"Vista: Halo 2 Edition" == "Warezed copy of Vista"
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone made a DVD ISO of a nice, bootable Windows Vista install, stripped out to the bare essentials like those various tech/maintenance CDs, complete with a functioning copy of the game ready to run. If they did it right then it'd not need to do much more than use the HD for swap and for save games.
Has Microsoft managed to finally get all of of the Windows 2000 holdouts to switch to XP yet? I know that they're business customers mainly, but if they're having trouble with them then I don't see them having a lot more success with Vista in the business environment either.
3/4 of the computers at my employer still run Windows 98 or 95...
Disclaimer: I am not a developer by training, and I typically work on small compiled things or moderate scripts at best, so this opinion is based on that.
I imagine that Borland is caught in the middle between the "give me every visual widget" people and the "command line editor" people. I tend to use vi or even nano when I'm writing something, not commercial software. I've found that I simply don't need commercial software to develop, compile, and test stuff when I have the ability to open several xterms. Yeah, I'll acknowledge that I lose the ability to step through the operation compared to what I knew with Turbo C for DOS, but it's not really something that I miss terribly.
I like the command line. I've tried X-native editing programs, and other than ones that I use specifically to define type faces and advanced formatting I always find myself returning to console editors. I don't do GUI programming at all, either, so the GUI is basically a really nice way for me to display a lot of text, when it comes down to work.
Some like Visual Studio and other IDEs, I've just not found a use for them. I also don't feel a need to buy something that does what I don't need when I have free things that will do what I need.
It has come to my notice that you as a company are dissatisfied, and are complaining that content providers are unfairly stepping on the toes of bandwidth providers without sharing the profits. It has also come to my attention that you as a company are seeking ways of extircating fees from these content providers in order for them to use your network.
I would like to remind you that the bandwidth that these content providers use is being paid for. No, it's not being paid for by the likes of Google, Microsoft, or any other content provider, for that matter, but by your subscribers. That's right, subscribers. You know, those people who send you a check for $39.95 every month in exchange for their 256K downstream, 128K upstream that they use in order to get from their computer to the content provider's services. These hard working, paying customers are sending you their hard-earned money to ensure that that you give them access to the sites and the content that they want.
If you decide to cut back access for subscribers to reach the content on the public Internet that they want you will find yourself losing subscribers. Should you try to enforce disconnect fees on these subscribers, or try to enforce any other end-of-contract requirements, you will undoubtedly find yourself in court from a number of subscribers who would challenge such fees due to your failure to provide services. It could even reach the level of class-action status, which would make your position even worse.
Do consider what you're thinking about doing. Your services are already being paid for. If you don't like the profitability of the enterprise then you should get out of it, not look for ways to extort money out of others.
Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT may have separate permissions for users, but the system itself is still much, much more susceptible to infection. If the system is lost, the user directories are very possibly lost too. A user without much in the line of priviledges can destroy the system with a browser exploit or a local vulnerability. There are less local vulnerabilities in Linux, and when they're found they're fixed (at least in the distribution that I'm running).
So I do maintain that individual user accounts are safer in Linux than in Windows, because the core system is safer.
This idiot is stating that because some users don't understand the UNIX security model, the UNIX security model is flawed. Apparently, as far as he's concerned, if ~ gets destroyed, the whole system may as well be destroyed. He's blathering about a "false sense of security," but I have never, anywhere, ever, heard anyone say that you don't have to back up your data if you run UNIX.
It really annoys me that the writer makes the assumption that there's only one user on the machine. My machines have accounts for myself (unpriviledged, of course), my girlfriend, my friends that come over on a regular basis, and one extra generic account for people who don't have specific ones. This isolation is something that I could never achieve with Microsoft, and I have had times where a friend has nuked his home directory or the generic one, but left the rest of the box intact, including my stuff.
And, yeah, on my laptop I'll admit that since I'm the only user, if I lost home then I'd be pissed, but it'd be my own damn fault. But, I'd have the box back up and running immediately, which on a laptop potentially being used in the field with no support structure immediately available is very, very important.
