This is a free country and if people want to believe in creationism then they damn well have the right to do so without someone coming along and making hints that it's all the creationists fault that the world isn't some atheistic utopia.
Absolutely. If people wish to hamstring themselves in such a way that "magic" becomes a valid explanation of things ( even divine magic ), by all means we should let them.
However, those same people lose the right to complain that we are losing our technological edge in the world. If you want to be part of the problem, you are welcome to do so. You don't get to complain about said problem at the same time, however.
Me and most of my friends hate David Hasslehoff. You could say Americans love Hasslehoff since you like watching his naked body on Baywatch so much (American TV show, no?)
This is actually from an SNL skit from years ago. It always made me crack up, and I have yet to figure out why exactly. I've since been meaning to change it to reflect something significant or deep, but have yet to come up with anything beyond random political BS of one sort or another.
This should ( rightly so ) piss off external entities ( ie: foriegn nations ) enough to have them setup alternative roots. And I, for one, will be using those as apposed to the "secure" ones.
Granted, I won't be fully trusting the information from either set, so it's not as if my system security is dependant on it.
You are both right and wrong, in a sense. You are right that he should know what's going on under the hood. You are wrong in that he shouldn't use it. Program execution speed should ( almost always ) take a backseat to code readability. If the organization uses strcat, there is a very strong and valid argument why he should still be using it.
You take his quote out of context to make it sound like he's saying the software has very few features.
I quoted just about EVERYTHING in his post. It would be very difficult to take it out of context. I propose, instead, that he didn't say what he meant to say. PVR stands for Personal Video Recorder. Not Personal TV Recorder. His quote once again;
A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.
minimally functional is what I'd call commercial DVR ( there's that pesky acronym again ) solutions, and that's what I take issue with. Now, if you are proposing that he meant to say this;
A set-top DVR used explicitly for HD content is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-function system.
I would not have an argument, as I haven't played with the HD scene on myth. It exists, and by it's very existence it implies a certain usability, but I know nothing about it.
A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.
Never used Myth, huh?
Myth is constantly talked about as far as PVRs ar the like are concerned. What is often ignored is, frankly, the best part of the project; The videos section. I can "backup" a DVD on to disk, then play that from my myth box at the click of a button. A VERY handy thing to have with a house full of children. No more lost DVDs, scratched or otherwise unwatchable discs. Just quick and simple click of the button.
Oh, this method provides you with the opportunity to remove the ads before the movie as well. Disney being the worst offender.
So do yourself a favor and learn about a software package before you badmouth it. I just pointed out something that no commercial PVR will likely EVER have, yet is so damn useful it could be it's own product.
Now, that it appears very likely that in 2008, Democrats will control both houses of congress and the presidency
The Dems still have to prove themselves to make control of both the house and the senate likely; To say nothing of the presidency. Who's in the lead for the democratic nomination anyway? Clinton? Obama?
Clinton simply isn't electable, and I don't believe Obama will ever get the support he needs to come close to touching the white house.
Users Your downloads will be simpler, faster, and more reliable...without you doing anything differently.
Bittorrent already does this just about as effectively as this idea will.
Developers It's a neutral framework that doesn't favor any one program, Operating system, or group, and is easy to implement.
Once again, bittorrent is just as easy. And its OS agnostic.
Site owners Resume and recover from single servers going down.
Sorta an issue with bittorrent, but not really. House the seed in multiple locations. Or better yet, have your clients take a copy of the seed and share that with their peers in the case of a downed server.
Downloads can automatically be split between sources (mirrors/P2P) and all downloads will be verified. More people can get access to your files easier, more reliably, even at the most heavily accessed times. This means less retries and cheaper bandwidth and support bills. Saving money = good.
Once again, this is where bittorrent shines. A lot of people going after your files? Great, that means it's got a better availability on your torrent, more bandwidth for everyone.
To me, this looks like a solution in search of a problem.
