Imagine if MSPaint didn't exist. Photoshop would cost even more!
A free graphics editor (think the GIMP rather than MSPaint) allows/causes the professional quality software to have higher prices. When Photoshop is the only software available, Adobe has to choose between high prices or market penetration, and market penetration usually wins. Do you want 10 sales at $10,000, or 1,000,000 sales at $100? With some of the functionality available for free, Adobe has already lost most of the low end of the market, but potential customers needing more will pay more, resulting in higher prices.
When Microsoft enters a market, they compete on price, because (until recently) they had little interest in profits from products other than MSWindows and MSOffice, but they had great interest in destroying competitors. They could not compete on functionality because their software is barely functional. The downside of MS entering a market is: 1. A very poorly designed application from MS. 2. Removal of competitors means there are fewer good applications. 3. The quality of all software suffers.
The other downside of their monopoly was many good ideas were discarded because they either: - competed with a MS product, or - MS could easily enter the market, so there was no chance of funding. MS proved this the only sane choice by destroying the existing software companies (Lotus, Ashton-Tate, WordPerfect, every other PC software company existing in the 1980s) and the few that tried anyway (Netscape, Real). Yes, I know those companies made mistakes, but who owns each of their markets today? Why isn't there any commercial competition? The only method to compete with MS is to give software away, and even then MS will do its best to conquer.
I dislike the lack of alternatives. I dislike poorly designed software. MS's lowering prices is the cause of this, and should not be celebrated.
Thank you. I had not realized that IFRAMEs were in the HTML4.0 standard. I still write HTML3 unless something is impossible without it, and I have never found anything impossible (although I am using CSS1 for formatting and mouseovers.)
There are still two problems with YahooMail: 1. Yahoo will not serve the full-function page unless the browser claims to be MSIE. 2. Mozilla could not handle the page due to trouble with IFRAMEs. I tested by changing the request to be MSIE, and by saving the page locally and opening it in Mozilla. This may be fixed in recent releases. It was originally Mozilla1.3 or 1.5; I may have tested again with Mozilla1.7 (what my father is currently using.) I have not tested Firefox. (My father will switch during my next visit.)
My father (mentioned above) started using YahooMail because I recommended it because it was the only free webmail with POP3. The free YahooMail no longer has POP3 in the US. (The UK version may be different.)
History: - 1995: I signed up for free mail accounts on GeoCities and Yahoo. Geocities allowed free POP3, so that became my main home email address. - 1999: Yahoo bought Geocities. Yahoo quickly added free POP3. I merged my accounts. - 2000? Yahoo changes the free POP3 to require at least weekly advertisements. One additional unwanted email is almost unnoticable with the rise of spam. I still recommended YahooMail to everybody; this is when my father signed up. - 2002? Yahoo moves POP3 to the paid subsciptions. Attempts to use POP3 get an email recommending giving Yahoo money. I stop recommending YahooMail.
A Slashdot discussion about a year ago turned up that the UK YahooMail still had free POP3. I am not recommending to my US-based friends and family that they use a UK email address. They have enough trouble typing URLs that do not end with ".com".
ActiveX is not the only Microsoft technology causing problems in non-Microsoft browsers.
Yahoo is a home-consumer website. Yahoo Mail uses an IFRAME and some very poor (from the standards-compliant perspective) JavaScript to provide RichText (HTML) composing of emails. None of the functionality would be difficult using standards, but Yahoo's answer to the existence of browsers other than MSIE is to deliver a different page without full functionality.
My father uses Yahoo Mail. He switched to Mozilla a couple of years ago. He only uses MSIE for WindowsUpdate and YahooMail. He confirmed Yahoo still had the problem last week; he was experimenting with Linux, and complained none of the browsers had full functionality with YahooMail. He (almost) understands this is a problem with Yahoo, not Mozilla, but consumers only see that expected functionality is missing with Mozilla, and blame the browser, not the websites.
I remember a program (WordPerfect? WordStar?) that determined the complexity of a written work by finding the average number of words per sentence (wps). IIRC, the levels were: "simple" (<6wps) "normal" (7-10wps) "technical" (11-19wps) "doctoral" (>20wps).
(I am certain these numbers and labels are not correct. I think the program also considered the average word length.)
This supports your theory that longer sentence structures imply a more educated mind. I tend to write very long sentences, and am accused of having a very complex mind rather often. That does not mean I should not attempt to simplify my writing so lesser minds can understand more easily.
Writing must consider the audience. Do longer sentence structure imply the writer has a complex mind, or that complex minds are the expected audience?
Books for the very young usually have about 3 words per sentence, like "See Spot run." If anybody under age seven will read it, do not use sentences with more than 5 words.
Most sentences in business writing should have 8-15 words. A sentence with less words will get more attention, such as "Do not click DELETE ALL." or "He is being terminated."
A sentence with more than 15 words requires complex thought from the reader. If they are focused on the subject, such as reading a technical manual, they will work for understanding. If they are not focused on the subject, such as an email for something other than their current task, they will stop reading.
I follow the rules I suggested in the gradparent post. Even after editing, my writing usually contains long sentences. Hopefully my audience cares enough to take the effort to comprehend. If they go numb, I have failed as a writer.
In the same way as your examples, dependent clauses normally take a placement that makes it easy to see what they depend on. (There, I broke a rule, rather than write "that on which they depend", which would sound stilted and archaic, but nicely Latinate).
Ending with a preposition often indicates a verb phrase was used where a noun would suffice. Much writing can be improved by reducing each sentence to the basic concepts. Start by removing "that", "which", and all prepositions; then rebuild the sentence adding as few words as possible. Do not be afraid to change words' "parts of speech".
You could have replaced the phrase with a noun, improving the grammar and making it more concise. You almost fixed it when you realized the phrase could have been the noun phrase "that on which they depend", which can be shortened to the single word "dependencies". In reverse, "take a placement" can be replaced by "placed".
Like your examples, dependent clauses are normally placed to see their dependencies easily.
[I prefer to split the infinitive ("to easily see"), but that would be dangerous in this forum.]
--- Advanced editing After editing each sentence for conciseness, remove all conjunctions. Then add just enough connectors to make each paragraph make sense. Add paragraph breaks to group the sentences properly.
I tend to write very long sentences. Each sentence should contain only one thought. This process greatly improves readability.
Compare to: After editing each sentence for conciseness, remove all conjunctions, then add just enough connectors to make each paragraph make sense, and add paragraph breaks to group the sentences properly. I tend to write very long sentences, although each sentence should contain only one thought, but this process greatly improves readability.
--- I spend so much time writing and talking professionally for work, my last girlfriend was surprised by my speech patterns when a vacation allowed me to revert to "normal".
I wonder if usage of the "Preview" button for posts to this article is greatly above the norm.
Yes, I want to improve the world. I need to become rich to do it.
