Recently MS acquire Frontbridge a spam filtering company that was highly effective in its job of stopping virus and spams. You pay a monthly fee and all your mail goes through them before reaching your mail servers. I guess M$ see spam fighting as the next source of revenue for the company. With spam costing people billions of dollars in lost productivity, who wouldn't pay a few hundred millions to get rid of it. Of course, if the government stepped in and put a dent in the problem, that's just that much more lost revenue for M$'s new acquisitions. That would be communist/terrorists. We should leave all the problem solving to corporations... Right.
Cost in dolars delete spam from your AOL account: $5 Cost to have CompUSSR repair your PC from spyware: $150 The look on the spammer's face as he see "Bubba" get a penis enlargement spam: Priceless
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's KARMA!
Actually, probably not. The reason we have laws against that is because of harm to children in the making of them. If not children is harmed in the making, it's not illegal. I can't remember off the top of my head but there have been at least a case or two on this that went to the US Supreme Court.
As long as they still offer you the paper version, it's really not that bad. If the buyer doesn't care about the text after 5 months and have no qualms about DRM, then should he be given the choice to buy it at a discount? As long as the buyer are given choices, then it's not so bad. More choices for buyer is a good thing. It's when they start pulling the paper version and sell only the DRM version that we should be up in arms about, especially at universities where you have to buy the text.
Wow, that actually sounds a lot like the Open Source movement. I don't mean to invite flame or troll but let's look at it objectively. They both function as somewhat decentralized networks where often anonymous contributors help with the cause by doing their part. I can also see how if they have disagreements among themselves, they can just "fork". And like open source, they don't always require expensive equipment or lots of cash to operate. I suppose they're both in a class of organizations that have been made possible by modern communications.
I'm a product of American education and I know the atrocities we committed against them. The Pox blankets, the numerous broken treaties, and the massacres. I agree that the US must also live up to its past. Likewise, I think China will one day have to live up to what it did in Tibet.
If they inherited some of their prosperity from their ancestors should they not also be required to make amends for the wrong doings of their ancestors? Even now, the Japaneses are trying to erase any records of the atrocities from their textbooks nor have they sincerely apologized. I'm not asking for retribution or reparation. A simple statement that what they did or their grandparents did was wrong and to let their next generation know about it as well would suffice for most of us. Japan should look to Germany for guidance in the matters of righting a past wrong. They can never fully repair what was done nor should they have to. However, a sincere apology and the acceptance of the truth are not too much to ask for.
It just seems to go against the principle of checks-and-balances when an executive agency can just make up new rules. Isn't it the job of Congress to come up with new laws? I can understand an agency coming up with new rules within a very narrow range of its jurisdiction[sp?] to fulfill it's narrowly defined responsibilities, but this seems really broad and entails more than just communications. It concerns our liberty and privacy, which I'm sure the FCC doesn't have the sole jurisdiction over or I hope not.
I don't get Massport's claim at all. Continental and Massport are both using WiFi, which is 802.11. Massport claims that their system doesn't interfere with their system but Continental's does? This leaves two possibilities: 1. Massport is using a different frequency or media sharing technology that's different from Continental's WiFi. 2. Massport is full of shit.
But if Massport is using a different system than 802.11, then how can their customer expect to use their WiFi devices with their APs? That leaves only one conclusion. Massport is full of shit.
The worst kind are the small ones that are hard to detect or just plain anecdotes that's just impossible to verify. For example, on many military related pages, there are also tibbits or stories that are just impossible to verify. Much like email stories, these "facts" are then passed around as truth especially since it was found on the Wikipedia. For example, on the article on the Russian special forces, there was a story about them being better than the Rangers and how they beat the Rangers in a competition in Alaska in everything except for weight lifting. Nice story but false. This isn't intentional vandalism but it is damaging to credibility and difficult to verify. If we demand citations for every statement, progress will be slow. Being aware of this has affect my view of the Wikipedia, despite my own contributions to me. I really love the Wikipedia and it is my way of contributing to the open source movement. But at some point you have to balance openness and credibility. Bad code won't run but false statements aren't always so obvious. I wish there are some standardized way we can use to test the credibility of an article like we do with programs.