A variety of comments posted already spout doom and gloom regarding email systems. When the truth of the matter is this; Spam is not that big of a deal if you use the proper techniques. I work for a small town city government, about 200 employees with mailboxes. Using about 4 different techniques ( from connection dropping based on connection metrics to content filtering of the actual message to tarpitting connections based on characteristics ), most of my female co-workers never see spam in their inbox, despite their damnedest attempts. Other admins will know what I'm talking about.
These five steps are good for your upper managers to know, but let's face it; They won't read that and understand it. Instead, use colorful graphs to highlight the work you have done to stop the spam, highlighting why certain online behavior is bad.
"The problem of unauthorized camcording of films in Canadian theatres is now nearing crisis levels," the group complained.
Crisis levels? People are dying?
No, it's a fucking camcorder recording of a hollywood movie. All the bad things about watching the movie in the theator in the privacy of your own home.
If this is really a problem, it's because the movies suck and early word getting out about how bad the movie is is hurting sales. Simple solution to that; Stop making crap movies.
I hate it when our politicians do it, and I hate it just as much when you do it.
The summary ( and link ) say nothing about schools. Putting that in the title is egging for a flame war. It makes you ( the submitter and editor ) look like an idiot.
But those same companies are at the mercy of consumers, just like anybody else. If there is enough bad press due to the poor security of the product, the company will be forced to fix things. This is especially true for companies that sell software to large corporations.
You really think that. It's cute. Now let me tell you how it works in the real world; Software has such a percieved cost for development ( factual or not ) that once a company comes out with something that sorta works, no one else is willing to jump ship. On top of that, the companies that are the first to market typically focus more on vendor lock in than features or stability. Thus, you have mini-market monopolies, where the customer is at the mercy of their developer ( through piss poor decisions made years ago. Thank you, upper management ), sometimes even if there is an alternative that is better.
So you'll get situations where there is a piece of software installed, and people know not to click a certain thing or it'll blow up the application. I work with an application on a daily basis that is still running in the windows 16bit subsystem. Wanna hear somethign funny? Every now and then an end user system will magically blow up, taking the 16bit system with it. No way short of a wipe and reload to make that app work on that system again. This happens even when users are limited users. Why do we still use it? Well, because all our data is in there, and there is no one else that lies to our upper management like these guys do. Plain and simple.
Microsoft really is a case in point. They did a lot of what you described, got nailed for it by the press, by consumers, and by corporations, and they really did change their ways. Their Secure Development Lifecycle has turned out some pretty high quality releases. For instance, IIS 6 has far fewer vulnerabilities than Apache. One certainly couldn't say that for IIS 5.
If MS really is a changed corporation ( which remains to be seen ), they'd be the exception to the rule. And how, exactly, did they get nailed for their behavior by consumers? Did consumers stop buying their crap? Obviously not. So how?
You won't get any real arguments from me; Organized religion is in the business of selling the afterlife to gullible people.
And they've made a mint.
However, consider this when weighing scientology; They believe that millions of years ago, the evil lord Xenu packaged up all the useless cruft of society into giant space planes ( which, coincidentally looked like DC10s ), and flew them to Earth. There, he crashed these jets into volanos. But that wasn't good enough! No, then he built huge soul capturing centers to attract the wandering "thetans" and confuse them. Once released from these spirit reeducation camps, the thetans floated around confused until they found a prehistoric us. In which they found a host, and have been living in us ever since.
Now, the virgin mary, jesus on a stick and moses are pretty spectacular, but this is just plain bonkers. No less for the fact that their prophet was a Sci Fi writer. A very very bad sci fi writer.
So while jesus-centric religions are pretty nutty, you have to account for 2000+ years of history rewriting and folk tale telling to account for the weird shit. This crap is weird right out the gate.
...and a stupid defendant for going on the run. I find his claim of fearing for his life just as unfounded as the "threats" used to convict him; It's not like there are huge scientology gangs in prisons.
