However I think that there is something in the worries expressed by many about Red Hat's decision to include a gcc that the gcc people have publicly
stated is not up to the standard of an official release due to incompatibilities.
That product will then only work on either Red Hat 7.0 or another platform that chooses to discard the views of the GCC steering committee.
However, the gcc folk only released their statement after the release of RH 7.0, so it's not like Red Hat decided to include what they call GCC 2.96 in spite of objections by the gcc steering committee. On the other hand, I think that the inclusion of a snapshot of the compiler in a distro is at best not wise.
That being said, I do understand Red Hat's motives for doing so. They're caught in a difficult position -- marketing wisdom drives them to try to be the most cutting edge distro (after all, having the newest features first looks good to PHBs), while on the other hand it seems like a much safer move to ship a currently stable compiler (yes, I understand that there are questions about the state of 2.95.5 or whatever it is . ..).
Personally, I think I would have chosen to keep the stable release of gcc in, wait until KDE 2.0 was out, add in XFree4.0 and the latest stable GNOME, upgrade some other useful packages, and call the whole thing Red Hat 6.5. Then, I'd sit tight and wait until gcc 3.0 and kernel 2.4 were on the immediate horizon, and then start developing what would become RH7.0.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
I dunno . . . I'm not so keen on the idea that the dominant powers-that-be should make standards, and the rest of the world should then follow. I know it's a bit idealistic, but I would prefer that competing methods be introduced by different groups, and let the most robust, effecient, and useful one become the de facto standard. The down side to this is that things remain in a state of flux for a while until everything gets acclimated.
On the other hand, there are some areas where competing standards don't really hurt folks too much, given that the standard is well documented.
I do, however, like the idea of Red Hat taking charge. At worst, given the manner in which the "community" works, if the standard they attempt to implement ain't no good, it will more than likely get ignored.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
I'm not sure what's worse -- the idea that anybody buying a PC with no OS will be pirating Windows, or the fact that the whole page implies that it's the dealer's responsibility to install an OS on the PC so that the buyer won't be tempted to break the law and pirate software.
Dealer: "Sir, this computer comes pre-installed with Windows, as well as every other software package known to man!"
Consumer: "Buy I don't want or need all of that! I'll never use it all"
Dealer: "Well, it's my responsibility to make sure you don't pirate the software by selling you a computer with it all preinstalled! It's my moral duty!"
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
> Yeah, Apple is such a vanguard of modern design. That's why we all have wood grained computers (a la the 20th anniversary Mac).
While Apple has certainly made their mistakes in computer case design, I'd wager that their introduction of machines like the Blue and White G3, the iMac, the iBook, the new Cube, and their Studio Displays have strongly influenced the direction that computer case and peripheral design will take in the future. In the early years, automobiles were basically a functional carriage on a chassis with a motor instead of a horse. By the 1930s, auto makers began to add styling and color to their products. The end result is that now automobiles are often sold on the basis of their styling in addition to other more pragmatic factors such as the technology underneath the vehicle and reliability over time, etc. I'm sure few people would argue now that we should approach automotive design from a purely functional standpoint. However, function is still an important issue in the development of automobiles.
Computers, IMHO, will more than likely begin to proceed in the same direction. I look at the proliferation of colors and translucent plastic as the equivalent of the introduction of different color paint jobs and aerodynamic styling in the automotive world. Just because radical styling has been introduced into the world of computer design doesn't mean that reliability and functionality are going to go away. Any computer manufacturer that ignores these and focuses on styling will quickly find themselves in the same position as American auto manufacturers did in the 80s, when other companies that are willing to build reliable, functional computers at competitive prices start popping up.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
I dunno, looked like an attempt at a [+1, Funny] to me . . . at least I hope it was.
The comment states first that " If Microsoft is forced to take an agreement they don't like, they'll simply move to another country. Then won't the Americans be sorry!" and then later "Microsoft is pretty pathetic when you think of it. Forcing them to split up could destroy that fragile company."
Yup, I'm pretty sure that Americans are always sorry when "pathetic" and "fragile" companies move elsewhere. Personally, if Microsoft packed up and left for (Canada/Mexico/Equador/Tahiti) it wouldn't bother me in the least. I'd be sorry in about the same manner most people are when the paper mill or hog farm down the road packs up and moves to the next county over because your county wants 'em to clean up their act.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
> If no one had been able to figure out the cuecat interface protocol, most of us would have thrown
> them in the trash by now.
Absolutely. These things aren't conveinent at all. It's just as easy for me to find the web site of some product manufacturer (say, Coca-Cola) as it is for me to take the dang thing and scan the barcode and let their software do it for me (Actually, it's easier. Scanning a barcode that consists of unprinted portions on a aluminum can with condensation on the outside of it with these things is an excercise in futility . ..).
