And when I run that untrusted code and perhaps it burps up because it can't bind to a port...
And when I run that untrusted code and perhaps it burps up because it was built on a BSD to exploit a BSD problem....
And when I run that untrusted code and perhaps it burps up because it doesn't have permissions to do an operation....
And, of course, to run that untrusted code, I can't double-click anything in my e-mail. I have to actually save it and drop to shell and run it like any other executable file.
So, what you're saying is, if all the "idiots" that aren't "smart enough" to use Linux were using Linux, they'd somehow suddenly be smart enough to do all the things necessary to allow a virus to be launched this easily, but they're not going to be smart enough to not run untrusted code?
And, or course, the nail in the coffin is that, while Microsoft may rule the desktops of stay-at-home moms, students, and suits, *nix runs the Internet. Awfully juicy target, that Internet thing, but the only time it ever seems to suffer any major, widespread problems due to viruses is when these goddamn Microsoft-only worms come out and spike traffic.
Give it a rest. The fundamental building blocks of the operating system are flawed and several of the applications that Microsoft tied to it are even worse. Love or hate them, whether you use Windows or not, it's the truth. Just drop the "we're a poor oppressed group of OS users because there's so many of us." You're poor and oppressed because Microsoft focused all of its money on marketing the home systems and tools rather than developing the damn things. This is what you get when you let marketers write the code. See Windows 2003? It's not actually doing too bad. Funny what happens when a software company actually sits down and lets the developers write the goddamn thing rather than having focus groups and marketeering art major morons lord over them.
Good logic. Ever talked to a detective? The FBI? No? Then, basically, you're responding to my rail against unsubstantiated, manufactured fact-for-the-sake-of-talking with unsubstantiated, manufactured fact-for-the-sake-of-talking?
God... you gotta love Slashdot. Excepting, perhaps, Congress, I can't think of a bigger collection of blowhards who know so little and think so highly of themselves for it..
Obviously, you know all, so care to share that statistic with us? Or, were you just making a highly uninformed statement to try and cover up the fact that you have no clue what you're talking about?
Never mind, I hit the nail on the head, so I'll give you a sample: typically, the number of unsolved murders has hung around 20-30% of cases according to various FBI statistics. Since that covers everything from someone blowing someone away in broad daylight in a fit of rage to premeditation, that's not a particularly good number for supporting your assinine charge of stupid criminals.
At one point (2000), the FBI actually reported that FIFTY PERCENT of violent crimes go unsolved.
Where are all these stupid criminals, again, when most of the criminals jailed now are jailed on nothing more than minor drug possession offenses?
Go look up the actual stats yourself. You can find them in FBI "Uniform Crime Reports". You need the practice.
"Crime doesn't pay" is an empty adage. If you treat crime like any other business opportunity and work your ass off doing the smart thing, you can get to a motherlode and retire young, rich, fat, and happy.
Actually, it's amazing to me that people DON'T attack us more often for the garbage we pull on them while nutjobs like Bin Laden are the ones running around all pissed off because we're in his precious desert.
Consider the bogus "War on Drugs". The setup: numbers of U.S. citizens do drugs creating demand. Result: poor countries trying to survive wind up with people planting crops to fill this market. Solution: gas their plants.
Good solution... except for two little problems:
We wind up poisoning large areas of legitimate crops to get to small tracts of illegitimate plants.
U.S. citizens created the demand in the first place! WE'RE willing addicts, so THEY suffer? WTF?
Go ahead and live in your cushy little world. Stick flags on your gas-guzzling SUV and continue to scream down anyone who suggests you might be part of the problem. You'll pay for it eventually. You can keep turning your back on the problems you help create for as long as you want, but someone's going to shoot you in it eventually. Are we solely to blame for every attack? No, of course not. Doesn't mean we're not a PART of the problem. The little "drug war" example above is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to "passive-aggressive violence" from the United States. Until the ignorant morons who think it's the "dirty gooks" or "stinking A-rabs" or whatever other SCAPEGOAT culture we label as the purveyor of the problem-of-the-hour, the situation will only get worse. And, I hate to ruin your apparent vision of a U.S. under attack, but we've suffered FAR, FAR less from terrorism then A LOT of other countries around the world. You'd be surprised what you learn when you start taking responsibilities for your and your country's actions and drop the chest-thumping facade of some heroic, liberating legend.
People hate us. There's a reason. Scapegoating is frequently NOT that reason. Go ahead and try to argue with me if you want. Likely, the best you can do is open your mouth and start spitting more emotional misinformation and ideologic, blind patriotism, but I'm going to bust your lip with a fact every time you do.
Yes, it is when you are discussing the world of software.
You're mincing words and trying to mislead people in the process. First off, I can vouch for my grandparent poster's ability with the English laguage and I believe he knows what he is talking about and is right on the money.