Unfortunately, having been exposed to these nut jobs, I can completely sympathize with him. These people are 11 shades of fucked up, the "religion" attracts the type. Further, they tend not to be too concerned with actual law and have proven merely by being a member that they are extremely gullible. Further, if you've read some of the things these people believe in, you'd have no problem believing that they can and would kill you simply because they think you are a suppressive person ( which, amusingly, most of their members fit that definition to a tee, but I digress ).
I'm sure he could have followed proper channels and had this resolved in a more amicable fashion, but don't fault him for fearing for his life. Scientologists really are as wacky as they claim.
What do you expect? It's someone else's playground; Your data lives on their servers by their good graces. If it's even your data, which I would suspect to be not the case if you closely read the TOS.
The asshole-ness of this rep is immaterial; She should never have left her data on that server if it was this important to her.
Anyone else betting that Sony learns nothing from this?
They seriously need to figure out that, when someone buys a game system, we want to PLAY GAMES ON IT. We don't need to watch movies, listen to MP3s, view images, surf the web, do our dishes, and drive to work using the same machine.
And why would they? This is a lesson the cell phone industry still hasn't learned. And they have more at stake. Sony will claim that they deliver what the consumer wants to their grave, all the while loading up simple tech with more "features" and restrictions that most users would ever touch.
But it accurately reflects what their attitudes was, and likely still is. They view people as pieces in their game. Which is well until people realise what is going on.
Hate to break it to ya, but that's all business has ever been. MS is just blatant about it, but they are hardly the most blatant. We, as an industry, just find it offensive because on the whole, we are a rather naive bunch.
Slashdot Mirror
Google TiSP, a free home wireless broadband service that connected via a 'commode-based router' and runs fiber cabling through the sewer system.
This april fool's gag is not a truck. It's a series of tubes.
Eeewwww...
This is a free country and if people want to believe in creationism then they damn well have the right to do so without someone coming along and making hints that it's all the creationists fault that the world isn't some atheistic utopia.
Absolutely. If people wish to hamstring themselves in such a way that "magic" becomes a valid explanation of things ( even divine magic ), by all means we should let them.
However, those same people lose the right to complain that we are losing our technological edge in the world. If you want to be part of the problem, you are welcome to do so. You don't get to complain about said problem at the same time, however.
Me and most of my friends hate David Hasslehoff. You could say Americans love Hasslehoff since you like watching his naked body on Baywatch so much (American TV show, no?)
This is actually from an SNL skit from years ago. It always made me crack up, and I have yet to figure out why exactly. I've since been meaning to change it to reflect something significant or deep, but have yet to come up with anything beyond random political BS of one sort or another.
This should ( rightly so ) piss off external entities ( ie: foriegn nations ) enough to have them setup alternative roots. And I, for one, will be using those as apposed to the "secure" ones.
Granted, I won't be fully trusting the information from either set, so it's not as if my system security is dependant on it.
You are both right and wrong, in a sense. You are right that he should know what's going on under the hood. You are wrong in that he shouldn't use it. Program execution speed should ( almost always ) take a backseat to code readability. If the organization uses strcat, there is a very strong and valid argument why he should still be using it.
You take his quote out of context to make it sound like he's saying the software has very few features.
I quoted just about EVERYTHING in his post. It would be very difficult to take it out of context. I propose, instead, that he didn't say what he meant to say. PVR stands for Personal Video Recorder. Not Personal TV Recorder. His quote once again;
A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.
minimally functional is what I'd call commercial DVR ( there's that pesky acronym again ) solutions, and that's what I take issue with. Now, if you are proposing that he meant to say this;
A set-top DVR used explicitly for HD content is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-function system.
I would not have an argument, as I haven't played with the HD scene on myth. It exists, and by it's very existence it implies a certain usability, but I know nothing about it.
A set-top DVR is the only choice for a more-than-minimally-functional system.
Never used Myth, huh?
Myth is constantly talked about as far as PVRs ar the like are concerned. What is often ignored is, frankly, the best part of the project; The videos section. I can "backup" a DVD on to disk, then play that from my myth box at the click of a button. A VERY handy thing to have with a house full of children. No more lost DVDs, scratched or otherwise unwatchable discs. Just quick and simple click of the button.
