What makes you think that the bible predates the actions of Cyrus? Seriously.
There's much documentation of errors and outright changes in bible stories. There's also, if you really care to dig, indications that at least some bible stories are actually adaptations of older (and pagan!) stories. Evidently they were popular and were incorporated into the old testament.
As for "believing" the bible as "the truth": do you stone your neighbor for growing two crops side by side? If not, why not? (Since we are discussing the old testament here, there's more, but that one just cracks me up.)
As for the new testament... do you even want to try?
ANYONE who claims more than months or even weeks uptime in XP isn't applying patches!
You're right. There's no reason to apply patches.
Seriously, if you don't run IE or any MS mail client, are behind a hardware firewall, and don't have MS Office installed, you've removed 99% of your vulnerabilities. The only reason I rebooted in the past 8 months is 2 upgrades of my ATI video driver (once for Half Life 2, once for Oblivion).
Serial code is a crap-load easier to learn to debug, for most people. It's similar to object modeling or music, 2-D items or single melodies are just easier to visualize initially for most people. To truly get into higher orders apparently takes certain skills, whether natural or learned, that many don't have or take the time to invest in learning.
I can echo that. I have been doing programming on parallel CPUs since 1968 (on a monstrosity at Stanford University that included a 166 and a KA-10 processor). You have to think differently to write parallel code, but once you learn to think that way it becomes no harder than conventional, "linear" programming.
What's this "conventional, 'linear' programming"?
Some of us have been writing conventional asynchronous code for quite some time now. e.g., I couldn't imagine having to have a single thread sit there and wait on some slow-ass DB to respond... it should be doing some useful work!;)
yes, I could find dev kits, starter kits, etc, for the developer. But, without commercial end-units, which happened to be the market I was interested in, Zigbee doesn't exist. I am interested in home automation devices, for which Zigbee's impending publicized existence has effectively killed the X10 market. (OK, so there are other problems for the X10 market, such as lack of wide-spread adoption and reliability of hardware, which is why everyone wants Zigbee!) There is nothing really to replace them except Insteon. I will most likely start looking at Insteon shortly for my needs, as Zigbee is still vapor-ware and doesn't look to be anything but vaporware for the foreseeable future.
For specialty applications, such as your described thumbprint device, that's a whole different story and Zigbee might be perfect.
Any tech worth his salt (ok, maybe not "just" a tech) will have taken a clean system, inventoried it software wise and process wise, and then match it with what's on the system. The first step they'll do on a "troubled" system is go through the initial cleaning process of shutting down 50+% of the unecessary services that run by default.
Then, using a process viewing tool after a reboot, track whether the running processes on startup are really who they say they are. Knowing how to stop and remove troublesome processes should also be part of the standard repetoire.
None of this takes a long time to learn. Matter of fact, anyone that's reasonably intelligent and understands the basics of computers, ie, TaskManager in Windows isn't a foreign concept) will be able to pick this up from a document in less than 2 hours.
BTW, I run Linux, Macs, and OS/2. Windows is a last resort.
And just try to buy something. I started looking at Zigbee in 2004, and waited, and waited... went X10, and waited... and now, in 2006, I think I'm going to start buying Insteon. Sounds like largely the same setup, except it's here, now, and is compatible with the X10 junk I have. Sounds like Insteon is a win-win. Zigbee, as of 3 months ago, still a no show. Kind of like Vista.....(just to drag in an unrelated troll...;)
I don't know of any open source applications that are "finished", or even try to be
I can name at least 1: Log4J. It's pretty much feature complete, and certainly meets almost everyone's needs for logging in the java dev community. Not only that, it's the preferred logging solution even though Sun ships a logging utility with the JDK now (At least in my experience. I should also note any other logging tool benchmarks against Log4J if they're any good at all).
(Of course, the issue of criminal laws that prohibit bypassing DRM in order to get at public domain content is entirely another matter, and one that needs to be fixed.)
I thought breaking DRM was against the law only for copyrighted materials? Once the material is no longer under copyright, there's no issue with breaking it?
Yes if you download copyrighted music, you're commiting a crime. Maybe it shouldn't be a crime, but it's a crime all the same.