We do not discuss metaphoric losses in the world of software because, unlike kisses, glances, or time, software can literally be subject to theft, though it is difficult. Nobody can literally steal a kiss and time is not something that is owned and can be robbed from someone. Figures of speech work well to denote ideas in the figurative sense, but confusing them with literal ideas only serves to show that you don't know how to properly present the thought.
For theft to occur, an original owner must be deprived of something that the theif now posseses. If you were to remove, from the original owner, all copies of their code such that they possesed no backups, caches, or originals, you have STOLEN that code from them. Since people are not actually depriving the original BSD codebase owners of possession of the code, they are not engaging in THEFT. Because of the BSD license, they are not even likely to be engaging in (insert-copy/trade/whatever-mark-here) INFRINGEMENT which is what you are confusing for THEFT.
Beyond that, arguing that the GPL is somehow superior because it inhibits people is silly. If you don't like the BSD license, don't use it. The BSD license is meant to spread codebases without the ideological and legal babbling of idiots like RMS. Don't take swipes at the BSD license just because it's more interested in disseminating a strong, useful codebase than taking political jabs at corporate monsters.
Yea, but in context here... we're talking about lawyers, so it's a pretty good bet I'm not exaggerating too much. Frankly, if I agreed with a litigating lawyer's version of the "truth", I'd think I was wrong, not that they were right...
All I can say to DoubleClick is - bring it on you rat bastards. I've been shredding (not deleting - just poisoning) their cookies for 2 years with a perl script I wrote (other software has since come into existence to "spoil" cookies), use that badass hosts file of ad servers aimed at localhost, block popups, refuse images from "non-originating" hosts, don't use Flash, and, pretty soon, I'm going to be filtering my incoming pages through proxy to strip crap at the front door.
I have no problem looking at ads and even click through them if they interest me. I don't block the ads on Slashdot or most of the tech forums I inhabit, for example. But I will NOT put up with popups stealing focus or opening new "hidden" windows to surpise me. Bitch about it all they want, the fact of the matter is that they're abusing technology and it's irritating me. If I'm not getting their ads, there's a good reason for it - they pissed me off, and, frankly, I don't give a damn if the "poor guys" running the site go under as a result. Use popups or other irritating mediums to shove advertising in my face or try to track my habits and interests and I'll laugh at your funeral when the site folds.
Care to explain how he's "clearly infringing" anything? The phonetic similarities are incidental. In my accent, I first pronounced his domain as 'mike.rowe.soft.dot.com' whereas I pronounce Microsoft's as 'microsoft.dot.com'. The phonetic similarities wouldn't even be close enough to confuse mediocre speech recognition unless you're a mushmouth, although the tool likely wouldn't recognize the spelling for Mike's site anyway.
As for similarities in the way they're spelled, the only thing the two domains share is 'soft' and '.com'. If somebody is so abysmally stupid that they could misspell microsoft as mikerowesoft, they probably aren't smart enough to by typing on their own anyway.
This is no different than the Nissan car company abusing Uzi Nissan because of his name. Corporate abuse of power, plain and simple. Am I jumping to conclusions? You betcha. But, maybe before somebody flames me for it, they ought to stop and consider why I'd automatically assume that a big corporate would be abusing it's power in this situation. I don't suppose I've come to expect that from these companies based on their past actions, right? Noooooo.... they're just good little capitalists struggling to earn a living like the rest of us. They would NEVER play the courts or stomp helpless individuals over make-believe issues like this. Uh uh. Obviously, Mr. Rowe is a bad, horrible, stinking, dirty, godless commie and Microsoft is doing its Patriotic Duty (TM) in stomping the shit out of him.
OK... that sarcasm seemed to cross into something else entirely...
Sure, but he can sell the domain for whatever he wants to the highest bidder as long as it wasn't really a bad faith registration. Bear in mind, the lawyers tried to trick him into the counter offer for the purpose of suing the domain out of him. However, if "mikerowesoft.com" isn't similar enough to "microsoft.com" (note that, although they sound similar, the pronunciation is clearly different to anyone but an idiot or a lawyer [as if there was a difference..] since 'mikerowesoft' is naturally pronounced as three seperate words), they don't seem to have much case and, indeed, Mike can certainly counter to sell his non "infringing" domain for 10 grand if he so desires.
Of course, I'm notoriously bad when it comes to legal matters because I tend to look at things they way they are whereas lawyers make things the way they want them to be whether that's how it really is or not... the best fiction on earth comes out of litigious idiots like the legal department at Microsoft.
I'm willing to bet you've never worked in a modern retail outlet.
When someone comes in and wants to buy something, and you don't think they understand what they're buying, you have two options.
Option One. Education.
This is not, inherently, a bad option. However, if someone comes into my department and wants to buy something stupid, and there are three other people milling around, and I have stock to handle, and I need to clean the department up, and I'm the only one on duty, I'm not going to risk trying to explain something exceedingly simple for the next 30 minutes to an hour like "you can write directly on the back of the CD". Solution? Simple. Staff enough people in the fucking department. Odds of that happening no matter what the salesperson does? EXTREMELY SMALL.