I have been writing software for large companies for over a decade. My software is fast and easy to use, which reduces headaches and improves the quality of life for the users. I have been focused on business software for a very long time: I am good at it, and most of my ideas focus on business software. I would like to spend time fixing Mozilla and other OSS, but my other projects seem more important because there is nobody else to develop them; Mozilla has other developers and they may eventually implement my ideas, or at least solve my complaints.
Of my current products: #1 is for businesses. It should make me money. No apologies. #2 is for businesses, and it will help consumers. It requires major investment to develop, which is why it is planned second. It may make me more money, but it will improve the lives of almost everybody. #3 was originally designed for business. It requires major investment to complete. The original core is still aimed at business, but the fully developed version may change how everybody uses computers. The current plan is to release the consumer version for free, while selling some applications built on the platform to businesses.
A person doing your charitable actions does not "improve the world"; they improve a very small piece of it, usually by helping something return to the "normal" state. Women should not be battered; sheltering them is important for removing evil, but it does not stop all women from being battered. If I could develop software to stop women from ever being battered, I would, but I have no ideas on the subject (yet).
If you want to help one battered woman, go do it. If I want to help every battered women, I need more resources. With enough money, I can put a shelter in every city and pay the staff. Which of us helps more?
Getting rich is not evil in itself. Many of the people running the United Way get paid well, but they are doing it because they believe. I want to make enough to be able to give my software away. I expect most new software product companies to be sued into oblivion; the business model cannot compete against lawsuit factories; we will need money just to survive the lawsuits.
Check back in 10 years and decide if I made a positive adjustment to "the world".
I fit the definition of the "Lone Coder". While I have a long history of working on teams to write software, several companies have rejected funding my "Really Good Ideas(TM)". I built the programs anyway. I believe (and hope and pray) I have the business sense to bring the products to market without getting sued to oblivion first. Then I hope to free (as in "release the source code under the GPL") the programs before lawsuits force my company into bankruptcy. I want to: - make the world a better place. - get rich. - continue having fun with computers. I hope the world (the US court system and the idiots with a bankroll for lawyers) let me.
Taking your points: 1. They notice me. My first products are built on software from IBM. I hope the partnership with IBM develops so they: - Won't sue me. (I am helping to sell their products too.) - May assist in my defense against lawsuits. This is a long shot, but I can dream, right?
2. Realize I am violating a patent. Given the state of patents, I assume every new program violates many of them, including anything I write. So I assume I will get sued. Today, there is no chance that a "Lone Coder" could market anything without getting sued.
3a. Need to be a threat. One of my programs obsoletes most of what MS has said Longhorn will do. That should count as a threat.
3b. Deep pockets. We are in negotiations to license one of my programs for several million dollars. Does that count as "deep pockets"?
4 & 5. They make a move and sue me. Are you kidding? There are too many "companies" producing nothing but lawsuits for me to even hope I have a chance to not be sued.
6. The courts. Of course the courts will allow them to sue me. What else are the courts for?
7a & b. Bankruptcy, Broke I hope to have enough money to survive the smaller players. I hope to make partners to survive the big players (MS). Declaring bankruptcy is the last line of the business plan. We expect it.
7c. Do something else. Always have a Plan B. Mine involves an estate somewhere warm with swimming pools. That will not advance the state of computers, but at least I have a plan.
== Points in my favor? == - Stay under the radar? I want to improve the world. I don't worry about developing ideas unless they have the potential to produce millions of dolllars. That is not a good plan for staying under the radar.
- Lawyers? I have a good IP law firm. While I expect them to defend me, and keep the cases in court as long as possible without any impediments to my business, they are expensive, and eventually the cost of the lawyers will eat all the profits. At that point, I'll quit.
- Counter-offers They are only good when the other "company" has something to lose. If they are suing for the hope of a big win, it will be difficult to buy them off. Cross-licensing is useless when the other company only produces lawsuits, since lawyers will not pass laws allowing patents restricting lawsuits, and none of my patents would be relevant.
- Big companies If MS sues me, I am releasing the software as open source. That is the step in the business plan just before going bankrupt.
- Small companies I like your comparison to ants, but a few million dollars will seem like much money to an ant. Why should they take on an elephant when they can retire by stepping on another ant?
Don't assume a "Lone Coder" cannot be a threat to the big guys. Linus managed to create the only violable threat to MSWindows. One of my programs threatens most of the business software sold today. Yes, Linux involved many other people before it became a real threat, and I expect to hire other people before my programs are brought to market. But the ideas were first developed by a Lone Coder.
I agree with your last point. Our first goal is to make money. Then we need to polish our other programs and bring them to market. Then we'll wait until lawsuits bankrupt us. Hopefully I will still have Plan B.
(No fair; I got modded down when I did a similar analysis last month. Your post is longer; mine might be funnier.)
Much of the problem is Open Source experience is rarely also the corporate experience needed to get past HR. Unless you worked for RedHat (or Cygnus before they merged with RH), there have been few opportunities to get corporate experience with OSS. You could have used Linux since the mid-90s, but it was not in the corporate environment, so HR will discount the experience as "not good enough".
I am trying to win a project. I am probably the best candidate on the east coast, and the job is in my town. My resume includes Intranets for Fortune 10 companies. They asked about my skills with HTML and Java. HR people do not have a clue, and they are the bottleneck. There are probably 10 unemployed Slashdotters for every OSS job, but HR departments everywhere will complain that there are not enough knowledgeable people.
--- Hey, Slashdot does have job listings, but it just goes to Yahoo jobs.
When I started at a consulting company in 1997, I wondered why some of my colleagues did not like me before we had talked. A few months later, someone mentioned I looked like a brown-noser because I was always having conversations with our boss John. They finally realized John kept coming to me for conversation because WE BOTH LOVED COMPUTERS. - Both of us were programming for fun in the 80s. - Both of us made a profession out of our hobby. While John had written some shareware that was still making a few dollars a month, he was not a good programmer, so he became a technology manager. He knew before I arrived that I was good programmer; I was hired because I impressed HIS boss by glancing at a screen of code, pointing to an error, and explaining how to fix it. So John went out of his way to become friends with me.
Once my colleagues had their epiphany, most of them were OK with me, at least enough to ask for help. One of them tried to get me fired. She was a "bang your head against the computer until it does something useful" type of programmer, but she had established herself as the guru, and I was threatening her position. She was friends with the owner of the company, and he did not like me because our boss' boss had hired me without consulting him. I only survived because their method of getting me fired was to keep giving me impossible assignments, and I kept succeeding. (The assignments were much fun and great for the resume.) I hope never to deal with that much politics again.
--- The grandparent post uses 1999 as the divider between the computer-lovers and the computer-jobs-for-money people. I think the line is much earlier. Almost everybody at the consulting company in 1997 belonged to the latter group.
MSWindows started dominating around 1992, and that killed command-line programming on PCs. Unix people have the attitude, but I do not know anybody that started with Unix after 1992. Hopefully Linux is creating a new set of command-line program writers. All of the well-known hackers were involved with computers before 1992. The youngest hacker known to me is Justin Frankel, but even he was writing software before 1992. (Wikipedia says he was programming before starting high school in 1991.)
