I'm guessing windows 2000 isn't one of the operating systems that will be patched?
I couldn't find details in the article, but since extended support has ended... RIP win2k:(
P.S. unless it's not affected by this? but I think there are previous vulnerabilities which haven't been patched too so maybe win2k is already dead and I missed the boat.
What's the point of eInk if they are able to use a screen that looks pretty much the same, with color?
An eInk interface is still pretty expensive to make (compared to standard LCD), and it's really hard to create a usable interface (uuggghhh scroll wheel)
Oh, I suppose it wasn't totally clear from the story. So they will have free access to all those books they mentioned, and they'll be able to find what they're looking for and print it?
This defeats the whole purpose of the library. You go there so you have free access to books. If you end up having to pay for them, how is that different from buying it anywhere else?
Sounds like they just wanted to get rid of the library and use the building space for something else. Oh yes, here we go:
Tracy and other administrators said the books took up too much space and that there was nowhere else on campus to stock them. So they decided to give their collection - aside from a few hundred children's books and valuable antiquarian works - to local schools and libraries.
Oh look, beancounters deciding to abandon the literary arts! What a surprise. Except not, since this is America after all. At least they donated them rather than burning them or throwing them out.
The sad part is they additionally justify this by saying the library wasn't used very much.
Tia Alliy, a 16-year-old junior, said she visits the library nearly every day, but only once looked for a book in the stacks. She's not alone. School officials said when they checked library records one day last spring only 48 books had been checked out, and 30 of those were children's books.
How can they possibly tell how the library is utilized by checkout rates? The whole point of a school library is to go there, find a book you need to reference, make copies of the relevant pages, and go.
Symantec is just going to use this to make computer users more afraid.
Computer users will think: "Oh man, look at all the evil schemes hackers are thinking of on the web! I'm really scared! But wait, Symantec knows all about what's going on the internet, so they can save us! Let's buy all their products so we don't have to be afraid anymore!"
In the end this looks like nothing more than a marketing ploy. If they were really interested in going after the "bad guys" (is that even possible when so many of them are in foreign countries??) they would be working with the FBI rather than using citizens.
Re:It still fails at my simple CSS test.
on
Opera 10.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Looks fine in Opera 10. Resizing does not change any orientation or positions relative to each other. Not sure what your problem is. If you're talking about the jaggedness while resizing, well, I dunno what you expect. How often do you have to browse a website by resizing your browser constantly?
That seems much more reasonable than the summary, but it appears that the actual story is referring to other sections which leave control much more open-ended (always very dangerous in legislation).
Unfortunately this law demonstrates a common illness in our government: it's really hard for a simple layman to know what a single law does.
Can we make a proposal to the government that they start adopting the KISS principle?
Maybe they make things so long and complicated just so the population at large has no freakin idea what they are doing... But at any rate that needs to change. We need bills that are readable and understandable by the common citizen to reduce the amount of fear generated by legislation like this.
At what point do you declare a company having a monopoly over a certain industry?
95% market share is not required to have monopolistic practices:
First it is necessary to determine whether a firm is dominant, or whether it behaves "to an appreciable extent independently of its competitors, customers and ultimately of its consumer."[6] As with collusive conduct, market shares are determined with reference to the particular market in which the firm and product in question is sold.
And in fact in the EU they have defined "dominant" marketshare to be 39.7% in one case (according to that wikipedia article). I'm guessing the law is a little different in the U.S. so you may be right, and maybe Apple is perfectly legit under the law in making this decision. Still pisses me off though!
Personally, I don't know much about the law, or monopolies in general. But it does seem to me that Apple is significantly behaving independently of it's consumers with regards to Google Voice. Their behavior with regards to the Google Voice application is arrogant and self-serving, and I hope someone is able to step in and at least slap them around a little.
Are there any contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T that affected Apple's decision in this matter?
Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application. No contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple's decision-making process in this matter.
Okay, so Apple is saying that no contract with AT&T affected their decision to remove the Google Voice application from the iTunes Store. But wait, what do they say in the _next section_!?
There is a provision in Apple's agreement with AT&T that obligates Apple not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T's cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP session without obtaining AT&T's permission.
WTF?
Then they go into "asscovering mode" by saying they don't know what VOIP is:
Apple does not know if there is a VoIP element in the way the Google Voice application routes calls and messages, and whether VoIP technology is used over the 3G network by the application. Apple has approved numerous standard VoIP applications (such as Skype, Nimbuzz and iCall) for use over WiFi, but not over AT&T's 3G network.