Option Two. Play Dumb.
Ring 'em up and if they don't like it they can return it. I get all the work done, all the customers checked out, and out the door without having things half finished. Good for me.
Typical clueless customer - blame it on the carefree salesperson who doesn't care about anything. Kids these days why in my day we....
Get over yourself. Sure there are careless assholes working in retail. I was one of them a few years ago. But most of the other people are inherently not bad people and would like to do a good job, they're just overworked and underpaid and, as a result, simply don't care about doing a good job. What's the point when they're not paid to do a good job and their chances for advancement are about as good as if they were slopping stables? No incentive, no service. As usual, the suits are to blame, but since they can hide in their pretty offices all the time, they never take any flak.
Now, since you're posting non-sensitive information AC, which means there's no record of your positions so I can't really tell if you're trolling or not, I'll bid you a good 'whatever-it-is-where-you-are' and call this conversation finished.
I don't get paid to post on Slashdot, so I don't have to be phony here. Needless to say, I never told any of the customers that their heads were filled with "warm tapioca pudding", much as I'd have loved to.
And, of course, you ARE right about the abuse coming from the exception, but I didn't say that I was talking about the whole base of customers, only the idiots. I was more than happy to help people who had legitimate questions, even if I thought they were sort of silly (basically, as long as they seemed honest and didn't appear to just be trying to blatantly waste my time). However, when somebody leaves a pair of fucking shoes in the store, then, a week later, without calling or anything, comes back and wants them back, then gets pissed because they got thrown out (bear in mind this is a shoe department, so if someone leaves the shoes, it's generally accepted that they didn't want them anymore), it tends to diminish enthusiasm quite a bit. At $5.80 an hour, it doesn't take much of this to sour one's attitude. I have very little patience for stupidity. If not being able to put up with stupid people who do things like give away an unpaid product for Christmas, then try to demand that that exempts them from their bill is a "problem on [my] end", then I guess I'm the problem, not the lead paint these morons were eating as children.
That last paragraph only serves to further cement my point. They KNOW how to sell their products. Yes, of course they screw up. But, let's face it. There are sterotypes that hold very well:
Men like semi naked (well, all naked, but the FCC would get pissed) women and it's a good way to get their attention in commercials.
Men like beer.
Men like sports.
Guess what? None of these are necessarily flattering, and not all apply to me (well, the sports one anyway.. I watch football now and then), but I'm not so arrogant to say they're not largely accurate. I like jiggly breasts and firm figures. It's possibly debase, "immoral", etc. to ogle such things, but it's just part of being male, especially, and this is critical, in the CURRENT SOCIETY.
Do you know why tissue boxes have pretty designs on them with flowers and whatnot? Because, largely, WOMEN are shopping at the grocery store and buying them. Stereotypical? You betcha! Inaccurate? Fat chance!
Sony is not stupid. I have to say that I'm largely in agreement with their take on women and electronics. I've met few women who are tech-savvy in computer and electronics fields. In fact, I've known more women who could install a radiator than install a hard drive.
Now, of course, you might be right. However, if you are, then the market is changing, and it's only a matter of time before the marketers catch up.
Sony is not stupid. They are not going to lose sales to a huge potential market segment over some silly sterotypes. Money is probably the only thing that's blind to race, creed, sex...
Why does the sales drone exist if not to offer advice.
I would be less enthusiastic in pointing out that your head is, apparently, filled with warm tapioca pudding, but your original, rude response in this sub-thread doesn't justify my showing a moronic AC with a superiority complex any respect.
With that out of the way, sales drones exist to point to shelves and ring things up. At $5.80 an hour, with the abuse the average idiot customer provided, they were lucky I didn't spit in their faces and strangle them. Granted, this was years ago when I first got out of high school, but I somehow doubt the retail situation regarding pay or abusive customers has improved.
So, quite frankly, when a significant portion of the populace is abusive to 'stupid sales drones', that abuse is redirected back at the populace giving the drone shit. At $5.80 an hour, I'd have let the moron buy the labels too. It's not that complicated of a concept - handling CD-Rs - so if she can't be bothered to put 5 minutes of research into the subject, too fucking bad. If the company wants to provide Customer Service, they can provide training and half decent pay. Otherwise, they'll get just what you said - mindless sales drones who couldn't possibly give a shit less.
You remind me of Tina the Brittle Tech Writer from Dilbert.
How is that "sterotyped shit", exactly? These are MARKET DRIVEN products. The marketers KNOW demographics. They have enough data and numbers to make your head spin.
And, apparently, Sony at least, has data that points to that "sterotyped shit" as the truth about the demographic.
I guess it never crossed your mind that, perhaps, that could actually be the demographic Sony wants to appeal to? No, of course not. You were too busy stomping on your soap box because you have too many poorly conceived notions and are overly sensitive of this sort of thing.
Does that mean that 60 percent were treated better when they weren't accompanied by a man?