Oh, this method provides you with the opportunity to remove the ads before the movie as well. Disney being the worst offender.
So do yourself a favor and learn about a software package before you badmouth it. I just pointed out something that no commercial PVR will likely EVER have, yet is so damn useful it could be it's own product.
Well, at least it keeps her out of the streets, I guess.
I wouldn't be so sure of that; She is a politician after all. It's in her nature to whore herself out.
Now, that it appears very likely that in 2008, Democrats will control both houses of congress and the presidency
The Dems still have to prove themselves to make control of both the house and the senate likely; To say nothing of the presidency. Who's in the lead for the democratic nomination anyway? Clinton? Obama?
Clinton simply isn't electable, and I don't believe Obama will ever get the support he needs to come close to touching the white house.
Chuck Norris, is that you?
From their page:
Why should you use it?
Users
Your downloads will be simpler, faster, and more reliable...without you doing anything differently.
Bittorrent already does this just about as effectively as this idea will.
Developers
It's a neutral framework that doesn't favor any one program, Operating system, or group, and is easy to implement.
Once again, bittorrent is just as easy. And its OS agnostic.
Site owners
Resume and recover from single servers going down.
Sorta an issue with bittorrent, but not really. House the seed in multiple locations. Or better yet, have your clients take a copy of the seed and share that with their peers in the case of a downed server.
Downloads can automatically be split between sources (mirrors/P2P) and all downloads will be verified.
More people can get access to your files easier, more reliably, even at the most heavily accessed times.
This means less retries and cheaper bandwidth and support bills. Saving money = good.
Once again, this is where bittorrent shines. A lot of people going after your files? Great, that means it's got a better availability on your torrent, more bandwidth for everyone.
To me, this looks like a solution in search of a problem.
A variety of comments posted already spout doom and gloom regarding email systems. When the truth of the matter is this; Spam is not that big of a deal if you use the proper techniques. I work for a small town city government, about 200 employees with mailboxes. Using about 4 different techniques ( from connection dropping based on connection metrics to content filtering of the actual message to tarpitting connections based on characteristics ), most of my female co-workers never see spam in their inbox, despite their damnedest attempts. Other admins will know what I'm talking about.
These five steps are good for your upper managers to know, but let's face it; They won't read that and understand it. Instead, use colorful graphs to highlight the work you have done to stop the spam, highlighting why certain online behavior is bad.
"The problem of unauthorized camcording of films in Canadian theatres is now nearing crisis levels," the group complained.
Crisis levels? People are dying?
No, it's a fucking camcorder recording of a hollywood movie. All the bad things about watching the movie in the theator in the privacy of your own home.
If this is really a problem, it's because the movies suck and early word getting out about how bad the movie is is hurting sales. Simple solution to that; Stop making crap movies.
Who do we bomb if the attack is coming from a botnet in our own US of A?
Simply put; He's a black man running for president that actually has a chance. It's a novelty, and thus, interesting.
Don't boo me for being a racist ( the truth is far from it ), you all know it's true.
I hate it when our politicians do it, and I hate it just as much when you do it.
The summary ( and link ) say nothing about schools. Putting that in the title is egging for a flame war. It makes you ( the submitter and editor ) look like an idiot.
But those same companies are at the mercy of consumers, just like anybody else. If there is enough bad press due to the poor security of the product, the company will be forced to fix things. This is especially true for companies that sell software to large corporations.
You really think that. It's cute. Now let me tell you how it works in the real world; Software has such a percieved cost for development ( factual or not ) that once a company comes out with something that sorta works, no one else is willing to jump ship. On top of that, the companies that are the first to market typically focus more on vendor lock in than features or stability. Thus, you have mini-market monopolies, where the customer is at the mercy of their developer ( through piss poor decisions made years ago. Thank you, upper management ), sometimes even if there is an alternative that is better.