The only reason I'm keeping mine is that one of these days, I'll probably take mine and use it to catalog all my CDs and books.
Maybe . ..
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
OK, OK, I guess I need to go through a remedial sarcasm course or something . . .
Basically, I was trying to imply that the CueCat device won't make a scheme requiring a barcode to be scanned to grant access to a specified device any more inherently secure than it already was prior to its introduction. The fact that the barcode is encrypted is trivial, since the encryption happens after the scanning.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
> You're still ignoring the fact that DC had a
> license agreement that everyone here was aware
> of before they picked up their CueCat.
Not quite true. I picked up my scanner just after Radio Shack started giving them away, about a week before I heard any rumblings about IP and what not. I was, when I picked up my scanner, quite unaware of any licensing agreement. There was no note on the package noting that I was agreeing to a license of any sort before I opened the package. There was no note on the scanner referring to an agreement. It was only when I installed the software, several days later, to see what it did that was so "revolutionary" that I became aware of the agreement.
So, trivial as it may be, not "everyone here" was aware of the agreement before they picked up the device.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
Even if Digital Convergence had built in some form of relatively strong encryption that was much more difficult to crack, and nobody had written third-party drivers that bypass their servers, I'd be willing to wager that they would have been out of business or close to in 12 months or less anyway.
Why? Their business model is brain dead. Any business model built on the concept of giving away a "loss leader" is at best a risky gamble. Investing money in developing a product designed to be used with some other service, which is then utilized to acquire a profit is, in short, usually a pretty dumb idea.
For example, let's consider the I-opener (sp?) that's been discussed here before. Say the company producing these spends $250,000 planning the device, $750,000 gearing up for manufacturing, and then spends $500 per unit to produce them, and then sells them for $200 a piece, expecting the end user to use their service at $25 a month. (All numbers are made up by me here . ..)
Now, if they go through with the production, initially produce 1,000 boxen, and nobody buys one, they've lost $1.5 million and have nothing to show for it but a bunch of crippled boxen. In this case, they could sell 'em off to somebody else who might use them, in an effort to recover their expenses. If they sell all 1,000 boxen, and nobody uses the service for more than a month (they decide they want a PC or a Mac and AOL, they decide that net access is useless to them, etc), then they've spent $1.5 million and taken in $225,000. They're still $1,275,000 in the hole, and they have no boxen to sell off to regain expenses. At best, all 1,000 users will need to utilize their service for one year before the company ever breaks even. From that point on, they pull $25 a month from every user that is profit for them, but in the real world, they still have to worry about manufacturing new machines for new customers, warranty service, paying their staff, maintaining capital, etc. Sure, it's possible to make a profit with a model like this, but it's also possible to make a fortune in Las Vegas from the slot machines -- but it's not likely. It's risky business.
Digital Covergence's model is even worse than the above, because they invest money to develop and manufacture their barcode readers, develop their software, press their CDs, pay their staff, pay for marketing (all those infomercials), maintain captital, etc. Then, once folk get these barcode readers, even if they all use them, they still don't turn a profit. They still have to market and sell their demographic data.
Iin order for them to really acquire any sort of really useful demographic data, the folks with the barcode scanners have to really think that they are the the "biggest computer innovation since the mouse" and find them conveinent to use. Problem is, they ain't. They don't work well (sometimes it takes me 3-4 times to get a barcode to scan), they're annoying, it's a pain in the butt to answer all the questions you have to answer to get to install their software (Yes, I installed it, just to see how it works. No, I really don't care that they have all sorts of demographic data on me. It's not like I really have much privacy on the net, anyway. If I really wanted privacy, I'd lock myself in a closet with a box of Cheerios and keep the light off). If 90% of the folk who get these scanners hook them up, use them 3 or 4 times and then stick them in a drawer to collect dust (and I believe that's what will happen), then they're not going to get the sort of demographic data they're trying to market, and they're going to go belly up.
So, if they are outta business in two years, the Slashdot community won't be the one that puts them there, nor will it be the Linux community, or any other group of folk on the face of the earth or elsewhere. They might speed DC on their merry way to e-biz oblivion, where they will join the ranks of hundreds of other companies with equally flawed business models, but make no mistake about it, Digital Convergence's course was more or less set before the first barcode scanners made their way off of the assembly line.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
Yeah, but it makes me feel so much better that somebody is using a barcode reader that encrypts the barcode after reading it, and before transmitting it to the computer. That's so much safer than those older barcode readers that don't do encryption! Man, if you had one of those archaic older jobs around, somebody could just scan the barcode and figure out exactly what was encoded in it.
Hey, wait a minute . . .
Seriously, this idea is about as good as giving a note card with "Hi, my name is _________" scribbled on it, and then requiring that everybody needing access to a high-security facility flash one of those.