Last time I checked, downloading isn't a crime, regardless of what the **AA folks say. Uploading, however, is. This is why you can download freely from such sites as that russian mp3 site (disregarding any other international issues such as it's legal there, etc).
If you'll notice, no one has been busted for downloading. They have been busted for sharing (distribution). That the part that gets you into hot water with the copyright laws.
1) ordering things from a company by mail is not novel 2) ordering things using the web from a company is not novel 3) renting items (DVDs especially) is not novel 4) per 1-3, Netflix's DVD rental business is not novel
Oh, and I believe there were passes and other things back in the 80s with VHS tapes. But that's so long ago and predates the web entirely, that I have nothing to back it up except my memory.
Although I don't have much respect for the US patent system, I have to wonder how else would Netflix protect their novel business model from a competitor like Blockbuster? BB has several major advantages already: a huge, existing inventory of movies and actual stores. How can Netflix compete with that without protecting their novel business model?
For the factual counterpoint: 1) ordering things from a company by mail is not novel 2) ordering things using the web from a company is not novel 3) renting items (DVDs especially) is not novel 4) per 1-3, Netflix's DVD rental business is not novel
The only unique thing when Netflix came out was the subscription based service that allows for 'x' items to be "out" at any one time. Is that patentable? I don't believe it is nor should be.
Now to answer a couple of your other questions:
Who says you can "protect" your business model? All business models at their core have selling something to a customer in exchange for something. If that's not your business model, I present a business that won't survive long.
As for how Netflix would compete? Why, they compete like they always have, by offering choices among 40,000+ movies, with a "convenient" mail based system with no late fees, and, of course, their customer service and price.
Last point: BB's stores generally only stock hundreds to very low thousands of movies. There's a considerable selection usually not available in your local store. This also means BB can't take advantage of its inventory, as it doesn't have these and would have to acquire a larger selection.
What's to stop the creation of whole classes of über weapons and armor only available on a pay-per basis? What's to stop the developer from making those items absolutely necessary to finish the game? This sets an unfortunate precedent
Well, just download them or create your own. Oh, wait, you bought the XBox version....
You set the bad precedent. There's a reason some of us don't own consoles. (Although I'm eagerly awaiting the PS3. I'm curious as to what it will look like. If it is as heavily integrated with an online subscription service like XBox Live, then I'll skip it too.)
and exactly what use is a 192.168.x.x address going to do? Yes, there's another good reason to NAT your box behind one of those ever useful broadband routers. Heck, if you want to get evil, change your DHCP config to assign real IP numbers for sites you don't visit, like, perhaps, the entire MS IP address space....
Basically, Java and JS aren't any better than any other method for tracking.
Well, the IE7 0 day exploits and continuing exploits that plague all IE versions from 5.x onward, should continue to make people happy with FF. As someone who has to do enough web dev type stuff, FF is my only browser. Basically, if it works in FF, it should work in everything, and IE testing is left to the QA folks. (I'm not responsible for fancy CSS stuff, just putting the data on the page, so the quirks of browsers are less important for me:)
And besides, there's just something trendy and enlarging about not using an MS shoved product. The enlightment that comes with increased realization is subtle, but hopefully large enough to continue making folks aware of whether they're using FF. One thing that comes to my mind is some of my family that I inadvertently support.;) They call and say XYZ is happening, we step through the inevitable process of debugging things via phone, and lo and behold, IE usage is more often than not the culprit (adware, virus, whatever). After the cleanup process, again remotely through the phone, is usually painful enough that I only have to do it once, and the process of getting them to install FF is painless. After they install it and Thunderbird, my calls drop off significantly. What more can we say?
Spot on! I'd give you mod points for that posting if I'd ever get any again....
But, to go one step further, even the CLI is a framework hiding True Names. To really find True Names, you must go into the depths of the the actual hardware addressing. This is generally considered much fun by those to whom social skills are like an abstract foreign language.
Imagine your entire CD/DVD collection available at the touch of a remote. No fiddling with hundreds of cases, finding the one you're looking for. No limit of shuffling songs on only 5 CDs. Instant access to everything you own. The ability to make instant playlists of whatever songs you like, or the ability to dynamically change the potential of a song to be played.