So you'll get situations where there is a piece of software installed, and people know not to click a certain thing or it'll blow up the application. I work with an application on a daily basis that is still running in the windows 16bit subsystem. Wanna hear somethign funny? Every now and then an end user system will magically blow up, taking the 16bit system with it. No way short of a wipe and reload to make that app work on that system again. This happens even when users are limited users. Why do we still use it? Well, because all our data is in there, and there is no one else that lies to our upper management like these guys do. Plain and simple.
Microsoft really is a case in point. They did a lot of what you described, got nailed for it by the press, by consumers, and by corporations, and they really did change their ways. Their Secure Development Lifecycle has turned out some pretty high quality releases. For instance, IIS 6 has far fewer vulnerabilities than Apache. One certainly couldn't say that for IIS 5.
If MS really is a changed corporation ( which remains to be seen ), they'd be the exception to the rule. And how, exactly, did they get nailed for their behavior by consumers? Did consumers stop buying their crap? Obviously not. So how?
You won't get any real arguments from me; Organized religion is in the business of selling the afterlife to gullible people.
And they've made a mint.
However, consider this when weighing scientology; They believe that millions of years ago, the evil lord Xenu packaged up all the useless cruft of society into giant space planes ( which, coincidentally looked like DC10s ), and flew them to Earth. There, he crashed these jets into volanos. But that wasn't good enough! No, then he built huge soul capturing centers to attract the wandering "thetans" and confuse them. Once released from these spirit reeducation camps, the thetans floated around confused until they found a prehistoric us. In which they found a host, and have been living in us ever since.
Now, the virgin mary, jesus on a stick and moses are pretty spectacular, but this is just plain bonkers. No less for the fact that their prophet was a Sci Fi writer. A very very bad sci fi writer.
So while jesus-centric religions are pretty nutty, you have to account for 2000+ years of history rewriting and folk tale telling to account for the weird shit. This crap is weird right out the gate.
...and a stupid defendant for going on the run. I find his claim of fearing for his life just as unfounded as the "threats" used to convict him; It's not like there are huge scientology gangs in prisons.
Unfortunately, having been exposed to these nut jobs, I can completely sympathize with him. These people are 11 shades of fucked up, the "religion" attracts the type. Further, they tend not to be too concerned with actual law and have proven merely by being a member that they are extremely gullible. Further, if you've read some of the things these people believe in, you'd have no problem believing that they can and would kill you simply because they think you are a suppressive person ( which, amusingly, most of their members fit that definition to a tee, but I digress ).
I'm sure he could have followed proper channels and had this resolved in a more amicable fashion, but don't fault him for fearing for his life. Scientologists really are as wacky as they claim.
What do you expect? It's someone else's playground; Your data lives on their servers by their good graces. If it's even your data, which I would suspect to be not the case if you closely read the TOS.
The asshole-ness of this rep is immaterial; She should never have left her data on that server if it was this important to her.
Anyone else betting that Sony learns nothing from this?
They seriously need to figure out that, when someone buys a game system, we want to PLAY GAMES ON IT. We don't need to watch movies, listen to MP3s, view images, surf the web, do our dishes, and drive to work using the same machine.
And why would they? This is a lesson the cell phone industry still hasn't learned. And they have more at stake. Sony will claim that they deliver what the consumer wants to their grave, all the while loading up simple tech with more "features" and restrictions that most users would ever touch.
Except you aren't buying any properties or gold. You are buying someone else's time to do what you ask them to do.
That's how IGE and most other ingame item sellers make their cash. And it's perfectly legitimate.
But what kind of lasers were they armed with?
Ok, now that we got that out of our system, we can procede.
Where AT&T is allowed to consolidate and satellite radio is not.
Regardless of the reasons, it looks awfully funny to those outside.
But it accurately reflects what their attitudes was, and likely still is. They view people as pieces in their game. Which is well until people realise what is going on.
Hate to break it to ya, but that's all business has ever been. MS is just blatant about it, but they are hardly the most blatant. We, as an industry, just find it offensive because on the whole, we are a rather naive bunch.