---- "A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
This isn't a matter of a bunch of rogue geeks ruining a company by finding all sorts of loopholes on some law; this is a matter of a company with an inherently flawed business model experiencing the results of faulty planning. Make no mistake about it, the law does not guarantee companies success despite dumb decisions.
Whether or not you agree with the production of third-party software for decoding the CutCat barcodes, or with the installation of Linux on the I-Opener machines, or any of the other examples in this category, the fact of the matter is that any company that attempts to make money on services while distributing a "loss leader" to utilize those services is taking a risky gamble at best. Certainly, sometimes this gamble pays off, but in reality, I would wager that 90%+ of companies that try to do so either barely break even or fail miserably. DC has taken this gamble, and built a business model that not only requires that users utlize the barcode readers in conjunction with their software, but that they use them often, and that they actually feel that swiping barcodes that are linked in the DC database to particular websites is conveinent enough that they can build a demographic database that can be peddled to companies interested in such data.
Furthermore, no matter what the motivation of those who are filing complaints with the USPS against DC might be, it does not mitigate the fact that they are clearly in violation of the regulations. One would expect that a company that expects to "loan" such a device to end users while distributing them to those users by way of magazines via the USPS would certainly inverstigate to see if such a distribution was not in violation of regulations. Clearly, they either did not do the research, or either they don't care. In the first case, ignorance of the law does not clear the offending party of any guilt, although it might persuade those in the business of dispensing justice to "go easy" on the offending party. However, if DC is violating postal regulations despite knowledge of them, it's their own tough luck if they get slapped around in the legal system.
Changing my name to the code sounded really good to me, until I thought about trying to sign my name every time I wrote a check or signed some document. That would really suck. I haven't written that much since my last essay exam . . . and I didn't have to memorize that word for word (number for number) . ..
Who is WildTangent? Former Microsoft Multimedia evangelist and DirectX creator, Alex St. John, and his partner Cambridge mathematician Jeremy Kenyon founded WildTangent Inc. in June 1998. WildTangent pursues the vision of building a richer more communicative Internet experience through the use of 3D graphics, sound, animation, and interactivity.
and
How did the web driver get installed on my system? Our web driver provides advanced multimedia capabilities to your web browser. It was installed by a product that needed its services, such as one of our music visualizers, screensavers, or games. It could also have been installed when you visited a web page or by a third party product. In all cases, the web driver announces its installation through a series of licensing screens. If you missed this information, you can view our license agreement or our privacy statement.
It would be nice if software companies were required legally to place all obsolete, discontinued, or simply old software into the public domain (at least at the binary level -- source code would be super-cool, but that's not likely at all) 2-3 years after they stopped selling it. This would benefit scores of end users, at pretty much no cost to the company. The software publisher is no longer selling the product, so it's not like they are losing revenue from that particular version of the product.
At my school, for example, there are many students whose home computers consist of 486 and slower Pentium based systems, as well as a small cadre of users who are still using older PowerMacs (and a few clones). The vast majority of these users are simply interested in a machine that they can do simple word processing on. A 486-66 running Win95 rev. A ain't gonna be able to hack running Office 2000. These guys don't have the bucks to shell out for a newer machine (or an upgrade) so that they can run MS' latest bloated version of Word. Word 6.0 or WordPerfect 6/7 will suit them nicely, but guess what? They can't buy it anywhere, and if they copy someone else's, then they're suddenly a pirate in Microsoft's eyes . . .
I've tried to set a few guys around campus with Linux and AbiWord, but in most cases they've either gone back to Windows (Linux is too much for them to bother with, AbiWord doesn't do page numbers yet, etc.) or I end up doing 24/7 tech support for 'em. So that option, while it's inexpensive in terms of money, isn't really an option for folks who aren't as technically inclined as most of us.
The problem with AbandonWare (in the case of products like Word and WordPerfect) is that the 486 user that doesn't have the horsepower to run Office 2000, and copies her friend's old Word 6.0 to do simple word processing represents a potential sale to MS. And when there are thousands of potential sales that end up copying old software instead of shelling out whatever the latest version of Office costs ($300? I have no idea really . ..) then suddenly the suits start to worry. Sure, 50,000 users *not* buying a $300 software package that otherwise would buy it only represents a total of $4,500,000 to Microsoft, whose assets are far past that amount, but each chunk of revenue lost equals a hit to the bottom line.
And, in the end, it's the bottom line that counts to pretty much any company (at least the ones that want to stay in business). Microsoft doesn't really give a rip about whether Bob and Sue can afford to upgrade their computers to run Office 2000, or if they can't stretch their budget to buy Office 2000 itself. They care about money. Period. And, even though I use MS as an example throughout, I'm not just picking on them -- most large software companies are going to feel the same way.
On an entirely different note, it sure is fun to run across a copy of a game you played 10 years ago, and play it again though . ..
