Seriously, MS has been in one battle after another for the past 2-3 years. Major battles.
Battles which has been hurting MS's cash funds as well as their future income.
To list a few...
MS vs. DOJ: Monopoly issues.
Losing marketshare to competing products:
Apache vs IIS
Sendmail vs Exchange
MySQL vs MS-SQL Server
Oracle vs MS-SQL Server
Symbian & PalmOS vs WinCE/PocketPC
WebTV fiasco: MS buys WebTv, then drops support.
UltimateTV: Outsold by Tivo and ReplayTV. Good feature set though!
MS vs. Sony: Xbox loses in sales against the Playstation2
MS vs. itself: XP upgrades have been slow/sluggish since people went through hell upgrading to 2000 while many still stick with NT. Now they have 2003 on the shelves which is seeing the same slow response as XP.
MS admitting that NT is not fixable security-wise.
Repeated high-level exposure to Virus/Worm/Vulnerability/Spyware attacks on MS products.
Failed automatic patching/upgrading subsystem resulting in a "clean" bill of health if the scan fails.
If I've been fighting the good(relatively speaking) fight for the last few years and have seen defeat after defeat, I would jump ship. The fact that Balmer hasn't jumped ship before this is either credit to his undying loyalty to MS/Bill Gates or his salary.
That's not to say that MS is all bad. XP pro is by far the most stable and workable OS I've ever used from MS. And I've used all of them from MSDOS 3.00 through XP_Pro. Then again, I've also used Linux from betas of Slackware up through the latest in Suse/Mandrake/Redhat/Debian and have had a great time with Linux as well.
If Ballmer is starting to jump ship, I can't say I blame him. His position is like that of a President's; You work for the length of your "term' and then you gracefully step down to let someone else get some face time while you get to work on your book and movie rights.
Having millions in liquid cash to live off of while waiting for your next job doesn't hurt either.
It is one thing to admit and resign to that fact that there will be bugs... during the development phase. But the debugging process isn't something that "another department" handles. It isn't something to be foisted onto paying customers.
What makes someone a good coder, in my mind, is also what makes a person a good driver. You go about it defensively, you are aware of what is going on all around you, and you are planning and anticipating ahead of you well before you get there.
The idea is that you code defensively so that there are fewer bugs introduced into the software at the start. If the bugs are there at the start, then it has no right leaving development to begin with.
Passing known buggy code to "a debugging department" is an attitude which results in poor coding.
If the base code is of poor quality, no amount of debugging can fix inherit flaws and problems.
As an aside, I write, debug, and profile my own code. I work in concert with other coders. Bugs in our software means downtime and lost revenue for a multi-terrabyte storage system. If we don't have time to make the code stable, we don't push it out. We don't assume the customer is going to be understanding that we were tired when we wrote a particular block of code. We code for contingencies: network failure, drive failure, system crash and reboots. These are things which should be thought about well before any code is written.
The code should be a source of pride for coders and engineers. Not a reason to apologize for bad planning and constant debugging.
I would agree. Properly and well written code will gracefully handle runtime errors.
Translation: Short of the user fubar'ing the program or data files themselves, the program should handle all user input in a graceful way.
The problem though is that to do this would require quite a bit of extra work.
Progammers are caught in a situation of getting something ready for market at a time dictated to them by a department which doesn't understand the underlying issues or saying "Screw it" and making the code solid.
That only describes one way in which the problem is caused.
The bigger problem is the attitude people have about computers which allows for this kind of shoddy programming. People are, for the most part, okay and even expectant of their computers to crash at some point in time.
This in turn makes it okay to release bad code which will be "fixed later".
I say that whenever we get a crash or a problem, we report it to the company and we post it to our websites and to review sites.
I say that the users should make it a big fat noticable problem to the companies whenever their software breaks.
why? because it means that whenever someone who's never used the software before searches on Google for that software or software company's name, they will find page after page of complaints, dissuading them from using the software.
the flip side is, if the software works, post to your sites and review sites. Give the people and companies who produce good software credit when it is due.
As users and consumers, we should find ways to encourage the producers and companies to produce solid code.
Solid stable code shouldn't be the exception to the rule.
Since SCO is obviously capable of auditing code, as they are a producer of software/services themselves, when they distributed a SCO Linux under the GPL, they have in essence said that they understood the GPL, have looked at the code in question, and found no fault with the code.
By distributing their own version of SCO Linux, they have released that version and said code base into the GPL world.
Any and all IP which was incorporated into that GPL'd distribution would then fall under the GPL.
Last time I checked, if you sign yourself/bind yourself to a contract, you are to adhere to it. Whether you have fully read it or were ignorant of the details in the contract through your own negligence is irrelevant.
SCO has "read" the GPL license agreement and has had a fair amount of time to "audit" the linux source base before distributing their own version of Linux, SCO Linux. By doing so, they are agreeing with the GPL and agree that all of the code in their distribution is "clean" and GPL'd.