Your argument has some fatal flaws. First, in China, the rules are actually in the process of relaxing. That we have U.S. companies able to do business there at all, let alone in something as sensitive as communication is a sign of that. Second, ALL similar businesses are subject to the same rules. Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines are either complying or are blocked. Third, in order for the U.S. Government to successfully force Google to censor, it'd take a helluva lot of work, cause a lot of collateral damage across the entire spectrum of freedoms that we enjoy, and require basically all three Federal branches to be in agreement. That doesn't happen. Remember Terri Schaivo? The Legislature and the Executive branch agreed but were given the finger by the Judiciary. Even if a branch of Government tried, I suspect that Google would fight it vehemently here.
"It's really their own fault for coming up with a simplistic slogan that's impossible to fulfill in reality. That said, as far as I can see they're doing their best to act ethically in this moral minefield."
It's no worse than the Hyppocratic Oath, with it's statement of "Do No Harm" when we use mustard gas (Chemotherapy) to treat cancer patients, or where we use drugs that have potentially deadly side effects to treat diseases or conditions.
"[...]at least some Chinese citizens using out-of-country proxies would be able to use the search engine to its fullest extent."
Why would that stop working on account of this? If they're out of country proxies, then they're not in IP-space that Google would be monitoring. They should remain entirely unaffected.
How 'bout this one, since we're being hypothetical all of the way around here: What if the general populace's use of Google makes it popular enough that more and more of them want to use anonymous proxies in third party countries? Wouldn't that actually work even more against the Chinese Government?
I'm not going to worry about China right now. The more Western they're exposed, the more they'll change, and right now there's no good indication of where that's going. I'm willing to let it happen to find out.
"So you're saying they should just _lie_ to the Chinese government? Or perhaps shirk off and do a poor job of doing what they said they could do?"
That's not what I'm saying at all. Have you ever tried to filter the Internet? It CAN'T be done effectively. There are companies with a helluva lot more experience with filtering than Google, many of which supply filtering systems to governments, fortune 500 companies, and educational systems, and they STILL can't do it. What makes you think that Google can do it any better when it's not the core of their business?
Google will filter to the specifications that the People's Republic of China gives them. That's complying with the law, and it's not lying. I don't doubt that Google will also report things that slip through as they're found. This still doesn't mean that they'll keep everything out.
Remember, the more data that has to be sifted through, the harder and more computer-intensive it is to do it. Maybe enough general traffic and China's filtering won't be able to function anyway, and this will only serve to ramp up the traffic.
Did it occur to you that maybe they'll do more Good by being a western influence in China than by not being there at all? Filtering ALL of the Internet is impossible. Stuff will slip through, even if it's only a little, even if it's shut off as soon as authorities detect that it has. That it got through at all is better than nothing. If Google's failure to willingly cooperate means that they're completely blocked in China, then as far as the West influencing things it's worse. In my opinion.
I live with the reality that exists or has been demonstrated, rather than with fantasy. We've seen what happens without government. Somalia. Afganistan. The Middle East, before Europe attempted to assert itself.
With no government, people attempt to take power. It happens in the form of dictatorships, theocracies, 'councils' of those looking to gain, etc.
Anarchy is great, in theory. Unfortunately as soon as you add people to the mix, then you have disagreements, which leads to fights. On a large enough scale you develop factions, which lead to direct conflict, action, and violence. And, you keep getting stuck with some form of organization, which is government.
I'd rather have a potentially just government that actually has laws to protect me from other individuals and from itself, even if it doesn't do the best job of it, than to have no law.
Government projects are generally extremely wasteful. Anything good the government would do will be done more efficiantly when the people involved are not coerced. And besides, if free individuals won't work together to make their own roads, why should they be forced to?
The entire point in government originally was that it was free individuals working together to accomplish something. That's what, "Of the People, By the People, For the People," means. It's corrupted now.
It's an economy of scale, too. Something paid for by a few thousand people for the benefit of those people will cost a certain amount. Something paid for by a larger group of people, like a few million, should cost less per person and achieve the same per-person results, sometimes drastically cheaper.
Also remember, the government didn't use to tax in the manner that they do now, or nearly as heavily as they do now. Taxes were predominately put upon imports, and that paid for the government. It wasn't until the 20th Century that an income tax successfully stuck against the populace from the Federal level.