You'd think that if they're really so interested in open source software (Mozilla anyone?) that they would be more interested in contributing to an established project like yours, that is already stable and mostly feature-complete, instead of hacking together this client . ..
I used to use licq, way back in the day, and I switched to GtkICQ for . . . well, heck, it was so long ago, I can't even remember. Anyway, I switched, and I more or less like GnomeICU, but I'm definately not against trying another client. So, I think I'll head on over and grab the latest tarball . . .
And, as far as Gtk vs. Qt, I don't really give a rip what it uses, as long as it works and it works well. Functionality is my primary concern right now . . . maybe when there are two or three competing clients around, that are more or less equal feature-wise, then I'll pick one for political reasons or what not.
I would argue that the comparison to Nazi Germany is indeed invalid. Adolf Hitler and his cohorts murdered thousands of innocent people for simply being of a certain ethnic heritage. Jews were placed into forced labor camps, given sparse food, forced to work until the collapsed, then beaten and killed. Even if the accusations of these protesters were shown to be correct, their treatment hardly warrants comparison to Nazi Germany. Such a comparison is similar to comparing a band of middle school bullies to an axe murderer. Frankly, if I were of Jewish heritage, I would be offended that the sort of abuse that my people had suffered at the hands of Hitler would be trivialized by comparing it to the much milder plight of these protesters.
The author was indiscrimentally arrested for refusing to allow the police to violate his civil rights. You can't search someone's backup, purse, fanny pack, etc. as the interior is considered private property. And you don't have to tell the police anything before you talk to a lawyer.
Based on my reading of the article, it doesn't appear that the author was at all arrested. Harrassed maybe, but not arrested. In his own words, he was
. . . wearing a camouflage vest over a olive drab polo shirt (that approximately matched my green cargo trousers with a vintage gas mask case strapped to one leg). Officially, the vest buckled to my torso is called a "load bearing harness." It has multiple cylindrical pouches, loops, and clips and distributes weight between the shoulders and belt line. My pouches were stuffed with pens, granola bars, cigarettes and notebooks. In wartime, such pouches hold one grenade each.
He also states earlier that he was wearing "orange target shooting lenses to tone down my tunnel vision." I don't know about you, but if somebody was hanging out in my neighborhood, dressed in camoflouge and olive green, wearing a device designed to hold grenades as well as target shooting lenses, I think I might be mildly concerned. In light of this, I have no difficulty understanding why the cop was interested in what the guy had in his vest. The author doesn't go out of his way to ease the tension of the situation with his response, either . . . where "I've got notebooks, granola bars, cigarettes, etc . .." would have sufficed nicely, our friend immediately jumps into sarcastic mode. If the officer felt that the author might pose an immediate threat to the safety of folks in the area, he had every right (and indeed the responsibility) to make sure this guy was OK. And, in light of events like recent school shootings, etc., it seems that the author might have been a bit sympathetic.
Man, that really sucks. I *really* like(d) Kuro5hin . . . rusty (and company) had really done a nice job developing the engine, as well as a nice site. It's annoying that a few brain-dead twerps can ruin good stuff like this for the rest of us . . .
Kuro5shin was a Slashdot-like site, devoted to the discussion of technology and culture. It was different from Slashdot in that anyone, even folks without an account, could submit a story to the submission queue. Registered users could then vote on whether to post the story to the front page or not.
Its user base was much smaller than Slashdot, and as of the time the attacks started, discussion tended to be more "useful" than what we have here at Slashdot now, since it hadn't attracted the attention of most of the internet. I've been around Slashdot long enough that it reminds me of what this place used to be like in the early days (from my perspective, late 1997 - early 1998).
If you want to have an idea of what the flavor of Kuro5hin was, have a look at scoop.kuro5hin.org, the development site for the scoop engine, the back end of Kuro5hin. I assume the engine is still under development despite the shutdown, and I certainly hope it continues to be developed in the face of all this crap.
I'm not dumb enough or idealistic enough to have expected that Kuro5hin wouldn't have eventually been overrun with the same kind of gargage that Slashdot gets every day, and I don't expect that it will never happen again to sites like Slashdot or Kuro5hin again either. It's sad, but probably just a fact of life that we're just going to have to deal with idiots. Slashdot has shown that technical solutions aren't capable of solving other peoples' personal problems, even though they can seem to make them manageable. I guess the fact of the matter is that no amount of good coding (or bad coding either, for that matter) can keep a jackass from being a jackass.
On the UNIX side, how are the problems of UNIX system administration handled? Are all the text configuration files gone, or did Apple just put GUI wallpaper over them?
Disclaimer: it's been a while since I sat down behind a box running OS X Server, so I may be remembering some stuff wrong . . .
I've dealt with OS X Server a bit, and some of the standard text config files are still hanging out, but not very many. Almost everything you need to configure (well, that I needed to configure) was configurable through relatively intuitive GUI tools. From what I've heard, there are ways to accomplish administration from the command line, but I never played around enough to figure out how to do so. Documentation is scarce.