Personally, I don't have a google voice account. From what I've read, google voice actually uses the normal phone system (so it still requires that you have a phone account). It's just a service.
IMO, Apple doesn't have a leg to stand on. The only argument they have is that it replaces "core functionality" of the iPhone. That argument is completely bogus too, because that is just preventing competition (and may be considered monopolistic behavior). Sure, that's not unusual for Apple. But I think now their position is different. They aren't the underdog in the smartphone industry, they are one of the top dogs. They can't just do whatever they want while ignoring existing anti-trust legislation.
This is a really good summary of where we are now with this whole mess.
Now if only we could find somebody willing to grow a spine and slap those big ISPs around to remind them how they got to be where they are! (Like you said: They didn't get here with only their own capital)
It's all about the regional monopolies. With regional monopolies, they are able to control prices within certain regions since there are no other options. Why would they want to spend money expanding/improving service in regional markets where they have no competition?
Those net neutrality rules would possibly threaten those regional monopolies... so they're like "F THAT! I want my control!"
For example, consider the recent obscenely low bandwidth caps in rural areas where there is no other option. That's a prime example of the power regional monopoly gives these companies.
Also as a side note, I find it hilarious that they think they can justify instating bandwidth caps when they apparently have more then enough capital. Wow, where did the argument that they were losing money due to excessive users go?
I can't speak for you, but I know that when I switched from PCs (running linux), the main reason was because I was tired of having to buy new components/new machines every year. It seemed like the hardware I bought just didn't last like machines used to. In the 90's and early naughts, you could rely on a laptop lasting for a few years. Now it seems like the components are so flimsy (especially on the cheaper ones) that under somewhat heavy usage they just fall apart.
Apple provides awesome support through apple care (well worth the investment if you are a heavy user of laptops, e.g. carting it around everywhere and actually using it). Sure, if all you do is take your laptop to work and back, any laptop would really suffice. It's not undergoing much wear and tear. But if you're traveling and putting a lot of strain on it, I find the policies Apple has are really good.
Granted, some of their laptops (esp the sub-1000 macbook with the plastic shell) had issues under heavy usage, but all the fixes were free under apple care...
That's probably not much different than other companies now, so maybe Dell or something might offer a better total package, but honestly I can't stand the sight of some of their machines.. they are so clunky looking.
Also, being on Mac OS X, I really appreciate not having to tinker constantly, or have to deal with broken packages, broken configs, hardware on newer machines not working properly with linux... ugh.
Mac OS X has it's fair share of issues but from my own personal experience, I have not had any problems. I kind of miss the power and customizability of linux, but NOT the endless fiddling!
As many posters have already stated, this is a good thing for iPhone owners if the FCC follows through.
I'm more interested in seeing the reasons for all the Application rejections though. In all honesty, Apple made a huge mistake by making the reasoning for app rejection secret. App rejection should be made public. The whole process should be available, perhaps in a format similar to mozilla's bug tracker.
What reason is there to keep Application acceptance/rejection secret? Honestly I really can't think of a good reason.
Nevermind, I read the actual article (wow), and the version played on the mp3 player is 320kbps...
I could see a use for this if they have a version that is lossless with a low quality version (say, 160 or 192kbps). The process of transferring the file to the portable mp3 player would extract the lower quality version and only store that data on the player (thus allowing the lossless data on the desktop, and the low quality space saving version on the player).
I'm guessing the format can't really do that so yeah, I guess it is pretty useless.
I imagine the lower quality audio reduces the amount of battery required to process and play the audio. I'm not too sure about this though. Anyone know about this?
For example, does the audio processor on a portable mp3 player draw more power for higher bitrate files than lower bitrate files?
I can't dictate the terms for your services nd your resources, that's true. However, your client side code is running in MY BROWSER consuming MY RESOURCES.
That is the point Stallman is making. I really think he should have provided more examples.
He doesn't care what you do on the server side. Just provide us with messages to the client (us) that enables us to provide whatever interface to the data that we want.
I posted something similar below but you said this much better.
Stallman really could have focused more on detailing WHY non-OSS webapps are a threat, rather than jumping to how we should solve it.
