When the shuttle first appeared, I remember it being sold as a "space plane", like you'd be able to launch, land later and fuel it up again and take off the next day.
The mistake was that no-one seems to have reviewed the program. Pretty quickly, someone must have realised that it was saving little compared to repeat launches.
A few times, I've worked in call centres - sitting at a desk next to the users for a few months. Working with people earning a lot less than IT people, with less job security and less mobility.
I heard much less whining sitting there than in the average IT department.
If there's greener grass in another company, leave and go work there.
That's not what we're saying at all. It has little to do with the pre-copy protection era. The people copying pre-protection are probably still doing so or not bothering at all.
The point is that the people who were honest are those that will be those who suffer from anti-copying mechanisms.
This is the era of digital copying. Not analogue where a 20th generation copy would be unwatchable. It takes one guy to break the protection and it will be out there, spread across a number of digital formats. Clamp down on FTP sites, people will just trade CDs with their friends at workplaces or schools.
Now, I'm not addressing the moral questions of copying. I'm stating fact as I see it. A lot of people don't care about the morals of copying. So, it's pretty important for the industries that those who are on the borders are kept sweet.
You make something hard for someone to get - like playing a music file with a player of their choice, you will lose them to the murky world.
They'll ask their geek pal why it won't play. He'll introduce them to any number of hacking and cracking tools, or maybe tell them about where they can get it without paying for it.
Oh, and you pissed them off as a customer. Now, how much love do they have for you now? How much are they going to respect you next time they want to get hold of an album? How much have you shifted their moral compass away from "reward the artist" to "fuck you, I'll have it for free".
The thing is, you've sort of answered your own point by equating alcohol and dope. Yeah, I don't want a stoned driver in a bus nor do I want a drunk driver. There's some equivalence.
If you are sitting in a hotel and detect an open hotspot, you could well assume it is the hotel's and not the house down the road.
However, in a predominantly residential area (particularly when you are sat in your car outside), it's safe to assume that someone isn't making an accidental hookup.
As I said in another post, this is all about protocols. We go into a cafe and pick up a sachet of sugar. We don't expect to pay for it, even though we haven't paid for or asked permission.
What is the protocol for open hotspots? Well, my view is that its an undecided, but if I was sitting in a hotel or bar, I'd probably check the approximate name and if it looked reasonable and the bar seemed to be a hotspot sort of place, I'd use it (if unsure, I'd ask).
If I was in a residential area, I'd presume it was someone's home network and not use it.
OK let's say you have some sort of private parking outside your house. Under UK law, I can park anywhere that's allowed on the public highway, this includes parking on the street outside people's houses.
However, some housing has private roads that you can't park on. Basically, if you don't mark it as a private road, people can reasonably assume that it's public highway, because most of it is. Don't want me to park on your private road? Put a sign up.
The analogy of driving a car away is ridiculous. No-one would do it because they know that by default, people don't leave their cars open for other people to use. However, there are public hotspots. I know 3 near me that are unlocked, and in each case, I know the owners are cool with it. 2 are hotels, one is a restaurant. What if I'm sitting in a restaurant and hit a hotspot of the home next door? How do I know, particularly as they broadcast their presence.
I'm just saying that the protocol for open hotspots is disputed. Don't want people on it? Switch WEP or WPA on.
"Some people might argue that taking a joy-ride in someone else's car is not an offence either"
Wrong. It's more like going up a private road which isn't marked as a private road, and which you have contacted Google to tell them to put it on their maps. Don't want people to go driving up your private road? Put some signs up or a gate.
It's very simple - put WEP or WPA on. To be honest, if someone goes through your WEP, then that counts as a deliberate break-in in my book. If you don't have it no, don't complain when people go using it.
I guess this means that the bunkum spreaders will now write off all their charts as there's a new planet that's going to affect how people's lives are going to pan out.
Navigation/cancel/refresh. Yeah that's different, but horrible.
Search. FF.
Add-on manager that can turn off BHOs. How about, having a browser that means you don't have to put up with unwanted BHOs in the first place. See FF.
Toolbar options. I can more the toolbar how I want in FF. And have a sidebar. And do some skinning of it.
Sounds revolutionary. Oh yeah, and how long until IE7 gets SVG or the really nice Find function that FF has? And has it switched off being able to override the javascript? Or continuing broken downloads?
OK. I didn't necessarily mean that yours were geek sites, more that in general, geeks are bigger web users, and most geeks I know are on FF.
But if the mythical joe sixpack is using FF, then great.