What I found most disconcerting about OS X Server was the way they "Mac-ified" the filesystem . . . by default, hard drives are mounted on the root with terribly descriptive names like "Server_HD3" instead of putting them somewhere really useful (i.e., make the second drive/usr/local/share or/usr/local or something . ..). Stuff like Apache ended up in/Local/Library/WebServer, CommuniGate Pro was in/Local/Communigate . . . apps were not installed in/usr/bin or/usr/local/bin, in some cases. It was just weird.
If there's anybody out there with NeXT experience, is this the way things were done? I know that OS X (from what I understand) draws heavily on NeXT (i.e., retaining the NetInfo stuff).
That's odd -- I ordered a Dell Inspiron in October. They granted me $5,000 credit immediately, no hassle. They told me that it would ship in mid-December due to a shortage of screens; it shipped November 17.
I know of several friends who have bought from Dell, and none have had trouble. Their quality seems to be well above average -- two friends have had their laptops for almost 1.5 years with no problems. One has had his for over two, no problems. Their good experience with Dell was one of the reasons I bought from them.
Maybe they treat companies different than individuals or something . . .
One of the companies I work for has been hosting their e-commerce site on CIHost. Fortunately, we registered the domain name ourselves, and we just recently were able to get a decent connection so that we can host our sites in the office, run our own DNS servers, mail servers, etc. So, we've been able to transfer the domain to our servers without too much trouble.
I know that keeping web servers up isn't the easiest thing in the world, from my past experience. It's not rocket science, but sometimes hardware failures happen. Sometimes you lost power, and not everbody can afford a backup generator to run their web server on.
However, I've never dealt with a hosting company with as many problems as CIHost.In the past two months or so, our web site has been offline at least 8 times for no apparent reason. For about two weeks, their bandwidth was almost completely saturated. And now, we've got this issue.
When we first heard about CIHost, we checked into them, and they were rated highly on at least two sites we checked. With this kind of service they sure won't keep a rating like that for long.
Slashdot Mirror
That product will then only work on either Red Hat 7.0 or another platform that chooses to discard the views of the GCC steering committee.
However, the gcc folk only released their statement after the release of RH 7.0, so it's not like Red Hat decided to include what they call GCC 2.96 in spite of objections by the gcc steering committee. On the other hand, I think that the inclusion of a snapshot of the compiler in a distro is at best not wise.
That being said, I do understand Red Hat's motives for doing so. They're caught in a difficult position -- marketing wisdom drives them to try to be the most cutting edge distro (after all, having the newest features first looks good to PHBs), while on the other hand it seems like a much safer move to ship a currently stable compiler (yes, I understand that there are questions about the state of 2.95.5 or whatever it is . . .).
Personally, I think I would have chosen to keep the stable release of gcc in, wait until KDE 2.0 was out, add in XFree4.0 and the latest stable GNOME, upgrade some other useful packages, and call the whole thing Red Hat 6.5. Then, I'd sit tight and wait until gcc 3.0 and kernel 2.4 were on the immediate horizon, and then start developing what would become RH7.0.
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
On the other hand, there are some areas where competing standards don't really hurt folks too much, given that the standard is well documented.
I do, however, like the idea of Red Hat taking charge. At worst, given the manner in which the "community" works, if the standard they attempt to implement ain't no good, it will more than likely get ignored.
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
Dealer: "Sir, this computer comes pre-installed with Windows, as well as every other software package known to man!"
Consumer: "Buy I don't want or need all of that! I'll never use it all"
Dealer: "Well, it's my responsibility to make sure you don't pirate the software by selling you a computer with it all preinstalled! It's my moral duty!"
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
While Apple has certainly made their mistakes in computer case design, I'd wager that their introduction of machines like the Blue and White G3, the iMac, the iBook, the new Cube, and their Studio Displays have strongly influenced the direction that computer case and peripheral design will take in the future. In the early years, automobiles were basically a functional carriage on a chassis with a motor instead of a horse. By the 1930s, auto makers began to add styling and color to their products. The end result is that now automobiles are often sold on the basis of their styling in addition to other more pragmatic factors such as the technology underneath the vehicle and reliability over time, etc. I'm sure few people would argue now that we should approach automotive design from a purely functional standpoint. However, function is still an important issue in the development of automobiles.
Computers, IMHO, will more than likely begin to proceed in the same direction. I look at the proliferation of colors and translucent plastic as the equivalent of the introduction of different color paint jobs and aerodynamic styling in the automotive world. Just because radical styling has been introduced into the world of computer design doesn't mean that reliability and functionality are going to go away. Any computer manufacturer that ignores these and focuses on styling will quickly find themselves in the same position as American auto manufacturers did in the 80s, when other companies that are willing to build reliable, functional computers at competitive prices start popping up.