Theoretically, there would be three options, not two: being treated better, worse, and the same. Of course, since the other two options (better and the same) could be viewed as either neutral or better, that means that no matter how the breakdown works, the odds are STILL in favor of a woman NOT taking a man along, which directly invalidates what the article is trying to quietly suggest: that women are better off being accompanied by a man when making a tech purchase.
Some other questionable "factoids":
...women are involved in almost 75 percent of all electronics purchases...
Meaning what, exactly? How much are they involved EXCLUSIVELY in? What are they buying? Who are they buying for?
Radio Shack's customers have shifted from 20 percent female seven years ago to 40 percent female today.
Has Radio Shack's marketing changed? Has it's product changed? Locations?
Every time you go to these places, they think women don't know anything, and they don't tell you the same features as they would when my husband goes with me.
That doesn't hold with the marketing complaint from earlier. Are they targetting something they feel will appeal more to the demographic? What, specifically, are they saying?
I don't usually even bother reading anything like this, especially studies, when they're in major news organizations. There's never any context provided to suggest the data has any validity or, worse, any meaning what-so-ever. People never question the fact that the numbers don't mean anything beyond what the writer is suggesting (typically, suggesting without any REAL evidence), so they keep doing it. CNN: The New American Tabloid.
Interesting how a seemingly unrelated government entity can become part of the story.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA is, undoubtedly, most well known for its space initiatives. However, they have their fingers in everything from complicated probes on other planets to medicine here on earth. They help develop commercial technology that you use every day of your life and they do cutting edge research into any number of scientific fields that you may well not hear about for another decade or more, if ever.
Frankly, NASA is probably second only to FEMA for underestimation of agency influence within the country. Those two agencies are either known only for very specific things, or never even thought about, but they have exceptionally broad, far-reaching powers and their fingers are in pretty much anything you can think of, even if you don't notice it.
Technically, you can apply for a patent on anything. You could even apply for a patent on someone's else's patent if you were looking for a way to burn a lot of money real quick.
The thing is, people patent stupid shit all the time. Shining a flashlight on the floor and having a cat chase it is a patented exercise system for pets. The problem is that they'd never be able to enforce it, the owner of the patent would pretty much be laughed right out of the courtroom as long as the defendant showed up. Then, they'd lose it.
The USPTO will play lip service to any idiot that can pay them. They just sort of leave it up to the courts to decide whether or not there was any intelligent driving force behind the patent or not. Fear not, this "entrepreneur" will be shot down pretty quickly. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here, just a bunch of braindead corporate lawyers.
Ha ha! Children, point and laugh at the funny, trolling anonymous coward who knows nothing about Windows, much less how most people wind up having to run it! He's what we call a "technology have-not". He likely believes that Microsoft Windows is somehow technologically capable of putting up a fight against the traditional and modernized POSIX systems. He is a fool, and his blood will run in the streets during the next plague of Windows-only viruses and worms.
Or, in short. You're an idiot. Get a life. Stop trolling me.
As opposed to Windows which just runs all of your thoughts as admin by default? Imagine someone crashing your optical input to get full access to your brain a la smashing SQL Server to grab a whole server.
AAAGHH!!!! I'm blind!!!
But, on the other hand, I'm being used to host pr0n... so is it really that bad?
Noooo... like the post said, I'm getting SPAMS with chunks of pseudo-legitmate text which is harming the spam threshold. While Viagra continues to be a word that the filter throws the red flag at, the other terms will also take a hit as far as the filter is concerned. This results in legitimate messages getting a higher spam rating.
The only way to avoid that is to not mark them off as spam (which means the "legit text" won't be counted against legit messages with similar text). Unfortunately, that means the spams that have this "legit text" don't get labeled as harshly for a high-spam-likelihood anymore, which means I have to lower my threshold to say, 85% from 90% for the spams to get cut.
The temporary fix is to keep mingling the two tactics because then the threshold can be dropped slowly while the legit messages get smacked up slowly. The two limits are so far apart between what is an isn't spam that in the mid-term, there's not going to be any significant impact. However, over the long term, if this continues unabated, the thresholds will eventually meet for what is and what isn't spam.
For example. Say I sent you a spam for timeshares in the S. Pacific. You mark it spam, but I've pulled a nasty trick. I copied the first Act of Hamlet into the bottom of the spam. Guess what, buddy? You just blocked Shakespeare as spam, too! It works the same way if they're putting "legit" text in. Sure, you blocked their spam for Viagra, or financing, or prescription drugs, or whatever, but you also put a hit on the legitimate chunk of text they included.
Bayesian filtering is not the end-all solution to spam. It will be defeated. I know people don't like to hear that because it works so well NOW, but the fundamental problem of computer security remains: whatever you can DO, somebody else can UNDO given enough time.
Slashdot Mirror
Managers and lawyers don't care about the facts unless those facts are in writing.
Of course they'd fix it going forward, but it gives manadrones and legal eagles a warm, fuzzy feeling to see documents that actually say that.