Note: When I use GPL, I am including LGPL, Opensource, etc. licenses. All of which make an appearance in various distros of Linux.
It's funny. The first thing one thinks about when they are out of work is: How can I get another job just like the one I lost!?
Sometimes, maybe it's better to change one's perspective. Sit back or go do something you hadn't done in a long while on the first day of your jobless existence. If you spent the last period of your life in a concrete jungle... go visit the beach, the forests, or a local garden. If you've been hacking code for longer than you can remember, why not step outside,take a breath, and make for a change of pace?
Don't change your life, but just one day.
Maybe it's just luck, but sometimes, not banging your head into the wall repeatedly to find a job can help you see other opportunities waiting out there.... if not waiting, then at least, it's a door laying ajar, waiting for someone to come through.
Hope the economy picks up soon... personally, I'm ready for a career outside of IT.
I can only manage to work on mine just before bed time. Where do you find the time? Let alone the parts?
Anyone willing to sell me some naquadria? >:)
Vengence and getting back at someone who wrongs u
on
How to Become A Spammer
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Some people who posted responses made many good points. They mainly center around one of the following:
1) The person wronged the online community and profited from it. "Just" letting them go would be wrong!
We all want satisfaction. That is the difference between enforcement of Law and dealing out of Justice. Persons who abuse online resources would be in violation of the law. The anguish they cause people isn't as clearly defined by the Laws. That leaves us without satisfaction. Without closure.
Taking it unto yourself to right what you percieve to be a wrong by taking the law into your own hands is called vigilantism(sp?). Those actions typically land outside of what is condoned by the Law as it currently stands.
I do believe that people should be penalized for doing something which is wrong and costs everyone in the community. Spam and Spamming falls under this kind of community abuse.
If you want satisfaction, change the Laws so that Spamming and Spammers will be penalized and not just slapped on the wrists.
2) "Spammers will think it is okay to spam and quit when they have made their money if we take the 'give them an out' attitude!"
The real problem here is that there is the question of satisfaction of our sense of justice being served. When a person goes to prison and serves their term and are released, we believe them to have repaid their debt to society. If they are repeat offenders, we consider them to be lost causes. (Sorry, I'm generalizing here.) And then, there are those who commit crimes and get away with it. They decide to quit while they are ahead and try to be productive elsewhere. If they slip back into the lifestyle, they will eventually screw up.
I guess my point is: Here is an example of someone who tried it out. Saw it was profitable, but due to the stream of hate mail and just having to dodge the proverbial bullet, has decided to quit the lifestyle and earn a living in a more accepted way.
He's already quit the spamming life. Harassing him more doesn't make him quit spamming any more than he has. Nor will it set an example for others to quit. Quite the opposite.
Then, you have those who are career spammers. They are the ones raking in 5+ digit earnings per month and they escape the reach of the law. Given death threats and harassment, they continue on.
I see them as the repeat offender criminal. The lost causes. They will continue to commit crimes both legally and socially. They should be the ones hatred and "requests to stop" be directed at. Not at people who have already stopped.
When you try to bring someone out of a life of crime or who has taken the wrong path, you don't continually harass them after they have stopped. That just pushes them back into the life. You don't pat them on the back either. You watch them carefully to make sure they don't repeat their offense. They ask for forgiveness from the community and work to re-earn the communities' trust. They are in essence, the little fish who have a future.
The repeat spammers who have been at it for years are the ones which deserve a lifetime of punishment for the ill they have caused and willingly continue to cause.
What we all want is spam to go away. So give them a reason to stop if they are spamming. Give them a reason to stay stopped if they have decided to stop. And get the law/government in on it if they refuse to stop.
I thought nanotube material was prohibitively expensive? Something like on the order of thousands of dollars per gram produced?
I thought the idea was to rid ourselves of spam!
on
How to Become A Spammer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Okay, the above poster is just being stupid.
I thought the goal was to give spammers incentive, whether negative or positive, to stop spamming.
How is abusing someone who gave up spamming going to help?
The message you are saying is:
"Once you've spammed, you're screwed. Doesn't matter if you stop or change."
That is plain stupid and the wrong attitude to take. If someone stops spamming, give them the pat on the shoulder and leave them alone. Move onto the next spammer. Why continue to harass someone who has gone legit?
If you abuse people because they spam and you abuse them if they stop, then you are basically telling them and anyone else that hey, once you have started to spam, there is no reason to stop.
My hat goes off to Mr. Jobs. Sometimes, it seems, you really do need to think differently.
Though this does beg the question of whether or not there are potential law suits to be filed in the coming months due to this development(read: proof of concept).
Hope the sales keep going strong with Apple's iTunes.
Security isn't a destination, it's a journey.
on
Securing Your Network?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Seriously, it's true. Security isn't something you setup and put into place and just let it fester or sit.
