I have carefully read other people's comments, and noone can come up with a rational explanation so I shall try.
Let us suppose the NSA wants you to put backdoors into your security products and you refuse, what leverage does NSA have? Well, perhaps they might put commercial pressure on the company to comply: by refusing to allow them to sell the product until they do.
I am not sure this is the real reason, but it seems possible.
Personally, I see Google's current valuation of $127,000,000,000 as vindication of the Google strategy to date of building tools users like, while building public trust. If Google starts concentrating on its short term bottom line, and loses the goodwill it currently enjoys, I think you will see the valuation drop not rise.
I shall, however, wait until there is concrete evidence of such a change in approach before assuming it will occur.
Documentation projects
on
Season's Givings?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I tried to RTFA, but the/. effect struck before I had a chance.
An area, often forgotten, that has a huge impact on whether open source products are easily useable is documentation. In this respect, kudos to the OOo documentation project who have done a great job this year.
The usefulness of the above resources is in sad contrast to the documentation available for most open source application software. I am very keen to make more use of some of these products, but a lack of good documentation is pretty much a show stopper.
Recent studies have shown >. Consumers are selecting only the tracks they want in complete disregard of the impact this might have on the income of poor struggling creative musicians. To rectify this injustice, Congress needs to legislate that sales of music online will only be permitted under the same conditions as those of music albums: with unpopular tracks bundled along with their more popular cousins. Only in this way can musical creativity be maintained and further encouraged in this great country of ours.
IBM has been a good friend to those parts of the open source community that fit its overall strategy. However, the emphasis on Java shows the importance it places on trying to protect its WebSphere revenue.
You are 100% correct, technically. The problem is human nature. People are unwilling to accept any additional effort in their everyday computing. They just use their computers until they become too slow or are otherwise malfunctioning, and then want them fixed.
You and I do not get infected anyway. Expecting the typical user to white-list programs, together with what they are allowed to do (often needing to pick up the phone and ask) is, unfortunately, unrealistic.
Above two known to be good.
The driver for the Epson Stylus Photo R1800 listed by linuxprinting.org appears to have a few issues, but works adequately. I expect I could find a better driver if I had a reason to.
The letter appears plausible. However, I could find nothing to indicate how the poster came into possession of the letter. Under those circumstancs, I am not ready to accept it as genuine.
It depends on the availability of drivers for Linux. Are there printer drivers for Linux? I checked hp.com, canon.com and epson.com. NO DRIVERS FOR LINUX.
I am not sure about Canon, but I know for a fact that there are good Linux drivers for most HP and Epson devices. As basic drivers, they are often better than those available for Windows. Of course, if you actually like the bloatware that successfully destabalises half of the Windows setups I look at, the functional nature of the Linux drivers might disappoint you.
the President because he didn't ask for that banner to be there
Actually, this is a symptom of one of my biggest concerns: working out who is in charge in the US. Sure, the President did not arrange that banner. Further, the decision to make that speech was made by his advisors and the content about "major combat operations being over" was not actually written by him. After all, the President had no more idea about what was actually happening after the invasion than he had before ordering it. Actually, I have always believed that GWB was lied to by the real powers in the same way that Congress and the electorate was. The President probably believed there were WMDs, but the likes of Rumsfeld, Chaney and Wolfewitz certainly knew better. So, yes, the President makes few real decisions: he just goes along with what is arranged for him. That does not make me feel better.
In a world without fences or walls, who needs gates or windows
Seems appropriate with the world moving towards open standards, where the inclination to use MS Windows, ad-supported or not, will surely become less and less.
who in the their right mind would send sensitive information over e-mail anyway???
Non techies. It may be obvious to you that email is insecure, but that would not occur to 90% of all email users. Further, it is possible to use email for sensitive information. Unfortunately, it requires both the sender and the receiver to understand enough about encryption.
I last saw him about 20 years ago. He was in his early 20s. His life at the time was unexceptional. He had a low paying job and a nice girlfriend. The "no fear" side effect was still there.
Apparently, in spite of having no fear of anything, he had a sense of self preservation. He never (that I know of) did anything to threaten his continued existence.