The separation of the OSI and Stallman (as well as some of his stances on oss issues) has made a lot of people demonize Stallman, but he is still a very smart person who can see potential pitfalls where others can't. I think it's silly for people to automatically write him off as an insane hippy (and since when has that become a bad thing??)
Stallman is advocating a more modular method of loading Javascript webapps.
An example of what he's envisioning: If Gmail was OSS, it would announce to the browser the modular scripts it was using to perform each operation, and the source would provided under a specific license. The browser would be configurable to load alternate web scripts to replace the functionality provided by google.
What Stallman is advocating is essentially turning webapps into applications where the user can control the application, rather than the service provider.
This would rely on OSS providers using the standard object passing model between server and client.
I'm not too sure if his idea would work too well, given how reluctant most non-OSS providers are to give away the code to their main applications.
It's a very gray area to tread, so many websites really can't be considered to be like traditional desktop applications, but they exist in some middle ground between traditional web sites and desktop apps.
I think he has an interesting point but he didn't really express it well. If he provided more examples and what the real world implications of relying on and migrating towards proprietary javascript web apps for daily productivity, I think more people would understand.
I for one think the message upon logon is not intrusive at all and is quite tasteful (oppose that to other addons that popup messages saying they want donations).
What I think you should do is not request donations in the message. Just say that QuestHelper is going to die without more money.
You're not actually asking for money, just saying the truth...
If people want to donate they can find it on your site.
I've had an iPhone from the day after release. This story sounds like the customers are lying through their teeth. For one, automatic email check is off by default. The main point that I would like to make is that the automatic email check does NOT DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE MAIL MESSAGE!
The iPhone simply checks the mail server and determines if there is new mail. I think it also downloads the email headers. But it does NOT download email attachments unless you actually open it! This goes for IMAP as well as POP (I have.mac and gmail on my iphone). There is NO WAY these guys could have racked up that amount of usage without actually going into the mail app and reading their mail. This smells like a fishy story to me. Sounds like they are trying to make excuses for actually reading their email overseas.
If I'm wrong about this, please let me know... But that's what I have observed with my phone. Unless I actually open the Mail app on the bar, it does not attempt to download entire new messages.
However, I do think it is false advertising that "unlimited" internet access isn't really unlimited if you're not in an approved region. One thing that would be nice is if the iPhone gave a warning if you were roaming, or some kind of indicator to that effect.
Wait, what OS are you using? You know Flash 9 is available for linux, right? And, coincidentally, works a lot better than 7.
It would have been helpful if you mentioned what OS you're using...
Otherwise, I totally agree. Flash is pretty evil and developers tend to rely on it far too heavily for things that are more appropriate for DHTML. Still, there are some pretty nice things it can do in some circumstances. Personally, I'd prefer Flash to Silverlight.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, there's no software fix possible for PEBKAC vulnerabilities.
I'm guessing windows 2000 isn't one of the operating systems that will be patched?
:(
I couldn't find details in the article, but since extended support has ended... RIP win2k
P.S. unless it's not affected by this? but I think there are previous vulnerabilities which haven't been patched too so maybe win2k is already dead and I missed the boat.
And now we see what administrators (and parents) truly see the purpose of school to be:
Publicly funded daycare.
What's the point of eInk if they are able to use a screen that looks pretty much the same, with color?
An eInk interface is still pretty expensive to make (compared to standard LCD), and it's really hard to create a usable interface (uuggghhh scroll wheel)
It won't be a problem if they use a screen from pixelqi: http://www.pixelqi.com/
Oh, I suppose it wasn't totally clear from the story. So they will have free access to all those books they mentioned, and they'll be able to find what they're looking for and print it?
If so maybe it won't be such a bad deal.
Sounds like they just wanted to get rid of the library and use the building space for something else. Oh yes, here we go:
Oh look, beancounters deciding to abandon the literary arts! What a surprise. Except not, since this is America after all. At least they donated them rather than burning them or throwing them out.
The sad part is they additionally justify this by saying the library wasn't used very much.
How can they possibly tell how the library is utilized by checkout rates? The whole point of a school library is to go there, find a book you need to reference, make copies of the relevant pages, and go.
Symantec is just going to use this to make computer users more afraid.
Computer users will think: "Oh man, look at all the evil schemes hackers are thinking of on the web! I'm really scared! But wait, Symantec knows all about what's going on the internet, so they can save us! Let's buy all their products so we don't have to be afraid anymore!"