Can anybody name a great hacker that started with computers after 1992?
From the article: - Preparation and planning activities took 5% to 25% longer for Linux than Windows. - Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux. - All 14 companies said it was difficult finding qualified Linux personnel in the marketplace to support their Linux projects. When they did find third-party help, they had less leverage negotiating hourly rates than with Windows consulting resources.
Revised version with comments: - Linux administrators take longer than Windows administrators to plan their infrastructure.
This is bad? Linux administrators have more choices, so they think more about what they are doing. Windows administrators know that anything wrong can be blamed on MS's software.
- Retraining Windows admins on Linux is expensive.
Windows admins are trained how to reboot. Their prior skill is useless in the new environment
- Linux admins are expensive and difficult to find.
Good news for the many unemployed Slashdotters. Very large companies are looking for you, and think you are worth much money. The bad news is they have never heard of Slashdot. Should Slashdot start a job listing or resume website to help these clueless big companies?
My father is running a triple-boot PC: MSWindows98SE, RedHat9, Slackware. He has OpenOffice on all 3 OSes. He does his word-processing in MSWord (using MSWindows) because "everybody else needs the files in MSWord97 format." He sticks to MSWord even though OOo can save in MSWord format, because they have enough difficulty getting MSWord to format it correctly even when everybody is using the same version. (He is trying to convert them, but there are many people involved.)
I also converted (forced?) my cousins to use OpenOffice. The children (aged 2 to 15) complain because things do not look quite right when they open the files at school.
MS has 2 monopolies: the OS (MSWindows) and the office suite (MSOffice). Slashdotters are spreading the word about alternatives, but it will be a few years before the general public is happy using alternatives. OTOH, MS has upset so many people that their replacement is inevitable.
--- I hope to buy a Powerbook soon. That Slashdot article about how they work from a few days ago may have converted me. Except that I still need to program for MSWindows because that is how I get paid.
This is timely. I built a triple-boot PC for my father last year. He recently got DSL, so I needed to update all the network settings. (I did it this morning.)
The first issue was that Earthlink provided a DSL modem with only one network jack. He also has a laptop, so he needed another port. $60 got a Linksys WRT54G. He will (probably) buy a wireless PCMCIA network card for the laptop next Spring. I turned off the wireless capablilities, and he has a good router.
Then I changed the network settings for MSWindows98SE on the PC and the laptop. Only 3 reboots each. (It could have been less if I remembered to configure DNS the first time.)
Then I changed RedHat9. There is a GUI for the network settings. Changed the settings. "/etc/init.d/network restart". Perfect. (But why did it tell me to restart the network? It knew it needed to be done. Just do it.)
Then I looked for the network settings in Slackware. I could not find any admin tool to even display the settings. Finally found the/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf, and changed them in vi in a terminal (which would not accept BACKSPACE or DEL as valid keys for erasing; I used "dl".) Then I restarted rc.inet1. The IP Address did not change, so I rebooted.
I then tried to figure out how to map the MSWindows share on the laptop for the Linuxes. They refused to see it before I had to head home.
--- The RedHat is probably 9.0. The Slackware is either 9 or 10. The newer Slackware was more difficult to configure than the old RedHat.
[I previously had difficulty because I changed Slackware to boot to the GUI by changing the runlevel. Then I had to copy the startup scripts to the new runlevel. People have already suggested that was the wrong way to do it, although no one has told me how to boot to the GUI without changing the runlevel.]
As far as using them, my father likes KDE slightly better than Gnome, likely because he was trained on MSWindows, and KDE was much closer to MSWindows on the versions he is using. He browses the internet from all 3 OSes (Mozilla on Windows and RedHat, and Konq on Slack), and rips and burns CDs using the Linuxes. He thinks it is fun to experiment with several OSes.
[Off-topic: I also installed Opera on Windows. He tried it once; it opened to Opera's homepage: "There was too much to read", so he gave up and went back to Mozilla.]
He does not have to administer the systems. KDE has been more difficult when it requires intervention.
EXCEPT: KDE detects new monitors much better than RedHat. When I delivered the PC, I had to use Slackware to change RedHat's monitor settings, and I just copied the settings from Slackware. (MSWindows98SE cannot see the Linux partitions.)
--- Yes, I know I am writing about obsolete versions. RedHat is completely obsolete, as Fedora is the current line, and the Slackware install is also over a year old. But most people are using whatever version they had handy. I only download the latest versions when I am installing a new system. Upgrading takes time and causes headaches; why bother?
The text version has a link for "Next" that points to the same text as the original page, but in a larger font. The/software directory only contains those 2 files.
Is this irony? An article about quality has only half of the article.
And it increases the Slashdot effect as everybody thinks they made a mistake and keeps clicking the "Next" link until finally realizing that the website is broken.
Assuming you accept and obey the license terms, most home consumer software is sold for: 1. You (one person), 2. Your computer (one installation), or 3. Your household (one business unit.)
Sun is selling a per-business-unit license, but charging different prices for different number of people. A company believes it is licensing as #3, but they pay as if it is #1. The advantage is that Sun gets to charge for employees that will not be using the software.
It was called a "volume discount" when the price was lowered as volume increased. The big innovation from Sun is that the price-per-employee increases as the volume increases (because the company will be paying for more unused licenses.) We do not yet have a term for that because it is silly.
Where've you been hiding? MS is doing everything it can to keep its stock price up. Linux and OpenOffice threaten its cash cows: MSWindows and MSOffice. No other MS products have any respect, market penetration, or profits.
I'm late to a meeting. Maybe a Slashdot subscriber can link to my relevant posts.
I used to believe that MS would die this year; I did not think that Bill understood how much trouble his company had. Paying dividends puts money in Bill's personal accounts, and stalls the decline of the stock price. Trying to push DRM on things like USB devices are attempts to delay the demise of MSWindows. It may take a few years, but Bill, Steve and I believe the company needs a new direction, and none of us have any idea where they can go.
I apologize. I do not have the time to find my old posts. Maybe a Slashdot subscriber can look through my old posts and link to the relevant ones.
To summarize: 1. IBM sees itself as a "big computer" hardware company. Sun has been one of the largest competitors in that market. IBM hates Sun.
2. Sun got much publicity from Java. IBM hates Sun: - IBM tries to wrest Java away from Sun by setting standards by providing libraries for new technology. - IBM releases Eclipse to take the IDE from Sun. - IBM partners with MS to create standard-setting groups that affect Java, but they do not include Sun.
3. IBM moves Lotus Notes applications to WebSphere. WebSphere's main purpose is to have an IBM-controlled Java application server. Lotus Notes is a much better development environment, and included a Java application server, but IBM lobotomized LN's Java server so it could market WebSphere. IBM is pushing WebSphere as the expensive alternative to using free software, at the expense of other IBM software offerings; that makes no sense from a business perspective, but makes much sense when you realize the goal is not to sell software, but to take control of Java from Sun.
