--well, first time for me today. I live in georgia, got to "enjoy" our closed source no way to verify it anymore computerised voting machine. We had paper ballots before, relatively easy to count with any old random pairs of eyeballs and really never a problem before.
After I finished voting I asked ror A - a paper receipt with my recoded vote, and B a copy of the source code used on the computer for outside audit to see that it wasn't trojaned or set up to manipulate the votes in anyway. No receipt available. Poor poll official in this small county was flabbergasted. Called folks, eventually got shuffled to some guy at the computer company. He wouldn't give me a copy of the code because it was propietary, well, that's the point sez I no way to verify it. If there's a dispute how do the people at the polls recount it-run the flash card through the same maybe compromised machine? And if the flash card itself is changed already? All they need to pull off the scam is get the total number of votes cast to match the numbers hand entered at the head of the line, the RESULTS are un-verifiable. This is a duh really, it's just totaly bogus.
The poll official really didn't get it, I honestly don't think they understood what the whole point was, see it's the magic infalliable computer that no government or other party would ever manipulate, no, that's just not possible, and the corporate dude I talked to on the phone was kinda sorta smarmy and was indignant, so no source code. He KNEW what I was saying but was play acting dumb. ButI made sure at least I protested for the record.
Earlier on drudge before I went and voted he had a headline of big problems in georgia with the machines already, casting and changing votes from one party to the other, etc-what I think a lot of hipper people expected to happen- but now I can't find it cruising some other news sites, it poofed from drudge as near as I can see.
--my point was merely owning the highest tech is not the exact equivalent of "victory always" in all situations. It helps, and it can hurt as well. As long as there are human beings who act unbalanced as an agressor, the person(s) defending themselves will come up with something that could very well work as a defense or deterrent. That's the nature of assymetry, and it's something our own high tech government studies and uses as well, it's not "either-or" as you suggest I said or implied, I was just doing a little light wargaming.
Yes I know artillery shells are low tech more or less and common. If it becomes useless to use them other means of counter attack will be developed. As the nature of the size and superiority of the attacking force becomes more readily apparent, so will the rise of the creativity of the victims counter attack rise, that was really the point I was making, as humans have this "revenge" gene, if if it isn't overwhelmingly and immediately effective, they still use it. Warsaw ghetto? Ya, they lost eventually, but made a good point. Dien bien Phu, no way them little "gooks" (note popular term used at the time for demonization and de-humanizing purposes) could get advanced artillery over those impassable mountains, was there? Not possible, why they'll get bombed from the air and wiped out! whoops.... Ragtag rebel colonialists against the official organized colonial army, low tech disorganized militioa of farmers and tradesmen against the higher tech, richer and more organized regular and mercenary armies of kingus georgy, well, a way was found to win eventually, to neutralise the higher tewch and superior army, because the will and necessity was there.
And ya, if nation A with icbm nukes knew that much smaller and poorer nation B with hidden portable nukes had them spread out around their nation, well hidden - we'll call it non-findable for theory and conversational purposes - there very well could be a stoppage put to nation A's ICBM aggression by merely knowing they wouldn't get off totally scot free in an attack. They just might not attack. Or do ya feel lucky today? Semi MAD is just about as effective as a full MAD doctrine, wouldn't you say?
Anyway, a year and change ago a dozen dudes with 2 dollar wimpy knives and really a simple basic plan took out billions in infrastructure, hit the main militaryHQ hard of the worlds biggest and highest tech nation, killed thousands, and suceeded. Satellites didn't stop them, lasers, intel agencies, fighter planes, stealth bombers, abrahams tanks, nukes, zip nada stopped them. 2 buck knives and determination (and some collusion in high places but that's a different argument for a different time) took that particular day. Ya, they suffering now, but it ain't over yet either, is it?
Anywho, to me it don't really matter. My best guess is the electronic flashy stuff won't be the last weapons invented and used by man, my loot is on racial specific genotype biologicals that will be slightly flawed and/or mutate and basically wipe out humans across the planet. They'll be a flurry of nukes and lasers and whatnot, but the slow, steady and quiet biologicals will "win"-for the germs, that's who's gonna win, the germs. Humans ain't gonna make it. We're too stupid and arrogant. *Most* of our so called leaders-across the board, all the nations I mean-are clinically insane megalomaniacs. Total bonkers, loop de loops. They control use of weapons, weapons are all morphing into being variants of WMD. It's the largest growth industry on the planet, every ounce of high tech ability is being thrown at it.
That suckah gonna pop one day, 999 to 1 odds, IMO.
There's never been any weapon system of note invented that hasn't eventually been mass deployed and used in warfare, zero exceptions. The timing for this or that gadget or technique is different, but so far human's basic track record in history is "if they build it, it eventually gets used a lot". The temptation is just too great. Human nature hasn't ever changed since jawbone of an ass days. It'll happen.
--for better or worse, we have laws against monopolies, or monopolies that are abusive. they are counter productive, not productive. Microsoft got convicted of being a monopoly, and of getting there illegally and of being abusive. Anarchy just ain't gonna work, microsoft wants anarchy for themselves and fascism for everone else, they want YOU to conform to their EULAS, swell, peachy keen, but THEY don't want to conform to OUR offical laws, our "EULA" we as an organized society maintain.
THEY BROKE THE EULA THEY AGREED TO, BROKE IT IN A MILLION PIECES. Our EULAS, our laws of conduct and commerce, this is proven DATA, it's indisputable now, it's not "opinion".
What part of them breaking our EULAS don't you get?
My position is no different from yours, I actually agree with it, except I readily see both EULAS and you obviously can't, don't or won't. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, microsoft wanted to be free to break the law, but they throw a hissy fit if they find anyone breaking their contract EULA law.
Ain't happening man. A crook is a crook is a crook. You support crookedness or you don't. You buy purchase and support from some crooked mafia org you don't.
--just some preliminary WAGS here, total random order off the top of my head:
A successful knockout requires precise aiming, artillery is a parabola, farther away the higher the arc, the easier to see and knockout. Solution, low altitude cheap drone cruise missiles,nap of the earth flying, highly maneuverable, very close to the ground. They are configured stealth angularity, paint and composite emissions absorbing materials. Work until the atmospheric or exosatmospheric lasers are in place.
Decoys until the defensive laser is overwhelmed. These things heat up, require some kind of fueling, whether conventional gennys for electricity or pulse nukes, whatever, their "fuel supply" is a limiting factor. Get them to use up the available fuel supply on masses of cheap joke targets that can't be ignored, ie, every tenth one is a real destructive device, and etc. Once their fuel is gone, proceed with attack. the supply lines for these devices as well, there will always be weak link humans in these supply lines, cut a part of the line someplace removed from the laser.
Blackmail. Make the cost of using the lasers too high. An example, they use overt lasers, you use covert biologicals in their civilian sectors.
They use space, you contaminate their water in a major city.
They use B-2's, you use a dozen or a hundred guys with bic lighters one night.
They steal your natural resources when you are a small weak country, you ally with a strong non allied country and promise them 1/2 your resources for help.
They do economic sanctions, you make their economic infrastructure non functional, the "backhoe whoops" syndrome, or code red part deux
The BEST though--blackmail/bribe/control the opposing forces top leadership and business people. You win hands down no fighting required, the ultimate trojan horse attack, the Quisling gambit.
--here's a thought, how about the 500$ brand new laptop with an all day battery, instead of a "tablet". Much better idea, IMO. It would sell like a 500$ brand new laptop! Most people aren't doing weather modeling, you really don't need all the horsepower of most new chips except for games and extreme industry niches, and those folks would always get the most expensive top of the line anyway, what we need is the opposite economic strata "just works" laptop, consumer entry level, and not at 1000$, either.
--maybe they will if they ever actually win any cases, and use that for legal precedent. What I think they are dojng now is both gaining (trying to) a legal precedent plus building a war chest from these little guys copping out to take on one of the big guys.
--can't help ya but I want a lit up keyboard real bad. Always wanted one. I like to be able to sit in front of the monitor but NOT have to have an overhead light to see the keys. I wish ya luck, get one on the market ya got a sale! As to re mapping it, that's frosting and cool too.
--I used to send in the talkback report on netscape, but this mozilla I'm on, 1.01(I think, don't remember), where is it? I'll turn it on if I can find it. I found one that is definetly a reproducable bug, and I've also encounted things that lock moz down completely. The version moz I'm running is the update from rh 7.2 up2date. Thanks in advance.