I don't believe that anarchy would work any better than communism worked. Anarchy would require everyone to behave else things would degenerate into violent chaos as individuals who have a desire to achieve more, posess more, or have more status than others would exploit a lack of authority defined from the people to achieve their gains. Government perpetuates law enforcement and thus the possibility for recourse or retribution if an individual seeks gain at the peril of others, and I don't believe that society can ever do without that, as much as it would be utopian if it could be achieved.
Back to your original argument, wouldn't, "...the people involved...work[ing] together to make their own roads..." be a form of Government itself?
I guess that since it's now not beta anymore, we can all finally use it! All of those of us who held back until it was ready for market can rest assured!
For some reason, FairPlay and PlaysForSure both remind me of products in dystopian science fiction novels by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson...
"Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."
Or, that since they have a legal, inexpensive way to obtain the specific music that they want to play, they are more inclined to actually spend $5.00 to get five songs from five different bands instead of $16 for twelve songs from one band, with only one song that they actually want.
Or still, that the people who bought iPods coincidentally are also the same people who already have large CD collections, so they were inclined to rip and encode their music specifically so that they could play it on the iPod, rather than having to resort to scavenging the Internet for music because they were too cheap to pay for it...
"... you'd think they could find someone to run linux on their servers... its not like it takes a rocket scientist..."
My girlfriend (who, coincidentally is a rocket scientist) unfortunately runs Windows too. At least she stuck to Windows 2000. She apparently tried to run MIT's variant of Linux when she was a student, but I guess that she found it not to her taste *sigh*
I'm sure it did. His chances of winning awards based on this film just decreased, if for no other reason than the screeners will be pissed that they can't watch it because of actions by Spielberg's people. True, it wasn't him personally that did it, but he still is the boss, and his name is the one all over the credits.
Slashdot Mirror
"Vista: Halo 2 Edition" == "Warezed copy of Vista"
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone made a DVD ISO of a nice, bootable Windows Vista install, stripped out to the bare essentials like those various tech/maintenance CDs, complete with a functioning copy of the game ready to run. If they did it right then it'd not need to do much more than use the HD for swap and for save games.
Has Microsoft managed to finally get all of of the Windows 2000 holdouts to switch to XP yet? I know that they're business customers mainly, but if they're having trouble with them then I don't see them having a lot more success with Vista in the business environment either. 3/4 of the computers at my employer still run Windows 98 or 95...
Disclaimer: I am not a developer by training, and I typically work on small compiled things or moderate scripts at best, so this opinion is based on that.
I imagine that Borland is caught in the middle between the "give me every visual widget" people and the "command line editor" people. I tend to use vi or even nano when I'm writing something, not commercial software. I've found that I simply don't need commercial software to develop, compile, and test stuff when I have the ability to open several xterms. Yeah, I'll acknowledge that I lose the ability to step through the operation compared to what I knew with Turbo C for DOS, but it's not really something that I miss terribly.
I like the command line. I've tried X-native editing programs, and other than ones that I use specifically to define type faces and advanced formatting I always find myself returning to console editors. I don't do GUI programming at all, either, so the GUI is basically a really nice way for me to display a lot of text, when it comes down to work.
Some like Visual Studio and other IDEs, I've just not found a use for them. I also don't feel a need to buy something that does what I don't need when I have free things that will do what I need.
Dear Verizon Communications,
It has come to my notice that you as a company are dissatisfied, and are complaining that content providers are unfairly stepping on the toes of bandwidth providers without sharing the profits. It has also come to my attention that you as a company are seeking ways of extircating fees from these content providers in order for them to use your network.
I would like to remind you that the bandwidth that these content providers use is being paid for. No, it's not being paid for by the likes of Google, Microsoft, or any other content provider, for that matter, but by your subscribers. That's right, subscribers. You know, those people who send you a check for $39.95 every month in exchange for their 256K downstream, 128K upstream that they use in order to get from their computer to the content provider's services. These hard working, paying customers are sending you their hard-earned money to ensure that that you give them access to the sites and the content that they want.