About forty years ago, a neighbour's child was damaged by a rare adverse reaction to a vaccination (cannot remember which one). One of the most striking affects was that the child became completely without fear of anything. By this, I do not mean antisocial in any way. He was a really nice kid but had lost the capacity to feel fear. The consensus was that this was very dangerous.
The crocodle farm and zoo at Samut prakan in Thailand has a 6m specimin called "Yai" (Thai for "big"). Weighing in at 1,114kg, it is recognised by the Guiness book of World Records. Frankly, it looks pretty sleepy and overfed in its photos. I still would be careful around it.
I won't be surprised if in 15 years time, NASA simply won't exist anymore. I just hope that by that time, there isn't a need for it.
I have felt for a while that the long term future of space research (both commercial and for national prestige) lies in Asia. I think much of the critical materials research will come from Japan, reliable rocket technology from India and China, electronics from Taiwan and Korea, and governmental support for major advances mainly from China.
The US and Europe will increasingly have other concerns, with the political will for expensive space projects generally lacking. While the US will probably be able to claim the "credit" for the militarisation of space, I do not believe the US desire to feed its defense industry with boondoggles like an "anti missile shield" will lead to much useful technology for space exploration, exploitation or eventual colonisation.
Russia, if its economy permits, might remain a power to be reckoned with. Certainly, national pride in its ability to achieve practical results with a lower budget than the Americans is a factor.
I agree with you that extensions are what makes Firefox as good a browser as it is. However, I have become very wary of trying to run with too many. In my experience, there is a tendency for extensions to conflict with each other. As a result, I now only include those that I consider genuinely important. Those with marginal utility, even though they may be nice, no longer have a place in my system. For me, about a dozen extensions give me most of what I want: the days of 30-40 extensions are over.
The concept of tracking cell phone movements to assist in optimising traffic flow seems to me a good one. I expect other similar good ideas to be forthcoming. Surely, there ought to be technological solutions to allow tracking while reliably protecting individual privacy. Perhaps, each cell phone could generate a short term session identifier (24 hours in duration and not tied in an obvious way to the phone number) for use in such tracking applications? It might also be feasible to allow paranoid phone owners to opt out.
The court has already asked that documents in this case not be sealed arbitrarily without valid reasons. I cannot fathom what reasons tSCOg could have for needing the list of supposed violations sealed. I hope IBM asks (at a minimum) for a redacted version to be made public.
If not, I suspect the final list of supposed transgressions (in December if the schedule does not slip) and the battle over IBM's motions for summary judgments to be mostly sealed. We can then expect some spectacular media grandstanding from tSCOg, trumpeting the strength of their sealed case, before they finally go down in flames.
My vote for the most likely development by Google is a version of Open Office based on storage of documents on their servers accessed via an AJAX type browser interface.
Before anyone starts screaming about privacy and Google becoming too powerful, let me say that I find such a prospect very attractive for individuals and for small and medium size businesses. Let Google handle the backup issues and provide appropriate conversion utilities when communicating with others. While I am quite competent to handle such issues myself, I would be tempted to use a Google service such as this myself. It is so convenient having documents stored on a globally accessible server and not having to maintain that server oneself.
Slashdot Mirror
Let us suppose the NSA wants you to put backdoors into your security products and you refuse, what leverage does NSA have? Well, perhaps they might put commercial pressure on the company to comply: by refusing to allow them to sell the product until they do.
I am not sure this is the real reason, but it seems possible.
I shall, however, wait until there is concrete evidence of such a change in approach before assuming it will occur.
An area, often forgotten, that has a huge impact on whether open source products are easily useable is documentation. In this respect, kudos to the OOo documentation project who have done a great job this year.
Useful to a smaller group, but very useful to me this year, has been the excellent Linux Terminal Server Project Wiki.
The usefulness of the above resources is in sad contrast to the documentation available for most open source application software. I am very keen to make more use of some of these products, but a lack of good documentation is pretty much a show stopper.
Recent studies have shown >. Consumers are selecting only the tracks they want in complete disregard of the impact this might have on the income of poor struggling creative musicians. To rectify this injustice, Congress needs to legislate that sales of music online will only be permitted under the same conditions as those of music albums: with unpopular tracks bundled along with their more popular cousins. Only in this way can musical creativity be maintained and further encouraged in this great country of ours.