...here's the deal. Ok, swell, 60,000 employees. Ya'all produce products, great! No probs! except..... there are 280 MILLION people just in the united States. For better or worse, "the internet" is an integral part of our ECONOMY and NATIONAL SECURITY. Using fraud, deceit, extortion, theft, etc, microsoft has become a dominant player in desktop pc's and is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the servers out there. the stuff is INSECURE and buggy and insists on closed propietary "solutions" that make other peoples efforts (people with families and mortgages and whatnot) NOT WORK, work badly or not at all. They expose EVERYONE to ridiculously easy to use security exploits because of their pervasivness that is extant. They-the company-has a verifiable track record of IGNORING security problems until it's been rubbed in their face for extended periods of time, for example, I'll refresh you to the BO debacle, where microsoft just slap refused to acknowledge that gaping holes in their system, denied it existed, in essence, lied through their teeth, hiding behind their weight and arrogance. They put all 280 million people in the US at risk over this, and who knows what eles is out there. this nations business NEEDS the net now, there ain't no going back. it's not a luxury it's a NECESSITY. They did this so they could make more profit. They have 40 billion in the bank, like I have written before, is there any rational explanation they couldn't have instead used 1/2 (pick a big fraction or number here) of this money to actually CODE BETTER? How many programmers and engineers could they have hired for 20 billion, and given them a directive to make SURE that their products worked as advertised and were secure? I don't have an exact number, but it looks like thousands more-but they voluntarily CHOSE to accumulate more profits INSTEAD of making their products secure and functional. This is called short sighted GREED. The security of the nation's internet infrastructure should not have become hostage to this GREED, and the needs and security of the other 279,940,000 people are MORE IMPORTANT than the 60,000 microsoft employees money.
Sorry, that's the way it is. The internet is for EVERYONE, not for just MICROSOFT. They don't OWN it much as they would like to and have actively sought to. Their efforts are severly mucking up the ability of non microsoft ANYTHING to do anything, and if palladium gets mandated directly into hardware... huh?
You drive to work? You want the road you are on to only be allowed to owners of belchfire cars, and all the gas stations to only have gas that works only in belchfire cars? Oh what's that, you don't want to run a belchfire because you notice that every belchfire needs it's own full time mechanic to keep it running and not blowing up, you can't lock the doors so every time you stop and park and go into a store you come out and your stuff is stolen, the car stops working every 2 years requiring a new engine, it then takes a "new" kind of gas, and their gas comes chunky style with crud and whatnot floating in it every single new version of gas?
Too bad, see, belchfire is "the standard" now, even if you want to buy another brand of car-which you still can- soon you'll need a "passport" to use the road, you'll need to filter your gas, and well, the drivetrain is still gonna be a palladiumBelchfire drivetrain and you'll be required to only drive on belchfire tollroads and only stop at belchfire stores. Oh ya, the want to know every place you go to, this info gets sent automatically back to belchfire headquarters. Every_place_you_go. Oh, you added a non belchfire fender to replace the one that got banged up? Too bad, your car won't start now. On and on. You want that kind of "choice"?
Sure, you still got a choice, go get your non belchfire car, good luck running it soon after the new tollroads for belchfire-only are in place and all you can get is belchfire gas. We aren't 100% of the way there yet, but we are over 90% of the way there.. No belchfire car running belchfire gas, soon you'll be hitchhiking to work, not driving, or I guess you can just buy a belchfire, right? I mean it's "fair" and you got that choice........the rest of us think that sucks, if you ain't getting it by now you just ain't never gonna get it.
I'm not an IT guy just a "car driver". I actually don't like belchfires, they have never worked all that well for me when I tried them out. yes I've owned and driven belchfires. Hmm, they actually don't work that well. In fact I've tried several belchfires, the "new and improved" are pretty much old belchfires with new body styles, the door locks don't work, I can't use anything but belchfire gas in them, and dang if every third tank of gas I put in it seemed to bust another part. That sorta suxs. I just find this sorta weird and annoying. So far I can struggle by with non belchfire, but I'm not looking forward to the new toll roads, and dang I'm getting tired of dodging all the broken down belchfires spread out on the road, and gee whizz, half the traffic is tow trucks towing in belchfires, all those broken belchfires are hurting the economy, which is hurting me in general, the real work delivery trucks can't hardly get through anymore, and I got to keep looking further and further for non belchfire gas.
Enough's enough, become part of the solution, stop being part of the problem. This belchfire leopard ain't changing it's spots, slap new paint on it, it's still a belchfire. They been asked nicey nice for years now, to PLEASE just change a few things abvout how they go about this business, they refused and even got nastier, they ain't changing except for MORE belchfire. Give it up, accept reality, belchfires useability is broken and is hindering everyone else. Your profits aren't worth the grief everyone is going through. It's just plain rank nasty wrong.
Are you aware of why a RICO suit wasn't pushed against microsoft execs given the scuttlebutt of the strongarm tactics they used against various hardware manufacturers as regards bundling and pre-loading alternative OS's? Last I knew, extortion was a criminal and not a civil crime. To me that was a more proper venue and focus for this case, with wider ranging ramifications. Comment?
This ruling boils down to a repeat of "bad microsoft, go ahead and keep doing what you were doing more or less". so--what's next? How can the average person who's had his security threatened by their exclusionary polices leading to insecure systems in not only the private market but in the public sector react to this and in what manner? What practical recourse is left? Say you have already stopped using microsoft products. Well, big deal, I want to know when they will be removed from my tax supported government, as they are A untrustworthy and a national security risk, and B, products produced by known felons who have been allowed to skate after using illegal activities to promote and profit from flawed products, a double crime in essence. What's a next step to take, for an individual? Is there ANY sort of practical recourse to take with such a vague but clear threat from mass continual useage and deployment of their products?
--side issue here. You CAN do an indemnity personal bond for car insurance, just most people don't and it's little known about. It's also expensive, goes by state minimum liabilites, and you'd of course want more than those minimums any more with the cost of cars and people in the hospital, etc, but if you got it you can do it and keep your wealth unless it's needed by your proven negligence.
Got a neighbor periodically goes to panama for his oil business stuff, he sez the government there is roughly equivalent to say chicago in corruption levels, ie, total top to bottom. I imagine them mucking with the internet only applies to peons, that if you are at least a semi connected fatcat and pay the correct bribes you can do whatever you want, but at that level you could afford long distance so the point is moot. Most (not al, generally speaking here of course) civil laws in regards to anything but fraud in it's various forms more or less exist to protect the already wealthy's status quo. No different here than in panama, not really.
I'll give you an example I am running into locally here where I live. I'm in the market for a small piece of property to have a home on. My income level for this would be in the uber cheap range. Anywho, this county a few years ago decided on a minimun acreage size for new homes, 1.5 acres. Well, ok, fine and dandy..... trouble is, for the decades preceding this, they "allowed" smaller than that to be deeded up as lots and now exist in undeveloped abundance by the hundreds or thousands really, like 1.1 acre, etc. These lots are now useless except for growing weeds and trees, people are stuck with them now, no one wants to buy them, you can't do anything with them, but they are still taxed. This benefits the more recent richer arrivals who took the county over(lotta cash under the table money gets spread into country government is the popular notion) and don't want it to be farming/light manufacturing, they want it to be yet another yuppie retirement/second home vacation place.
Poorer people are untermenschen here, you can WORK here, but they would rather you to live over real far away some other place and commute, please go home at quitting time, no riff raff. It sucks but that's another example of a civil statute enforced by their bureaucrats and hired badged mercenaries to benefit the more wealthy.
..ok, on that one point it makes sense. If you use text based mail though it won't matter, no urls open anyway. I personally don't use html or script enabled emails, that eliminates at least 90% of the problem there, that and deleting. I maybe get 6 spams a day now whereas years ago I got as many as anyone, hundreds sometimes. All I do is text based/delete spam, it seems to have worked admirably. I don't load remote images, etc. And I have more or less trained email senders to not send me bogus attachments or forwards with all the other recipients CC'ed, etc by the simple matter of informing them once and if it persists I stop reading their mail. It's a tough call, but I made it years ago and it's paid off, email is not unmanageable, I get hardly any spam and very little sent viruses, and those can't effect me anyway-at least as far as I know, no executables run from just text based email, but perhaps I am wrong on that, I honestly do not know.
All in all I'll sum it up. IF you trust this thing after a suitable "learning period" for it, AND you never waste your time thereafter checking the saved spam, yes, it IS an email spam filter. BUT, IF you open the spam folder to check it-ever, after the learning period- and read all the headers, you've defeated the purpose, at best it's a middle man gee- whizz placebo effect, as any perceived "time" savings is now illusory, and that's the whole point of a filter, yes? To save time wading through the spam and to avoid getting internet cooties sent to you? The emphasis should be on never getting it or getting on spam lists in the first place, filters are locking the barn door after the horse got out.
Just showing that not all tech is useful to all people, here's a prime example, for some folks it's apparently what they think they need, good for them, for others it's nice to read about it a little, but it's irrelevant as the problem got solved(more or less generally speaking now) long ago by numbers of people the old fashioned byt practical and effective high tech way of using human biochemical intelligence over primitive manufactured electronic only artificial intelligence.
To each their own, no one is correct or wrong in this per se, it's just a matter of taste and priorities. I see this as an overly complicated way to solve a simple problem-for some people, not all. Some folks have no choice, unfortunately they have gotten on so many lists that they are deluged with spam, it happens obviously. whoops. Others avoid it in the first place and regulate it on an as-needed basis. Two paths to the same destination,they are different from each other but it is the destination that is important, not the travel there. I could build a robot arm to open the fridge door, add blinkenneonlights, but I don't think I will at this juncture. See?
I'll leave it at that, have fun with it, hope it works for ya'all.
