How long will it take before MS realises that they are selling WinXP at a bulk rate to a competitor to the XBox and just kills the company off?
After all, they didn't hesitate to terminate the UK cellular telephone company who was making a WinCE based phone when they realised that they could get a better deal in Korea, if they stole Sendo's IP by bankrupting them.
They didn't hesitate to screw with Sharp's Windows license when they started to ship the Zaurus.
I don't expect this company to have a bright future.
This story posted for your enjoyment by a KDE Zealot who wanted to kill the Gnoppix project and melt it's webserver beore it had a chance to gain in popularity.
Wouldn't it be better to blame those resposible for Outlook for Outlook worms? (Be it users who fail to patch, admins to deploy it, Microsoft for writing it on one drunken weekend that involved a lot of monkey hookers and a boat load of cocaine.)
It's certainly better than blaming a _client_ problem on the _network_ which when it was designed didn't anticipate (understandably) a near monoculture of such vunerable products being deployed.
If someone sells you something and makes overgrand claims ("Stable" - Microsoft, "Access free music" - Kazaa) they should be elligible for at least actual damages, not only very limited liability.
If companies could make claims with impunity to sell you something and not fear the consequences we would see cars sold as "safe at 200 mph even if you have never driven before". The same thing should apply to software companies.
Obiously in cases of user stupidity this should be ajusted accordingly (so users cannot complain that their machine went wrong when they gave out root passwords and their IP address on IRC), but otherwise if you want to make a claim about your product you should be legally obliged to stand by it.
My local library blocks out anything to do with pregnancy (like the council run pregnancy advice service), anything with chat in the domain name (like the casual chat web forum) but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.
That'll teach me not to RTFA. It seems that this filter would actually improve this situation and make it slightly more sane - assuming that it was set up correctly.
If internet filters are going to cost money, then maybe schools and libraries will stop using them.
My local library blocks out anything to do with pregnancy (like the council run pregnancy advice service), anything with chat in the domain name (like the casual chat web forum) but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.
The only news that could be better is that someone had patented spam emailling and was taking every spammer in the world to court.
When people can see that the marginal cost f an extra copy is 0, no one likes to pay for these things - look at music, not many people (10m at iTunes vs 50m file sharers in the US) choose to pay for something that they cannot hold, whereas many people buy CDs.
When you buy a book you feel that you get something which is worth what you pay for it - a solid item that you will always have. It's reassuring and feels like good value. An ebook is neither of those things.
There is also the danger of the possiblity that more elecctronic books could cause something like 'Bookster' (sic) to come about, something that the publishers really wouldn't want to hapen.
Maybe if ebooks were $0.99 they might sell, and still leave a market for traditional media. Until that happens I can't see them doing very well at all.
Scientists and Engineers build tools. How you use them is up to you.
Don't blame us for building a mega death ray just because your government happens to want to use it for terror, it could just as easily be used for keeping the peace instead.
The V22 is _finally_ getting to the mature design stage. They removed the problems that killed people (mostly, no a/c is perfect) like the inability to handle the loss of ground effect under one rotor.
Now they have an a/c which can not only take off vertically (or very sharply with high load), fly at 400mph and carry a ton of stuff. For it's role it beats the shit out of any helicopter (fast enough to do the job more fuel efficient, heavier loads,) and and cargo plane (no need for a JATO unit, can't run a C5 off a carrier).
This new technology is (like the tilt rotor concept was) unproven, and requires a complex set of engineering decisions to be made to get it to fly safley (like the tilt rotor). In 20 years, with a few deaths, it might be great - but the tilt rotor is here now.
FWIW there is now a commercial version of the V22 in prototype, the BA commuter aircraft. Small enough to land on helipads, but fast enough for intercity (and in Europe) international work. There have also been plans for a gunship version of the V22, with a massive rotary cannon and the ability to fly very slow it's even going to make the A-10 look a bit lightweight:oD
Thanks to £25 WiFi cards and the ease of turning on ICS with WinXP, my IT department are bugging for the money to buy a 2.4Ghz magnatron so that we don't get the whole towns virus/pr0n/hacking/general trafic as well!