I did not say all other distributions were worthless. I did not say that other distributions do not have a place in business.
I used the term "commercially viable" to mean "able to be sold for money". If you have a completely FSS-based company, you are not the target market for IBM, Sun, MS, Oracle, SAP and anybody else trying to sell software. A "commercially viable" distribution will be on the short list of supported distributions for Oracle, SAP, WebSphere, Lotus Notes, and other non-free software packages.
I do not have time to check at the moment. What proprietary software is advertised as supported on Slackware?
I have written before that most of IBM's actions over many years seem to attacks against Sun. IBM is killing its own software offerings to try to control Java. IBM even partnered with MS to take standards away from Sun.
Now Sun is partnered with MS. That alone could kill Sun if it is not very careful. But MS is running scared, and could die before leveraging their partnership to destroy Sun.
Sun wants to equate Linux with Redhat. That might have worked a few years ago. Redhat is American; SuSE was German; Mandrake is French; TurboLinux is Asian; Lindows is playing a different game. Now SuSE is American, owned by Novell, and IBM is investing in it. Does Sun not realize that SuSE moved into the neighborhood? Redhat is attempting to emulate MS, and earning MS-like badwill, but there is an American alternative. Of course, SuSE has the similar problems in putting proprietary programs into its distribution. It is difficult to find a totally-free but commercially-viable American distribution, but that does not affect Sun's market.
IBM and Sun are still focused on powerful hardware. Google has demonstrated that many applications work well with a large server farm of low-power computers. IBM realizes that the only way to keep the hardware prices high is to commoditize software. Sun has great engineers, but their business strategies do not reflect today's market.
I like Sun, and wish them well. Dell is winning on hardware, MS is struggling to stay viable in software, and everybody else is wondering how to stay competitive. Sun does not have a good answer yet.
I recently played with an iPod Mini. It was new, so it had little music in it. I did not even plug in the headphones.
The UI for music is incredible. It is easy to build lists of favorites and such. Then I tried the games. That UI needs work. You play several of the games by moving the paddle side-to-side. It took some time to learn how to be accurate with a paddle that increased speed the longer it was moving. But the worst is the game exits the moment your finger leaves and returns to the pad. It is difficult to keep your finger connected to the circular control for tens of minutes without slipping off or relaxing the pressure. The moment you slip, game over, not because you lost but because the UI commands were designed poorly.
I realize that the games are just there because every small electonic device must have games. No one says "I've got to get an iPod Mini for the cool games." But if you are going to have a function, have someone test it. Making the "quit game" UI a double-click would have made it so much more usable. (Or does MS own the patent on double-clicks now?)
I am uncertain Earthlink's SpamBlock works if you POP3 mail. I have it set to the "medium" setting, and have never received a "daily spam report".
(The "high" setting requires whitelisting everybody, which means giving Earthlink my address book. Even I do not have my address book; I just search for a previous email from somebody and click Reply.)
Whatever Earthlink is paying for the SpamBlock is too much if it does not do anything.
Back in 1999, I designed a system as the core of a new application development system that would make most of WinFS seem archaic. We realized that if it became THE data store for computers (usually called a file system), we could build many programs that would make computers MUCH more useful to everybody. Computers would evolve into systems that the public could understand.
When we wrote a business plan, we realized the only method to get enough market penetration was to release it for free. That killed it as a separate project. We still plan to develop it, but it will probably only be sold as the core for the appdev system. Just having the best appdev system does not guarantee any possibility for revenue generation. So the current plan is to use the appdev system to sell business applications. Rather than build everything from scratch, we are currently building applications on another company's appdev platform.
Our first product should be mature (meaning it will not require all of my time) by the end of the year. Our second commercial product will probably take most of next year. The portal version of the appdev system should also be released next year. (Most of the work is done, but bugs in the other company's platform makes it unstable.) We expect the core to take one year to prototype, and another year to optimize and complete. We should be releasing it (probably as FSS) around 2007, just in time to make WinFS seem like a complete waste. Can you wait?
Thanks for the info. I agree completely, but the privacy nuts usually get upset when they hear that someone needs to be trusted with other people's information.
As a consultant, I tell companies that they have to trust their admins. If they do not, then the company will have problems making IT an asset rather than an obstacle. I built an incredible single-signon system, and all passwords are encrypted for storage, but an admin could modify the program to save the unencrypted passwords. I wonder that companies do not require admins to be bonded, especially admins that have access to confidential customer information.
--- What is "Brightmaild"? Google knew nothing.
You might be referring to my remarks about spam through Earthlink rather than my sig. There is a Brightmail server-based spam-blocker, but I doubt I can convince Earthlink to implement it.
For the domains I host, I am trying to use SpamAssassin with SendMail. I may have set it up wrong, but it is not marking messages redirected using virtusertable.
One notorious spammer, whom EarthLink helped put behind bars, repeatedly used the names of sports such as baseball and football as his password.
Did anyone else see the implications of that? It says, "Earthlink admins know your password." Every security system I know stores passwords using a one-way hash. It is supposed to be impossible for an administrator to discover the password from the stored data. But this admin just admitted he is that checking the cleartext passwords. Make certain you use a different password for every account.
Now the spammers know to use random passwords, so the admins have one less method to catch them. Did he kill every account that used "baseball" as the password? Probably not a bad idea, but not practical for a commercial ISP.
--- My Earthlink account only started getting obvious spam in the last year. The Subjects are variations on one of these: "ORIGINAL SOFTWARES TO ALL COUNTRIES" "V1AGRA, C1ALIS, XANAAX, VAL1UM AT CHEAPEST PRICE" Is there any spam filter that would not catch them just by looking at the Subject? I receive only four each week, so maybe Earthlink is not doing too poorly.
Hotmail does not automatically download images if you access it using Mozilla without "Accept all images". Even MS's navigation graphics do not appear using "Accept images that come from the originating server only" because the URLs for the images contain the IP Address!
--- I am still wishing Mozilla would add the ability to easily add domains/server/paths to the "Allow" list for image permissions. I am using Mozilla 1.6, so it is possible they figured out a better UI (by reading my posts?) to improve it in a more recent release. Without a good UI, functionality does not matter. Mozilla's 9 clicks to view a picture is excessive. (I just spent 5 hours designing a dialog box that has one set of radio buttons and one set of checkboxes. Now I have to make the functionality work.)
--- Somebody else already asked, but there were no answers. Does anybody know if Mozilla on MSWindows could be susceptible to this bug?
I took this news report as an opportunity to remind my friends and family to use Mozilla. Some of them are using Mozilla on MSWindowsXP. I told them they are safe from THIS Microsoft bug. Did I lie?
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine if MSPaint didn't exist. Photoshop would cost even more!