All in a box smaller than your current DVD player, and, coincidently, able to play CD/DVDs as well. (OK, so the drives that store all this are located remotely, cuts down on sound and size of the box in your living room)
One of the HUGE detractions of NT when it first came out, other than lack of drivers, was lack of software. There's a ton of common software from 3.x, 95, 98, and ME that WON'T run on NT, 2K, nor XP.
I've got a Win95 system at home solely to support some of these programs. Take MasterCook 2.0 for instance, better have a 3.x system. 95 will crash with it. MasterCook 4.x, better have 95/98. IIRC, it won't even install on ME, much less any NT variant. Then there's the slew of games. Lemmings is one popular old game that comes to mind. Any of the DOS based games that ran under 95/98 is a whole-subset that won't run under NT variants. Matter of fact, most games under the 3.x/95/98/ME set won't run under any NT variant. Interestingly enough, many do run under Linux/WINE or OS/2.
I'd have to go back and see if I even have a version of Office pre 95, but I don't believe any of those ran on an NT variant, nor did their Lotus/Wordperfect brethern.
incorrect. Check my response to the GP. Cairo was announced in 1992 as a product. It was supposed to be delivered, complete, by 1995.
DFS certainly isn't as originally advertised, as anyone who has tried to use it would know. Kerberos, isn't it non-compliant and bug-ridden? I seem to remember something relating to a bug caused by non-compliance. OFS? What's that as I missed an acronym.
ADS blows chunks, and still hasn't caught up to NDS, but MS's PR branch sure killed off NDS as well. So NT finally got disk quotas? What version? 2K3? About 20 years after Unix? What innovation! BG's folks must be so proud! Discounting the rest are left as excercises for the reader.
Lastly, the biggies: Object Oriented GUI and file system. Nope - both still MIA 14 years later, and neither will be delivered in 2007 either.
you've got to be fucking kidding me. Did you write that page specifically for this link? (you may not have written it for this article, but it's highly suspicious, being only 2 years old)
Let's put down the crack pipe for a moment, and check the facts. From articles significantly after the 1992 Cairo announcement, Byte makes the admission that Cairo has morphed from a product to a "collection of technologies". This is confirmed in a Windows IT Pro article from 97. This article originally from 93 mentions Cairo in an interesting sense as well. And here's just an outright interesting paper on MS's business practices.
So anyway, to sum up the content of all those references:
MS announced Cairo as the be all and end all of all OSes in 1992. It was to be delivered by 1995. This was in direct response to OS/2, which was released in 1992 in a truly workable form. In between, Cairo became a set of technologies, because MS realized they couldn't release the OS within their lifetime. Then, when OS/2 was finally conquered by Office95's backwards incompatibilities around 1996/1997, they announced that Cairo would not be released.
BTW, does that pattern sound familiar?.NET anyone? Except in the case of.NET, they were even later to the party than they were with the internet. Java had a firm hold, and.NET has some core architectural issues that just won't allow it to dislodge Java. That, and the fact that apparently MS won't drink the koolaid either (Vista will have almost no managed code... another departure from the promises of Longhorn, another case that follows the pattern.)
Speaking of Longhorn, it was announced to face a two-headed threat. On the one side, Linux was making in-roads. On the other, the Mac OSX was a surprising come-back from a company that MS gave a heart-transplant to. What better way to discount both than to announce... and resurrect Cairo as Longhorn?
And finally, if you really believe that most of Cairo's features exist today, I ask you this: where are my:
object oriented desktop
object based file system
true pre-emptive OS
true SMP OS
TCP Multi-cast capabilities
That's just what I can remember from the list that Cairo promised. It's a shame I threw out all those old mags years ago, that date from the appropriate time-period that might have refreshed my memory. Most of the articles now on the web only reflect the largest of the claims of Cairo, namely the object oriented nature of its file system. I don't recall that being described as a DB though. They were trying to mimic OS/2's features, including things like shadows (OS/2's vastly improved shortcuts) and extended attributes. That the latter allowed for more efficient searching, perhaps that's where they delved off into a DB file system that they still haven't been able to produce 14 years later. How many FS's have been created by OS contributors in the meantime?
Oh, and lastly, let's remember Chicago. It actually shipped, minus a few pieces, as a whole product.
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What makes you think that the bible predates the actions of Cyrus? Seriously.