The next 10 years could be fascinating. Vista looks like a point upgrade to XP. People look at Powerbooks and go "Oooooh". More and more software is going platform-independent webapp. Some geeks and some enterprises are going Linux.
looking at what's in Vista and IE7, my first thought was "who's going to hang around for this?". If you are already putting money into a fund to get yourself a Mac Mini, is there anything in there that's going to make you change your mind.
Likewise, if you are already of FF, what's there to get you onto IE7?
I know they are a multi-billion dollar company, but I sense a company with a crisis coming. Enough people turn their internal applications into standards-based webapps, and Microsofts numbers could start shifting fast (particularly if people are running VB6 and being forced to convert anyway).
Security is also about some little things - like that Firefox insists on the process of downloading an exe to be a two-stage. 1) Download 2) Run. You can't just kick it off.
It also displays the actual URL of a link, which means that javascript spoofing can't be done so easily.
Security is about all these little things. And Firefox seems much more capable of evolving (particularly as it's open source, meaning anyone can offer up a fix).
I would guess that casual users are more likely to use IE - geeks who are online the whole time are more likely using Firefox.
But I'd be interested to hear thoughts on this.
The other important question isn't just percentage of users, but what sort of users. It's like sponsoring ballet and opera. Not many people are interested in it, but they happen to be a minority with a large disposable income. I often think this about Macs - they may be a small percentage of users, but the ones I've met are big software buyers, and frequently have a high disposable income.
This issue is much more about trade-offs. In this case, the cost of hardware+software+bandwidth vs cost of labour.
At one time, processing power was very expensive, servers were expensive, as a percentage the OS was cheap, network traffic was very expensive. PCs cut the cost of that. At the same time, they often required more costs in terms of labour.
Now, PC hardware is cheap, servers are cheap, network traffic is getting cheaper, but labour has gone up.
I remember being in a company that switched from green screen to PC, and the most seductive part wasn't local working. It was drop downs. Users loved that you didn't have to know a product code, you could just look it up.
The question isn't about you doing 400MB photoshop work on a remote server (although one day, this may happen), it's more about someone running CRM or fault management on a web based project management tool instead of a desktop app.
Basically, you have to get organised. Create a group, something like Gamers of America, and make it very clear that the leadership will make pronouncements about which party will give the most rights to gamers. Only by mobilising large blocks of votes will you scare politicians into listening to you.
A lot of politicians are either living in another world, or forget just how boring huge periods of the adolescent day is.
I can remember spending a lot of time just walking around with buddies. Never did any law breaking, but movies never tell you what the truth is. You aren't going bowling or playing in a band every day. For kids who don't have sporting facilities there's often nothing to do but TV and video games.
I think that people have been running Windows on the new Intel macs.
And yes, I do some Windows stuff but gradually making a transition to Apache-based development. To have one box that could run a Unix-based environment easily and a Windows-based environment to allow for transition would be wonderful.
Slashdot Mirror
The mistake was that no-one seems to have reviewed the program. Pretty quickly, someone must have realised that it was saving little compared to repeat launches.
I heard much less whining sitting there than in the average IT department.
If there's greener grass in another company, leave and go work there.
The point is that the people who were honest are those that will be those who suffer from anti-copying mechanisms.
This is the era of digital copying. Not analogue where a 20th generation copy would be unwatchable. It takes one guy to break the protection and it will be out there, spread across a number of digital formats. Clamp down on FTP sites, people will just trade CDs with their friends at workplaces or schools.
Now, I'm not addressing the moral questions of copying. I'm stating fact as I see it. A lot of people don't care about the morals of copying. So, it's pretty important for the industries that those who are on the borders are kept sweet.
They'll ask their geek pal why it won't play. He'll introduce them to any number of hacking and cracking tools, or maybe tell them about where they can get it without paying for it.
Oh, and you pissed them off as a customer. Now, how much love do they have for you now? How much are they going to respect you next time they want to get hold of an album? How much have you shifted their moral compass away from "reward the artist" to "fuck you, I'll have it for free".
Now, why is dope illegal and alcohol legal?
If you are sitting in a hotel and detect an open hotspot, you could well assume it is the hotel's and not the house down the road.
However, in a predominantly residential area (particularly when you are sat in your car outside), it's safe to assume that someone isn't making an accidental hookup.
What is the protocol for open hotspots? Well, my view is that its an undecided, but if I was sitting in a hotel or bar, I'd probably check the approximate name and if it looked reasonable and the bar seemed to be a hotspot sort of place, I'd use it (if unsure, I'd ask).
If I was in a residential area, I'd presume it was someone's home network and not use it.
However, some housing has private roads that you can't park on. Basically, if you don't mark it as a private road, people can reasonably assume that it's public highway, because most of it is. Don't want me to park on your private road? Put a sign up.