A free graphics editor (think the GIMP rather than MSPaint) allows/causes the professional quality software to have higher prices. When Photoshop is the only software available, Adobe has to choose between high prices or market penetration, and market penetration usually wins. Do you want 10 sales at $10,000, or 1,000,000 sales at $100? With some of the functionality available for free, Adobe has already lost most of the low end of the market, but potential customers needing more will pay more, resulting in higher prices.
When Microsoft enters a market, they compete on price, because (until recently) they had little interest in profits from products other than MSWindows and MSOffice, but they had great interest in destroying competitors. They could not compete on functionality because their software is barely functional. The downside of MS entering a market is:
1. A very poorly designed application from MS.
2. Removal of competitors means there are fewer good applications.
3. The quality of all software suffers.
The other downside of their monopoly was many good ideas were discarded because they either:
- competed with a MS product, or
- MS could easily enter the market,
so there was no chance of funding. MS proved this the only sane choice by destroying the existing software companies (Lotus, Ashton-Tate, WordPerfect, every other PC software company existing in the 1980s) and the few that tried anyway (Netscape, Real). Yes, I know those companies made mistakes, but who owns each of their markets today? Why isn't there any commercial competition? The only method to compete with MS is to give software away, and even then MS will do its best to conquer.
I dislike the lack of alternatives. I dislike poorly designed software. MS's lowering prices is the cause of this, and should not be celebrated.
Thank you. I had not realized that IFRAMEs were in the HTML4.0 standard. I still write HTML3 unless something is impossible without it, and I have never found anything impossible (although I am using CSS1 for formatting and mouseovers.)
There are still two problems with YahooMail:
1. Yahoo will not serve the full-function page unless the browser claims to be MSIE.
2. Mozilla could not handle the page due to trouble with IFRAMEs. I tested by changing the request to be MSIE, and by saving the page locally and opening it in Mozilla. This may be fixed in recent releases. It was originally Mozilla1.3 or 1.5; I may have tested again with Mozilla1.7 (what my father is currently using.) I have not tested Firefox. (My father will switch during my next visit.)
My father (mentioned above) started using YahooMail because I recommended it because it was the only free webmail with POP3. The free YahooMail no longer has POP3 in the US. (The UK version may be different.)
History:
- 1995: I signed up for free mail accounts on GeoCities and Yahoo. Geocities allowed free POP3, so that became my main home email address.
- 1999: Yahoo bought Geocities. Yahoo quickly added free POP3. I merged my accounts.
- 2000? Yahoo changes the free POP3 to require at least weekly advertisements. One additional unwanted email is almost unnoticable with the rise of spam. I still recommended YahooMail to everybody; this is when my father signed up.
- 2002? Yahoo moves POP3 to the paid subsciptions. Attempts to use POP3 get an email recommending giving Yahoo money. I stop recommending YahooMail.
A Slashdot discussion about a year ago turned up that the UK YahooMail still had free POP3. I am not recommending to my US-based friends and family that they use a UK email address. They have enough trouble typing URLs that do not end with ".com".
ActiveX is not the only Microsoft technology causing problems in non-Microsoft browsers.
Yahoo is a home-consumer website. Yahoo Mail uses an IFRAME and some very poor (from the standards-compliant perspective) JavaScript to provide RichText (HTML) composing of emails. None of the functionality would be difficult using standards, but Yahoo's answer to the existence of browsers other than MSIE is to deliver a different page without full functionality.
My father uses Yahoo Mail. He switched to Mozilla a couple of years ago. He only uses MSIE for WindowsUpdate and YahooMail. He confirmed Yahoo still had the problem last week; he was experimenting with Linux, and complained none of the browsers had full functionality with YahooMail. He (almost) understands this is a problem with Yahoo, not Mozilla, but consumers only see that expected functionality is missing with Mozilla, and blame the browser, not the websites.
I remember a program (WordPerfect? WordStar?) that determined the complexity of a written work by finding the average number of words per sentence (wps). IIRC, the levels were:
"simple" (<6wps)
"normal" (7-10wps)
"technical" (11-19wps)
"doctoral" (>20wps).
(I am certain these numbers and labels are not correct. I think the program also considered the average word length.)
This supports your theory that longer sentence structures imply a more educated mind. I tend to write very long sentences, and am accused of having a very complex mind rather often. That does not mean I should not attempt to simplify my writing so lesser minds can understand more easily.
Writing must consider the audience. Do longer sentence structure imply the writer has a complex mind, or that complex minds are the expected audience?
Books for the very young usually have about 3 words per sentence, like "See Spot run." If anybody under age seven will read it, do not use sentences with more than 5 words.
Most sentences in business writing should have 8-15 words. A sentence with less words will get more attention, such as "Do not click DELETE ALL." or "He is being terminated."
A sentence with more than 15 words requires complex thought from the reader. If they are focused on the subject, such as reading a technical manual, they will work for understanding. If they are not focused on the subject, such as an email for something other than their current task, they will stop reading.
I follow the rules I suggested in the gradparent post. Even after editing, my writing usually contains long sentences. Hopefully my audience cares enough to take the effort to comprehend. If they go numb, I have failed as a writer.
In the same way as your examples, dependent clauses normally take a placement that makes it easy to see what they depend on. (There, I broke a rule, rather than write "that on which they depend", which would sound stilted and archaic, but nicely Latinate).
Ending with a preposition often indicates a verb phrase was used where a noun would suffice. Much writing can be improved by reducing each sentence to the basic concepts. Start by removing "that", "which", and all prepositions; then rebuild the sentence adding as few words as possible. Do not be afraid to change words' "parts of speech".
You could have replaced the phrase with a noun, improving the grammar and making it more concise. You almost fixed it when you realized the phrase could have been the noun phrase "that on which they depend", which can be shortened to the single word "dependencies". In reverse, "take a placement" can be replaced by "placed".
Like your examples, dependent clauses are normally placed to see their dependencies easily.
[I prefer to split the infinitive ("to easily see"), but that would be dangerous in this forum.]
--- Advanced editing
After editing each sentence for conciseness, remove all conjunctions. Then add just enough connectors to make each paragraph make sense. Add paragraph breaks to group the sentences properly.
I tend to write very long sentences. Each sentence should contain only one thought. This process greatly improves readability.
Compare to:
After editing each sentence for conciseness, remove all conjunctions, then add just enough connectors to make each paragraph make sense, and add paragraph breaks to group the sentences properly. I tend to write very long sentences, although each sentence should contain only one thought, but this process greatly improves readability.
---
I spend so much time writing and talking professionally for work, my last girlfriend was surprised by my speech patterns when a vacation allowed me to revert to "normal".
I wonder if usage of the "Preview" button for posts to this article is greatly above the norm.
Yes, I want to improve the world. I need to become rich to do it.
I have been writing software for large companies for over a decade. My software is fast and easy to use, which reduces headaches and improves the quality of life for the users. I have been focused on business software for a very long time: I am good at it, and most of my ideas focus on business software. I would like to spend time fixing Mozilla and other OSS, but my other projects seem more important because there is nobody else to develop them; Mozilla has other developers and they may eventually implement my ideas, or at least solve my complaints.