In the end this looks like nothing more than a marketing ploy. If they were really interested in going after the "bad guys" (is that even possible when so many of them are in foreign countries??) they would be working with the FBI rather than using citizens.
Looks fine in Opera 10. Resizing does not change any orientation or positions relative to each other. Not sure what your problem is. If you're talking about the jaggedness while resizing, well, I dunno what you expect. How often do you have to browse a website by resizing your browser constantly?
That seems much more reasonable than the summary, but it appears that the actual story is referring to other sections which leave control much more open-ended (always very dangerous in legislation).
Unfortunately this law demonstrates a common illness in our government: it's really hard for a simple layman to know what a single law does.
Can we make a proposal to the government that they start adopting the KISS principle?
Maybe they make things so long and complicated just so the population at large has no freakin idea what they are doing... But at any rate that needs to change. We need bills that are readable and understandable by the common citizen to reduce the amount of fear generated by legislation like this.
Exactly my thoughts on this. It'd be like a giant backdoor into the internet that everyone knows exists. Prime target for hackers/crackers.
I like my internet distributed and robust. It's decentralized for a reason.
95% market share is not required to have monopolistic practices:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Law
And in fact in the EU they have defined "dominant" marketshare to be 39.7% in one case (according to that wikipedia article). I'm guessing the law is a little different in the U.S. so you may be right, and maybe Apple is perfectly legit under the law in making this decision. Still pisses me off though!
Personally, I don't know much about the law, or monopolies in general. But it does seem to me that Apple is significantly behaving independently of it's consumers with regards to Google Voice. Their behavior with regards to the Google Voice application is arrogant and self-serving, and I hope someone is able to step in and at least slap them around a little.
For example:
Okay, so Apple is saying that no contract with AT&T affected their decision to remove the Google Voice application from the iTunes Store. But wait, what do they say in the _next section_!?
WTF?
Then they go into "asscovering mode" by saying they don't know what VOIP is:
Personally, I don't have a google voice account. From what I've read, google voice actually uses the normal phone system (so it still requires that you have a phone account). It's just a service.
IMO, Apple doesn't have a leg to stand on. The only argument they have is that it replaces "core functionality" of the iPhone. That argument is completely bogus too, because that is just preventing competition (and may be considered monopolistic behavior). Sure, that's not unusual for Apple. But I think now their position is different. They aren't the underdog in the smartphone industry, they are one of the top dogs. They can't just do whatever they want while ignoring existing anti-trust legislation.
This is a really good summary of where we are now with this whole mess.
Now if only we could find somebody willing to grow a spine and slap those big ISPs around to remind them how they got to be where they are! (Like you said: They didn't get here with only their own capital)
It's all about the regional monopolies. With regional monopolies, they are able to control prices within certain regions since there are no other options. Why would they want to spend money expanding/improving service in regional markets where they have no competition?
Those net neutrality rules would possibly threaten those regional monopolies... so they're like "F THAT! I want my control!"
For example, consider the recent obscenely low bandwidth caps in rural areas where there is no other option. That's a prime example of the power regional monopoly gives these companies.
Also as a side note, I find it hilarious that they think they can justify instating bandwidth caps when they apparently have more then enough capital. Wow, where did the argument that they were losing money due to excessive users go?
I can't speak for you, but I know that when I switched from PCs (running linux), the main reason was because I was tired of having to buy new components/new machines every year. It seemed like the hardware I bought just didn't last like machines used to. In the 90's and early naughts, you could rely on a laptop lasting for a few years. Now it seems like the components are so flimsy (especially on the cheaper ones) that under somewhat heavy usage they just fall apart.
Apple provides awesome support through apple care (well worth the investment if you are a heavy user of laptops, e.g. carting it around everywhere and actually using it). Sure, if all you do is take your laptop to work and back, any laptop would really suffice. It's not undergoing much wear and tear. But if you're traveling and putting a lot of strain on it, I find the policies Apple has are really good.
Granted, some of their laptops (esp the sub-1000 macbook with the plastic shell) had issues under heavy usage, but all the fixes were free under apple care...
That's probably not much different than other companies now, so maybe Dell or something might offer a better total package, but honestly I can't stand the sight of some of their machines.. they are so clunky looking.
Also, being on Mac OS X, I really appreciate not having to tinker constantly, or have to deal with broken packages, broken configs, hardware on newer machines not working properly with linux... ugh.