And when I run that untrusted code and perhaps it burps up because it can't bind to a port...
And when I run that untrusted code and perhaps it burps up because it was built on a BSD to exploit a BSD problem....
And when I run that untrusted code and perhaps it burps up because it doesn't have permissions to do an operation....
And, of course, to run that untrusted code, I can't double-click anything in my e-mail. I have to actually save it and drop to shell and run it like any other executable file.
So, what you're saying is, if all the "idiots" that aren't "smart enough" to use Linux were using Linux, they'd somehow suddenly be smart enough to do all the things necessary to allow a virus to be launched this easily, but they're not going to be smart enough to not run untrusted code?
And, or course, the nail in the coffin is that, while Microsoft may rule the desktops of stay-at-home moms, students, and suits, *nix runs the Internet. Awfully juicy target, that Internet thing, but the only time it ever seems to suffer any major, widespread problems due to viruses is when these goddamn Microsoft-only worms come out and spike traffic.
Give it a rest. The fundamental building blocks of the operating system are flawed and several of the applications that Microsoft tied to it are even worse. Love or hate them, whether you use Windows or not, it's the truth. Just drop the "we're a poor oppressed group of OS users because there's so many of us." You're poor and oppressed because Microsoft focused all of its money on marketing the home systems and tools rather than developing the damn things. This is what you get when you let marketers write the code. See Windows 2003? It's not actually doing too bad. Funny what happens when a software company actually sits down and lets the developers write the goddamn thing rather than having focus groups and marketeering art major morons lord over them.
Good logic. Ever talked to a detective? The FBI? No? Then, basically, you're responding to my rail against unsubstantiated, manufactured fact-for-the-sake-of-talking with unsubstantiated, manufactured fact-for-the-sake-of-talking?
God... you gotta love Slashdot. Excepting, perhaps, Congress, I can't think of a bigger collection of blowhards who know so little and think so highly of themselves for it..
Most criminals are very stupid.
It doesn't make the ones who got caught stupid, either, now does it?
Obviously, you know all, so care to share that statistic with us? Or, were you just making a highly uninformed statement to try and cover up the fact that you have no clue what you're talking about?
Never mind, I hit the nail on the head, so I'll give you a sample: typically, the number of unsolved murders has hung around 20-30% of cases according to various FBI statistics. Since that covers everything from someone blowing someone away in broad daylight in a fit of rage to premeditation, that's not a particularly good number for supporting your assinine charge of stupid criminals.
At one point (2000), the FBI actually reported that FIFTY PERCENT of violent crimes go unsolved.
Where are all these stupid criminals, again, when most of the criminals jailed now are jailed on nothing more than minor drug possession offenses?
Go look up the actual stats yourself. You can find them in FBI "Uniform Crime Reports". You need the practice.
"Crime doesn't pay" is an empty adage. If you treat crime like any other business opportunity and work your ass off doing the smart thing, you can get to a motherlode and retire young, rich, fat, and happy.
Actually, it's amazing to me that people DON'T attack us more often for the garbage we pull on them while nutjobs like Bin Laden are the ones running around all pissed off because we're in his precious desert.
Consider the bogus "War on Drugs". The setup: numbers of U.S. citizens do drugs creating demand. Result: poor countries trying to survive wind up with people planting crops to fill this market. Solution: gas their plants.
Good solution... except for two little problems:
Go ahead and live in your cushy little world. Stick flags on your gas-guzzling SUV and continue to scream down anyone who suggests you might be part of the problem. You'll pay for it eventually. You can keep turning your back on the problems you help create for as long as you want, but someone's going to shoot you in it eventually. Are we solely to blame for every attack? No, of course not. Doesn't mean we're not a PART of the problem. The little "drug war" example above is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to "passive-aggressive violence" from the United States. Until the ignorant morons who think it's the "dirty gooks" or "stinking A-rabs" or whatever other SCAPEGOAT culture we label as the purveyor of the problem-of-the-hour, the situation will only get worse. And, I hate to ruin your apparent vision of a U.S. under attack, but we've suffered FAR, FAR less from terrorism then A LOT of other countries around the world. You'd be surprised what you learn when you start taking responsibilities for your and your country's actions and drop the chest-thumping facade of some heroic, liberating legend.
People hate us. There's a reason. Scapegoating is frequently NOT that reason. Go ahead and try to argue with me if you want. Likely, the best you can do is open your mouth and start spitting more emotional misinformation and ideologic, blind patriotism, but I'm going to bust your lip with a fact every time you do.
Theft isn't just real as a literal legal term.
Yes, it is when you are discussing the world of software.
You're mincing words and trying to mislead people in the process. First off, I can vouch for my grandparent poster's ability with the English laguage and I believe he knows what he is talking about and is right on the money.