The release was phased over August and September 2004. I needed a copy immediately and was able to download a torrent on 6 August 2004.
IBM has been a good friend to those parts of the open source community that fit its overall strategy. However, the emphasis on Java shows the importance it places on trying to protect its WebSphere revenue.
You must be new here.
You and I do not get infected anyway. Expecting the typical user to white-list programs, together with what they are allowed to do (often needing to pick up the phone and ask) is, unfortunately, unrealistic.
Get Skype: 800 numbers in the US are free
Epson Stylus Photo R800
Above two known to be good. The driver for the Epson Stylus Photo R1800 listed by linuxprinting.org appears to have a few issues, but works adequately. I expect I could find a better driver if I had a reason to.
The letter appears plausible. However, I could find nothing to indicate how the poster came into possession of the letter. Under those circumstancs, I am not ready to accept it as genuine.
Mr Gates is probably laying the framework for changes in the AJAX support in IE aimed at breaking competitors products.
I prefer Linux for routine use, but there are times when Windows in a virtual machine would be quite handy.
Non techies. It may be obvious to you that email is insecure, but that would not occur to 90% of all email users. Further, it is possible to use email for sensitive information. Unfortunately, it requires both the sender and the receiver to understand enough about encryption.
I last saw him about 20 years ago. He was in his early 20s. His life at the time was unexceptional. He had a low paying job and a nice girlfriend. The "no fear" side effect was still there.
Apparently, in spite of having no fear of anything, he had a sense of self preservation. He never (that I know of) did anything to threaten his continued existence.
About forty years ago, a neighbour's child was damaged by a rare adverse reaction to a vaccination (cannot remember which one). One of the most striking affects was that the child became completely without fear of anything. By this, I do not mean antisocial in any way. He was a really nice kid but had lost the capacity to feel fear. The consensus was that this was very dangerous.
The crocodle farm and zoo at Samut prakan in Thailand has a 6m specimin called "Yai" (Thai for "big"). Weighing in at 1,114kg, it is recognised by the Guiness book of World Records. Frankly, it looks pretty sleepy and overfed in its photos. I still would be careful around it.
The US and Europe will increasingly have other concerns, with the political will for expensive space projects generally lacking. While the US will probably be able to claim the "credit" for the militarisation of space, I do not believe the US desire to feed its defense industry with boondoggles like an "anti missile shield" will lead to much useful technology for space exploration, exploitation or eventual colonisation.
Russia, if its economy permits, might remain a power to be reckoned with. Certainly, national pride in its ability to achieve practical results with a lower budget than the Americans is a factor.
I agree with you that extensions are what makes Firefox as good a browser as it is. However, I have become very wary of trying to run with too many. In my experience, there is a tendency for extensions to conflict with each other. As a result, I now only include those that I consider genuinely important. Those with marginal utility, even though they may be nice, no longer have a place in my system. For me, about a dozen extensions give me most of what I want: the days of 30-40 extensions are over.
The concept of tracking cell phone movements to assist in optimising traffic flow seems to me a good one. I expect other similar good ideas to be forthcoming. Surely, there ought to be technological solutions to allow tracking while reliably protecting individual privacy. Perhaps, each cell phone could generate a short term session identifier (24 hours in duration and not tied in an obvious way to the phone number) for use in such tracking applications? It might also be feasible to allow paranoid phone owners to opt out.
If not, I suspect the final list of supposed transgressions (in December if the schedule does not slip) and the battle over IBM's motions for summary judgments to be mostly sealed. We can then expect some spectacular media grandstanding from tSCOg, trumpeting the strength of their sealed case, before they finally go down in flames.
Before anyone starts screaming about privacy and Google becoming too powerful, let me say that I find such a prospect very attractive for individuals and for small and medium size businesses. Let Google handle the backup issues and provide appropriate conversion utilities when communicating with others. While I am quite competent to handle such issues myself, I would be tempted to use a Google service such as this myself. It is so convenient having documents stored on a globally accessible server and not having to maintain that server oneself.