Mac OS X has it's fair share of issues but from my own personal experience, I have not had any problems. I kind of miss the power and customizability of linux, but NOT the endless fiddling!
As many posters have already stated, this is a good thing for iPhone owners if the FCC follows through.
I'm more interested in seeing the reasons for all the Application rejections though. In all honesty, Apple made a huge mistake by making the reasoning for app rejection secret. App rejection should be made public. The whole process should be available, perhaps in a format similar to mozilla's bug tracker.
What reason is there to keep Application acceptance/rejection secret? Honestly I really can't think of a good reason.
Nevermind, I read the actual article (wow), and the version played on the mp3 player is 320kbps...
I could see a use for this if they have a version that is lossless with a low quality version (say, 160 or 192kbps). The process of transferring the file to the portable mp3 player would extract the lower quality version and only store that data on the player (thus allowing the lossless data on the desktop, and the low quality space saving version on the player).
I'm guessing the format can't really do that so yeah, I guess it is pretty useless.
I imagine the lower quality audio reduces the amount of battery required to process and play the audio. I'm not too sure about this though. Anyone know about this?
For example, does the audio processor on a portable mp3 player draw more power for higher bitrate files than lower bitrate files?
I can't dictate the terms for your services nd your resources, that's true. However, your client side code is running in MY BROWSER consuming MY RESOURCES.
That is the point Stallman is making. I really think he should have provided more examples.
He doesn't care what you do on the server side. Just provide us with messages to the client (us) that enables us to provide whatever interface to the data that we want.
I posted something similar below but you said this much better.
Stallman really could have focused more on detailing WHY non-OSS webapps are a threat, rather than jumping to how we should solve it.
The separation of the OSI and Stallman (as well as some of his stances on oss issues) has made a lot of people demonize Stallman, but he is still a very smart person who can see potential pitfalls where others can't. I think it's silly for people to automatically write him off as an insane hippy (and since when has that become a bad thing??)
Stallman is advocating a more modular method of loading Javascript webapps.
An example of what he's envisioning: If Gmail was OSS, it would announce to the browser the modular scripts it was using to perform each operation, and the source would provided under a specific license. The browser would be configurable to load alternate web scripts to replace the functionality provided by google.
What Stallman is advocating is essentially turning webapps into applications where the user can control the application, rather than the service provider.
This would rely on OSS providers using the standard object passing model between server and client.
I'm not too sure if his idea would work too well, given how reluctant most non-OSS providers are to give away the code to their main applications.
It's a very gray area to tread, so many websites really can't be considered to be like traditional desktop applications, but they exist in some middle ground between traditional web sites and desktop apps.
I think he has an interesting point but he didn't really express it well. If he provided more examples and what the real world implications of relying on and migrating towards proprietary javascript web apps for daily productivity, I think more people would understand.
I for one think the message upon logon is not intrusive at all and is quite tasteful (oppose that to other addons that popup messages saying they want donations). What I think you should do is not request donations in the message. Just say that QuestHelper is going to die without more money. You're not actually asking for money, just saying the truth... If people want to donate they can find it on your site.
I've had an iPhone from the day after release. This story sounds like the customers are lying through their teeth. For one, automatic email check is off by default. The main point that I would like to make is that the automatic email check does NOT DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE MAIL MESSAGE!
.mac and gmail on my iphone). There is NO WAY these guys could have racked up that amount of usage without actually going into the mail app and reading their mail. This smells like a fishy story to me. Sounds like they are trying to make excuses for actually reading their email overseas.
The iPhone simply checks the mail server and determines if there is new mail. I think it also downloads the email headers. But it does NOT download email attachments unless you actually open it! This goes for IMAP as well as POP (I have
If I'm wrong about this, please let me know... But that's what I have observed with my phone. Unless I actually open the Mail app on the bar, it does not attempt to download entire new messages.
However, I do think it is false advertising that "unlimited" internet access isn't really unlimited if you're not in an approved region. One thing that would be nice is if the iPhone gave a warning if you were roaming, or some kind of indicator to that effect.
Wait, what OS are you using? You know Flash 9 is available for linux, right? And, coincidentally, works a lot better than 7.
It would have been helpful if you mentioned what OS you're using...
Otherwise, I totally agree. Flash is pretty evil and developers tend to rely on it far too heavily for things that are more appropriate for DHTML. Still, there are some pretty nice things it can do in some circumstances. Personally, I'd prefer Flash to Silverlight.