What you've done is started packing for the journey. Gathering your tools and getting it all setup to go with you as you move forward.
But as effective as some security measures are, they still need to be tended to. Watched over. Tweaked. That's the journey.
Along the way, you will find new tools. You might even be waylaid by someone with better tools than you. Surely, you haven't arrived.
And you never will. Your security, through watchfulness, effort, and action, will improve as you improve and move forward.
It is bad security to see security as something you plan, implement, and walk away from. That leaves you prone to holes and highly creative or bored individuals out there.
Security is something that is ongoing.
A home user using a simple firewall package who is diligent with watching the logs and keeping up on security bulletins for the software, the os, and the system in general will be much safer than a multi-layer security system that no one bothers to watch or that can't be easily understood by those watching.
First of all, they didn't use the name: "American Greetings", they used "America Greeting". So they are not addressing the company you are thinking of.
The character portrayed in the strip itself is also not identified, so there is no individual who is being labelled a "Nazi".
Second, they are expressing editorial comment, not statement of fact. That is protected under 1st amendment free speech rights.
If they had expressed explicitly, as fact, that AM worshipped and were Nazis, then they would be in trouble.... unless they could prove that they actually did and were.
In this case, they are expressing editorial comment and the strip would be highly unlikely to be mistaken as a statement of fact by any normal jury.
Reprints of cards bearing the Strawberry Shortcake likeness and production of other material copies in the form of lunchboxes, pencils, paperpads, etc. would all constitute use of the intellectual property and rights.
They had acquired limited rights for the production of the film, most likely. Pepsi might have even paid them for the character so that they could get free advertising. Falls under the category called "sponsorship". (Some categorize it as "selling out".)
Sad, but ultimately, I think this is SCO's last ditch move.
If SCO wins the lawsuit, then it will be a witchhunt. They will go after every business that has Linux under their wing like MS has been doing.
People will basically look at SCO and see it no different from the monster that is Microsoft.
However, if SCO loses, then they lose in totality.
Businesses don't like other businesses who are sue-happy. Why would you do business with a company which thinks nothing of sue'ing to get it's way even when it would be a losing proposition?
They will have no support from the OpenSource community since their very actions seek to taint Linux and potentially other open code bases by claiming they took code from illegally gained code.
Companies will also quite likely ban together in either a class action or multiple lawsuits, sue'ing for damages in lost business which SCO has inflicted, should SCO be proven wrong.
I for one hope the issue goes to trial. Should SCO lose, it will be the end of them. And should they win, then they will be a monster up there with, but in the shadow of, MS.
Personally, I found the Rambus suits to the distasteful. I find this one equally so.
Before I start looking for new backup tools, I would look for the one responsible for removing my tools in the first place.
A possible(read: theoretical) form of backup would be to use the various online search engines as distributed backup mediums. Ie, convert your data into various web pages which are encoded. Since webcrawlers will crawl a site and attempt to store/cache te data(google, the wayback machine, etc), your data is, in theory, cached on those crawler databases.
The only problem with this idea is the fact that you can't really determine the time and place of the backup. Only hope that they cache it in a reasonable way.;)
The corollary of that would be to encode it as DNS with LONG LONG expire times so that people can serve your domain and by extension your data.
Seriously though, the utilities mentioned in the original post represents functions which, after a fashion and some long hours tinkering, could be simulated so that you can perform your backups in a half-way reasonable way. (Read: custom code your own backup tool)
There is, of course, the good old tried and true backup a hard drive with another hard drive... but that get's a wee bit expensive and hard when you start talking terabytes of data...
Okay, so you build your AI robot and it's cruising along at a bouncey 60+Mph. What happens if it starts going crazy and your e-stop command doesn't work?
I'm thinking of a phrase from Futurama:
Bender(sleep-talking):Mmm.... Kill all humans.... hey baby, wanna go and kill all humans...?
Heh.. okay, funny, but maybe not that funny. ^_^;
Still, such a vehicle would be great. Why just think of the uses:
Safe ferrying of toxic chemicals of bio agents without involving humans
Safe delivery of WMD's...
Mobile EMP generators...
But... wait... what if you put targetting systems on it? Why.. you'd have fast moving kill machines...
Unmanned omni-directional mobile machine gun turret. Just like Red Alert and C&C, you just point on the map and it goes there and kills all moving things...
Unmanned roaming missle launchers
Unmanned urban soldiers that can both unleash blinding gas and a hail of bullets to quiet the opposing forces
Yes, technology can be great... and maybe Bender wasn't so far off after all... Let's just kill all humans...
It's a tough problem. You don't want your ISP playing God. Yet, you don't want to pay for unexpected bandwidth.
That's like saying you only want good bandwidth and none of the bad bandwidth.:)
Let's use a Mall analogy:
You build a shopping mall. There are roads leading into your mall. The city maintains the roads, but the parking lot and accessways into the malls and shops are maintained by you, the site owner.