Exemptions are being granted on a case by case basis, and a minimum requirement is something like Kerebos+IPSec+a very good IPchains config, but lots of people don't even seem to have considered they might need permission and just plug in wireless routers.
A good scientific calc replacement for the Zaurus is Qplot. Also available there is the list of changes you need to make to get it to run on Open Zaurus.
It doesn't do everything yet, but it is OSS so that you can add your own functionality. If that's still not enough for you, there is a build of Octave for the Zaurus so you can load Matlab toolboxes.
I picked Gentoo because it was Free and free, and because emerge has IME one big advantage over APT - one well updated, consistant, all encompasing, repositry.
OTOH my laptop runs RedHat, because I needed at least one machine running it to stay current with where they dump configs (it's the distro they use at work). Coupled with Apt-RPM it's competent enough, and I have no major problems with the performance.
So yeah, I have to agree with the article - you may like it one way, others may want to do theit own thing. No matter what you chose, you (probably) have binary compatibility, so who gives a sh!t about the holy wars, just as long as you aren't running Windows:D
In the UK refusing or being unable to hand over encryption keys on demand from law enforcement is a crime I believe. (IANAL.)
I know this affects things like GNUPG too (I have my encryption keys on a USB pen drive) but it does mean that if you fling your key store into the river when the police come calling they can still arrest you - good if your crime was greater (kiddie pr0n or plotting assasination) I suppose, but pretty much a losing proposition for everyone else.
It seems that the hardware manufacturers can see that the money is with the pirates and not with the media companies.
It wouldn't surprise me if they ended up killing off DRM by offering workarounds and personal encryption based products, because that is what consumers are demanding.
The only problem is that these "dragon chips" are about equivilent to your average pentium 2
Confucious say, he who would walk far must still take first step.
Besides, experience with a P2 equivalent is a lot better than nothing when trying to design a P4 killer - not to mention the fact that Linux can quite comfortably be tailored to run on a 500mhz machine - Open Office might be a bit painful, but AbiWord will fly.
It annoys me when legal types with an insufficient grasp of technology create laws without realising the consequences. Laws should have to pass through some kind of expert panel first.
And if you don't know enough about ASP to disable cookies, perhaps your work should have been passed through some kind of expert panel before they let you lose on the internet?
It's always irritating to get a site trying to set a cookie without saying why, and I _always_ block them if they do that. Places like slashdot, who give a reasonable reason for having a cookie set, get unblocked... otherwise they can suck hind tit.
Will we now see websites where any user running IE is banned, because all the other web browser users can be assumed to have made a choice about accepting cookies or not?
Finally, the hackers can get someone they like into office. It might even mean the end of the two party system, when mysteriously 300 million (out of 210m) vote for a third party;o)
Most accidents are caused by human error, the second most popular cause being mechanical failure.
Software failure is almost bottom of the list, mostly because of the extreme testing that is done. Nearly all software for FBW systems (especially full authority FBW systems) is written in critical ADA. This is no VBA-on-Windows solution you know.
The sooner they get the human out of the loop, the better. (And this goes for the programming too, more and more of that is being done by computers.)
Please recycle your electrons responsibly. It's a great shame that our e-landfil sites are filling up with so many bits and bytes that could otherwise be reused.
If we don't take care to conserve our resources now, in 20 years time there might not be enough free data to allow any new films, music or even slashdot posts, thus crippling society as we know it.
The USA is also insisting that any country which enjoys visa free travel into the USA also meets these requirements - affecting places like the UK.
Not that visa free travel is the same as less hassle, I was almost deported crossing the Mexican border into the US last year for failling to carry enough proof that I was a student. Apparently the only thing they will accept officially is proof that you have paid the fees for the next semester - even for countries like the UK where not all students have to pay university fees:o)
Slashdot Mirror
How long will it take before MS realises that they are selling WinXP at a bulk rate to a competitor to the XBox and just kills the company off?
After all, they didn't hesitate to terminate the UK cellular telephone company who was making a WinCE based phone when they realised that they could get a better deal in Korea, if they stole Sendo's IP by bankrupting them.