There's much documentation of errors and outright changes in bible stories. There's also, if you really care to dig, indications that at least some bible stories are actually adaptations of older (and pagan!) stories. Evidently they were popular and were incorporated into the old testament.
As for "believing" the bible as "the truth": do you stone your neighbor for growing two crops side by side? If not, why not? (Since we are discussing the old testament here, there's more, but that one just cracks me up.)
As for the new testament... do you even want to try?
ANYONE who claims more than months or even weeks uptime in XP isn't applying patches!
You're right. There's no reason to apply patches.
Seriously, if you don't run IE or any MS mail client, are behind a hardware firewall, and don't have MS Office installed, you've removed 99% of your vulnerabilities. The only reason I rebooted in the past 8 months is 2 upgrades of my ATI video driver (once for Half Life 2, once for Oblivion).
Serial code is a crap-load easier to learn to debug, for most people. It's similar to object modeling or music, 2-D items or single melodies are just easier to visualize initially for most people. To truly get into higher orders apparently takes certain skills, whether natural or learned, that many don't have or take the time to invest in learning.
I can echo that. I have been doing programming on parallel CPUs since 1968 (on a monstrosity at Stanford University that included a 166 and a KA-10 processor). You have to think differently to write parallel code, but once you learn to think that way it becomes no harder than conventional, "linear" programming.
;)
What's this "conventional, 'linear' programming"?
Some of us have been writing conventional asynchronous code for quite some time now. e.g., I couldn't imagine having to have a single thread sit there and wait on some slow-ass DB to respond... it should be doing some useful work!
yes, I could find dev kits, starter kits, etc, for the developer. But, without commercial end-units, which happened to be the market I was interested in, Zigbee doesn't exist. I am interested in home automation devices, for which Zigbee's impending publicized existence has effectively killed the X10 market. (OK, so there are other problems for the X10 market, such as lack of wide-spread adoption and reliability of hardware, which is why everyone wants Zigbee!) There is nothing really to replace them except Insteon. I will most likely start looking at Insteon shortly for my needs, as Zigbee is still vapor-ware and doesn't look to be anything but vaporware for the foreseeable future.
For specialty applications, such as your described thumbprint device, that's a whole different story and Zigbee might be perfect.
Any tech worth his salt (ok, maybe not "just" a tech) will have taken a clean system, inventoried it software wise and process wise, and then match it with what's on the system. The first step they'll do on a "troubled" system is go through the initial cleaning process of shutting down 50+% of the unecessary services that run by default.
Then, using a process viewing tool after a reboot, track whether the running processes on startup are really who they say they are. Knowing how to stop and remove troublesome processes should also be part of the standard repetoire.
None of this takes a long time to learn. Matter of fact, anyone that's reasonably intelligent and understands the basics of computers, ie, TaskManager in Windows isn't a foreign concept) will be able to pick this up from a document in less than 2 hours.
BTW, I run Linux, Macs, and OS/2. Windows is a last resort.
guarantee packet delivery? Not too hard, built into TCP. You'll get an error notice if you're outside spec.
Wait, you want to absolutely guarantee the packet will be delivered? That's impossible. Just realise there is no packet....
And just try to buy something. I started looking at Zigbee in 2004, and waited, and waited... went X10, and waited... and now, in 2006, I think I'm going to start buying Insteon. Sounds like largely the same setup, except it's here, now, and is compatible with the X10 junk I have. Sounds like Insteon is a win-win. Zigbee, as of 3 months ago, still a no show. Kind of like Vista.....(just to drag in an unrelated troll...;)
I don't know of any open source applications that are "finished", or even try to be
I can name at least 1: Log4J. It's pretty much feature complete, and certainly meets almost everyone's needs for logging in the java dev community. Not only that, it's the preferred logging solution even though Sun ships a logging utility with the JDK now (At least in my experience. I should also note any other logging tool benchmarks against Log4J if they're any good at all).
... on the non-obligation to release source code.
(Of course, the issue of criminal laws that prohibit bypassing DRM in order to get at public domain content is entirely another matter, and one that needs to be fixed.)
I thought breaking DRM was against the law only for copyrighted materials? Once the material is no longer under copyright, there's no issue with breaking it?