If you get alot of paying customers coming and they jam up your parking lots and driveways and walkways with cars and people who are willing to pay, you don't say anything because you're getting money.
However, let's say you get alot of non-paying traffic. A large group of people decide to find a place to gather and organize and decide on your mall. They take up your parking spaces and take up the chairs in your food court or block walkways while they chat. No money being earned.
It's still traffic, but it is traffic you don't want. You still have to pay the electric bills and road maintenance. But you don't get compensated.
Who should foot the bill for your losses?
Seriously, the customer should monitor their systems and when they detect anomalies, should be able to work with their ISP to have the traffic in question blocked off. In the event of a DDOS/DOS, then they should seriously consider taking their system off the pipe.
ISPs should see this as a profit potential. I mean, offer your customers content based filtering. Let them setup their own filters and provide assistance service contracts.
In the end, the ISPs will make extra money, customers will feel more supported, and the network bandwidth will be better utilized.
As for the Mall, if there are people taking up space to the point of disturbing your business, it may be time to call in the police.
Customers and Providers really need to work together instead of pointing the finger.
From the sound of it, the Godson chips will be lower powered in terms of performance to current US chips. However, I find the energy consumption to be very attractive. Ie, 5 watts and 10 watts for 266Mhz 500 Mhz respectively. Scaling up linearly, that's still just 20 watts of power consumption for a 2Ghz chip.
But what I'm thinking is that China is aiming for is low cost and low power consumption chips. Ie, can be used in portable hardware and/or massively parallel setups.
Granted, they can't SMP the chips in hardware, but with a Linux cluster of these, they could quite readily setup a powerful computing cluster.
Personally, I'm glad that they are designing their own chips. It would be nice to see more competition outside of just the big two.
The way I see it, if they produce these chips at low prices($15-$50), at such low power consumption levels, I could easily see myself building many small nodes of them. Maybe now, I can POVray just ever so faster...:)
Mining the moon makes sense. At least, it makes more sense than the kind of mining done on Earth.
Some points:
The moon (pro):
No atmosphere to pollute, No existing ecosystem to destroy, Physically isolated from Earth in event of a disaster
The moon (con):
Horribly expensive to mine,Retrieving resources to Earth is potentially a problem unless fuel can be had from the Moon or near it.,Upsetting the Moon's mass over time could affect the tides on Earth.
The Earth (pro):
Cheaper,Ocean has vast resources,We understand mining on Earth alot better,Less likihood of death through decompression
The Earth (con):
Cost to environment extremely great
, The ocean, if mined for minerals and resources would, over time, result in the destruction of the oceanic eco-system.
, Surface eco system is affected
, Underground eco system is affected
, Exposes people and animals to potentially toxic substances
, Greenhouse warming and El Nino weather skewing
As for why a Moon and not an asteroid, it is expensive to "setup shop". Once you do, you want to be able to recoup the cost of the facility. To do that efficiently, you will need to mine a large body. The moon is much larger and much closer than the asteroids. It is also in a relatievely stable orbit and would not require us to chase it down or risk mutual asteroid collision once the base is setup.
Now, if asteroids could be reigned into orbid around the Earth or moon, then we could have a potentially unlimited supply of raw ores and other elemental resources.
But for the time being, the moon is closer and in comparison to asteroids, cheaper and safer.
So...
If it is a choice between the earth and the moon, I say the moon.
If it is a question between the moon and another rock, I'd say the other rock if it could be easily harnessed and was of a sufficiently worthwhile size. Otherwise, I'd say the moon.
Would this eventually lead to our demise? Who knows...
Maybe the federal government can finally put a "real" punishment to MS. Death by firing squad.
Seriously, if the code if full of holes and MS won't release the code to people in it's own nation, WTF are they doing by releasing it to any other nation but ours?!?
They've basically given China the means to shore up their own systems and to penetrate our's.
Maybe Gates is getting senile or something, but giving your source code to a country that doesn't share copyright treaties with your parent nation is like asking for the school kids to keep a secret.
So what Bill is telling us is to unplug all of our computers because a new wave of attacks even more devastating will be coming soon.:|
Just more reasons why it doesn't make sense to use Windows in any environment.
Base truth: Google needs to defend it or lose it. While a verb is not trademarkable material, Google can fight to prevent the term "Google" from becoming a verb. It doesn't matter that the verb listed differs from what "Google" is or does. If they want to remain protected, they need to defend their term.
Though this does bring up another subject, that of shafting people and basically bullying people around. Some example uses may include:
Wow, guess [extinct company due to monopolistic and predatory business practices] sure got m1cro$0fted.
Hey, looks like [monopolistic company] is about to pull a m1cro$0ft!
Get that m1cro$0fting jerk off of my front lawn!