... just wondering if anyone has downloaded this "linex" ISO and burned it and installed it yet. How it works, etc, compared to the 'big boys" releases.
ya, it might help to speak spanish I guess.......probably also help to read the entire responses here, too, but whut the hey.....
....my point is made you are still reading the headers and the from addy. THAT is my point. I do the same thing, delete the spam, done. You just get it moved into another folder, I skip that step, it's an unnecessary middleman process. It makes no difference to me if I filter it into 19 other folders or not, you are still eyeballing them, a "glance" is still reading, unless you purposely skip any, then you'll never know if you missed something critical.
Stuff happens. Recent slashdot story about the missed email that was leading to the 60k job, granted, the isp blocked it, but still a missed email might be important. Maybe, maybe not. But from the technical viewpoint, it's like pregnant, you ARE or you AREN'T. A filter for email is not useful if you value your email unless it is no joke 100% effective, not 99.999%, because you still read the headers. If you are gonna do that, skip the extra program, delete all after extracting your gems.
Here's an easy analogy, this filter acts as a remote control to run the remote control on your tv. ya, nifty, but what's it good for? Skip the middleman. I think this software is cute but unnecessary. I can also "glance" at my list of emails, pick out the verifiable ones, delete the rest, it takes no longer in one window then another. It's the same amount of time. previous poster commented it breaks train of thought. well, umm, I do my email in bulk, it's turned on, then off, I don't leave it running with odd beeps and flashes, rather not be bothered, but that is personal preference no right or wrong to it. The point of the deal is, you are still checking. Whether you do it now, later, makes no difference as long as it happens. The label of the folder makes no difference, the color of it, nada. If you are still reading it, it's not filtering except as cute busywork. If you can really trust it, then have it delete emails it considers as spam and be happy with it, but if you check it, it's not useful you are doing the same amount of work as before, just it's in new folders, ie, no difference.
I applaud the attempts, I can see they got it down to very few false positives, but people are still reading the headers at least using their real cognitive human intelligence as opposed to AI, because real intelligence actually works and AI is still guessing.
For my loot, if ya want to filter, you have an "allow only" list, as in "these addresses only, period, no exceptions" and everything else isn't allowed, has to be a from addy you entered manually, nothing else gets in. That will stop spam. Well, that and around a few thousand successful prosecutions of spammers including jail time and fines equal to triple of what they profited spamming. That gets around, most will cease, overseas, yes, it would be harder, but there are steps that could be taken to make those nations leaders deal with their own spammers. That's another topic entirely.
--I understand wanting to filter spam, but all these techniques near as I can see you still have to read all the spam to make sure it is A-learning to find spam, and B to make sure that you didn't filter out important mail by having your automatic filter filter it out. Umm, what's the point then? Isn't this an example of the department of redundancy department?
--thanks for the reply. yes i tried it on every tty place in the menu, I tried the different flow control settings, authentication, yada yada, went through the entire thing and tweaked and changed as many different variables as possible. Like I said I am missing something crucial, but not able to find the info I need on any of the info or man pages for the device. I searched google at various forums and I know now I'm not alone,m it's a common problem. some folks rigs it seems to work admirably, others it's just useless. I honestly don't know what else to try with the thing. When I first tried mandrake I had the same problem, posted on their forum, got zero help. It's that kppp thing, ain't no using it easy. thewvdial on redhat with their older version GUI front end works flawlessly, finds the exact modem, sets it up, it dials connects hand shakes done. Tkaes two minutes tops. KPPP I got over ten hours minimum into, that's enough, I have a version of linux that works. And what's annoying now is that redhat "improved" it in 8.0, it isn't the same, will only look for the modem once. It finds my modem with kudzu on boot, then insists on installing a "standard modem" that refuses to dial. Phooie. And now it DON'T work for me, so like I said I reinstalled 7.2 and started on updates again. No fun on rural dialup modem. Too bad on the knoppix I was REALLY looking forward to using it else I wouldn't have bought it, same with the new redhat, but it's as useful to me as any other AOL coaster set now, waste of money to buy them. Thousands of apps with rank useless "automagical" wizard account set up dialers.
Now I could understand it if I had some extreme weird hardware, but gimme a break a name brand ibm pc and a us robotics external serial port modem is about as standard and normal as you can get, and it worked swell with 7.1 and 7.2, so whatever they changed thanks for nuthin. Knoppix, oh well, maybe there will be an actual manual for it some time. I tried at KDE looked at the KPPP pages, no help for whatever it is. I know it's one tiny thing, but DANG I went up and down the list of tweaks over and over again thinking I was missing something and I sure as heck can't find it.
and I bet serious folding loot I'm not the only one with this problem, deal is, any n00b you hand that thing to, to 99% of people an operating system and OS means "internet", all work should cease on those things until "the internet" works twice as good as mac or windows or at least on par, and it sure don't. Score so far for me with linux distros is only 50% work to get online, sort of dismal considering use of mac and windows since mid 90's when I started using the net has always run 100% online when it was asked to do this small thing. To be fair windows has hosed connections for me with those lamer irq settings conflicts (wazzup with that stupidity anyway?), pretty bogus coming from classic mac background, pick modem from list open ppp window, put in phone number and add in IP for the isp, hit dial, it's always worked with OT/PPP, never failed one time.
BUT, don't kde got one thousand cute apps with K in the name!
Not impressed, they can have 999 of them "K" apps back for a dialer that works as advertised. I guess I stick with this old redhat for awhile. I don't MIND learning command line at MY PACE, but if ya can't get online at all it makes it sorta hard to go google for answers don't it?
Thanks again and No I ain't mad at you whatsoever. I can readily see a lot of folks successful with it, oh well, that's reality. this makes 4 different attemtps with kppp, every time I try fresh i think this time I'll see what I have been missing, but after yesterday i realise I'm not, there's some serious bug that affects my connection, it's a combo that for some reason is odd but happens. therer ain't nuthin left to tweak, but ya need to be online to submit them buig buddy things, catch 22. I'm just not gonna fool with it until they release a version that I can see from reports works much better and not just have prettier GUI.
--serendipity. Just so happens I received a knoppix 3.1 cd. This afternoon I tried it out, loaded fine, cool. Check the menu, lotta kde apps. Tried to get online, normal external US robotics serial port modem. nada. 2.5 hours later I shut that thing off. I have yet to be able to get online with that kppp thing, read every HOWTO I could find, adjusted stomped chomped and romped everything they said to try, zip, nada, more or less useless to me without being able to surf with it.
I know one million guys will now say they get online flawlessly, it's automagically delicious that all they do is use thought control, that it washes their car and does their laundry too,yada, yada, yada, but it's been my experience the kppp dialer just slap don't work for way too many people. I've tried it before on mandrake and on redhat, it never_dialed_one_time. I cruised around and googled, it's a common problem it appears, goto any forum where folks having trouble with it, they get told to read the same manuals that say the same 4 things to try that's it. Phooie.. too bad, too, it has a ton of apps on their, but internet connectivity is job #1 as far as I am concerned with any modern OS release. They can skip the eye candy and the 689 other apps if the net isn't there and EASILY. Keyword EASILY. this is 2002, there is zero reason to do nothing besides clik and fill in the blank and get online with the connection of your choice anymore, it just shouldn't be this weird and rely on massive tweaking.
Gimme a GNOME based cd like this, with redhat's GUI dialer from 7.1 and 2 and I'll buy it. Yep, it ain't a purty dialer, but dadgum if finds your modem and sets it up and you hit connect and she dials out. And NOT the dialr wannabe from 8.0, I took that off my drive as well and put 7.2 back on, that sucks too.
This run from the cd is a great concept, I am just soured on kde apps now, not even gonna bother from this experience. next installzero any kde goes on my machine. Must have a good ten or 12 hours total trying to make kppp work total on different distros, that's enough, I got something that works and spend my time doing what I want to do. Not a coder here, so that's that..
--now I am wondering "big deal". What large hardware box builder will even WANT to ship multiple boot and have to increase their help desk size by 1000%? I DOUBT it would only double. Let alone deal with the returns by people saying "ugh, broken, don't work, replace, gimmee money back"?
Anyone here who works at dell/gateway/compaq and etc want to comment? any plans in the works for consumer entry level PC's going out the door dual boot because of this ruling now?
Just wondering. I was hoping gates and co would get some jail time for fraud at a minimum and extortion. The civil suit was a waste of lawyers and fed prosecutors, they should have gone straight to RICO and made some serious felony arrests in the beginning, IMO.
..get your own contract, BUT, put cash money in there with a lot of zeroes. the info gets out, HE is personally responsible, and make him get bonded. make it 100 grand.
OR.....
personally I would never go to that gym, tell 'em why too, because it sucks.