The analogy of driving a car away is ridiculous. No-one would do it because they know that by default, people don't leave their cars open for other people to use. However, there are public hotspots. I know 3 near me that are unlocked, and in each case, I know the owners are cool with it. 2 are hotels, one is a restaurant. What if I'm sitting in a restaurant and hit a hotspot of the home next door? How do I know, particularly as they broadcast their presence.
I'm just saying that the protocol for open hotspots is disputed. Don't want people on it? Switch WEP or WPA on.
Wrong. It's more like going up a private road which isn't marked as a private road, and which you have contacted Google to tell them to put it on their maps. Don't want people to go driving up your private road? Put some signs up or a gate.
It's very simple - put WEP or WPA on. To be honest, if someone goes through your WEP, then that counts as a deliberate break-in in my book. If you don't have it no, don't complain when people go using it.
I guess this means that the bunkum spreaders will now write off all their charts as there's a new planet that's going to affect how people's lives are going to pan out.
yeah, into the core of the planet.
now get your ass to Mars. I saw a movie with some instructions.
Let's see:-
tabbed browsing. FF.
right click gives new window or new tab. FF.
CSS Acid Test. Oh no, doesn't pass that. Kinda irrelevant then.
Phishing. Yup sounds new. Not in FF.
Navigation/cancel/refresh. Yeah that's different, but horrible.
Search. FF.
Add-on manager that can turn off BHOs. How about, having a browser that means you don't have to put up with unwanted BHOs in the first place. See FF.
Toolbar options. I can more the toolbar how I want in FF. And have a sidebar. And do some skinning of it.
Sounds revolutionary. Oh yeah, and how long until IE7 gets SVG or the really nice Find function that FF has? And has it switched off being able to override the javascript? Or continuing broken downloads?
The key to anti-phishing is user education and keeping users informed of new cunning tricks spotted.
This will just make people feel that the technology will protect them and disengage their grey matter.
But if the mythical joe sixpack is using FF, then great.
The next 10 years could be fascinating. Vista looks like a point upgrade to XP. People look at Powerbooks and go "Oooooh". More and more software is going platform-independent webapp. Some geeks and some enterprises are going Linux.
Likewise, if you are already of FF, what's there to get you onto IE7? I know they are a multi-billion dollar company, but I sense a company with a crisis coming. Enough people turn their internal applications into standards-based webapps, and Microsofts numbers could start shifting fast (particularly if people are running VB6 and being forced to convert anyway).
It also displays the actual URL of a link, which means that javascript spoofing can't be done so easily.
Security is about all these little things. And Firefox seems much more capable of evolving (particularly as it's open source, meaning anyone can offer up a fix).
But I'd be interested to hear thoughts on this.
The other important question isn't just percentage of users, but what sort of users. It's like sponsoring ballet and opera. Not many people are interested in it, but they happen to be a minority with a large disposable income. I often think this about Macs - they may be a small percentage of users, but the ones I've met are big software buyers, and frequently have a high disposable income.
This issue is much more about trade-offs. In this case, the cost of hardware+software+bandwidth vs cost of labour.
At one time, processing power was very expensive, servers were expensive, as a percentage the OS was cheap, network traffic was very expensive. PCs cut the cost of that. At the same time, they often required more costs in terms of labour.
Now, PC hardware is cheap, servers are cheap, network traffic is getting cheaper, but labour has gone up.
The question isn't about you doing 400MB photoshop work on a remote server (although one day, this may happen), it's more about someone running CRM or fault management on a web based project management tool instead of a desktop app.
If they see that censored video games will still make them cash and keep the government from clamping down hard, that's what they'll continue to do.
The video game companies are worried about the big retailers who won't stock an "adult" game already. So, they don't care if some censorship occurs.
Basically, you have to get organised. Create a group, something like Gamers of America, and make it very clear that the leadership will make pronouncements about which party will give the most rights to gamers. Only by mobilising large blocks of votes will you scare politicians into listening to you.
IMO, it's not really related. Violence is far more about general upbringing, and how people feel about themselves.
Every time that people make a game=murderers link, dig slightly below the surface and you'll find an alcoholic, neglectful or abusive parent as well.
If videogames were such an issue, we'd have an epidemic of violence now.
I can remember spending a lot of time just walking around with buddies. Never did any law breaking, but movies never tell you what the truth is. You aren't going bowling or playing in a band every day. For kids who don't have sporting facilities there's often nothing to do but TV and video games.
And yes, I do some Windows stuff but gradually making a transition to Apache-based development. To have one box that could run a Unix-based environment easily and a Windows-based environment to allow for transition would be wonderful.
That's the L word I was thinking of...