Firefox and FlashBlock. What ads?
Yes if you download copyrighted music, you're commiting a crime. Maybe it shouldn't be a crime, but it's a crime all the same.
Last time I checked, downloading isn't a crime, regardless of what the **AA folks say. Uploading, however, is. This is why you can download freely from such sites as that russian mp3 site (disregarding any other international issues such as it's legal there, etc).
If you'll notice, no one has been busted for downloading. They have been busted for sharing (distribution). That the part that gets you into hot water with the copyright laws.
check my posting further up. To summarize:
1) ordering things from a company by mail is not novel
2) ordering things using the web from a company is not novel
3) renting items (DVDs especially) is not novel
4) per 1-3, Netflix's DVD rental business is not novel
Oh, and I believe there were passes and other things back in the 80s with VHS tapes. But that's so long ago and predates the web entirely, that I have nothing to back it up except my memory.
Although I don't have much respect for the US patent system, I have to wonder how else would Netflix protect their novel business model from a competitor like Blockbuster? BB has several major advantages already: a huge, existing inventory of movies and actual stores. How can Netflix compete with that without protecting their novel business model?
For the factual counterpoint:
1) ordering things from a company by mail is not novel
2) ordering things using the web from a company is not novel
3) renting items (DVDs especially) is not novel
4) per 1-3, Netflix's DVD rental business is not novel
The only unique thing when Netflix came out was the subscription based service that allows for 'x' items to be "out" at any one time. Is that patentable? I don't believe it is nor should be.
Now to answer a couple of your other questions:
Who says you can "protect" your business model? All business models at their core have selling something to a customer in exchange for something. If that's not your business model, I present a business that won't survive long.
As for how Netflix would compete? Why, they compete like they always have, by offering choices among 40,000+ movies, with a "convenient" mail based system with no late fees, and, of course, their customer service and price.
Last point: BB's stores generally only stock hundreds to very low thousands of movies. There's a considerable selection usually not available in your local store. This also means BB can't take advantage of its inventory, as it doesn't have these and would have to acquire a larger selection.
What's to stop the creation of whole classes of über weapons and armor only available on a pay-per basis? What's to stop the developer from making those items absolutely necessary to finish the game? This sets an unfortunate precedent
Well, just download them or create your own. Oh, wait, you bought the XBox version....
You set the bad precedent. There's a reason some of us don't own consoles. (Although I'm eagerly awaiting the PS3. I'm curious as to what it will look like. If it is as heavily integrated with an online subscription service like XBox Live, then I'll skip it too.)
and exactly what use is a 192.168.x.x address going to do? Yes, there's another good reason to NAT your box behind one of those ever useful broadband routers. Heck, if you want to get evil, change your DHCP config to assign real IP numbers for sites you don't visit, like, perhaps, the entire MS IP address space....
Basically, Java and JS aren't any better than any other method for tracking.
Well, the IE7 0 day exploits and continuing exploits that plague all IE versions from 5.x onward, should continue to make people happy with FF. As someone who has to do enough web dev type stuff, FF is my only browser. Basically, if it works in FF, it should work in everything, and IE testing is left to the QA folks. (I'm not responsible for fancy CSS stuff, just putting the data on the page, so the quirks of browsers are less important for me:)
;) They call and say XYZ is happening, we step through the inevitable process of debugging things via phone, and lo and behold, IE usage is more often than not the culprit (adware, virus, whatever). After the cleanup process, again remotely through the phone, is usually painful enough that I only have to do it once, and the process of getting them to install FF is painless. After they install it and Thunderbird, my calls drop off significantly. What more can we say?
And besides, there's just something trendy and enlarging about not using an MS shoved product. The enlightment that comes with increased realization is subtle, but hopefully large enough to continue making folks aware of whether they're using FF. One thing that comes to my mind is some of my family that I inadvertently support.
Spot on! I'd give you mod points for that posting if I'd ever get any again....
But, to go one step further, even the CLI is a framework hiding True Names. To really find True Names, you must go into the depths of the the actual hardware addressing. This is generally considered much fun by those to whom social skills are like an abstract foreign language.
That's what I was thinking, but I didn't say it. You have to couch my post in context of the GP. Evidently he couldn't imagine it.