Of my current products:
#1 is for businesses. It should make me money. No apologies.
#2 is for businesses, and it will help consumers. It requires major investment to develop, which is why it is planned second. It may make me more money, but it will improve the lives of almost everybody.
#3 was originally designed for business. It requires major investment to complete. The original core is still aimed at business, but the fully developed version may change how everybody uses computers. The current plan is to release the consumer version for free, while selling some applications built on the platform to businesses.
A person doing your charitable actions does not "improve the world"; they improve a very small piece of it, usually by helping something return to the "normal" state. Women should not be battered; sheltering them is important for removing evil, but it does not stop all women from being battered. If I could develop software to stop women from ever being battered, I would, but I have no ideas on the subject (yet).
If you want to help one battered woman, go do it. If I want to help every battered women, I need more resources. With enough money, I can put a shelter in every city and pay the staff. Which of us helps more?
Getting rich is not evil in itself. Many of the people running the United Way get paid well, but they are doing it because they believe. I want to make enough to be able to give my software away. I expect most new software product companies to be sued into oblivion; the business model cannot compete against lawsuit factories; we will need money just to survive the lawsuits.
Check back in 10 years and decide if I made a positive adjustment to "the world".
I fit the definition of the "Lone Coder". While I have a long history of working on teams to write software, several companies have rejected funding my "Really Good Ideas(TM)". I built the programs anyway. I believe (and hope and pray) I have the business sense to bring the products to market without getting sued to oblivion first. Then I hope to free (as in "release the source code under the GPL") the programs before lawsuits force my company into bankruptcy. I want to:
- make the world a better place.
- get rich.
- continue having fun with computers.
I hope the world (the US court system and the idiots with a bankroll for lawyers) let me.
Taking your points:
1. They notice me.
My first products are built on software from IBM. I hope the partnership with IBM develops so they:
- Won't sue me. (I am helping to sell their products too.)
- May assist in my defense against lawsuits. This is a long shot, but I can dream, right?
2. Realize I am violating a patent.
Given the state of patents, I assume every new program violates many of them, including anything I write. So I assume I will get sued. Today, there is no chance that a "Lone Coder" could market anything without getting sued.
3a. Need to be a threat.
One of my programs obsoletes most of what MS has said Longhorn will do. That should count as a threat.
3b. Deep pockets.
We are in negotiations to license one of my programs for several million dollars. Does that count as "deep pockets"?
4 & 5. They make a move and sue me.
Are you kidding? There are too many "companies" producing nothing but lawsuits for me to even hope I have a chance to not be sued.
6. The courts.
Of course the courts will allow them to sue me. What else are the courts for?
7a & b. Bankruptcy, Broke
I hope to have enough money to survive the smaller players. I hope to make partners to survive the big players (MS). Declaring bankruptcy is the last line of the business plan. We expect it.
7c. Do something else.
Always have a Plan B. Mine involves an estate somewhere warm with swimming pools. That will not advance the state of computers, but at least I have a plan.
== Points in my favor? ==
- Stay under the radar?
I want to improve the world. I don't worry about developing ideas unless they have the potential to produce millions of dolllars. That is not a good plan for staying under the radar.
- Lawyers?
I have a good IP law firm. While I expect them to defend me, and keep the cases in court as long as possible without any impediments to my business, they are expensive, and eventually the cost of the lawyers will eat all the profits. At that point, I'll quit.
- Counter-offers
They are only good when the other "company" has something to lose. If they are suing for the hope of a big win, it will be difficult to buy them off. Cross-licensing is useless when the other company only produces lawsuits, since lawyers will not pass laws allowing patents restricting lawsuits, and none of my patents would be relevant.
- Big companies
If MS sues me, I am releasing the software as open source. That is the step in the business plan just before going bankrupt.
- Small companies
I like your comparison to ants, but a few million dollars will seem like much money to an ant. Why should they take on an elephant when they can retire by stepping on another ant?
Don't assume a "Lone Coder" cannot be a threat to the big guys. Linus managed to create the only violable threat to MSWindows. One of my programs threatens most of the business software sold today. Yes, Linux involved many other people before it became a real threat, and I expect to hire other people before my programs are brought to market. But the ideas were first developed by a Lone Coder.
I agree with your last point. Our first goal is to make money. Then we need to polish our other programs and bring them to market. Then we'll wait until lawsuits bankrupt us. Hopefully I will still have Plan B.
(No fair; I got modded down when I did a similar analysis last month. Your post is longer; mine might be funnier.)
Much of the problem is Open Source experience is rarely also the corporate experience needed to get past HR. Unless you worked for RedHat (or Cygnus before they merged with RH), there have been few opportunities to get corporate experience with OSS. You could have used Linux since the mid-90s, but it was not in the corporate environment, so HR will discount the experience as "not good enough".
I am trying to win a project. I am probably the best candidate on the east coast, and the job is in my town. My resume includes Intranets for Fortune 10 companies. They asked about my skills with HTML and Java. HR people do not have a clue, and they are the bottleneck. There are probably 10 unemployed Slashdotters for every OSS job, but HR departments everywhere will complain that there are not enough knowledgeable people.
---
Hey, Slashdot does have job listings, but it just goes to Yahoo jobs.
When I started at a consulting company in 1997, I wondered why some of my colleagues did not like me before we had talked. A few months later, someone mentioned I looked like a brown-noser because I was always having conversations with our boss John. They finally realized John kept coming to me for conversation because WE BOTH LOVED COMPUTERS.
- Both of us were programming for fun in the 80s.
- Both of us made a profession out of our hobby.
While John had written some shareware that was still making a few dollars a month, he was not a good programmer, so he became a technology manager. He knew before I arrived that I was good programmer; I was hired because I impressed HIS boss by glancing at a screen of code, pointing to an error, and explaining how to fix it. So John went out of his way to become friends with me.
Once my colleagues had their epiphany, most of them were OK with me, at least enough to ask for help. One of them tried to get me fired. She was a "bang your head against the computer until it does something useful" type of programmer, but she had established herself as the guru, and I was threatening her position. She was friends with the owner of the company, and he did not like me because our boss' boss had hired me without consulting him. I only survived because their method of getting me fired was to keep giving me impossible assignments, and I kept succeeding. (The assignments were much fun and great for the resume.) I hope never to deal with that much politics again.
---
The grandparent post uses 1999 as the divider between the computer-lovers and the computer-jobs-for-money people. I think the line is much earlier. Almost everybody at the consulting company in 1997 belonged to the latter group.
MSWindows started dominating around 1992, and that killed command-line programming on PCs. Unix people have the attitude, but I do not know anybody that started with Unix after 1992. Hopefully Linux is creating a new set of command-line program writers. All of the well-known hackers were involved with computers before 1992. The youngest hacker known to me is Justin Frankel, but even he was writing software before 1992. (Wikipedia says he was programming before starting high school in 1991.)