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
I dunno, looked like an attempt at a [+1, Funny] to me . . . at least I hope it was.
The comment states first that " If Microsoft is forced to take an agreement they don't like, they'll simply move to another country. Then won't the Americans be sorry!" and then later "Microsoft is pretty pathetic when you think of it. Forcing them to split up could destroy that fragile company."
Yup, I'm pretty sure that Americans are always sorry when "pathetic" and "fragile" companies move elsewhere. Personally, if Microsoft packed up and left for (Canada/Mexico/Equador/Tahiti) it wouldn't bother me in the least. I'd be sorry in about the same manner most people are when the paper mill or hog farm down the road packs up and moves to the next county over because your county wants 'em to clean up their act.
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
> them in the trash by now.
Absolutely. These things aren't conveinent at all. It's just as easy for me to find the web site of some product manufacturer (say, Coca-Cola) as it is for me to take the dang thing and scan the barcode and let their software do it for me (Actually, it's easier. Scanning a barcode that consists of unprinted portions on a aluminum can with condensation on the outside of it with these things is an excercise in futility . . .).
The only reason I'm keeping mine is that one of these days, I'll probably take mine and use it to catalog all my CDs and books.
Maybe . . .
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
Basically, I was trying to imply that the CueCat device won't make a scheme requiring a barcode to be scanned to grant access to a specified device any more inherently secure than it already was prior to its introduction. The fact that the barcode is encrypted is trivial, since the encryption happens after the scanning.
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
> license agreement that everyone here was aware
> of before they picked up their CueCat.
Not quite true. I picked up my scanner just after Radio Shack started giving them away, about a week before I heard any rumblings about IP and what not. I was, when I picked up my scanner, quite unaware of any licensing agreement. There was no note on the package noting that I was agreeing to a license of any sort before I opened the package. There was no note on the scanner referring to an agreement. It was only when I installed the software, several days later, to see what it did that was so "revolutionary" that I became aware of the agreement.
So, trivial as it may be, not "everyone here" was aware of the agreement before they picked up the device.
----
"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
Why? Their business model is brain dead. Any business model built on the concept of giving away a "loss leader" is at best a risky gamble. Investing money in developing a product designed to be used with some other service, which is then utilized to acquire a profit is, in short, usually a pretty dumb idea.
For example, let's consider the I-opener (sp?) that's been discussed here before. Say the company producing these spends $250,000 planning the device, $750,000 gearing up for manufacturing, and then spends $500 per unit to produce them, and then sells them for $200 a piece, expecting the end user to use their service at $25 a month. (All numbers are made up by me here . . .)
Now, if they go through with the production, initially produce 1,000 boxen, and nobody buys one, they've lost $1.5 million and have nothing to show for it but a bunch of crippled boxen. In this case, they could sell 'em off to somebody else who might use them, in an effort to recover their expenses. If they sell all 1,000 boxen, and nobody uses the service for more than a month (they decide they want a PC or a Mac and AOL, they decide that net access is useless to them, etc), then they've spent $1.5 million and taken in $225,000. They're still $1,275,000 in the hole, and they have no boxen to sell off to regain expenses. At best, all 1,000 users will need to utilize their service for one year before the company ever breaks even. From that point on, they pull $25 a month from every user that is profit for them, but in the real world, they still have to worry about manufacturing new machines for new customers, warranty service, paying their staff, maintaining capital, etc. Sure, it's possible to make a profit with a model like this, but it's also possible to make a fortune in Las Vegas from the slot machines -- but it's not likely. It's risky business.
Digital Covergence's model is even worse than the above, because they invest money to develop and manufacture their barcode readers, develop their software, press their CDs, pay their staff, pay for marketing (all those infomercials), maintain captital, etc. Then, once folk get these barcode readers, even if they all use them, they still don't turn a profit. They still have to market and sell their demographic data.
Iin order for them to really acquire any sort of really useful demographic data, the folks with the barcode scanners have to really think that they are the the "biggest computer innovation since the mouse" and find them conveinent to use. Problem is, they ain't. They don't work well (sometimes it takes me 3-4 times to get a barcode to scan), they're annoying, it's a pain in the butt to answer all the questions you have to answer to get to install their software (Yes, I installed it, just to see how it works. No, I really don't care that they have all sorts of demographic data on me. It's not like I really have much privacy on the net, anyway. If I really wanted privacy, I'd lock myself in a closet with a box of Cheerios and keep the light off). If 90% of the folk who get these scanners hook them up, use them 3 or 4 times and then stick them in a drawer to collect dust (and I believe that's what will happen), then they're not going to get the sort of demographic data they're trying to market, and they're going to go belly up.
