But you still shouldn't be running Win98. Upgrade to Win2K at least. Sure, its motto is, "It sucks less." But it really does suck way less than 9x.
I've experimented with Win2k. The first thing I discovered is that it's a lot more difficult to secure Win2K than Win98. Win2k has a buttload of services running by default, and it's difficult to find information about what they do and which ones are really needed. There also seem to be many interdependencies, so that shutting down a service that seems unneeded can break other things that you do need.
One thing that really stood out was that Win2K doesn't seem to allow the kind of control over network interface/protocol/service bindings that Win98 did.
Stop bitching and upgrade already, XP is the best Windows release since 3.11.
Try again. Product activation is an unacceptable leash that I refuse to wear. Anytime M$ wants some revenue, they can just refuse to re-activate older versions and force me to upgrade at my next disk failure. Using XP to download DRM'd music just makes it worse, because my music library would then be a hostage that M$ could use to force me to take thier upgrade path.
What they are trying to do is to make you and me - and people like us - who own multiple machines at home, buy a copy for each computer we own....
This is particularly irksome with products like Powerquest's Partition Magic. I mean really, how often does someone need to change the partitioning on a hard drive? I only find a need about once every few months on any given computer. PQ is outta their minds if they think people are going to buy a second copy of PM when they already have one doing nothing on another system.
Product Activation on products as important as antivirus apps is bad IMO....
How about that. I'd think the product activation scheme would provide a nice target for malicious code. Why try to outsmart the antivirus when you can more easily make it refuse to work?
.... They *can* be good imho. (remember even linux had some basis for its design already researched and developed in the shape of unix api) Patents should exist to allow us R&D and time to setup, hopefully for the good of everyone...but not to monopolise and stunt creativity for decades, and thats the point. Balance and Tao.
OK, so then what do you do when Microsoft starts hitting you with legal action for infringing various of their patents? Even if they don't have a clear-cut case for infringement, they can litigate you to death.
Of course, they could generously offer you relief from the legal harrassment if only you cross-license your special patent to them. Then what?
Yep, you're right. We Americans gumped our way into the greatest empire in the history of mankind. Lucky us!
Before you get feeling too smug, you might want to try figuring our how we're paying for the rather incredible trade imbalance. Free clue: We're making the same mistake the Indians supposedly made in the (probably inaccurate) story of the sale of Manhattan island.
At the end of the day, the people will wise up to it and the people absolutely will limit intellectual property rights.
Nonsense. Americans are the most clue-resistant people on the face of the Earth. They can be relied on to do whatever is most convenient/profitable/etc at any given moment in time, without regard to future consequences. All one needs to do to enslave Americans is to do it in small steps, making sure that each step is the easiest thing for the victim to do at that time.
If a backup is no good, attempting to fix a minor proplem by restoring from it can leave you worse off than when you started. I know several people who have shot themselves in the foot this way.
I just sent a message to my congresscritter, who is a Republican. I explained that even though he says he supports the effort to reverse the FCC decision, another member of his party intends to prevent him from getting a chance to vote on this issue. I also pointed out that Tom Delay holds his powerful position because of the present Republican majority in the House, and the only thing I can do to help get rid of Tom Delay is to cast my vote in a manner that would help reduce the number of Republicans in the House.
The patent covered the "seamless" embedding of "rich content". With this dialog in place it is no longer seamless, and so doesn't violate the patent anymore. Imagine if there ware 20+ objects embedded in a page, can't say I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, it would be awful if web page creators had to start getting to the goddamn point, rather than wasting my time with eye candy.
I've observed fairly frequent releases of new versions of DivX 5.whatever codecs. Videos encoded with the newer versions usually don't play properly unless the codec is at a high enough version. This could cause a lot of hassles with standalone DVD players; A lot of non-tech people aren't going to like re-flashing their DVD player's firmware every month or so just so they can play the latest DVD releases, and the manufacturers will probably have a lot of headaches with units being returned for service because of failed firmware re-flashes.
That makes a lot of sense, but I'll bet the success of "listen with headphones" depends a lot on how the microphones were placed when the recording was made.
A long time ago, I read an article about research into this. Experiments were done using a dummy human head with microphones placed in it's ears. Subjects who listended to recordings made this way usually reported an excellent illusion of sound location, and were even able to correctly locate sounds that had come from behind the dummy head. OTOH, the same subjects reported poor localization of sounds when listening to recordings made using more conventional microphone placements.