This biometric stuff has got to stop, people have got to start saying NO or it will in fact be full total bigbrotherville within a few short years now. It's this smarmy creeping incrementalism. make a little compromise here, a little compromise there. People wonder when it will stop-big hint it's NOT going to stop until you say NO and make it stick. Stores do it, now government does it, it's obscene. Last month I go to buy a cheap car part, they want my full name address and phone number at checkout, or their computer won't work!. I tell the clerk to get $%^*ing stuffed, well, I didn't cuss but got close, and I'm LOUD in the store, tell (her in this case, who was the manager) that my receipt with the cheap car part they give me for the cash I give them is all they need and are gonna get or it's a big fat no sale and I never come back. I did the same at the dentists when they wanted two full pages of info including social security number that had zero to do with anything about some tooth. screw that. I insisted, got the dental work, paid cash, left. 99% of most people would just sheep it out and fill it all in. Phooie, it's not necessary, tell these bozos no or go someplace else. No more, and no damn thumbscan or retina scan or palm scan-zip nada ain't happening. I'm not giving any store or building-access my biometrics voluntarily, they can byte me. Not handing some doofus drone clerk my personal info either, they can byte me I'll find a work around.
Choose once choose wisely, you can exercise without going to some stoopid gym, vote your conscious always, you'll never go wrong long term that way.
--no, I wouldn't be criticising them now, BECAUSE if they had really spent an extra twenty BILLION dollars on software engineering, concentrating on bugs and security and function, chances are pretty high that that, combined with an ethical business model as opposed to their now proven unethical business model, it would have resulted in a much superior product, increased sales for them, increased productivity for the commercial concerns that use their products, which would have lead to across the nation improved economy, and a much more secure internet infrastructure and national defense.
I will repeat it in an even more simplistic analogy, planned obsolence and obfuscation and misrepresentation of goods and services offered for sale is a flawed business model long term, and criminal by nature. and coercing other companies and individuals into going along to get along by your sheer size and influence is akin to blackmailing or extortion. this is criminal and unethical behavior, any size, any company that does it, and human beings are responsible, not some typed words with an "inc" in the title. Humans. People. Criminal activity..
Microsoft is planned obsolence carried to an extreme. And like I said, I think they started as a perfectly normal company, some good, some bad, over all "good", then got greedy as the zillions piled up, their mindset changed, their practices changed, they morphed to the "bad", bad got 'worse", it went from the top on down and sideways, now they are in court. You got to really screw up bigtime for a corporation of their size and influence to get put in court for years, and they sure did it. Thankfully, this attitude and social experiment in letting mega corporations skate all the time when they screw up on purpose to just rake in more loot is changing, this is the only good thing to come socially out of the dot com bubble years, the turning over the rocks to expose the scam men and the liars for what they are.
Now, with that said, to answer what you allude I might be doing had they spent the money and stayed ethical, no, most likely not ragging on them, BUT, I WOULD be ragging on maybe some other company or politician, human nature being there is always corruption, and as such is my ranting posting and writing nature which I never deny. So, if microsoft had done as I suggest, nope, I wouldn't be ragging on them today, give it because it's speculation a 99 percentile probabilty rating. 20 bil is a lot of cash to put engineers to work with, not to accumulate ill gotten piles of cash and put lawyers and sales people and various thugs to work. Me, I think it's better idea to put engineers to work in a software company, and give them instructions that they make quality, secure, functional products and it doesn't leave the shop until it's the best, not close enough with eye candy razzle dazzle on top. Applying bondo to rust doesn't stop the rust, and frankly, it's better to paint better and rustproof in advance of the rust showing. Microsoft has 40 bil in the bank from selling bondoware, not quality steel.
I'm not against them because they are "big", I'm against them because they are proven greedy malicious conniving bullies who endangered the national security and put our economy at risk and ripped off millions of consumers. That's not even debateable at this point, they have been to court and it has already been *proven*, all that's left is the punishment, I advocate bill gates and the next 99 top level bosses below him in PRISON. then let the stockholders who care about something besides short term unethical profits elect some ethical business people to take their places.
Microsoft can continue as far as I am concerned, the market will adjust itself if some fatcats go to jail. Like, who's buying enron stock right now or doing business with them? the nation has woken up that just because some company or individual is "rich" or "mega successful" doesn't mean they are "decent people". Crooks and gangsters like expensive suits and flashy cars and mansions too, same as people who make their living honestly.
Times change and rapidly, microsoft managers and decision makers can find out that big bullies can fall hard same as their previous victims, and that any level fatcat can go to jail. I hope it happens, too.
IMO at this point in time microsoft costs the nations economy "more" than what is represented by their cash holdings and daily vig they squeeze. They are a net drag on the economy now from lost productivity and the effects of at least a decade of squashed innovation from their monopolistic tactics. They created an empire of wasteful and inefficient BUSYWORK not real work. In IT, they have single handedly slowed down software innovation by obscuring anything but their profits. They are in a grab/control/control/grab cycle, their so-called "innovations" aren't offset by any increaed over-all productivity by the businesses and consumers they "serve". At one point, yes, they were a useful company, now they exist almost totaly on inertia and locked in propietary "solutions" that are putting other companies in a WTF? scenario on whether or not it's even worht it to keep their stuff or lose a million now to save millions and millions later. entire industries existing on fixing stuff that comes pre-shipped broken is NOT productive for the over-all economy. If that model was useful we could all get rich by bulldozing down new buildings and constantly rebuilding them. In meatworld that's ridiculous but that'swhat companies suckered into using microsoft are faced with now. throwing good money after bad because now even the dullest of the dull are "getting it" on their companies need to make widgets, not exist to support microsoft. They also have contributed WAY more to weakening the over-all national security/defense by continually releasing INsecure products. This COSTS us way more than they are worth, unfortunately we won't know thefiull and total cost until some mega microsoft based attack/worm thing hits.
Think on this, they have 40 billion cash in the bank-how much better might their software be if they had spent 20 billion-only 1/2-on actual p[re-release engineering and making their products secure and less buggy? They'd still at a MINIMUM have 20 billion in the bank, a most respectable sum, but still....they'd have much better products, no one mad at them, and would have probably made even more money. See? Greed clouds judgement, business or personal, mega scale to personal scale, greed is NEVER good.
They got greedy, that's the bottom line-there's normal ETHICAL and responsible capitalism, then there's blood sucking mega-jerk greed, they crossed the line into being "bad guys" some time ago.
Gates and the next 99 guys below him need JAIL TIME. Not just ripping off stockholders and consumers to pay some joke fine, they need to get a dose of hard reality that no one is above the law, and that buckets of cash don't mean you are able to skate on being a criminal, nor should ANY of them be able to hide behind the creation of a fictitious person called a "corporation". That's nonsense on the face of it, that entire "corporation" concept needs to be on trial as well, every rank greedy decision they made was done by HUMAN BEINGS, identifiable people with names, it's those human beings who broke the law, ergo, human beings need the sentencing. Corporations-the concept-are a joke, again, IMO. I hope they get nailed, and hard. This nation locks people up for MUCH less than what they have done, daily.
Along with the lay's of enron types, these guys need to see steel bars, not vistas from mansions. they need blank walls to stare at, not the iew from a corporate jet or luxury office. I hope the next several years sees thousands of corporate fatcats and their tame poodle politicans imprisoned. Enough's enough on the "greed is good, screw everyone else" philosophy. I don't want microsoft to be fined one thin dime, nope, I never even wanted "microsoft" itself to be on trial, I wanted to see those bozos in charge on trial and charged and prosecuted and convicted and hauled off in cuffs, stripped of their armani's and chucked in the pokey, and the underlings who move up to replace them get 'scared straight' by this experience and to see the light on RESPONSIBLE corporate practices, and to serve as an example to every other fictitious-person "corporation" owners out there that their days of hiding behind that legal fiction and being blameless are OVER.
--to revisit outsourcing, and also massive immigration as regards "jobs". I know from a silicon valley perspective there still is "work", but on various other forums and irc channels, in the heartland it's hitting home hard, across the board, white collar and blue collar. I think that your estimate -I'll call it "cautious"- is a severe low-ball estimate. My opinion, this entire economy is tanking, and tanking hard. On one semi large forum I visit, they held an impromptu poll, result, 30% current un-or-underemployment, various fields, not just IT, various, software engineers to teachers to construction, you name it, it appears to be worse anecdotally than the "official" numbers promulgated by the government and wall street. I include in these figures people who have a "job", but have had to keep seeking work with the result every new job has resulted in severe pay cuts, often several in the past two years. This jibes with what else I have noted over net anecodtals for the past 2 or 3 years, most generally speaking.
I think a lot-most-companies are still not bingoing that every laid off / fired worker is also a laid off / fired consumer and customer, thus bad begatting bad leading to worse leading to..well....I think it's going to get most ugly...
Two questions, 1 -are you aware of ANY high level money guys or CEO's who actually understand what's happening and basically agree with my assessment, and if so, who,, and 2- which fields do you think will persevere no matter how "crashed" we become in terms of more unemployment, inflation or actual depression, etc.
--I sort of like the concept of the hybrids, but in my mind the jury will be out as for their longeveity with road salt, mud, weather, very rough roads and off road useage, etc. Electrical systems on vehicles in the real world are notoriously vulnerable to major FUBAR, check any garage on what needs fixing all the time on any newer vehicles now.
With that caveat, here's a link to what's happening with trucks, which is much more interesting to me than with the little commuter urban cars. The dodge contractor is nifty idea, you can use it stationary as an advanced home or jobsite generator. As someone who curently runs PVsolar with genny backup, I like the idea of eliminating cost, ie, you own a truck because you live rural, trucks are necessary out here, so you can save on the cost of your backup genny and truck simultaneously, no need for separate purchases. And 20 kw is a no-joke sized genny.