If you decide to cut back access for subscribers to reach the content on the public Internet that they want you will find yourself losing subscribers. Should you try to enforce disconnect fees on these subscribers, or try to enforce any other end-of-contract requirements, you will undoubtedly find yourself in court from a number of subscribers who would challenge such fees due to your failure to provide services. It could even reach the level of class-action status, which would make your position even worse.
Do consider what you're thinking about doing. Your services are already being paid for. If you don't like the profitability of the enterprise then you should get out of it, not look for ways to extort money out of others.
Sincerely,
TWX
Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT may have separate permissions for users, but the system itself is still much, much more susceptible to infection. If the system is lost, the user directories are very possibly lost too. A user without much in the line of priviledges can destroy the system with a browser exploit or a local vulnerability. There are less local vulnerabilities in Linux, and when they're found they're fixed (at least in the distribution that I'm running).
So I do maintain that individual user accounts are safer in Linux than in Windows, because the core system is safer.
But how long will it take for a damn open source kernel driver to come out? Ndiswrapper is a pain.
It really annoys me that the writer makes the assumption that there's only one user on the machine. My machines have accounts for myself (unpriviledged, of course), my girlfriend, my friends that come over on a regular basis, and one extra generic account for people who don't have specific ones. This isolation is something that I could never achieve with Microsoft, and I have had times where a friend has nuked his home directory or the generic one, but left the rest of the box intact, including my stuff.
And, yeah, on my laptop I'll admit that since I'm the only user, if I lost home then I'd be pissed, but it'd be my own damn fault. But, I'd have the box back up and running immediately, which on a laptop potentially being used in the field with no support structure immediately available is very, very important.
"After reading this I became curious and checked my dog's bedding, and sure enough I found a copy of the Microsoft source code."
So you're saying that your dog's not house-broken?
And ignoring China altogether helps?
Your argument has some fatal flaws. First, in China, the rules are actually in the process of relaxing. That we have U.S. companies able to do business there at all, let alone in something as sensitive as communication is a sign of that. Second, ALL similar businesses are subject to the same rules. Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines are either complying or are blocked. Third, in order for the U.S. Government to successfully force Google to censor, it'd take a helluva lot of work, cause a lot of collateral damage across the entire spectrum of freedoms that we enjoy, and require basically all three Federal branches to be in agreement. That doesn't happen. Remember Terri Schaivo? The Legislature and the Executive branch agreed but were given the finger by the Judiciary. Even if a branch of Government tried, I suspect that Google would fight it vehemently here.
"It's really their own fault for coming up with a simplistic slogan that's impossible to fulfill in reality. That said, as far as I can see they're doing their best to act ethically in this moral minefield."
It's no worse than the Hyppocratic Oath, with it's statement of "Do No Harm" when we use mustard gas (Chemotherapy) to treat cancer patients, or where we use drugs that have potentially deadly side effects to treat diseases or conditions.
"Blind adherence to 'ideals' that ignores the real world consequences is the true hypocrisy I believe."
Worse, it's like Fundamentalism. We've seen the results of Fundamentalism all over the world, and I've never seen it being good, pretty, or happy.
"[...]at least some Chinese citizens using out-of-country proxies would be able to use the search engine to its fullest extent."
Why would that stop working on account of this? If they're out of country proxies, then they're not in IP-space that Google would be monitoring. They should remain entirely unaffected.
How 'bout this one, since we're being hypothetical all of the way around here: What if the general populace's use of Google makes it popular enough that more and more of them want to use anonymous proxies in third party countries? Wouldn't that actually work even more against the Chinese Government?
I'm not going to worry about China right now. The more Western they're exposed, the more they'll change, and right now there's no good indication of where that's going. I'm willing to let it happen to find out.
I do listen to NPR, actually, but I didn't hear that interview. Interesting...
"So you're saying they should just _lie_ to the Chinese government? Or perhaps shirk off and do a poor job of doing what they said they could do?"
That's not what I'm saying at all. Have you ever tried to filter the Internet? It CAN'T be done effectively. There are companies with a helluva lot more experience with filtering than Google, many of which supply filtering systems to governments, fortune 500 companies, and educational systems, and they STILL can't do it. What makes you think that Google can do it any better when it's not the core of their business?