It seems obvious that the term has a multitude of uses not unlike that of f#ck.
Some sites which so beautifully illustrate the various uses of the word f#ck include:
When one thinks of all the meanings associated with f#ck and the similarities between it and the m-word, one can only wonder how long it will be before the m-word will make it into dictionaries the world over. Probably not in m1cro$0ft branded dictionaries or encyclopedias, however.
Hardware dongles have caused more problems than they solve... and they solve precious little!
Expensive software has been using dongles for years and the dongles only delay piracy by a year or so at most. Most of the time, they just serve to annoy and hassle the legitimate users who have to deal with the dongle not working, getting lost, or conflicting with something else on the system!
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, MS has been in one battle after another for the past 2-3 years. Major battles.
Battles which has been hurting MS's cash funds as well as their future income.
To list a few...
If I've been fighting the good(relatively speaking) fight for the last few years and have seen defeat after defeat, I would jump ship. The fact that Balmer hasn't jumped ship before this is either credit to his undying loyalty to MS/Bill Gates or his salary.
That's not to say that MS is all bad. XP pro is by far the most stable and workable OS I've ever used from MS. And I've used all of them from MSDOS 3.00 through XP_Pro. Then again, I've also used Linux from betas of Slackware up through the latest in Suse/Mandrake/Redhat/Debian and have had a great time with Linux as well.
If Ballmer is starting to jump ship, I can't say I blame him. His position is like that of a President's; You work for the length of your "term' and then you gracefully step down to let someone else get some face time while you get to work on your book and movie rights.
Having millions in liquid cash to live off of while waiting for your next job doesn't hurt either.
It is one thing to admit and resign to that fact that there will be bugs... during the development phase. But the debugging process isn't something that "another department" handles. It isn't something to be foisted onto paying customers.
What makes someone a good coder, in my mind, is also what makes a person a good driver. You go about it defensively, you are aware of what is going on all around you, and you are planning and anticipating ahead of you well before you get there.
The idea is that you code defensively so that there are fewer bugs introduced into the software at the start. If the bugs are there at the start, then it has no right leaving development to begin with.
Passing known buggy code to "a debugging department" is an attitude which results in poor coding.
If the base code is of poor quality, no amount of debugging can fix inherit flaws and problems.
As an aside, I write, debug, and profile my own code. I work in concert with other coders. Bugs in our software means downtime and lost revenue for a multi-terrabyte storage system. If we don't have time to make the code stable, we don't push it out. We don't assume the customer is going to be understanding that we were tired when we wrote a particular block of code. We code for contingencies: network failure, drive failure, system crash and reboots. These are things which should be thought about well before any code is written.
The code should be a source of pride for coders and engineers. Not a reason to apologize for bad planning and constant debugging.
I would agree. Properly and well written code will gracefully handle runtime errors.
Translation: Short of the user fubar'ing the program or data files themselves, the program should handle all user input in a graceful way.
The problem though is that to do this would require quite a bit of extra work.
Progammers are caught in a situation of getting something ready for market at a time dictated to them by a department which doesn't understand the underlying issues or saying "Screw it" and making the code solid.
That only describes one way in which the problem is caused.
The bigger problem is the attitude people have about computers which allows for this kind of shoddy programming. People are, for the most part, okay and even expectant of their computers to crash at some point in time.
This in turn makes it okay to release bad code which will be "fixed later".
I say that whenever we get a crash or a problem, we report it to the company and we post it to our websites and to review sites.
I say that the users should make it a big fat noticable problem to the companies whenever their software breaks.
why? because it means that whenever someone who's never used the software before searches on Google for that software or software company's name, they will find page after page of complaints, dissuading them from using the software.
the flip side is, if the software works, post to your sites and review sites. Give the people and companies who produce good software credit when it is due.
As users and consumers, we should find ways to encourage the producers and companies to produce solid code.
Solid stable code shouldn't be the exception to the rule.
I would definitely agree with the above poster.
Since SCO is obviously capable of auditing code, as they are a producer of software/services themselves, when they distributed a SCO Linux under the GPL, they have in essence said that they understood the GPL, have looked at the code in question, and found no fault with the code.
By distributing their own version of SCO Linux, they have released that version and said code base into the GPL world.
Any and all IP which was incorporated into that GPL'd distribution would then fall under the GPL.
Last time I checked, if you sign yourself/bind yourself to a contract, you are to adhere to it. Whether you have fully read it or were ignorant of the details in the contract through your own negligence is irrelevant.
SCO has "read" the GPL license agreement and has had a fair amount of time to "audit" the linux source base before distributing their own version of Linux, SCO Linux. By doing so, they are agreeing with the GPL and agree that all of the code in their distribution is "clean" and GPL'd.
Note: When I use GPL, I am including LGPL, Opensource, etc. licenses. All of which make an appearance in various distros of Linux.
Sorry, being ranty.