We do not discuss metaphoric losses in the world of software because, unlike kisses, glances, or time, software can literally be subject to theft, though it is difficult. Nobody can literally steal a kiss and time is not something that is owned and can be robbed from someone. Figures of speech work well to denote ideas in the figurative sense, but confusing them with literal ideas only serves to show that you don't know how to properly present the thought.
For theft to occur, an original owner must be deprived of something that the theif now posseses. If you were to remove, from the original owner, all copies of their code such that they possesed no backups, caches, or originals, you have STOLEN that code from them. Since people are not actually depriving the original BSD codebase owners of possession of the code, they are not engaging in THEFT. Because of the BSD license, they are not even likely to be engaging in (insert-copy/trade/whatever-mark-here) INFRINGEMENT which is what you are confusing for THEFT.
Beyond that, arguing that the GPL is somehow superior because it inhibits people is silly. If you don't like the BSD license, don't use it. The BSD license is meant to spread codebases without the ideological and legal babbling of idiots like RMS. Don't take swipes at the BSD license just because it's more interested in disseminating a strong, useful codebase than taking political jabs at corporate monsters.
Yea, but in context here... we're talking about lawyers, so it's a pretty good bet I'm not exaggerating too much. Frankly, if I agreed with a litigating lawyer's version of the "truth", I'd think I was wrong, not that they were right...
All I can say to DoubleClick is - bring it on you rat bastards. I've been shredding (not deleting - just poisoning) their cookies for 2 years with a perl script I wrote (other software has since come into existence to "spoil" cookies), use that badass hosts file of ad servers aimed at localhost, block popups, refuse images from "non-originating" hosts, don't use Flash, and, pretty soon, I'm going to be filtering my incoming pages through proxy to strip crap at the front door.
I have no problem looking at ads and even click through them if they interest me. I don't block the ads on Slashdot or most of the tech forums I inhabit, for example. But I will NOT put up with popups stealing focus or opening new "hidden" windows to surpise me. Bitch about it all they want, the fact of the matter is that they're abusing technology and it's irritating me. If I'm not getting their ads, there's a good reason for it - they pissed me off, and, frankly, I don't give a damn if the "poor guys" running the site go under as a result. Use popups or other irritating mediums to shove advertising in my face or try to track my habits and interests and I'll laugh at your funeral when the site folds.
Care to explain how he's "clearly infringing" anything? The phonetic similarities are incidental. In my accent, I first pronounced his domain as 'mike.rowe.soft.dot.com' whereas I pronounce Microsoft's as 'microsoft.dot.com'. The phonetic similarities wouldn't even be close enough to confuse mediocre speech recognition unless you're a mushmouth, although the tool likely wouldn't recognize the spelling for Mike's site anyway.
As for similarities in the way they're spelled, the only thing the two domains share is 'soft' and '.com'. If somebody is so abysmally stupid that they could misspell microsoft as mikerowesoft, they probably aren't smart enough to by typing on their own anyway.
This is no different than the Nissan car company abusing Uzi Nissan because of his name. Corporate abuse of power, plain and simple. Am I jumping to conclusions? You betcha. But, maybe before somebody flames me for it, they ought to stop and consider why I'd automatically assume that a big corporate would be abusing it's power in this situation. I don't suppose I've come to expect that from these companies based on their past actions, right? Noooooo.... they're just good little capitalists struggling to earn a living like the rest of us. They would NEVER play the courts or stomp helpless individuals over make-believe issues like this. Uh uh. Obviously, Mr. Rowe is a bad, horrible, stinking, dirty, godless commie and Microsoft is doing its Patriotic Duty (TM) in stomping the shit out of him.
OK... that sarcasm seemed to cross into something else entirely...
Sure, but he can sell the domain for whatever he wants to the highest bidder as long as it wasn't really a bad faith registration. Bear in mind, the lawyers tried to trick him into the counter offer for the purpose of suing the domain out of him. However, if "mikerowesoft.com" isn't similar enough to "microsoft.com" (note that, although they sound similar, the pronunciation is clearly different to anyone but an idiot or a lawyer [as if there was a difference..] since 'mikerowesoft' is naturally pronounced as three seperate words), they don't seem to have much case and, indeed, Mike can certainly counter to sell his non "infringing" domain for 10 grand if he so desires.
Of course, I'm notoriously bad when it comes to legal matters because I tend to look at things they way they are whereas lawyers make things the way they want them to be whether that's how it really is or not... the best fiction on earth comes out of litigious idiots like the legal department at Microsoft.
I'm willing to bet you've never worked in a modern retail outlet.
When someone comes in and wants to buy something, and you don't think they understand what they're buying, you have two options.
Option One. Education.
This is not, inherently, a bad option. However, if someone comes into my department and wants to buy something stupid, and there are three other people milling around, and I have stock to handle, and I need to clean the department up, and I'm the only one on duty, I'm not going to risk trying to explain something exceedingly simple for the next 30 minutes to an hour like "you can write directly on the back of the CD". Solution? Simple. Staff enough people in the fucking department. Odds of that happening no matter what the salesperson does? EXTREMELY SMALL.