Or they themselves could have taken advantage of the technology by creating applications that will run on the browser. If MS felt the need to expend that kind of money to crush Netscape, then it must have seen some advantage to the browser over what they had at the time. Once Netscape is gone, they don't even take advantage of it. When business stagnates and don't improve they leave room open for newcomers and startups. This is precisely what happened.
So Microsoft initially missed the boat on the Internet. They go on to spend enormous sums of money to destroy Netscape and win the browser war. Once the war is over, what do they do? Nothing. They let the technology stagnate. It ends up being a 3rd company, Google, a non-participant in the browser war who comes along and pushes the envelope. What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market? I think Google's play nice strategy is paying more dividends than MS's destroy all competitor strategy.
I think those Person 1 are in for a big surprise. My work at a hedge fund has opened my eyes to the importance of mathematics. It's not just the analyst who must know math but also the directors. Most of our directors have their degrees in engineering. The financial world is moving away from shooting from the hips and bravado to disciplined, precise engineering of risks.
What really annoyed in during high school and middle school was the prevalent idea that logic/reason is contrary to creativity. Anyone lacking skills in reasoning/math can compensate to themselves by claiming that they were creative. That's just dandy because there's no good way to measure creativity so they just hide behind that. Random ideas != creativity. From my experience, creativity requires at least a small measure of reasoning. In fact, some of the most creative people I know are very skilled at mathematics and computer science. The two are not exclusive but rather go hand-in-hand.
Actually, with the exception of the previous 3-4 centuries, China has been at the forefront of world civilizations. Their level of iron production during the Han dynasty would not be matched by the West until the 17th century. With China churning out 800,000 graduates with technical degrees every year, it looks like they are going to return to the front again, unless they or someone else do something stupid and start a world war.
Only a cyclist would say something like that... That's precisely the same reason I welcome their legislation.:-) I've always suspected that us cyclists are borderline insane in our dedication to our sport.
Wait, if they did that, wouldn't they have to GPL their additions? Is HP willing to give out that kind of technlogy? That would be a dream for Linux and possibly M$.
Yes! That right now, in my mind at least, is the most viable alternative. Bringing that up would be a little tough though. OSX desktop and Linux servers would be a dream for me but that's a major, major change.
I know about Open Office and have plans to test it out. However, there are a number of Excel plugins that we use so any Excel replacement must also work with those.
I'm definitely not seeing it at my company, which is a hedge fund. Maybe it's because I work at a hedge fund that things and the rules are different than the rest of the financial market. But the key issue for us isn't cost. It is reliability. We cannot tolerate downtime at all. The more data we can get continuously, the better we are. Linux is reliable and so is Windows if you have good administrators.
What's pegging us to Windows are our desktops. Until Excel or an equivalent like Excel runs on Linux, this won't happen. Does Bloomberg run on Linux? Until then, the desktops will stay Windows. So this leads to the servers staying Windows. From our experience, Windows plays better with Windows. MS products don't like to play nice with other companies' products. So our domain controllers, etc. are all Windows. I have to admit, our AD works fine and so do most of our Windows servers. Windows XP on our workstation leaves much room for improvement but Linux isn't an alternative on the desktops. It's not Linux itself but third party software that's making us stay on Windows XP.
I've been trying to push Linux since I started and haven't made too much progress and I can understand why. Windows works for us. Why undertake the risk of a major overhaul, especially when we know Microsoft products don't like to play nice with non-MS products? We have the money to stay with MS. However, I am happy to say that open source software is making progress. We're in the process of switching to Cacti to monitor our servers. Firefox has caught on with some of our uses and traders (they love tabbed browsing). I've seen a trader reading a book on R (OSS stats software)
In other news, Google has hires yet another world renown computer genius and visionary -- rumored to have been saved from the pits of an inkjet cartridge research dungeon.