So, if they are outta business in two years, the Slashdot community won't be the one that puts them there, nor will it be the Linux community, or any other group of folk on the face of the earth or elsewhere. They might speed DC on their merry way to e-biz oblivion, where they will join the ranks of hundreds of other companies with equally flawed business models, but make no mistake about it, Digital Convergence's course was more or less set before the first barcode scanners made their way off of the assembly line.
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"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
Hey, wait a minute . . .
Seriously, this idea is about as good as giving a note card with "Hi, my name is _________" scribbled on it, and then requiring that everybody needing access to a high-security facility flash one of those.
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"A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind."
Whether or not you agree with the production of third-party software for decoding the CutCat barcodes, or with the installation of Linux on the I-Opener machines, or any of the other examples in this category, the fact of the matter is that any company that attempts to make money on services while distributing a "loss leader" to utilize those services is taking a risky gamble at best. Certainly, sometimes this gamble pays off, but in reality, I would wager that 90%+ of companies that try to do so either barely break even or fail miserably. DC has taken this gamble, and built a business model that not only requires that users utlize the barcode readers in conjunction with their software, but that they use them often, and that they actually feel that swiping barcodes that are linked in the DC database to particular websites is conveinent enough that they can build a demographic database that can be peddled to companies interested in such data.
Furthermore, no matter what the motivation of those who are filing complaints with the USPS against DC might be, it does not mitigate the fact that they are clearly in violation of the regulations. One would expect that a company that expects to "loan" such a device to end users while distributing them to those users by way of magazines via the USPS would certainly inverstigate to see if such a distribution was not in violation of regulations. Clearly, they either did not do the research, or either they don't care. In the first case, ignorance of the law does not clear the offending party of any guilt, although it might persuade those in the business of dispensing justice to "go easy" on the offending party. However, if DC is violating postal regulations despite knowledge of them, it's their own tough luck if they get slapped around in the legal system.
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Who is WildTangent?
Former Microsoft Multimedia evangelist and DirectX creator, Alex St. John, and his partner Cambridge mathematician Jeremy Kenyon founded WildTangent Inc. in June 1998. WildTangent pursues the vision of building a richer more communicative Internet experience through the use of 3D graphics, sound, animation, and interactivity.
and
How did the web driver get installed on my system?
Our web driver provides advanced multimedia capabilities to your web browser. It was installed by a product that needed its services, such as one of our music visualizers, screensavers, or games. It could also have been installed when you visited a web page or by a third party product. In all cases, the web driver announces its installation through a series of licensing screens. If you missed this information, you can view our license agreement or our privacy statement.
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At my school, for example, there are many students whose home computers consist of 486 and slower Pentium based systems, as well as a small cadre of users who are still using older PowerMacs (and a few clones). The vast majority of these users are simply interested in a machine that they can do simple word processing on. A 486-66 running Win95 rev. A ain't gonna be able to hack running Office 2000. These guys don't have the bucks to shell out for a newer machine (or an upgrade) so that they can run MS' latest bloated version of Word. Word 6.0 or WordPerfect 6/7 will suit them nicely, but guess what? They can't buy it anywhere, and if they copy someone else's, then they're suddenly a pirate in Microsoft's eyes . . .
I've tried to set a few guys around campus with Linux and AbiWord, but in most cases they've either gone back to Windows (Linux is too much for them to bother with, AbiWord doesn't do page numbers yet, etc.) or I end up doing 24/7 tech support for 'em. So that option, while it's inexpensive in terms of money, isn't really an option for folks who aren't as technically inclined as most of us.
The problem with AbandonWare (in the case of products like Word and WordPerfect) is that the 486 user that doesn't have the horsepower to run Office 2000, and copies her friend's old Word 6.0 to do simple word processing represents a potential sale to MS. And when there are thousands of potential sales that end up copying old software instead of shelling out whatever the latest version of Office costs ($300? I have no idea really . . .) then suddenly the suits start to worry. Sure, 50,000 users *not* buying a $300 software package that otherwise would buy it only represents a total of $4,500,000 to Microsoft, whose assets are far past that amount, but each chunk of revenue lost equals a hit to the bottom line.
And, in the end, it's the bottom line that counts to pretty much any company (at least the ones that want to stay in business). Microsoft doesn't really give a rip about whether Bob and Sue can afford to upgrade their computers to run Office 2000, or if they can't stretch their budget to buy Office 2000 itself. They care about money. Period. And, even though I use MS as an example throughout, I'm not just picking on them -- most large software companies are going to feel the same way.
On an entirely different note, it sure is fun to run across a copy of a game you played 10 years ago, and play it again though . . .
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And, as far as Gtk vs. Qt, I don't really give a rip what it uses, as long as it works and it works well. Functionality is my primary concern right now . . . maybe when there are two or three competing clients around, that are more or less equal feature-wise, then I'll pick one for political reasons or what not.
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Now if they'll work on an ICQ client for Linux . . . or either actively contribute to the development of a clone like GnomeICU.