Option Two. Play Dumb.
Ring 'em up and if they don't like it they can return it. I get all the work done, all the customers checked out, and out the door without having things half finished. Good for me.
Typical clueless customer - blame it on the carefree salesperson who doesn't care about anything. Kids these days why in my day we....
Get over yourself. Sure there are careless assholes working in retail. I was one of them a few years ago. But most of the other people are inherently not bad people and would like to do a good job, they're just overworked and underpaid and, as a result, simply don't care about doing a good job. What's the point when they're not paid to do a good job and their chances for advancement are about as good as if they were slopping stables? No incentive, no service. As usual, the suits are to blame, but since they can hide in their pretty offices all the time, they never take any flak.
Now, since you're posting non-sensitive information AC, which means there's no record of your positions so I can't really tell if you're trolling or not, I'll bid you a good 'whatever-it-is-where-you-are' and call this conversation finished.
I don't get paid to post on Slashdot, so I don't have to be phony here. Needless to say, I never told any of the customers that their heads were filled with "warm tapioca pudding", much as I'd have loved to.
And, of course, you ARE right about the abuse coming from the exception, but I didn't say that I was talking about the whole base of customers, only the idiots. I was more than happy to help people who had legitimate questions, even if I thought they were sort of silly (basically, as long as they seemed honest and didn't appear to just be trying to blatantly waste my time). However, when somebody leaves a pair of fucking shoes in the store, then, a week later, without calling or anything, comes back and wants them back, then gets pissed because they got thrown out (bear in mind this is a shoe department, so if someone leaves the shoes, it's generally accepted that they didn't want them anymore), it tends to diminish enthusiasm quite a bit. At $5.80 an hour, it doesn't take much of this to sour one's attitude. I have very little patience for stupidity. If not being able to put up with stupid people who do things like give away an unpaid product for Christmas, then try to demand that that exempts them from their bill is a "problem on [my] end", then I guess I'm the problem, not the lead paint these morons were eating as children.
That last paragraph only serves to further cement my point. They KNOW how to sell their products. Yes, of course they screw up. But, let's face it. There are sterotypes that hold very well:
Men like semi naked (well, all naked, but the FCC would get pissed) women and it's a good way to get their attention in commercials.
Men like beer.
Men like sports.
Guess what? None of these are necessarily flattering, and not all apply to me (well, the sports one anyway.. I watch football now and then), but I'm not so arrogant to say they're not largely accurate. I like jiggly breasts and firm figures. It's possibly debase, "immoral", etc. to ogle such things, but it's just part of being male, especially, and this is critical, in the CURRENT SOCIETY.
Do you know why tissue boxes have pretty designs on them with flowers and whatnot? Because, largely, WOMEN are shopping at the grocery store and buying them. Stereotypical? You betcha! Inaccurate? Fat chance!
Sony is not stupid. I have to say that I'm largely in agreement with their take on women and electronics. I've met few women who are tech-savvy in computer and electronics fields. In fact, I've known more women who could install a radiator than install a hard drive.
Now, of course, you might be right. However, if you are, then the market is changing, and it's only a matter of time before the marketers catch up.
Sony is not stupid. They are not going to lose sales to a huge potential market segment over some silly sterotypes. Money is probably the only thing that's blind to race, creed, sex...
Yes, you're right - I screwed up the 40/60 split and got them confused.
Why does the sales drone exist if not to offer advice.
I would be less enthusiastic in pointing out that your head is, apparently, filled with warm tapioca pudding, but your original, rude response in this sub-thread doesn't justify my showing a moronic AC with a superiority complex any respect.
With that out of the way, sales drones exist to point to shelves and ring things up. At $5.80 an hour, with the abuse the average idiot customer provided, they were lucky I didn't spit in their faces and strangle them. Granted, this was years ago when I first got out of high school, but I somehow doubt the retail situation regarding pay or abusive customers has improved.
So, quite frankly, when a significant portion of the populace is abusive to 'stupid sales drones', that abuse is redirected back at the populace giving the drone shit. At $5.80 an hour, I'd have let the moron buy the labels too. It's not that complicated of a concept - handling CD-Rs - so if she can't be bothered to put 5 minutes of research into the subject, too fucking bad. If the company wants to provide Customer Service, they can provide training and half decent pay. Otherwise, they'll get just what you said - mindless sales drones who couldn't possibly give a shit less.
You remind me of Tina the Brittle Tech Writer from Dilbert.
How is that "sterotyped shit", exactly? These are MARKET DRIVEN products. The marketers KNOW demographics. They have enough data and numbers to make your head spin.
And, apparently, Sony at least, has data that points to that "sterotyped shit" as the truth about the demographic.
I guess it never crossed your mind that, perhaps, that could actually be the demographic Sony wants to appeal to? No, of course not. You were too busy stomping on your soap box because you have too many poorly conceived notions and are overly sensitive of this sort of thing.
Does that mean that 60 percent were treated better when they weren't accompanied by a man?