Slashdot Mirror
--well, first time for me today. I live in georgia, got to "enjoy" our closed source no way to verify it anymore computerised voting machine. We had paper ballots before, relatively easy to count with any old random pairs of eyeballs and really never a problem before.
After I finished voting I asked ror A - a paper receipt with my recoded vote, and B a copy of the source code used on the computer for outside audit to see that it wasn't trojaned or set up to manipulate the votes in anyway. No receipt available. Poor poll official in this small county was flabbergasted. Called folks, eventually got shuffled to some guy at the computer company. He wouldn't give me a copy of the code because it was propietary, well, that's the point sez I no way to verify it. If there's a dispute how do the people at the polls recount it-run the flash card through the same maybe compromised machine? And if the flash card itself is changed already? All they need to pull off the scam is get the total number of votes cast to match the numbers hand entered at the head of the line, the RESULTS are un-verifiable. This is a duh really, it's just totaly bogus.
The poll official really didn't get it, I honestly don't think they understood what the whole point was, see it's the magic infalliable computer that no government or other party would ever manipulate, no, that's just not possible, and the corporate dude I talked to on the phone was kinda sorta smarmy and was indignant, so no source code. He KNEW what I was saying but was play acting dumb. ButI made sure at least I protested for the record.
Earlier on drudge before I went and voted he had a headline of big problems in georgia with the machines already, casting and changing votes from one party to the other, etc-what I think a lot of hipper people expected to happen- but now I can't find it cruising some other news sites, it poofed from drudge as near as I can see.
--my point was merely owning the highest tech is not the exact equivalent of "victory always" in all situations. It helps, and it can hurt as well. As long as there are human beings who act unbalanced as an agressor, the person(s) defending themselves will come up with something that could very well work as a defense or deterrent. That's the nature of assymetry, and it's something our own high tech government studies and uses as well, it's not "either-or" as you suggest I said or implied, I was just doing a little light wargaming.
Yes I know artillery shells are low tech more or less and common. If it becomes useless to use them other means of counter attack will be developed. As the nature of the size and superiority of the attacking force becomes more readily apparent, so will the rise of the creativity of the victims counter attack rise, that was really the point I was making, as humans have this "revenge" gene, if if it isn't overwhelmingly and immediately effective, they still use it. Warsaw ghetto? Ya, they lost eventually, but made a good point. Dien bien Phu, no way them little "gooks" (note popular term used at the time for demonization and de-humanizing purposes) could get advanced artillery over those impassable mountains, was there? Not possible, why they'll get bombed from the air and wiped out! whoops.... Ragtag rebel colonialists against the official organized colonial army, low tech disorganized militioa of farmers and tradesmen against the higher tech, richer and more organized regular and mercenary armies of kingus georgy, well, a way was found to win eventually, to neutralise the higher tewch and superior army, because the will and necessity was there.
And ya, if nation A with icbm nukes knew that much smaller and poorer nation B with hidden portable nukes had them spread out around their nation, well hidden - we'll call it non-findable for theory and conversational purposes - there very well could be a stoppage put to nation A's ICBM aggression by merely knowing they wouldn't get off totally scot free in an attack. They just might not attack. Or do ya feel lucky today? Semi MAD is just about as effective as a full MAD doctrine, wouldn't you say?
Anyway, a year and change ago a dozen dudes with 2 dollar wimpy knives and really a simple basic plan took out billions in infrastructure, hit the main militaryHQ hard of the worlds biggest and highest tech nation, killed thousands, and suceeded. Satellites didn't stop them, lasers, intel agencies, fighter planes, stealth bombers, abrahams tanks, nukes, zip nada stopped them. 2 buck knives and determination (and some collusion in high places but that's a different argument for a different time) took that particular day. Ya, they suffering now, but it ain't over yet either, is it?
Anywho, to me it don't really matter. My best guess is the electronic flashy stuff won't be the last weapons invented and used by man, my loot is on racial specific genotype biologicals that will be slightly flawed and/or mutate and basically wipe out humans across the planet. They'll be a flurry of nukes and lasers and whatnot, but the slow, steady and quiet biologicals will "win"-for the germs, that's who's gonna win, the germs. Humans ain't gonna make it. We're too stupid and arrogant. *Most* of our so called leaders-across the board, all the nations I mean-are clinically insane megalomaniacs. Total bonkers, loop de loops. They control use of weapons, weapons are all morphing into being variants of WMD. It's the largest growth industry on the planet, every ounce of high tech ability is being thrown at it.
That suckah gonna pop one day, 999 to 1 odds, IMO.
There's never been any weapon system of note invented that hasn't eventually been mass deployed and used in warfare, zero exceptions. The timing for this or that gadget or technique is different, but so far human's basic track record in history is "if they build it, it eventually gets used a lot". The temptation is just too great. Human nature hasn't ever changed since jawbone of an ass days. It'll happen.
--for better or worse, we have laws against monopolies, or monopolies that are abusive. they are counter productive, not productive. Microsoft got convicted of being a monopoly, and of getting there illegally and of being abusive. Anarchy just ain't gonna work, microsoft wants anarchy for themselves and fascism for everone else, they want YOU to conform to their EULAS, swell, peachy keen, but THEY don't want to conform to OUR offical laws, our "EULA" we as an organized society maintain.
THEY BROKE THE EULA THEY AGREED TO, BROKE IT IN A MILLION PIECES. Our EULAS, our laws of conduct and commerce, this is proven DATA, it's indisputable now, it's not "opinion".
What part of them breaking our EULAS don't you get?
My position is no different from yours, I actually agree with it, except I readily see both EULAS and you obviously can't, don't or won't. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, microsoft wanted to be free to break the law, but they throw a hissy fit if they find anyone breaking their contract EULA law.
Ain't happening man. A crook is a crook is a crook. You support crookedness or you don't. You buy purchase and support from some crooked mafia org you don't.
I DON'T, YM obviously V quite a bit.
--just some preliminary WAGS here, total random order off the top of my head:
A successful knockout requires precise aiming, artillery is a parabola, farther away the higher the arc, the easier to see and knockout. Solution, low altitude cheap drone cruise missiles,nap of the earth flying, highly maneuverable, very close to the ground. They are configured stealth angularity, paint and composite emissions absorbing materials. Work until the atmospheric or exosatmospheric lasers are in place.
Decoys until the defensive laser is overwhelmed. These things heat up, require some kind of fueling, whether conventional gennys for electricity or pulse nukes, whatever, their "fuel supply" is a limiting factor. Get them to use up the available fuel supply on masses of cheap joke targets that can't be ignored, ie, every tenth one is a real destructive device, and etc. Once their fuel is gone, proceed with attack. the supply lines for these devices as well, there will always be weak link humans in these supply lines, cut a part of the line someplace removed from the laser.
Blackmail. Make the cost of using the lasers too high. An example, they use overt lasers, you use covert biologicals in their civilian sectors.
They use space, you contaminate their water in a major city.
They use B-2's, you use a dozen or a hundred guys with bic lighters one night.
They steal your natural resources when you are a small weak country, you ally with a strong non allied country and promise them 1/2 your resources for help.
They do economic sanctions, you make their economic infrastructure non functional, the "backhoe whoops" syndrome, or code red part deux
The BEST though--blackmail/bribe/control the opposing forces top leadership and business people. You win hands down no fighting required, the ultimate trojan horse attack, the Quisling gambit.
--here's a thought, how about the 500$ brand new laptop with an all day battery, instead of a "tablet". Much better idea, IMO. It would sell like a 500$ brand new laptop! Most people aren't doing weather modeling, you really don't need all the horsepower of most new chips except for games and extreme industry niches, and those folks would always get the most expensive top of the line anyway, what we need is the opposite economic strata "just works" laptop, consumer entry level, and not at 1000$, either.
--hahahaha! at least ya took it good!
"belchfires-where d'ya wanna go today?"
--maybe they will if they ever actually win any cases, and use that for legal precedent. What I think they are dojng now is both gaining (trying to) a legal precedent plus building a war chest from these little guys copping out to take on one of the big guys.
--can't help ya but I want a lit up keyboard real bad. Always wanted one. I like to be able to sit in front of the monitor but NOT have to have an overhead light to see the keys. I wish ya luck, get one on the market ya got a sale! As to re mapping it, that's frosting and cool too.
--I used to send in the talkback report on netscape, but this mozilla I'm on, 1.01(I think, don't remember), where is it? I'll turn it on if I can find it. I found one that is definetly a reproducable bug, and I've also encounted things that lock moz down completely. The version moz I'm running is the update from rh 7.2 up2date. Thanks in advance.