On that note, wonder why they didn't contribute to GAIM? It's not like they haven't released the TOC specs . . .
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I would argue that the comparison to Nazi Germany is indeed invalid. Adolf Hitler and his cohorts murdered thousands of innocent people for simply being of a certain ethnic heritage. Jews were placed into forced labor camps, given sparse food, forced to work until the collapsed, then beaten and killed. Even if the accusations of these protesters were shown to be correct, their treatment hardly warrants comparison to Nazi Germany. Such a comparison is similar to comparing a band of middle school bullies to an axe murderer. Frankly, if I were of Jewish heritage, I would be offended that the sort of abuse that my people had suffered at the hands of Hitler would be trivialized by comparing it to the much milder plight of these protesters.
The author was indiscrimentally arrested for refusing to allow the police to violate his civil rights. You can't search someone's backup, purse, fanny pack, etc. as the interior is considered private property. And you don't have to tell the police anything before you talk to a lawyer.
Based on my reading of the article, it doesn't appear that the author was at all arrested. Harrassed maybe, but not arrested. In his own words, he was
He also states earlier that he was wearing "orange target shooting lenses to tone down my tunnel vision." I don't know about you, but if somebody was hanging out in my neighborhood, dressed in camoflouge and olive green, wearing a device designed to hold grenades as well as target shooting lenses, I think I might be mildly concerned. In light of this, I have no difficulty understanding why the cop was interested in what the guy had in his vest. The author doesn't go out of his way to ease the tension of the situation with his response, either . . . where "I've got notebooks, granola bars, cigarettes, etc . .-------
Might I point out that if it indeed does go the way of the Macarena, it will start appearing at wedding receptions everywhere?
Of course, it might fare better in the hands of drunken revelers than it does in the hands of MS programmers . . .
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Its user base was much smaller than Slashdot, and as of the time the attacks started, discussion tended to be more "useful" than what we have here at Slashdot now, since it hadn't attracted the attention of most of the internet. I've been around Slashdot long enough that it reminds me of what this place used to be like in the early days (from my perspective, late 1997 - early 1998).
If you want to have an idea of what the flavor of Kuro5hin was, have a look at scoop.kuro5hin.org, the development site for the scoop engine, the back end of Kuro5hin. I assume the engine is still under development despite the shutdown, and I certainly hope it continues to be developed in the face of all this crap.
I'm not dumb enough or idealistic enough to have expected that Kuro5hin wouldn't have eventually been overrun with the same kind of gargage that Slashdot gets every day, and I don't expect that it will never happen again to sites like Slashdot or Kuro5hin again either. It's sad, but probably just a fact of life that we're just going to have to deal with idiots. Slashdot has shown that technical solutions aren't capable of solving other peoples' personal problems, even though they can seem to make them manageable. I guess the fact of the matter is that no amount of good coding (or bad coding either, for that matter) can keep a jackass from being a jackass.
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Disclaimer: it's been a while since I sat down behind a box running OS X Server, so I may be remembering some stuff wrong . . .
I've dealt with OS X Server a bit, and some of the standard text config files are still hanging out, but not very many. Almost everything you need to configure (well, that I needed to configure) was configurable through relatively intuitive GUI tools. From what I've heard, there are ways to accomplish administration from the command line, but I never played around enough to figure out how to do so. Documentation is scarce.
What I found most disconcerting about OS X Server was the way they "Mac-ified" the filesystem . . . by default, hard drives are mounted on the root with terribly descriptive names like "Server_HD3" instead of putting them somewhere really useful (i.e., make the second drive /usr/local/share or /usr/local or something . . .). Stuff like Apache ended up in /Local/Library/WebServer, CommuniGate Pro was in /Local/Communigate . . . apps were not installed in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, in some cases. It was just weird.
If there's anybody out there with NeXT experience, is this the way things were done? I know that OS X (from what I understand) draws heavily on NeXT (i.e., retaining the NetInfo stuff).
I know of several friends who have bought from Dell, and none have had trouble. Their quality seems to be well above average -- two friends have had their laptops for almost 1.5 years with no problems. One has had his for over two, no problems. Their good experience with Dell was one of the reasons I bought from them.
Maybe they treat companies different than individuals or something . . .
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was OK for a hosting company to not use generators and UPSs.
I know that keeping web servers up isn't the easiest thing in the world, from my past experience. It's not rocket science, but sometimes hardware failures happen. Sometimes you lost power, and not everbody can afford a backup generator to run their web server on.
However, I've never dealt with a hosting company with as many problems as CIHost.In the past two months or so, our web site has been offline at least 8 times for no apparent reason. For about two weeks, their bandwidth was almost completely saturated. And now, we've got this issue.
When we first heard about CIHost, we checked into them, and they were rated highly on at least two sites we checked. With this kind of service they sure won't keep a rating like that for long.