They didn't hesitate to screw with Sharp's Windows license when they started to ship the Zaurus.
I don't expect this company to have a bright future.
This story posted for your enjoyment by a KDE Zealot who wanted to kill the Gnoppix project and melt it's webserver beore it had a chance to gain in popularity.
Wouldn't it be better to blame those resposible for Outlook for Outlook worms? (Be it users who fail to patch, admins to deploy it, Microsoft for writing it on one drunken weekend that involved a lot of monkey hookers and a boat load of cocaine.)
It's certainly better than blaming a _client_ problem on the _network_ which when it was designed didn't anticipate (understandably) a near monoculture of such vunerable products being deployed.
Up to a point a software maker should be liable.
If someone sells you something and makes overgrand claims ("Stable" - Microsoft, "Access free music" - Kazaa) they should be elligible for at least actual damages, not only very limited liability.
If companies could make claims with impunity to sell you something and not fear the consequences we would see cars sold as "safe at 200 mph even if you have never driven before". The same thing should apply to software companies.
Obiously in cases of user stupidity this should be ajusted accordingly (so users cannot complain that their machine went wrong when they gave out root passwords and their IP address on IRC), but otherwise if you want to make a claim about your product you should be legally obliged to stand by it.
My local library blocks out anything to do with pregnancy (like the council run pregnancy advice service), anything with chat in the domain name (like the casual chat web forum) but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.
That'll teach me not to RTFA. It seems that this filter would actually improve this situation and make it slightly more sane - assuming that it was set up correctly.
If internet filters are going to cost money, then maybe schools and libraries will stop using them.
My local library blocks out anything to do with pregnancy (like the council run pregnancy advice service), anything with chat in the domain name (like the casual chat web forum) but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.
The only news that could be better is that someone had patented spam emailling and was taking every spammer in the world to court.
When people can see that the marginal cost f an extra copy is 0, no one likes to pay for these things - look at music, not many people (10m at iTunes vs 50m file sharers in the US) choose to pay for something that they cannot hold, whereas many people buy CDs.
When you buy a book you feel that you get something which is worth what you pay for it - a solid item that you will always have. It's reassuring and feels like good value. An ebook is neither of those things.
There is also the danger of the possiblity that more elecctronic books could cause something like 'Bookster' (sic) to come about, something that the publishers really wouldn't want to hapen.
Maybe if ebooks were $0.99 they might sell, and still leave a market for traditional media. Until that happens I can't see them doing very well at all.
Scientists and Engineers build tools. How you use them is up to you.
Don't blame us for building a mega death ray just because your government happens to want to use it for terror, it could just as easily be used for keeping the peace instead.
Blockbuster (Overpriced American movie rental store)
They have now extended their reach, and are an overpriced movie rental store in many other countries too.
No need for the V22? Hardly.
:oD
The V22 is _finally_ getting to the mature design stage. They removed the problems that killed people (mostly, no a/c is perfect) like the inability to handle the loss of ground effect under one rotor.
Now they have an a/c which can not only take off vertically (or very sharply with high load), fly at 400mph and carry a ton of stuff. For it's role it beats the shit out of any helicopter (fast enough to do the job more fuel efficient, heavier loads,) and and cargo plane (no need for a JATO unit, can't run a C5 off a carrier).
This new technology is (like the tilt rotor concept was) unproven, and requires a complex set of engineering decisions to be made to get it to fly safley (like the tilt rotor). In 20 years, with a few deaths, it might be great - but the tilt rotor is here now.
FWIW there is now a commercial version of the V22 in prototype, the BA commuter aircraft. Small enough to land on helipads, but fast enough for intercity (and in Europe) international work. There have also been plans for a gunship version of the V22, with a massive rotary cannon and the ability to fly very slow it's even going to make the A-10 look a bit lightweight
Does that mail policy code sound like an evil bit to you too?
Tagged as commercial, in the bin if goes!
Thanks to £25 WiFi cards and the ease of turning on ICS with WinXP, my IT department are bugging for the money to buy a 2.4Ghz magnatron so that we don't get the whole towns virus/pr0n/hacking/general trafic as well!