In the news the next day, HP sues Google for helping a former employee by giving him a job.
Slashdot Mirror
They for one welcome their new light emitting, load passing overlords.
Recently MS acquire Frontbridge a spam filtering company that was highly effective in its job of stopping virus and spams. You pay a monthly fee and all your mail goes through them before reaching your mail servers. I guess M$ see spam fighting as the next source of revenue for the company. With spam costing people billions of dollars in lost productivity, who wouldn't pay a few hundred millions to get rid of it. Of course, if the government stepped in and put a dent in the problem, that's just that much more lost revenue for M$'s new acquisitions. That would be communist/terrorists. We should leave all the problem solving to corporations... Right.
Cost in dolars delete spam from your AOL account: $5
Cost to have CompUSSR repair your PC from spyware: $150
The look on the spammer's face as he see "Bubba" get a penis enlargement spam: Priceless
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's KARMA!
Actually, probably not. The reason we have laws against that is because of harm to children in the making of them. If not children is harmed in the making, it's not illegal. I can't remember off the top of my head but there have been at least a case or two on this that went to the US Supreme Court.
As long as they still offer you the paper version, it's really not that bad. If the buyer doesn't care about the text after 5 months and have no qualms about DRM, then should he be given the choice to buy it at a discount? As long as the buyer are given choices, then it's not so bad. More choices for buyer is a good thing. It's when they start pulling the paper version and sell only the DRM version that we should be up in arms about, especially at universities where you have to buy the text.
Ssshhh..... He might hear us....
Wow, that actually sounds a lot like the Open Source movement. I don't mean to invite flame or troll but let's look at it objectively. They both function as somewhat decentralized networks where often anonymous contributors help with the cause by doing their part. I can also see how if they have disagreements among themselves, they can just "fork". And like open source, they don't always require expensive equipment or lots of cash to operate. I suppose they're both in a class of organizations that have been made possible by modern communications.
I'm a product of American education and I know the atrocities we committed against them. The Pox blankets, the numerous broken treaties, and the massacres. I agree that the US must also live up to its past. Likewise, I think China will one day have to live up to what it did in Tibet.
If they inherited some of their prosperity from their ancestors should they not also be required to make amends for the wrong doings of their ancestors? Even now, the Japaneses are trying to erase any records of the atrocities from their textbooks nor have they sincerely apologized. I'm not asking for retribution or reparation. A simple statement that what they did or their grandparents did was wrong and to let their next generation know about it as well would suffice for most of us. Japan should look to Germany for guidance in the matters of righting a past wrong. They can never fully repair what was done nor should they have to. However, a sincere apology and the acceptance of the truth are not too much to ask for.
It just seems to go against the principle of checks-and-balances when an executive agency can just make up new rules. Isn't it the job of Congress to come up with new laws? I can understand an agency coming up with new rules within a very narrow range of its jurisdiction[sp?] to fulfill it's narrowly defined responsibilities, but this seems really broad and entails more than just communications. It concerns our liberty and privacy, which I'm sure the FCC doesn't have the sole jurisdiction over or I hope not.
That also makes fire out of water and some of us call it "firewater".
I don't get Massport's claim at all. Continental and Massport are both using WiFi, which is 802.11. Massport claims that their system doesn't interfere with their system but Continental's does? This leaves two possibilities:
1. Massport is using a different frequency or media sharing technology that's different from Continental's WiFi.
2. Massport is full of shit.
But if Massport is using a different system than 802.11, then how can their customer expect to use their WiFi devices with their APs? That leaves only one conclusion. Massport is full of shit.
The worst kind are the small ones that are hard to detect or just plain anecdotes that's just impossible to verify. For example, on many military related pages, there are also tibbits or stories that are just impossible to verify. Much like email stories, these "facts" are then passed around as truth especially since it was found on the Wikipedia. For example, on the article on the Russian special forces, there was a story about them being better than the Rangers and how they beat the Rangers in a competition in Alaska in everything except for weight lifting. Nice story but false. This isn't intentional vandalism but it is damaging to credibility and difficult to verify. If we demand citations for every statement, progress will be slow. Being aware of this has affect my view of the Wikipedia, despite my own contributions to me. I really love the Wikipedia and it is my way of contributing to the open source movement. But at some point you have to balance openness and credibility. Bad code won't run but false statements aren't always so obvious. I wish there are some standardized way we can use to test the credibility of an article like we do with programs.