...here's the deal. Ok, swell, 60,000 employees. Ya'all produce products, great! No probs! except..... there are 280 MILLION people just in the united States. For better or worse, "the internet" is an integral part of our ECONOMY and NATIONAL SECURITY. Using fraud, deceit, extortion, theft, etc, microsoft has become a dominant player in desktop pc's and is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the servers out there. the stuff is INSECURE and buggy and insists on closed propietary "solutions" that make other peoples efforts (people with families and mortgages and whatnot) NOT WORK, work badly or not at all. They expose EVERYONE to ridiculously easy to use security exploits because of their pervasivness that is extant. They-the company-has a verifiable track record of IGNORING security problems until it's been rubbed in their face for extended periods of time, for example, I'll refresh you to the BO debacle, where microsoft just slap refused to acknowledge that gaping holes in their system, denied it existed, in essence, lied through their teeth, hiding behind their weight and arrogance. They put all 280 million people in the US at risk over this, and who knows what eles is out there. this nations business NEEDS the net now, there ain't no going back. it's not a luxury it's a NECESSITY. They did this so they could make more profit. They have 40 billion in the bank, like I have written before, is there any rational explanation they couldn't have instead used 1/2 (pick a big fraction or number here) of this money to actually CODE BETTER? How many programmers and engineers could they have hired for 20 billion, and given them a directive to make SURE that their products worked as advertised and were secure? I don't have an exact number, but it looks like thousands more-but they voluntarily CHOSE to accumulate more profits INSTEAD of making their products secure and functional. This is called short sighted GREED. The security of the nation's internet infrastructure should not have become hostage to this GREED, and the needs and security of the other 279,940,000 people are MORE IMPORTANT than the 60,000 microsoft employees money.
....the rest of us think that sucks, if you ain't getting it by now you just ain't never gonna get it.
Sorry, that's the way it is. The internet is for EVERYONE, not for just MICROSOFT. They don't OWN it much as they would like to and have actively sought to. Their efforts are severly mucking up the ability of non microsoft ANYTHING to do anything, and if palladium gets mandated directly into hardware... huh?
You drive to work? You want the road you are on to only be allowed to owners of belchfire cars, and all the gas stations to only have gas that works only in belchfire cars? Oh what's that, you don't want to run a belchfire because you notice that every belchfire needs it's own full time mechanic to keep it running and not blowing up, you can't lock the doors so every time you stop and park and go into a store you come out and your stuff is stolen, the car stops working every 2 years requiring a new engine, it then takes a "new" kind of gas, and their gas comes chunky style with crud and whatnot floating in it every single new version of gas?
Too bad, see, belchfire is "the standard" now, even if you want to buy another brand of car-which you still can- soon you'll need a "passport" to use the road, you'll need to filter your gas, and well, the drivetrain is still gonna be a palladiumBelchfire drivetrain and you'll be required to only drive on belchfire tollroads and only stop at belchfire stores. Oh ya, the want to know every place you go to, this info gets sent automatically back to belchfire headquarters. Every_place_you_go. Oh, you added a non belchfire fender to replace the one that got banged up? Too bad, your car won't start now. On and on. You want that kind of "choice"?
Sure, you still got a choice, go get your non belchfire car, good luck running it soon after the new tollroads for belchfire-only are in place and all you can get is belchfire gas. We aren't 100% of the way there yet, but we are over 90% of the way there.. No belchfire car running belchfire gas, soon you'll be hitchhiking to work, not driving, or I guess you can just buy a belchfire, right? I mean it's "fair" and you got that choice....
I'm not an IT guy just a "car driver". I actually don't like belchfires, they have never worked all that well for me when I tried them out. yes I've owned and driven belchfires. Hmm, they actually don't work that well. In fact I've tried several belchfires, the "new and improved" are pretty much old belchfires with new body styles, the door locks don't work, I can't use anything but belchfire gas in them, and dang if every third tank of gas I put in it seemed to bust another part. That sorta suxs. I just find this sorta weird and annoying. So far I can struggle by with non belchfire, but I'm not looking forward to the new toll roads, and dang I'm getting tired of dodging all the broken down belchfires spread out on the road, and gee whizz, half the traffic is tow trucks towing in belchfires, all those broken belchfires are hurting the economy, which is hurting me in general, the real work delivery trucks can't hardly get through anymore, and I got to keep looking further and further for non belchfire gas.
Enough's enough, become part of the solution, stop being part of the problem. This belchfire leopard ain't changing it's spots, slap new paint on it, it's still a belchfire. They been asked nicey nice for years now, to PLEASE just change a few things abvout how they go about this business, they refused and even got nastier, they ain't changing except for MORE belchfire. Give it up, accept reality, belchfires useability is broken and is hindering everyone else. Your profits aren't worth the grief everyone is going through. It's just plain rank nasty wrong.
--I have a few questions....
Mr. Rosen--
Are you aware of why a RICO suit wasn't pushed against microsoft execs given the scuttlebutt of the strongarm tactics they used against various hardware manufacturers as regards bundling and pre-loading alternative OS's? Last I knew, extortion was a criminal and not a civil crime. To me that was a more proper venue and focus for this case, with wider ranging ramifications. Comment?
This ruling boils down to a repeat of "bad microsoft, go ahead and keep doing what you were doing more or less". so--what's next? How can the average person who's had his security threatened by their exclusionary polices leading to insecure systems in not only the private market but in the public sector react to this and in what manner? What practical recourse is left? Say you have already stopped using microsoft products. Well, big deal, I want to know when they will be removed from my tax supported government, as they are A untrustworthy and a national security risk, and B, products produced by known felons who have been allowed to skate after using illegal activities to promote and profit from flawed products, a double crime in essence. What's a next step to take, for an individual? Is there ANY sort of practical recourse to take with such a vague but clear threat from mass continual useage and deployment of their products?
thanks in advance
--side issue here. You CAN do an indemnity personal bond for car insurance, just most people don't and it's little known about. It's also expensive, goes by state minimum liabilites, and you'd of course want more than those minimums any more with the cost of cars and people in the hospital, etc, but if you got it you can do it and keep your wealth unless it's needed by your proven negligence.
Got a neighbor periodically goes to panama for his oil business stuff, he sez the government there is roughly equivalent to say chicago in corruption levels, ie, total top to bottom. I imagine them mucking with the internet only applies to peons, that if you are at least a semi connected fatcat and pay the correct bribes you can do whatever you want, but at that level you could afford long distance so the point is moot. Most (not al, generally speaking here of course) civil laws in regards to anything but fraud in it's various forms more or less exist to protect the already wealthy's status quo. No different here than in panama, not really.
I'll give you an example I am running into locally here where I live. I'm in the market for a small piece of property to have a home on. My income level for this would be in the uber cheap range. Anywho, this county a few years ago decided on a minimun acreage size for new homes, 1.5 acres. Well, ok, fine and dandy..... trouble is, for the decades preceding this, they "allowed" smaller than that to be deeded up as lots and now exist in undeveloped abundance by the hundreds or thousands really, like 1.1 acre, etc. These lots are now useless except for growing weeds and trees, people are stuck with them now, no one wants to buy them, you can't do anything with them, but they are still taxed. This benefits the more recent richer arrivals who took the county over(lotta cash under the table money gets spread into country government is the popular notion) and don't want it to be farming/light manufacturing, they want it to be yet another yuppie retirement/second home vacation place.
Poorer people are untermenschen here, you can WORK here, but they would rather you to live over real far away some other place and commute, please go home at quitting time, no riff raff. It sucks but that's another example of a civil statute enforced by their bureaucrats and hired badged mercenaries to benefit the more wealthy.
..ok, on that one point it makes sense. If you use text based mail though it won't matter, no urls open anyway. I personally don't use html or script enabled emails, that eliminates at least 90% of the problem there, that and deleting. I maybe get 6 spams a day now whereas years ago I got as many as anyone, hundreds sometimes. All I do is text based/delete spam, it seems to have worked admirably. I don't load remote images, etc. And I have more or less trained email senders to not send me bogus attachments or forwards with all the other recipients CC'ed, etc by the simple matter of informing them once and if it persists I stop reading their mail. It's a tough call, but I made it years ago and it's paid off, email is not unmanageable, I get hardly any spam and very little sent viruses, and those can't effect me anyway-at least as far as I know, no executables run from just text based email, but perhaps I am wrong on that, I honestly do not know.
All in all I'll sum it up. IF you trust this thing after a suitable "learning period" for it, AND you never waste your time thereafter checking the saved spam, yes, it IS an email spam filter. BUT, IF you open the spam folder to check it-ever, after the learning period- and read all the headers, you've defeated the purpose, at best it's a middle man gee- whizz placebo effect, as any perceived "time" savings is now illusory, and that's the whole point of a filter, yes? To save time wading through the spam and to avoid getting internet cooties sent to you? The emphasis should be on never getting it or getting on spam lists in the first place, filters are locking the barn door after the horse got out.
Just showing that not all tech is useful to all people, here's a prime example, for some folks it's apparently what they think they need, good for them, for others it's nice to read about it a little, but it's irrelevant as the problem got solved(more or less generally speaking now) long ago by numbers of people the old fashioned byt practical and effective high tech way of using human biochemical intelligence over primitive manufactured electronic only artificial intelligence.
To each their own, no one is correct or wrong in this per se, it's just a matter of taste and priorities. I see this as an overly complicated way to solve a simple problem-for some people, not all. Some folks have no choice, unfortunately they have gotten on so many lists that they are deluged with spam, it happens obviously. whoops. Others avoid it in the first place and regulate it on an as-needed basis. Two paths to the same destination,they are different from each other but it is the destination that is important, not the travel there. I could build a robot arm to open the fridge door, add blinkenneonlights, but I don't think I will at this juncture. See?