It's funny. The first thing one thinks about when they are out of work is: How can I get another job just like the one I lost!?
Sometimes, maybe it's better to change one's perspective. Sit back or go do something you hadn't done in a long while on the first day of your jobless existence. If you spent the last period of your life in a concrete jungle... go visit the beach, the forests, or a local garden. If you've been hacking code for longer than you can remember, why not step outside,take a breath, and make for a change of pace?
Don't change your life, but just one day.
Maybe it's just luck, but sometimes, not banging your head into the wall repeatedly to find a job can help you see other opportunities waiting out there.... if not waiting, then at least, it's a door laying ajar, waiting for someone to come through.
Hope the economy picks up soon... personally, I'm ready for a career outside of IT.
I can only manage to work on mine just before bed time. Where do you find the time? Let alone the parts?
Anyone willing to sell me some naquadria? >:)
Some people who posted responses made many good points. They mainly center around one of the following:
1) The person wronged the online community and profited from it. "Just" letting them go would be wrong!
We all want satisfaction. That is the difference between enforcement of Law and dealing out of Justice. Persons who abuse online resources would be in violation of the law. The anguish they cause people isn't as clearly defined by the Laws. That leaves us without satisfaction. Without closure.
Taking it unto yourself to right what you percieve to be a wrong by taking the law into your own hands is called vigilantism(sp?). Those actions typically land outside of what is condoned by the Law as it currently stands.
I do believe that people should be penalized for doing something which is wrong and costs everyone in the community. Spam and Spamming falls under this kind of community abuse.
If you want satisfaction, change the Laws so that Spamming and Spammers will be penalized and not just slapped on the wrists.
2) "Spammers will think it is okay to spam and quit when they have made their money if we take the 'give them an out' attitude!"
The real problem here is that there is the question of satisfaction of our sense of justice being served. When a person goes to prison and serves their term and are released, we believe them to have repaid their debt to society. If they are repeat offenders, we consider them to be lost causes. (Sorry, I'm generalizing here.) And then, there are those who commit crimes and get away with it. They decide to quit while they are ahead and try to be productive elsewhere. If they slip back into the lifestyle, they will eventually screw up.
I guess my point is: Here is an example of someone who tried it out. Saw it was profitable, but due to the stream of hate mail and just having to dodge the proverbial bullet, has decided to quit the lifestyle and earn a living in a more accepted way.
He's already quit the spamming life. Harassing him more doesn't make him quit spamming any more than he has. Nor will it set an example for others to quit. Quite the opposite.
Then, you have those who are career spammers. They are the ones raking in 5+ digit earnings per month and they escape the reach of the law. Given death threats and harassment, they continue on.
I see them as the repeat offender criminal. The lost causes. They will continue to commit crimes both legally and socially. They should be the ones hatred and "requests to stop" be directed at. Not at people who have already stopped.
When you try to bring someone out of a life of crime or who has taken the wrong path, you don't continually harass them after they have stopped. That just pushes them back into the life. You don't pat them on the back either. You watch them carefully to make sure they don't repeat their offense. They ask for forgiveness from the community and work to re-earn the communities' trust. They are in essence, the little fish who have a future.
The repeat spammers who have been at it for years are the ones which deserve a lifetime of punishment for the ill they have caused and willingly continue to cause.
What we all want is spam to go away. So give them a reason to stop if they are spamming. Give them a reason to stay stopped if they have decided to stop. And get the law/government in on it if they refuse to stop.
I thought nanotube material was prohibitively expensive? Something like on the order of thousands of dollars per gram produced?
Okay, the above poster is just being stupid.
I thought the goal was to give spammers incentive, whether negative or positive, to stop spamming.
How is abusing someone who gave up spamming going to help?
The message you are saying is:
"Once you've spammed, you're screwed. Doesn't matter if you stop or change."
That is plain stupid and the wrong attitude to take. If someone stops spamming, give them the pat on the shoulder and leave them alone. Move onto the next spammer. Why continue to harass someone who has gone legit?
If you abuse people because they spam and you abuse them if they stop, then you are basically telling them and anyone else that hey, once you have started to spam, there is no reason to stop.
I for one would like to see the spamming stop.
My hat goes off to Mr. Jobs. Sometimes, it seems, you really do need to think differently.
Though this does beg the question of whether or not there are potential law suits to be filed in the coming months due to this development(read: proof of concept).
Hope the sales keep going strong with Apple's iTunes.
Seriously, it's true. Security isn't something you setup and put into place and just let it fester or sit.
What you've done is started packing for the journey. Gathering your tools and getting it all setup to go with you as you move forward.
But as effective as some security measures are, they still need to be tended to. Watched over. Tweaked. That's the journey.
Along the way, you will find new tools. You might even be waylaid by someone with better tools than you. Surely, you haven't arrived.
And you never will. Your security, through watchfulness, effort, and action, will improve as you improve and move forward.