Can anybody name a great hacker that started with computers after 1992?
From the article:
- Preparation and planning activities took 5% to 25% longer for Linux than Windows.
- Training for IT employees was significantly higher for Linux than for Windows - on average, 15% more expensive. The reasons: training materials were less readily available, and customers spent more on training to compensate for the lack of internal knowledge about Linux.
- All 14 companies said it was difficult finding qualified Linux personnel in the marketplace to support their Linux projects. When they did find third-party help, they had less leverage negotiating hourly rates than with Windows consulting resources.
Revised version with comments:
- Linux administrators take longer than Windows administrators to plan their infrastructure.
This is bad? Linux administrators have more choices, so they think more about what they are doing. Windows administrators know that anything wrong can be blamed on MS's software.
- Retraining Windows admins on Linux is expensive.
Windows admins are trained how to reboot. Their prior skill is useless in the new environment
- Linux admins are expensive and difficult to find.
Good news for the many unemployed Slashdotters. Very large companies are looking for you, and think you are worth much money. The bad news is they have never heard of Slashdot. Should Slashdot start a job listing or resume website to help these clueless big companies?
My father is running a triple-boot PC: MSWindows98SE, RedHat9, Slackware. He has OpenOffice on all 3 OSes. He does his word-processing in MSWord (using MSWindows) because "everybody else needs the files in MSWord97 format." He sticks to MSWord even though OOo can save in MSWord format, because they have enough difficulty getting MSWord to format it correctly even when everybody is using the same version. (He is trying to convert them, but there are many people involved.)
I also converted (forced?) my cousins to use OpenOffice. The children (aged 2 to 15) complain because things do not look quite right when they open the files at school.
MS has 2 monopolies: the OS (MSWindows) and the office suite (MSOffice). Slashdotters are spreading the word about alternatives, but it will be a few years before the general public is happy using alternatives. OTOH, MS has upset so many people that their replacement is inevitable.
---
I hope to buy a Powerbook soon. That Slashdot article about how they work from a few days ago may have converted me. Except that I still need to program for MSWindows because that is how I get paid.
This is timely. I built a triple-boot PC for my father last year. He recently got DSL, so I needed to update all the network settings. (I did it this morning.)
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf, and changed them in vi in a terminal (which would not accept BACKSPACE or DEL as valid keys for erasing; I used "dl".) Then I restarted rc.inet1. The IP Address did not change, so I rebooted.
The first issue was that Earthlink provided a DSL modem with only one network jack. He also has a laptop, so he needed another port. $60 got a Linksys WRT54G. He will (probably) buy a wireless PCMCIA network card for the laptop next Spring. I turned off the wireless capablilities, and he has a good router.
Then I changed the network settings for MSWindows98SE on the PC and the laptop. Only 3 reboots each. (It could have been less if I remembered to configure DNS the first time.)
Then I changed RedHat9. There is a GUI for the network settings. Changed the settings. "/etc/init.d/network restart". Perfect. (But why did it tell me to restart the network? It knew it needed to be done. Just do it.)
Then I looked for the network settings in Slackware. I could not find any admin tool to even display the settings. Finally found the
I then tried to figure out how to map the MSWindows share on the laptop for the Linuxes. They refused to see it before I had to head home.
---
The RedHat is probably 9.0. The Slackware is either 9 or 10. The newer Slackware was more difficult to configure than the old RedHat.
[I previously had difficulty because I changed Slackware to boot to the GUI by changing the runlevel. Then I had to copy the startup scripts to the new runlevel. People have already suggested that was the wrong way to do it, although no one has told me how to boot to the GUI without changing the runlevel.]
As far as using them, my father likes KDE slightly better than Gnome, likely because he was trained on MSWindows, and KDE was much closer to MSWindows on the versions he is using. He browses the internet from all 3 OSes (Mozilla on Windows and RedHat, and Konq on Slack), and rips and burns CDs using the Linuxes. He thinks it is fun to experiment with several OSes.
[Off-topic: I also installed Opera on Windows. He tried it once; it opened to Opera's homepage: "There was too much to read", so he gave up and went back to Mozilla.]
He does not have to administer the systems. KDE has been more difficult when it requires intervention.
EXCEPT: KDE detects new monitors much better than RedHat. When I delivered the PC, I had to use Slackware to change RedHat's monitor settings, and I just copied the settings from Slackware. (MSWindows98SE cannot see the Linux partitions.)
---
Yes, I know I am writing about obsolete versions. RedHat is completely obsolete, as Fedora is the current line, and the Slackware install is also over a year old. But most people are using whatever version they had handy. I only download the latest versions when I am installing a new system. Upgrading takes time and causes headaches; why bother?
The text version has a link for "Next" that points to the same text as the original page, but in a larger font. The /software directory only contains those 2 files.
Is this irony? An article about quality has only half of the article.
And it increases the Slashdot effect as everybody thinks they made a mistake and keeps clicking the "Next" link until finally realizing that the website is broken.
Assuming you accept and obey the license terms, most home consumer software is sold for:
1. You (one person),
2. Your computer (one installation), or
3. Your household (one business unit.)
Sun is selling a per-business-unit license, but charging different prices for different number of people. A company believes it is licensing as #3, but they pay as if it is #1. The advantage is that Sun gets to charge for employees that will not be using the software.
It was called a "volume discount" when the price was lowered as volume increased. The big innovation from Sun is that the price-per-employee increases as the volume increases (because the company will be paying for more unused licenses.) We do not yet have a term for that because it is silly.
Where've you been hiding? MS is doing everything it can to keep its stock price up. Linux and OpenOffice threaten its cash cows: MSWindows and MSOffice. No other MS products have any respect, market penetration, or profits.
I'm late to a meeting. Maybe a Slashdot subscriber can link to my relevant posts.
I used to believe that MS would die this year; I did not think that Bill understood how much trouble his company had. Paying dividends puts money in Bill's personal accounts, and stalls the decline of the stock price. Trying to push DRM on things like USB devices are attempts to delay the demise of MSWindows. It may take a few years, but Bill, Steve and I believe the company needs a new direction, and none of us have any idea where they can go.
I apologize. I do not have the time to find my old posts. Maybe a Slashdot subscriber can look through my old posts and link to the relevant ones.
To summarize:
1. IBM sees itself as a "big computer" hardware company. Sun has been one of the largest competitors in that market. IBM hates Sun.
2. Sun got much publicity from Java. IBM hates Sun:
- IBM tries to wrest Java away from Sun by setting standards by providing libraries for new technology.
- IBM releases Eclipse to take the IDE from Sun.
- IBM partners with MS to create standard-setting groups that affect Java, but they do not include Sun.