Did anyone ever notice how a live recording of a meeting sounds echoy, but it didn't seem that way when you were hearing it live? The echoes were there, but our hearing has a way of subtracting them out so we can hear what we're paying attention to more clearly. In order to subtract out the echoes, the brain has to create a model of the environment, and I think the awareness of what's around us is a byproduct.
I mean really. Every time a large corporation tries to do something like this, it eventually backfires on them.
I wonder if Microsoft's big "win" in the antitrust case isn't backfiring? Sure, Microsoft got off practically scott-free, but this showed the world that the U.S. government won't control it's unruly child. I think other countries now realize that they have to pay more attention to protecting their own interests because the U.S. goverment sure isn't going to.
Read the Friday August 29th page of Groklaw. There's a company called Integral Capital Management V that's bought enough recently that they had to file a 13G with the SEC. Curiously, shortly after they bought a big interest in Drugstore.com no long ago, a person by the name of Melinda French Gates was appointed to a seat on that company's board or directors. Hmmmm....
A lot of the recent problems could have been prevented if people had installed the available patches. However, the EULA's that one has to agree to while installing the patches are downright frightening, and Microsoft keeps making them worse.
I wonder how many people skip the patches because the EULA's are so obnoxious?
Slashdot Mirror
But you still shouldn't be running Win98. Upgrade to Win2K at least. Sure, its motto is, "It sucks less." But it really does suck way less than 9x.
I've experimented with Win2k. The first thing I discovered is that it's a lot more difficult to secure Win2K than Win98. Win2k has a buttload of services running by default, and it's difficult to find information about what they do and which ones are really needed. There also seem to be many interdependencies, so that shutting down a service that seems unneeded can break other things that you do need.
One thing that really stood out was that Win2K doesn't seem to allow the kind of control over network interface/protocol/service bindings that Win98 did.
Stop bitching and upgrade already, XP is the best Windows release since 3.11.
Try again. Product activation is an unacceptable leash that I refuse to wear. Anytime M$ wants some revenue, they can just refuse to re-activate older versions and force me to upgrade at my next disk failure. Using XP to download DRM'd music just makes it worse, because my music library would then be a hostage that M$ could use to force me to take thier upgrade path.
What they are trying to do is to make you and me - and people like us - who own multiple machines at home, buy a copy for each computer we own. ...
This is particularly irksome with products like Powerquest's Partition Magic. I mean really, how often does someone need to change the partitioning on a hard drive? I only find a need about once every few months on any given computer. PQ is outta their minds if they think people are going to buy a second copy of PM when they already have one doing nothing on another system.
Product Activation on products as important as antivirus apps is bad IMO. ...
How about that. I'd think the product activation scheme would provide a nice target for malicious code. Why try to outsmart the antivirus when you can more easily make it refuse to work?
The company I work for has officially designated Hotbar as a "security risk", and has put a Hotbar remover utiity on their desktop support website.
Can anyone suggest another reason why this bill would not pass?
Perhaps because of the difficulty in coming up with a definition of "spam" that excludes the unsolicited emailings of major campaign contributors.
From the article:
One settlement provision allows Microsoft's own programs to launch only if rival software "fails to implement a reasonable technical requirement."
So, is reinforcing Microsoft's monopoly a reasonable technical requirement?
.... They *can* be good imho. (remember even linux had some basis for its design already researched and developed in the shape of unix api) Patents should exist to allow us R&D and time to setup, hopefully for the good of everyone...but not to monopolise and stunt creativity for decades, and thats the point. Balance and Tao.
OK, so then what do you do when Microsoft starts hitting you with legal action for infringing various of their patents? Even if they don't have a clear-cut case for infringement, they can litigate you to death.
Of course, they could generously offer you relief from the legal harrassment if only you cross-license your special patent to them. Then what?
Yep, you're right. We Americans gumped our way into the greatest empire in the history of mankind. Lucky us!
Before you get feeling too smug, you might want to try figuring our how we're paying for the rather incredible trade imbalance.
Free clue: We're making the same mistake the Indians supposedly made in the (probably inaccurate) story of the sale of Manhattan island.