Exemptions are being granted on a case by case basis, and a minimum requirement is something like Kerebos+IPSec+a very good IPchains config, but lots of people don't even seem to have considered they might need permission and just plug in wireless routers.
A good scientific calc replacement for the Zaurus is Qplot. Also available there is the list of changes you need to make to get it to run on Open Zaurus.
It doesn't do everything yet, but it is OSS so that you can add your own functionality. If that's still not enough for you, there is a build of Octave for the Zaurus so you can load Matlab toolboxes.
I picked Gentoo because it was Free and free, and because emerge has IME one big advantage over APT - one well updated, consistant, all encompasing, repositry.
:D
OTOH my laptop runs RedHat, because I needed at least one machine running it to stay current with where they dump configs (it's the distro they use at work). Coupled with Apt-RPM it's competent enough, and I have no major problems with the performance.
So yeah, I have to agree with the article - you may like it one way, others may want to do theit own thing. No matter what you chose, you (probably) have binary compatibility, so who gives a sh!t about the holy wars, just as long as you aren't running Windows
In the UK refusing or being unable to hand over encryption keys on demand from law enforcement is a crime I believe. (IANAL.)
I know this affects things like GNUPG too (I have my encryption keys on a USB pen drive) but it does mean that if you fling your key store into the river when the police come calling they can still arrest you - good if your crime was greater (kiddie pr0n or plotting assasination) I suppose, but pretty much a losing proposition for everyone else.
It seems that the hardware manufacturers can see that the money is with the pirates and not with the media companies.
It wouldn't surprise me if they ended up killing off DRM by offering workarounds and personal encryption based products, because that is what consumers are demanding.
The only problem is that these "dragon chips" are about equivilent to your average pentium 2
Confucious say, he who would walk far must still take first step.
Besides, experience with a P2 equivalent is a lot better than nothing when trying to design a P4 killer - not to mention the fact that Linux can quite comfortably be tailored to run on a 500mhz machine - Open Office might be a bit painful, but AbiWord will fly.
It annoys me when legal types with an insufficient grasp of technology create laws without realising the consequences. Laws should have to pass through some kind of expert panel first.
And if you don't know enough about ASP to disable cookies, perhaps your work should have been passed through some kind of expert panel before they let you lose on the internet?
It's always irritating to get a site trying to set a cookie without saying why, and I _always_ block them if they do that. Places like slashdot, who give a reasonable reason for having a cookie set, get unblocked... otherwise they can suck hind tit.
Will we now see websites where any user running IE is banned, because all the other web browser users can be assumed to have made a choice about accepting cookies or not?
I was trying to find out if the Linux version of Real player was supported, but it blocks anyone not in the US.
Guess they haven't quite got the hang of the fact that the biggest advantage of the internet is it's worldwide reach yet.
Finally, the hackers can get someone they like into office. It might even mean the end of the two party system, when mysteriously 300 million (out of 210m) vote for a third party ;o)
Most accidents are caused by human error, the second most popular cause being mechanical failure.
Software failure is almost bottom of the list, mostly because of the extreme testing that is done. Nearly all software for FBW systems (especially full authority FBW systems) is written in critical ADA. This is no VBA-on-Windows solution you know.
The sooner they get the human out of the loop, the better. (And this goes for the programming too, more and more of that is being done by computers.)
Please recycle your electrons responsibly. It's a great shame that our e-landfil sites are filling up with so many bits and bytes that could otherwise be reused.
If we don't take care to conserve our resources now, in 20 years time there might not be enough free data to allow any new films, music or even slashdot posts, thus crippling society as we know it.
The USA is also insisting that any country which enjoys visa free travel into the USA also meets these requirements - affecting places like the UK.
:o)
Not that visa free travel is the same as less hassle, I was almost deported crossing the Mexican border into the US last year for failling to carry enough proof that I was a student. Apparently the only thing they will accept officially is proof that you have paid the fees for the next semester - even for countries like the UK where not all students have to pay university fees