I'll leave it at that, have fun with it, hope it works for ya'all.
... just wondering if anyone has downloaded this "linex" ISO and burned it and installed it yet. How it works, etc, compared to the 'big boys" releases.
..probably also help to read the entire responses here, too, but whut the hey.....
ya, it might help to speak spanish I guess.....
....my point is made you are still reading the headers and the from addy. THAT is my point. I do the same thing, delete the spam, done. You just get it moved into another folder, I skip that step, it's an unnecessary middleman process. It makes no difference to me if I filter it into 19 other folders or not, you are still eyeballing them, a "glance" is still reading, unless you purposely skip any, then you'll never know if you missed something critical.
Stuff happens. Recent slashdot story about the missed email that was leading to the 60k job, granted, the isp blocked it, but still a missed email might be important. Maybe, maybe not. But from the technical viewpoint, it's like pregnant, you ARE or you AREN'T. A filter for email is not useful if you value your email unless it is no joke 100% effective, not 99.999%, because you still read the headers. If you are gonna do that, skip the extra program, delete all after extracting your gems.
Here's an easy analogy, this filter acts as a remote control to run the remote control on your tv. ya, nifty, but what's it good for? Skip the middleman.
I think this software is cute but unnecessary. I can also "glance" at my list of emails, pick out the verifiable ones, delete the rest, it takes no longer in one window then another. It's the same amount of time. previous poster commented it breaks train of thought. well, umm, I do my email in bulk, it's turned on, then off, I don't leave it running with odd beeps and flashes, rather not be bothered, but that is personal preference no right or wrong to it. The point of the deal is, you are still checking. Whether you do it now, later, makes no difference as long as it happens. The label of the folder makes no difference, the color of it, nada. If you are still reading it, it's not filtering except as cute busywork. If you can really trust it, then have it delete emails it considers as spam and be happy with it, but if you check it, it's not useful you are doing the same amount of work as before, just it's in new folders, ie, no difference.
I applaud the attempts, I can see they got it down to very few false positives, but people are still reading the headers at least using their real cognitive human intelligence as opposed to AI, because real intelligence actually works and AI is still guessing.
For my loot, if ya want to filter, you have an "allow only" list, as in "these addresses only, period, no exceptions" and everything else isn't allowed, has to be a from addy you entered manually, nothing else gets in. That will stop spam. Well, that and around a few thousand successful prosecutions of spammers including jail time and fines equal to triple of what they profited spamming. That gets around, most will cease, overseas, yes, it would be harder, but there are steps that could be taken to make those nations leaders deal with their own spammers. That's another topic entirely.
--I understand wanting to filter spam, but all these techniques near as I can see you still have to read all the spam to make sure it is A-learning to find spam, and B to make sure that you didn't filter out important mail by having your automatic filter filter it out. Umm, what's the point then? Isn't this an example of the department of redundancy department?
--thanks for the reply. yes i tried it on every tty place in the menu, I tried the different flow control settings, authentication, yada yada, went through the entire thing and tweaked and changed as many different variables as possible. Like I said I am missing something crucial, but not able to find the info I need on any of the info or man pages for the device. I searched google at various forums and I know now I'm not alone,m it's a common problem. some folks rigs it seems to work admirably, others it's just useless. I honestly don't know what else to try with the thing. When I first tried mandrake I had the same problem, posted on their forum, got zero help. It's that kppp thing, ain't no using it easy. thewvdial on redhat with their older version GUI front end works flawlessly, finds the exact modem, sets it up, it dials connects hand shakes done. Tkaes two minutes tops. KPPP I got over ten hours minimum into, that's enough, I have a version of linux that works. And what's annoying now is that redhat "improved" it in 8.0, it isn't the same, will only look for the modem once. It finds my modem with kudzu on boot, then insists on installing a "standard modem" that refuses to dial. Phooie. And now it DON'T work for me, so like I said I reinstalled 7.2 and started on updates again. No fun on rural dialup modem. Too bad on the knoppix I was REALLY looking forward to using it else I wouldn't have bought it, same with the new redhat, but it's as useful to me as any other AOL coaster set now, waste of money to buy them. Thousands of apps with rank useless "automagical" wizard account set up dialers.
Now I could understand it if I had some extreme weird hardware, but gimme a break a name brand ibm pc and a us robotics external serial port modem is about as standard and normal as you can get, and it worked swell with 7.1 and 7.2, so whatever they changed thanks for nuthin. Knoppix, oh well, maybe there will be an actual manual for it some time. I tried at KDE looked at the KPPP pages, no help for whatever it is. I know it's one tiny thing, but DANG I went up and down the list of tweaks over and over again thinking I was missing something and I sure as heck can't find it.
and I bet serious folding loot I'm not the only one with this problem, deal is, any n00b you hand that thing to, to 99% of people an operating system and OS means "internet", all work should cease on those things until "the internet" works twice as good as mac or windows or at least on par, and it sure don't. Score so far for me with linux distros is only 50% work to get online, sort of dismal considering use of mac and windows since mid 90's when I started using the net has always run 100% online when it was asked to do this small thing. To be fair windows has hosed connections for me with those lamer irq settings conflicts (wazzup with that stupidity anyway?), pretty bogus coming from classic mac background, pick modem from list open ppp window, put in phone number and add in IP for the isp, hit dial, it's always worked with OT/PPP, never failed one time.
BUT, don't kde got one thousand cute apps with K in the name!
Not impressed, they can have 999 of them "K" apps back for a dialer that works as advertised. I guess I stick with this old redhat for awhile. I don't MIND learning command line at MY PACE, but if ya can't get online at all it makes it sorta hard to go google for answers don't it?
Thanks again and No I ain't mad at you whatsoever. I can readily see a lot of folks successful with it, oh well, that's reality. this makes 4 different attemtps with kppp, every time I try fresh i think this time I'll see what I have been missing, but after yesterday i realise I'm not, there's some serious bug that affects my connection, it's a combo that for some reason is odd but happens. therer ain't nuthin left to tweak, but ya need to be online to submit them buig buddy things, catch 22. I'm just not gonna fool with it until they release a version that I can see from reports works much better and not just have prettier GUI.
--serendipity. Just so happens I received a knoppix 3.1 cd. This afternoon I tried it out, loaded fine, cool. Check the menu, lotta kde apps. Tried to get online, normal external US robotics serial port modem. nada. 2.5 hours later I shut that thing off. I have yet to be able to get online with that kppp thing, read every HOWTO I could find, adjusted stomped chomped and romped everything they said to try, zip, nada, more or less useless to me without being able to surf with it.
I know one million guys will now say they get online flawlessly, it's automagically delicious that all they do is use thought control, that it washes their car and does their laundry too,yada, yada, yada, but it's been my experience the kppp dialer just slap don't work for way too many people. I've tried it before on mandrake and on redhat, it never_dialed_one_time. I cruised around and googled, it's a common problem it appears, goto any forum where folks having trouble with it, they get told to read the same manuals that say the same 4 things to try that's it. Phooie.. too bad, too, it has a ton of apps on their, but internet connectivity is job #1 as far as I am concerned with any modern OS release. They can skip the eye candy and the 689 other apps if the net isn't there and EASILY. Keyword EASILY. this is 2002, there is zero reason to do nothing besides clik and fill in the blank and get online with the connection of your choice anymore, it just shouldn't be this weird and rely on massive tweaking.
Gimme a GNOME based cd like this, with redhat's GUI dialer from 7.1 and 2 and I'll buy it. Yep, it ain't a purty dialer, but dadgum if finds your modem and sets it up and you hit connect and she dials out. And NOT the dialr wannabe from 8.0, I took that off my drive as well and put 7.2 back on, that sucks too.
This run from the cd is a great concept, I am just soured on kde apps now, not even gonna bother from this experience. next installzero any kde goes on my machine. Must have a good ten or 12 hours total trying to make kppp work total on different distros, that's enough, I got something that works and spend my time doing what I want to do. Not a coder here, so that's that..
--now I am wondering "big deal". What large hardware box builder will even WANT to ship multiple boot and have to increase their help desk size by 1000%? I DOUBT it would only double. Let alone deal with the returns by people saying "ugh, broken, don't work, replace, gimmee money back"?
Anyone here who works at dell/gateway/compaq and etc want to comment? any plans in the works for consumer entry level PC's going out the door dual boot because of this ruling now?
Just wondering. I was hoping gates and co would get some jail time for fraud at a minimum and extortion. The civil suit was a waste of lawyers and fed prosecutors, they should have gone straight to RICO and made some serious felony arrests in the beginning, IMO.
..get your own contract, BUT, put cash money in there with a lot of zeroes. the info gets out, HE is personally responsible, and make him get bonded. make it 100 grand.
OR.....
personally I would never go to that gym, tell 'em why too, because it sucks.