It is bad security to see security as something you plan, implement, and walk away from. That leaves you prone to holes and highly creative or bored individuals out there.
Security is something that is ongoing.
A home user using a simple firewall package who is diligent with watching the logs and keeping up on security bulletins for the software, the os, and the system in general will be much safer than a multi-layer security system that no one bothers to watch or that can't be easily understood by those watching.
Doubtful.
First of all, they didn't use the name: "American Greetings", they used "America Greeting". So they are not addressing the company you are thinking of.
The character portrayed in the strip itself is also not identified, so there is no individual who is being labelled a "Nazi".
Second, they are expressing editorial comment, not statement of fact. That is protected under 1st amendment free speech rights.
If they had expressed explicitly, as fact, that AM worshipped and were Nazis, then they would be in trouble.... unless they could prove that they actually did and were.
In this case, they are expressing editorial comment and the strip would be highly unlikely to be mistaken as a statement of fact by any normal jury.
Reprints of cards bearing the Strawberry Shortcake likeness and production of other material copies in the form of lunchboxes, pencils, paperpads, etc. would all constitute use of the intellectual property and rights.
They had acquired limited rights for the production of the film, most likely. Pepsi might have even paid them for the character so that they could get free advertising. Falls under the category called "sponsorship". (Some categorize it as "selling out".)
Sad, but ultimately, I think this is SCO's last ditch move.
If SCO wins the lawsuit, then it will be a witchhunt. They will go after every business that has Linux under their wing like MS has been doing.
People will basically look at SCO and see it no different from the monster that is Microsoft.
However, if SCO loses, then they lose in totality.
Businesses don't like other businesses who are sue-happy. Why would you do business with a company which thinks nothing of sue'ing to get it's way even when it would be a losing proposition?
They will have no support from the OpenSource community since their very actions seek to taint Linux and potentially other open code bases by claiming they took code from illegally gained code.
Companies will also quite likely ban together in either a class action or multiple lawsuits, sue'ing for damages in lost business which SCO has inflicted, should SCO be proven wrong.
I for one hope the issue goes to trial. Should SCO lose, it will be the end of them. And should they win, then they will be a monster up there with, but in the shadow of, MS.
Personally, I found the Rambus suits to the distasteful. I find this one equally so.
That sounds like a great idea... bounce spam to the people who spam you... wish it was as simple with the generic spam which hits the procmails..
Before I start looking for new backup tools, I would look for the one responsible for removing my tools in the first place.
A possible(read: theoretical) form of backup would be to use the various online search engines as distributed backup mediums. Ie, convert your data into various web pages which are encoded. Since webcrawlers will crawl a site and attempt to store/cache te data(google, the wayback machine, etc), your data is, in theory, cached on those crawler databases.
The only problem with this idea is the fact that you can't really determine the time and place of the backup. Only hope that they cache it in a reasonable way. ;)
The corollary of that would be to encode it as DNS with LONG LONG expire times so that people can serve your domain and by extension your data.
Seriously though, the utilities mentioned in the original post represents functions which, after a fashion and some long hours tinkering, could be simulated so that you can perform your backups in a half-way reasonable way. (Read: custom code your own backup tool)
There is, of course, the good old tried and true backup a hard drive with another hard drive... but that get's a wee bit expensive and hard when you start talking terabytes of data...
Okay, so you build your AI robot and it's cruising along at a bouncey 60+Mph. What happens if it starts going crazy and your e-stop command doesn't work?
I'm thinking of a phrase from Futurama:
Bender(sleep-talking): Mmm.... Kill all humans.... hey baby, wanna go and kill all humans...?
Heh.. okay, funny, but maybe not that funny. ^_^;
Still, such a vehicle would be great. Why just think of the uses:
But... wait... what if you put targetting systems on it? Why.. you'd have fast moving kill machines...
Yes, technology can be great... and maybe Bender wasn't so far off after all... Let's just kill all humans...
It's a tough problem. You don't want your ISP playing God. Yet, you don't want to pay for unexpected bandwidth.
That's like saying you only want good bandwidth and none of the bad bandwidth. :)
Let's use a Mall analogy:
You build a shopping mall. There are roads leading into your mall. The city maintains the roads, but the parking lot and accessways into the malls and shops are maintained by you, the site owner.
If you get alot of paying customers coming and they jam up your parking lots and driveways and walkways with cars and people who are willing to pay, you don't say anything because you're getting money.
However, let's say you get alot of non-paying traffic. A large group of people decide to find a place to gather and organize and decide on your mall. They take up your parking spaces and take up the chairs in your food court or block walkways while they chat. No money being earned.
It's still traffic, but it is traffic you don't want. You still have to pay the electric bills and road maintenance. But you don't get compensated.
Who should foot the bill for your losses?