3. IBM moves Lotus Notes applications to WebSphere. WebSphere's main purpose is to have an IBM-controlled Java application server. Lotus Notes is a much better development environment, and included a Java application server, but IBM lobotomized LN's Java server so it could market WebSphere. IBM is pushing WebSphere as the expensive alternative to using free software, at the expense of other IBM software offerings; that makes no sense from a business perspective, but makes much sense when you realize the goal is not to sell software, but to take control of Java from Sun.
I did not say all other distributions were worthless. I did not say that other distributions do not have a place in business.
I used the term "commercially viable" to mean "able to be sold for money". If you have a completely FSS-based company, you are not the target market for IBM, Sun, MS, Oracle, SAP and anybody else trying to sell software. A "commercially viable" distribution will be on the short list of supported distributions for Oracle, SAP, WebSphere, Lotus Notes, and other non-free software packages.
I do not have time to check at the moment. What proprietary software is advertised as supported on Slackware?
I have written before that most of IBM's actions over many years seem to attacks against Sun. IBM is killing its own software offerings to try to control Java. IBM even partnered with MS to take standards away from Sun.
Now Sun is partnered with MS. That alone could kill Sun if it is not very careful. But MS is running scared, and could die before leveraging their partnership to destroy Sun.
Sun wants to equate Linux with Redhat. That might have worked a few years ago. Redhat is American; SuSE was German; Mandrake is French; TurboLinux is Asian; Lindows is playing a different game. Now SuSE is American, owned by Novell, and IBM is investing in it. Does Sun not realize that SuSE moved into the neighborhood? Redhat is attempting to emulate MS, and earning MS-like badwill, but there is an American alternative. Of course, SuSE has the similar problems in putting proprietary programs into its distribution. It is difficult to find a totally-free but commercially-viable American distribution, but that does not affect Sun's market.
IBM and Sun are still focused on powerful hardware. Google has demonstrated that many applications work well with a large server farm of low-power computers. IBM realizes that the only way to keep the hardware prices high is to commoditize software. Sun has great engineers, but their business strategies do not reflect today's market.
I like Sun, and wish them well. Dell is winning on hardware, MS is struggling to stay viable in software, and everybody else is wondering how to stay competitive. Sun does not have a good answer yet.
I recently played with an iPod Mini. It was new, so it had little music in it. I did not even plug in the headphones.
The UI for music is incredible. It is easy to build lists of favorites and such. Then I tried the games. That UI needs work. You play several of the games by moving the paddle side-to-side. It took some time to learn how to be accurate with a paddle that increased speed the longer it was moving. But the worst is the game exits the moment your finger leaves and returns to the pad. It is difficult to keep your finger connected to the circular control for tens of minutes without slipping off or relaxing the pressure. The moment you slip, game over, not because you lost but because the UI commands were designed poorly.
I realize that the games are just there because every small electonic device must have games. No one says "I've got to get an iPod Mini for the cool games." But if you are going to have a function, have someone test it. Making the "quit game" UI a double-click would have made it so much more usable. (Or does MS own the patent on double-clicks now?)
I am uncertain Earthlink's SpamBlock works if you POP3 mail. I have it set to the "medium" setting, and have never received a "daily spam report".
(The "high" setting requires whitelisting everybody, which means giving Earthlink my address book. Even I do not have my address book; I just search for a previous email from somebody and click Reply.)
Whatever Earthlink is paying for the SpamBlock is too much if it does not do anything.
Back in 1999, I designed a system as the core of a new application development system that would make most of WinFS seem archaic. We realized that if it became THE data store for computers (usually called a file system), we could build many programs that would make computers MUCH more useful to everybody. Computers would evolve into systems that the public could understand.
When we wrote a business plan, we realized the only method to get enough market penetration was to release it for free. That killed it as a separate project. We still plan to develop it, but it will probably only be sold as the core for the appdev system. Just having the best appdev system does not guarantee any possibility for revenue generation. So the current plan is to use the appdev system to sell business applications. Rather than build everything from scratch, we are currently building applications on another company's appdev platform.
Our first product should be mature (meaning it will not require all of my time) by the end of the year. Our second commercial product will probably take most of next year. The portal version of the appdev system should also be released next year. (Most of the work is done, but bugs in the other company's platform makes it unstable.) We expect the core to take one year to prototype, and another year to optimize and complete. We should be releasing it (probably as FSS) around 2007, just in time to make WinFS seem like a complete waste. Can you wait?
Thanks for the info. I agree completely, but the privacy nuts usually get upset when they hear that someone needs to be trusted with other people's information.
As a consultant, I tell companies that they have to trust their admins. If they do not, then the company will have problems making IT an asset rather than an obstacle. I built an incredible single-signon system, and all passwords are encrypted for storage, but an admin could modify the program to save the unencrypted passwords. I wonder that companies do not require admins to be bonded, especially admins that have access to confidential customer information.
---
What is "Brightmaild"? Google knew nothing.
You might be referring to my remarks about spam through Earthlink rather than my sig. There is a Brightmail server-based spam-blocker, but I doubt I can convince Earthlink to implement it.
For the domains I host, I am trying to use SpamAssassin with SendMail. I may have set it up wrong, but it is not marking messages redirected using virtusertable.
One notorious spammer, whom EarthLink helped put behind bars, repeatedly used the names of sports such as baseball and football as his password.
Did anyone else see the implications of that? It says, "Earthlink admins know your password." Every security system I know stores passwords using a one-way hash. It is supposed to be impossible for an administrator to discover the password from the stored data. But this admin just admitted he is that checking the cleartext passwords. Make certain you use a different password for every account.
Now the spammers know to use random passwords, so the admins have one less method to catch them. Did he kill every account that used "baseball" as the password? Probably not a bad idea, but not practical for a commercial ISP.
---
My Earthlink account only started getting obvious spam in the last year. The Subjects are variations on one of these:
"ORIGINAL SOFTWARES TO ALL COUNTRIES"
"V1AGRA, C1ALIS, XANAAX, VAL1UM AT CHEAPEST PRICE"
Is there any spam filter that would not catch them just by looking at the Subject? I receive only four each week, so maybe Earthlink is not doing too poorly.
Hotmail does not automatically download images if you access it using Mozilla without "Accept all images". Even MS's navigation graphics do not appear using "Accept images that come from the originating server only" because the URLs for the images contain the IP Address!
---
I am still wishing Mozilla would add the ability to easily add domains/server/paths to the "Allow" list for image permissions. I am using Mozilla 1.6, so it is possible they figured out a better UI (by reading my posts?) to improve it in a more recent release. Without a good UI, functionality does not matter. Mozilla's 9 clicks to view a picture is excessive. (I just spent 5 hours designing a dialog box that has one set of radio buttons and one set of checkboxes. Now I have to make the functionality work.)
---
Somebody else already asked, but there were no answers. Does anybody know if Mozilla on MSWindows could be susceptible to this bug?
I took this news report as an opportunity to remind my friends and family to use Mozilla. Some of them are using Mozilla on MSWindowsXP. I told them they are safe from THIS Microsoft bug. Did I lie?