So now are they going to pass the Colonial Revolutionaries Act?
I suppose that is one way to explain the subject of breasts to nerds...
Or they themselves could have taken advantage of the technology by creating applications that will run on the browser. If MS felt the need to expend that kind of money to crush Netscape, then it must have seen some advantage to the browser over what they had at the time. Once Netscape is gone, they don't even take advantage of it. When business stagnates and don't improve they leave room open for newcomers and startups. This is precisely what happened.
So Microsoft initially missed the boat on the Internet. They go on to spend enormous sums of money to destroy Netscape and win the browser war. Once the war is over, what do they do? Nothing. They let the technology stagnate. It ends up being a 3rd company, Google, a non-participant in the browser war who comes along and pushes the envelope. What was the point of Microsoft trying so hard to destroy another company and take over the market? I think Google's play nice strategy is paying more dividends than MS's destroy all competitor strategy.
What really annoyed in during high school and middle school was the prevalent idea that logic/reason is contrary to creativity. Anyone lacking skills in reasoning/math can compensate to themselves by claiming that they were creative. That's just dandy because there's no good way to measure creativity so they just hide behind that. Random ideas != creativity. From my experience, creativity requires at least a small measure of reasoning. In fact, some of the most creative people I know are very skilled at mathematics and computer science. The two are not exclusive but rather go hand-in-hand.
Actually, with the exception of the previous 3-4 centuries, China has been at the forefront of world civilizations. Their level of iron production during the Han dynasty would not be matched by the West until the 17th century. With China churning out 800,000 graduates with technical degrees every year, it looks like they are going to return to the front again, unless they or someone else do something stupid and start a world war.
Only a cyclist would say something like that... That's precisely the same reason I welcome their legislation. :-) I've always suspected that us cyclists are borderline insane in our dedication to our sport.
Wait, if they did that, wouldn't they have to GPL their additions? Is HP willing to give out that kind of technlogy? That would be a dream for Linux and possibly M$.
Yes! That right now, in my mind at least, is the most viable alternative. Bringing that up would be a little tough though. OSX desktop and Linux servers would be a dream for me but that's a major, major change.
I know about Open Office and have plans to test it out. However, there are a number of Excel plugins that we use so any Excel replacement must also work with those.
I'm definitely not seeing it at my company, which is a hedge fund. Maybe it's because I work at a hedge fund that things and the rules are different than the rest of the financial market. But the key issue for us isn't cost. It is reliability. We cannot tolerate downtime at all. The more data we can get continuously, the better we are. Linux is reliable and so is Windows if you have good administrators.
What's pegging us to Windows are our desktops. Until Excel or an equivalent like Excel runs on Linux, this won't happen. Does Bloomberg run on Linux? Until then, the desktops will stay Windows. So this leads to the servers staying Windows. From our experience, Windows plays better with Windows. MS products don't like to play nice with other companies' products. So our domain controllers, etc. are all Windows. I have to admit, our AD works fine and so do most of our Windows servers. Windows XP on our workstation leaves much room for improvement but Linux isn't an alternative on the desktops. It's not Linux itself but third party software that's making us stay on Windows XP.
I've been trying to push Linux since I started and haven't made too much progress and I can understand why. Windows works for us. Why undertake the risk of a major overhaul, especially when we know Microsoft products don't like to play nice with non-MS products? We have the money to stay with MS. However, I am happy to say that open source software is making progress. We're in the process of switching to Cacti to monitor our servers. Firefox has caught on with some of our uses and traders (they love tabbed browsing). I've seen a trader reading a book on R (OSS stats software)
In the news the next day, HP sues Google for helping a former employee by giving him a job.