Seriously, the customer should monitor their systems and when they detect anomalies, should be able to work with their ISP to have the traffic in question blocked off. In the event of a DDOS/DOS, then they should seriously consider taking their system off the pipe.
ISPs should see this as a profit potential. I mean, offer your customers content based filtering. Let them setup their own filters and provide assistance service contracts.
In the end, the ISPs will make extra money, customers will feel more supported, and the network bandwidth will be better utilized.
As for the Mall, if there are people taking up space to the point of disturbing your business, it may be time to call in the police.
Customers and Providers really need to work together instead of pointing the finger.
From the sound of it, the Godson chips will be lower powered in terms of performance to current US chips. However, I find the energy consumption to be very attractive. Ie, 5 watts and 10 watts for 266Mhz 500 Mhz respectively. Scaling up linearly, that's still just 20 watts of power consumption for a 2Ghz chip.
But what I'm thinking is that China is aiming for is low cost and low power consumption chips. Ie, can be used in portable hardware and/or massively parallel setups.
Granted, they can't SMP the chips in hardware, but with a Linux cluster of these, they could quite readily setup a powerful computing cluster.
Personally, I'm glad that they are designing their own chips. It would be nice to see more competition outside of just the big two.
The way I see it, if they produce these chips at low prices($15-$50), at such low power consumption levels, I could easily see myself building many small nodes of them. Maybe now, I can POVray just ever so faster... :)
Mining the moon makes sense. At least, it makes more sense than the kind of mining done on Earth.
Some points:
The moon (pro):
No atmosphere to pollute, No existing ecosystem to destroy, Physically isolated from Earth in event of a disaster
The moon (con):
Horribly expensive to mine ,Retrieving resources to Earth is potentially a problem unless fuel can be had from the Moon or near it. ,Upsetting the Moon's mass over time could affect the tides on Earth.
The Earth (pro):
Cheaper ,Ocean has vast resources ,We understand mining on Earth alot better ,Less likihood of death through decompression
The Earth (con):
Cost to environment extremely great , The ocean, if mined for minerals and resources would, over time, result in the destruction of the oceanic eco-system. , Surface eco system is affected , Underground eco system is affected , Exposes people and animals to potentially toxic substances , Greenhouse warming and El Nino weather skewing
As for why a Moon and not an asteroid, it is expensive to "setup shop". Once you do, you want to be able to recoup the cost of the facility. To do that efficiently, you will need to mine a large body. The moon is much larger and much closer than the asteroids. It is also in a relatievely stable orbit and would not require us to chase it down or risk mutual asteroid collision once the base is setup.
Now, if asteroids could be reigned into orbid around the Earth or moon, then we could have a potentially unlimited supply of raw ores and other elemental resources.
But for the time being, the moon is closer and in comparison to asteroids, cheaper and safer.
So...
If it is a choice between the earth and the moon, I say the moon.
If it is a question between the moon and another rock, I'd say the other rock if it could be easily harnessed and was of a sufficiently worthwhile size. Otherwise, I'd say the moon.
Would this eventually lead to our demise? Who knows...
Maybe the federal government can finally put a "real" punishment to MS. Death by firing squad.
Seriously, if the code if full of holes and MS won't release the code to people in it's own nation, WTF are they doing by releasing it to any other nation but ours?!?
They've basically given China the means to shore up their own systems and to penetrate our's.
Maybe Gates is getting senile or something, but giving your source code to a country that doesn't share copyright treaties with your parent nation is like asking for the school kids to keep a secret.
So what Bill is telling us is to unplug all of our computers because a new wave of attacks even more devastating will be coming soon. :|
Just more reasons why it doesn't make sense to use Windows in any environment.
Windows: Just say no
Base truth: Google needs to defend it or lose it. While a verb is not trademarkable material, Google can fight to prevent the term "Google" from becoming a verb. It doesn't matter that the verb listed differs from what "Google" is or does. If they want to remain protected, they need to defend their term.
Though this does bring up another subject, that of shafting people and basically bullying people around. Some example uses may include:
It seems obvious that the term has a multitude of uses not unlike that of f#ck.
Some sites which so beautifully illustrate the various uses of the word f#ck include:
When one thinks of all the meanings associated with f#ck and the similarities between it and the m-word, one can only wonder how long it will be before the m-word will make it into dictionaries the world over. Probably not in m1cro$0ft branded dictionaries or encyclopedias, however.
Just a couple of cents.
Wow, guess that's one less application I would need to worry about needing specialized hardware for. Time to fire up the ol'deb box...
Wonder how much those cards cost... :|
NO!NO!NO!
Hardware dongles have caused more problems than they solve... and they solve precious little!
Expensive software has been using dongles for years and the dongles only delay piracy by a year or so at most. Most of the time, they just serve to annoy and hassle the legitimate users who have to deal with the dongle not working, getting lost, or conflicting with something else on the system!
Dongles are not the way to go!