Because the jukebox is a HUGE box, unlike the PC solution. 400 discs takes up space, no matter how you stack them.
You could fit the entire PC based multiple HD receivers/DVR/Audio/DVD solution into the space of that jukebox alone!
But obviously the GP can't. :)
Imagine your entire CD/DVD collection available at the touch of a remote. No fiddling with hundreds of cases, finding the one you're looking for. No limit of shuffling songs on only 5 CDs. Instant access to everything you own. The ability to make instant playlists of whatever songs you like, or the ability to dynamically change the potential of a song to be played.
All in a box smaller than your current DVD player, and, coincidently, able to play CD/DVDs as well. (OK, so the drives that store all this are located remotely, cuts down on sound and size of the box in your living room)
One of the HUGE detractions of NT when it first came out, other than lack of drivers, was lack of software. There's a ton of common software from 3.x, 95, 98, and ME that WON'T run on NT, 2K, nor XP.
I've got a Win95 system at home solely to support some of these programs. Take MasterCook 2.0 for instance, better have a 3.x system. 95 will crash with it. MasterCook 4.x, better have 95/98. IIRC, it won't even install on ME, much less any NT variant. Then there's the slew of games. Lemmings is one popular old game that comes to mind. Any of the DOS based games that ran under 95/98 is a whole-subset that won't run under NT variants. Matter of fact, most games under the 3.x/95/98/ME set won't run under any NT variant. Interestingly enough, many do run under Linux/WINE or OS/2.
I'd have to go back and see if I even have a version of Office pre 95, but I don't believe any of those ran on an NT variant, nor did their Lotus/Wordperfect brethern.
incorrect. Check my response to the GP. Cairo was announced in 1992 as a product. It was supposed to be delivered, complete, by 1995.
DFS certainly isn't as originally advertised, as anyone who has tried to use it would know. Kerberos, isn't it non-compliant and bug-ridden? I seem to remember something relating to a bug caused by non-compliance. OFS? What's that as I missed an acronym.
ADS blows chunks, and still hasn't caught up to NDS, but MS's PR branch sure killed off NDS as well. So NT finally got disk quotas? What version? 2K3? About 20 years after Unix? What innovation! BG's folks must be so proud! Discounting the rest are left as excercises for the reader.
Lastly, the biggies: Object Oriented GUI and file system. Nope - both still MIA 14 years later, and neither will be delivered in 2007 either.
Let's put down the crack pipe for a moment, and check the facts. From articles significantly after the 1992 Cairo announcement, Byte makes the admission that Cairo has morphed from a product to a "collection of technologies". This is confirmed in a Windows IT Pro article from 97. This article originally from 93 mentions Cairo in an interesting sense as well. And here's just an outright interesting paper on MS's business practices.
So anyway, to sum up the content of all those references:
MS announced Cairo as the be all and end all of all OSes in 1992. It was to be delivered by 1995. This was in direct response to OS/2, which was released in 1992 in a truly workable form. In between, Cairo became a set of technologies, because MS realized they couldn't release the OS within their lifetime. Then, when OS/2 was finally conquered by Office95's backwards incompatibilities around 1996/1997, they announced that Cairo would not be released.
BTW, does that pattern sound familiar?
Speaking of Longhorn, it was announced to face a two-headed threat. On the one side, Linux was making in-roads. On the other, the Mac OSX was a surprising come-back from a company that MS gave a heart-transplant to. What better way to discount both than to announce... and resurrect Cairo as Longhorn?
And finally, if you really believe that most of Cairo's features exist today, I ask you this: where are my:
That's just what I can remember from the list that Cairo promised. It's a shame I threw out all those old mags years ago, that date from the appropriate time-period that might have refreshed my memory. Most of the articles now on the web only reflect the largest of the claims of Cairo, namely the object oriented nature of its file system. I don't recall that being described as a DB though. They were trying to mimic OS/2's features, including things like shadows (OS/2's vastly improved shortcuts) and extended attributes. That the latter allowed for more efficient searching, perhaps that's where they delved off into a DB file system that they still haven't been able to produce 14 years later. How many FS's have been created by OS contributors in the meantime?
Oh, and lastly, let's remember Chicago. It actually shipped, minus a few pieces, as a whole product.