Google will filter to the specifications that the People's Republic of China gives them. That's complying with the law, and it's not lying. I don't doubt that Google will also report things that slip through as they're found. This still doesn't mean that they'll keep everything out.
Remember, the more data that has to be sifted through, the harder and more computer-intensive it is to do it. Maybe enough general traffic and China's filtering won't be able to function anyway, and this will only serve to ramp up the traffic.
Did it occur to you that maybe they'll do more Good by being a western influence in China than by not being there at all? Filtering ALL of the Internet is impossible. Stuff will slip through, even if it's only a little, even if it's shut off as soon as authorities detect that it has. That it got through at all is better than nothing. If Google's failure to willingly cooperate means that they're completely blocked in China, then as far as the West influencing things it's worse. In my opinion.
I live with the reality that exists or has been demonstrated, rather than with fantasy. We've seen what happens without government. Somalia. Afganistan. The Middle East, before Europe attempted to assert itself.
With no government, people attempt to take power. It happens in the form of dictatorships, theocracies, 'councils' of those looking to gain, etc.
Anarchy is great, in theory. Unfortunately as soon as you add people to the mix, then you have disagreements, which leads to fights. On a large enough scale you develop factions, which lead to direct conflict, action, and violence. And, you keep getting stuck with some form of organization, which is government.
I'd rather have a potentially just government that actually has laws to protect me from other individuals and from itself, even if it doesn't do the best job of it, than to have no law.
Yeah, well, people hate it when you make them feel stupid either way, so it really doesn't matter, child vs. scientist. They don't want to hear it.
It's an economy of scale, too. Something paid for by a few thousand people for the benefit of those people will cost a certain amount. Something paid for by a larger group of people, like a few million, should cost less per person and achieve the same per-person results, sometimes drastically cheaper.
Also remember, the government didn't use to tax in the manner that they do now, or nearly as heavily as they do now. Taxes were predominately put upon imports, and that paid for the government. It wasn't until the 20th Century that an income tax successfully stuck against the populace from the Federal level.
I don't believe that anarchy would work any better than communism worked. Anarchy would require everyone to behave else things would degenerate into violent chaos as individuals who have a desire to achieve more, posess more, or have more status than others would exploit a lack of authority defined from the people to achieve their gains. Government perpetuates law enforcement and thus the possibility for recourse or retribution if an individual seeks gain at the peril of others, and I don't believe that society can ever do without that, as much as it would be utopian if it could be achieved.
Back to your original argument, wouldn't, "...the people involved...work[ing] together to make their own roads..." be a form of Government itself?
I guess that since it's now not beta anymore, we can all finally use it! All of those of us who held back until it was ready for market can rest assured!
For some reason, FairPlay and PlaysForSure both remind me of products in dystopian science fiction novels by the likes of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson...
I guess that the truth is stranger than fiction.
"It's 'cause you searched for 'pornography' instead of 'Teenaged Tit Freaks'...jeez, man, that's like a basic internet skill."
Why do I get links to a high school orinthology club?
So is that what happened back during that Rusty/CmdrTaco battle back in '00?
"Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."
Or, that since they have a legal, inexpensive way to obtain the specific music that they want to play, they are more inclined to actually spend $5.00 to get five songs from five different bands instead of $16 for twelve songs from one band, with only one song that they actually want.
Or still, that the people who bought iPods coincidentally are also the same people who already have large CD collections, so they were inclined to rip and encode their music specifically so that they could play it on the iPod, rather than having to resort to scavenging the Internet for music because they were too cheap to pay for it...
"... you'd think they could find someone to run linux on their servers ... its not like it takes a rocket scientist..."
My girlfriend (who, coincidentally is a rocket scientist) unfortunately runs Windows too. At least she stuck to Windows 2000. She apparently tried to run MIT's variant of Linux when she was a student, but I guess that she found it not to her taste *sigh*
I'm sure it did. His chances of winning awards based on this film just decreased, if for no other reason than the screeners will be pissed that they can't watch it because of actions by Spielberg's people. True, it wasn't him personally that did it, but he still is the boss, and his name is the one all over the credits.