At the end of the day, the people will wise up to it and the people absolutely will limit intellectual property rights.
Nonsense. Americans are the most clue-resistant people on the face of the Earth. They can be relied on to do whatever is most convenient/profitable/etc at any given moment in time, without regard to future consequences. All one needs to do to enslave Americans is to do it in small steps, making sure that each step is the easiest thing for the victim to do at that time.
If you are so stupid as to work on your laptop while bathing you should die along with the computer.
That's why laptop makers are working so hard on developing better batteries.
If a backup is no good, attempting to fix a minor proplem by restoring from it can leave you worse off than when you started.
I know several people who have shot themselves in the foot this way.
I just sent a message to my congresscritter, who is a Republican. I explained that even though he says he supports the effort to reverse the FCC decision, another member of his party intends to prevent him from getting a chance to vote on this issue. I also pointed out that Tom Delay holds his powerful position because of the present Republican majority in the House, and the only thing I can do to help get rid of Tom Delay is to cast my vote in a manner that would help reduce the number of Republicans in the House.
The patent covered the "seamless" embedding of "rich content". With this dialog in place it is no longer seamless, and so doesn't violate the patent anymore. Imagine if there ware 20+ objects embedded in a page, can't say I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, it would be awful if web page creators had to start getting to the goddamn point, rather than wasting my time with eye candy.
I've observed fairly frequent releases of new versions of DivX 5.whatever codecs. Videos encoded with the newer versions usually don't play properly unless the codec is at a high enough version. This could cause a lot of hassles with standalone DVD players; A lot of non-tech people aren't going to like re-flashing their DVD player's firmware every month or so just so they can play the latest DVD releases, and the manufacturers will probably have a lot of headaches with units being returned for service because of failed firmware re-flashes.
What a perfect story for those reading slashdot on a Saturday night instead of going out.
There's a whole hemisphere of the planet where it ain't Saturday night yet.
I hate Ford... I love Linux... what do I do? HELP!
Go tell ${YOUR_FAVORITE_CAR_COMPANY} that their competitor is saving a ton of money by using Linux.
That makes a lot of sense, but I'll bet the success of "listen with headphones" depends a lot on how the microphones were placed when the recording was made.
A long time ago, I read an article about research into this. Experiments were done using a dummy human head with microphones placed in it's ears. Subjects who listended to recordings made this way usually reported an excellent illusion of sound location, and were even able to correctly locate sounds that had come from behind the dummy head. OTOH, the same subjects reported poor localization of sounds when listening to recordings made using more conventional microphone placements.
Did anyone ever notice how a live recording of a meeting sounds echoy, but it didn't seem that way when you were hearing it live? The echoes were there, but our hearing has a way of subtracting them out so we can hear what we're paying attention to more clearly. In order to subtract out the echoes, the brain has to create a model of the environment, and I think the awareness of what's around us is a byproduct.
I mean really. Every time a large corporation tries to do something like this, it eventually backfires on them.
I wonder if Microsoft's big "win" in the antitrust case isn't backfiring? Sure, Microsoft got off practically scott-free, but this showed the world that the U.S. government won't control it's unruly child. I think other countries now realize that they have to pay more attention to protecting their own interests because the U.S. goverment sure isn't going to.
Who buys the stocks that SCO "dump"?
Read the Friday August 29th page of Groklaw. There's a company called Integral Capital Management V that's bought enough recently that they had to file a 13G with the SEC. Curiously, shortly after they bought a big interest in Drugstore.com no long ago, a person by the name of Melinda French Gates was appointed to a seat on that company's board or directors. Hmmmm....
It ain't that great. The ad doesn't even say what Linux is.
That's the beauty of it - they managed to make an ad that the average PHB can understand.
You mean my evenings and weekends are ALL MINE AGAIN? Praise be to Microsoft! Where do I sign up?????
Dream on. What it really means is you get to spend more time in the office.
Since when has something as lightweight or obvious as this been worth an article?
It's a long weekend and the clowns at SCO have taken a break from their FUD-generating, so the editors are getting desperate.
A lot of the recent problems could have been prevented if people had installed the available patches. However, the EULA's that one has to agree to while installing the patches are downright frightening, and Microsoft keeps making them worse.
I wonder how many people skip the patches because the EULA's are so obnoxious?