Theoretically, there would be three options, not two: being treated better, worse, and the same. Of course, since the other two options (better and the same) could be viewed as either neutral or better, that means that no matter how the breakdown works, the odds are STILL in favor of a woman NOT taking a man along, which directly invalidates what the article is trying to quietly suggest: that women are better off being accompanied by a man when making a tech purchase.
Some other questionable "factoids":
Meaning what, exactly? How much are they involved EXCLUSIVELY in? What are they buying? Who are they buying for?
Radio Shack's customers have shifted from 20 percent female seven years ago to 40 percent female today.
Has Radio Shack's marketing changed? Has it's product changed? Locations?
Every time you go to these places, they think women don't know anything, and they don't tell you the same features as they would when my husband goes with me.
That doesn't hold with the marketing complaint from earlier. Are they targetting something they feel will appeal more to the demographic? What, specifically, are they saying?
I don't usually even bother reading anything like this, especially studies, when they're in major news organizations. There's never any context provided to suggest the data has any validity or, worse, any meaning what-so-ever. People never question the fact that the numbers don't mean anything beyond what the writer is suggesting (typically, suggesting without any REAL evidence), so they keep doing it. CNN: The New American Tabloid.
Interesting how a seemingly unrelated government entity can become part of the story.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA is, undoubtedly, most well known for its space initiatives. However, they have their fingers in everything from complicated probes on other planets to medicine here on earth. They help develop commercial technology that you use every day of your life and they do cutting edge research into any number of scientific fields that you may well not hear about for another decade or more, if ever.
Frankly, NASA is probably second only to FEMA for underestimation of agency influence within the country. Those two agencies are either known only for very specific things, or never even thought about, but they have exceptionally broad, far-reaching powers and their fingers are in pretty much anything you can think of, even if you don't notice it.
Technically, you can apply for a patent on anything. You could even apply for a patent on someone's else's patent if you were looking for a way to burn a lot of money real quick.
The thing is, people patent stupid shit all the time. Shining a flashlight on the floor and having a cat chase it is a patented exercise system for pets. The problem is that they'd never be able to enforce it, the owner of the patent would pretty much be laughed right out of the courtroom as long as the defendant showed up. Then, they'd lose it.
The USPTO will play lip service to any idiot that can pay them. They just sort of leave it up to the courts to decide whether or not there was any intelligent driving force behind the patent or not. Fear not, this "entrepreneur" will be shot down pretty quickly. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here, just a bunch of braindead corporate lawyers.
Weapons of Mass Distraction is more likely...
Uranus Experiment, Part 2.
Good ol' Space.com has an article on it so you don't have to worry about the spouse looking up your recent visits...
Ha ha! Children, point and laugh at the funny, trolling anonymous coward who knows nothing about Windows, much less how most people wind up having to run it! He's what we call a "technology have-not". He likely believes that Microsoft Windows is somehow technologically capable of putting up a fight against the traditional and modernized POSIX systems. He is a fool, and his blood will run in the streets during the next plague of Windows-only viruses and worms.
Or, in short. You're an idiot. Get a life. Stop trolling me.
As opposed to Windows which just runs all of your thoughts as admin by default? Imagine someone crashing your optical input to get full access to your brain a la smashing SQL Server to grab a whole server.
AAAGHH!!!! I'm blind!!!
But, on the other hand, I'm being used to host pr0n... so is it really that bad?
Imagine a ping o' death on your brain...
Noooo... like the post said, I'm getting SPAMS with chunks of pseudo-legitmate text which is harming the spam threshold. While Viagra continues to be a word that the filter throws the red flag at, the other terms will also take a hit as far as the filter is concerned. This results in legitimate messages getting a higher spam rating.
The only way to avoid that is to not mark them off as spam (which means the "legit text" won't be counted against legit messages with similar text). Unfortunately, that means the spams that have this "legit text" don't get labeled as harshly for a high-spam-likelihood anymore, which means I have to lower my threshold to say, 85% from 90% for the spams to get cut.
The temporary fix is to keep mingling the two tactics because then the threshold can be dropped slowly while the legit messages get smacked up slowly. The two limits are so far apart between what is an isn't spam that in the mid-term, there's not going to be any significant impact. However, over the long term, if this continues unabated, the thresholds will eventually meet for what is and what isn't spam.
For example. Say I sent you a spam for timeshares in the S. Pacific. You mark it spam, but I've pulled a nasty trick. I copied the first Act of Hamlet into the bottom of the spam. Guess what, buddy? You just blocked Shakespeare as spam, too! It works the same way if they're putting "legit" text in. Sure, you blocked their spam for Viagra, or financing, or prescription drugs, or whatever, but you also put a hit on the legitimate chunk of text they included.
Bayesian filtering is not the end-all solution to spam. It will be defeated. I know people don't like to hear that because it works so well NOW, but the fundamental problem of computer security remains: whatever you can DO, somebody else can UNDO given enough time.