This biometric stuff has got to stop, people have got to start saying NO or it will in fact be full total bigbrotherville within a few short years now. It's this smarmy creeping incrementalism. make a little compromise here, a little compromise there. People wonder when it will stop-big hint it's NOT going to stop until you say NO and make it stick. Stores do it, now government does it, it's obscene. Last month I go to buy a cheap car part, they want my full name address and phone number at checkout, or their computer won't work!. I tell the clerk to get $%^*ing stuffed, well, I didn't cuss but got close, and I'm LOUD in the store, tell (her in this case, who was the manager) that my receipt with the cheap car part they give me for the cash I give them is all they need and are gonna get or it's a big fat no sale and I never come back. I did the same at the dentists when they wanted two full pages of info including social security number that had zero to do with anything about some tooth. screw that. I insisted, got the dental work, paid cash, left. 99% of most people would just sheep it out and fill it all in. Phooie, it's not necessary, tell these bozos no or go someplace else. No more, and no damn thumbscan or retina scan or palm scan-zip nada ain't happening. I'm not giving any store or building-access my biometrics voluntarily, they can byte me. Not handing some doofus drone clerk my personal info either, they can byte me I'll find a work around.
Choose once choose wisely, you can exercise without going to some stoopid gym, vote your conscious always, you'll never go wrong long term that way.
good luck.
I will repeat it in an even more simplistic analogy, planned obsolence and obfuscation and misrepresentation of goods and services offered for sale is a flawed business model long term, and criminal by nature. and coercing other companies and individuals into going along to get along by your sheer size and influence is akin to blackmailing or extortion. this is criminal and unethical behavior, any size, any company that does it, and human beings are responsible, not some typed words with an "inc" in the title. Humans. People. Criminal activity..
Microsoft is planned obsolence carried to an extreme. And like I said, I think they started as a perfectly normal company, some good, some bad, over all "good", then got greedy as the zillions piled up, their mindset changed, their practices changed, they morphed to the "bad", bad got 'worse", it went from the top on down and sideways, now they are in court. You got to really screw up bigtime for a corporation of their size and influence to get put in court for years, and they sure did it. Thankfully, this attitude and social experiment in letting mega corporations skate all the time when they screw up on purpose to just rake in more loot is changing, this is the only good thing to come socially out of the dot com bubble years, the turning over the rocks to expose the scam men and the liars for what they are.
Now, with that said, to answer what you allude I might be doing had they spent the money and stayed ethical, no, most likely not ragging on them, BUT, I WOULD be ragging on maybe some other company or politician, human nature being there is always corruption, and as such is my ranting posting and writing nature which I never deny. So, if microsoft had done as I suggest, nope, I wouldn't be ragging on them today, give it because it's speculation a 99 percentile probabilty rating. 20 bil is a lot of cash to put engineers to work with, not to accumulate ill gotten piles of cash and put lawyers and sales people and various thugs to work. Me, I think it's better idea to put engineers to work in a software company, and give them instructions that they make quality, secure, functional products and it doesn't leave the shop until it's the best, not close enough with eye candy razzle dazzle on top. Applying bondo to rust doesn't stop the rust, and frankly, it's better to paint better and rustproof in advance of the rust showing. Microsoft has 40 bil in the bank from selling bondoware, not quality steel.
I'm not against them because they are "big", I'm against them because they are proven greedy malicious conniving bullies who endangered the national security and put our economy at risk and ripped off millions of consumers. That's not even debateable at this point, they have been to court and it has already been *proven*, all that's left is the punishment, I advocate bill gates and the next 99 top level bosses below him in PRISON. then let the stockholders who care about something besides short term unethical profits elect some ethical business people to take their places.
Microsoft can continue as far as I am concerned, the market will adjust itself if some fatcats go to jail. Like, who's buying enron stock right now or doing business with them? the nation has woken up that just because some company or individual is "rich" or "mega successful" doesn't mean they are "decent people". Crooks and gangsters like expensive suits and flashy cars and mansions too, same as people who make their living honestly.
Times change and rapidly, microsoft managers and decision makers can find out that big bullies can fall hard same as their previous victims, and that any level fatcat can go to jail. I hope it happens, too.
IMO at this point in time microsoft costs the nations economy "more" than what is represented by their cash holdings and daily vig they squeeze. They are a net drag on the economy now from lost productivity and the effects of at least a decade of squashed innovation from their monopolistic tactics. They created an empire of wasteful and inefficient BUSYWORK not real work. In IT, they have single handedly slowed down software innovation by obscuring anything but their profits. They are in a grab/control/control/grab cycle, their so-called "innovations" aren't offset by any increaed over-all productivity by the businesses and consumers they "serve". At one point, yes, they were a useful company, now they exist almost totaly on inertia and locked in propietary "solutions" that are putting other companies in a WTF? scenario on whether or not it's even worht it to keep their stuff or lose a million now to save millions and millions later. entire industries existing on fixing stuff that comes pre-shipped broken is NOT productive for the over-all economy. If that model was useful we could all get rich by bulldozing down new buildings and constantly rebuilding them. In meatworld that's ridiculous but that'swhat companies suckered into using microsoft are faced with now. throwing good money after bad because now even the dullest of the dull are "getting it" on their companies need to make widgets, not exist to support microsoft. They also have contributed WAY more to weakening the over-all national security/defense by continually releasing INsecure products. This COSTS us way more than they are worth, unfortunately we won't know thefiull and total cost until some mega microsoft based attack/worm thing hits.
Think on this, they have 40 billion cash in the bank-how much better might their software be if they had spent 20 billion-only 1/2-on actual p[re-release engineering and making their products secure and less buggy? They'd still at a MINIMUM have 20 billion in the bank, a most respectable sum, but still....they'd have much better products, no one mad at them, and would have probably made even more money. See? Greed clouds judgement, business or personal, mega scale to personal scale, greed is NEVER good.
They got greedy, that's the bottom line-there's normal ETHICAL and responsible capitalism, then there's blood sucking mega-jerk greed, they crossed the line into being "bad guys" some time ago.
Gates and the next 99 guys below him need JAIL TIME. Not just ripping off stockholders and consumers to pay some joke fine, they need to get a dose of hard reality that no one is above the law, and that buckets of cash don't mean you are able to skate on being a criminal, nor should ANY of them be able to hide behind the creation of a fictitious person called a "corporation". That's nonsense on the face of it, that entire "corporation" concept needs to be on trial as well, every rank greedy decision they made was done by HUMAN BEINGS, identifiable people with names, it's those human beings who broke the law, ergo, human beings need the sentencing. Corporations-the concept-are a joke, again, IMO. I hope they get nailed, and hard. This nation locks people up for MUCH less than what they have done, daily.
Along with the lay's of enron types, these guys need to see steel bars, not vistas from mansions. they need blank walls to stare at, not the iew from a corporate jet or luxury office. I hope the next several years sees thousands of corporate fatcats and their tame poodle politicans imprisoned. Enough's enough on the "greed is good, screw everyone else" philosophy. I don't want microsoft to be fined one thin dime, nope, I never even wanted "microsoft" itself to be on trial, I wanted to see those bozos in charge on trial and charged and prosecuted and convicted and hauled off in cuffs, stripped of their armani's and chucked in the pokey, and the underlings who move up to replace them get 'scared straight' by this experience and to see the light on RESPONSIBLE corporate practices, and to serve as an example to every other fictitious-person "corporation" owners out there that their days of hiding behind that legal fiction and being blameless are OVER.
--to revisit outsourcing, and also massive immigration as regards "jobs". I know from a silicon valley perspective there still is "work", but on various other forums and irc channels, in the heartland it's hitting home hard, across the board, white collar and blue collar. I think that your estimate -I'll call it "cautious"- is a severe low-ball estimate. My opinion, this entire economy is tanking, and tanking hard. On one semi large forum I visit, they held an impromptu poll, result, 30% current un-or-underemployment, various fields, not just IT, various, software engineers to teachers to construction, you name it, it appears to be worse anecdotally than the "official" numbers promulgated by the government and wall street. I include in these figures people who have a "job", but have had to keep seeking work with the result every new job has resulted in severe pay cuts, often several in the past two years. This jibes with what else I have noted over net anecodtals for the past 2 or 3 years, most generally speaking.
..well....I think it's going to get most ugly...
I think a lot-most-companies are still not bingoing that every laid off / fired worker is also a laid off / fired consumer and customer, thus bad begatting bad leading to worse leading to
Two questions, 1 -are you aware of ANY high level money guys or CEO's who actually understand what's happening and basically agree with my assessment, and if so, who,, and 2- which fields do you think will persevere no matter how "crashed" we become in terms of more unemployment, inflation or actual depression, etc.
thanks in advance should you choose to respond.
With that caveat, here's a link to what's happening with trucks, which is much more interesting to me than with the little commuter urban cars. The dodge contractor is nifty idea, you can use it stationary as an advanced home or jobsite generator. As someone who curently runs PVsolar with genny backup, I like the idea of eliminating cost, ie, you own a truck because you live rural, trucks are necessary out here, so you can save on the cost of your backup genny and truck simultaneously, no need for separate purchases. And 20 kw is a no-joke sized genny.
--hey thanks for that last link, that's some clean and real nice and pretty work. I bookmaked that page for future reference.