My Powerbook sounds like a jet engine is starting up on my lap when it gets too warm. Granted it's an older titanium model and I haven't used any of the new ones, but it's definitely not silent.
Well, to be fair, if we take Mark at his word, my viewers should only have to pay him the cost of a ticket if he manages to actually catch them. Otherwise they should be allowed to watch for free.
Somehow I think his opinions are probably a bit different when it's his "intellectual property" on the line, though.
Not only is Jupiter not a star; it's also not as bright as Venus. The ISS is not as bright as either of them. It's also less bright than Sirius (the brightest star).
Grandparent is obviously a West Wing viewer, and can be forgiven from buying in to the dumbest story line I've seen on TV in years.
I was just waiting for some character to say, "You know, it's a shame no one thought of including some sort of emergency escape vehicle on the ISS when they built it."
For one thing, if it looks just like the Mac mini case, Apple's going to sue you for using their trademarked logo, and you're going to need to charge thousands of dollars for each unit to cover your legal costs.
Besides, who's going to buy a product that involves invalidating the warranty on their brand new computer? And do you want to be the one providing technical support for the things?
You may recall that the decision to drop the monopoly case and not punish Microsoft for that conviction was made by the same administration of which the FTC is a part.
I wouldn't count on regulators stopping Microsoft from acquiring a competitor any time soon if that's what they want to do.
So by "lossless compression" you actually meant not lossless compression, but theoretically impossible compression. Fine.
But so what? Processors and transfer technologies are getting faster all the time, and hard drives keep getting bigger.
You sound like someone 20 years ago claiming that we'd never have digital pictures that are as high quality as real photographs, because you'd never be able to fit a significant quantity on a 800 KB floppy disk and they'd take forever to send over your 300 baud modem.
Actually, since he's posting under a CC license, not only can I have my browser display his site any way I want to, I can also download the entire site and publish it myself in the format that I think looks best, for everyone else to come and look at instead of visiting his site.
Just unfounded speculation from some guy who's dumb enough to post a link to his own website on slashdot when he knows (and says, right on the webpage he's linking to) that he's not going to be able to afford the bandwidth to keep the page online. I think I'd prefer some unfounded speculation by someone smarter.
We could already find this exact same speculation in comments on earlier slashdot stories, too. News? Hardly.
It absolutely, positively, does NOT run them. It installs them in a directory, which is read when you click the big plus sign at the bottom of the Dashboard screen. They're only run if you click on them there.
Wow, mods. Way to moderate a statement that couldn't possibly be more obviously false as "Informative".
Yes, a decrease in growth does exactly equal the decrease in the rate of growth. That's what growth means. The rate of increase. The rate of growing.
Did you mean to say that a decrease in growth isn't the same thing as a decrease in the number of users? That's true, and maybe not as obvious to a lot of people as it should be.
It's nothing like ActiveX controls. A remote site can't cause code to execute without user interaction.
Installing the widgets in a directory that Dashboard uses to make them available for use within its GUI without asking the user is definitely a bug (the one that's being fixed in the patch that's the subject of this article), but it's not as harmful as some people have suggested, and it's really not much different than offering a normal executable for download, and then sticking it somewhere that the user could click on it to execute it.
Is an icon stuck somewhere in Dashboard's GUI where a user will only see it if they're actually trying to add widgets to the set that's displayed on their screen more harmful than an icon in a folder on the desktop (or other default download location, if the user's set it)? Perhaps, but it's not like something that allows a remote website to execute arbitrary code by having a user navigate to the site, with no further user interaction.
If I'm not mistaken, the "exploit" in question is the same technique used by many download sites (including, e.g., Sourceforge) to serve files. You navigate to a web page which displays HTML content and then triggers a download of a file while the page is being displayed.
In Safari, if the file happens to be a widget, it gets installed for you so you can activate it from within Dashboard. If it's a disk image containing an application, the disk image gets opened (in Tiger, with a warning) so the user can take the right steps to install the application.
There are substantial non-abusive uses of this technology and, right now, basically one abusive use of it (sending a file that will auto-install without having the website actually ask the user if he/she wants to install it.)
It's perfectly legitimate to have a site that contains a "Download my widget" link which sends the user to a page like this. Whether the widget can be harmful or not is irrelevant; there's nothing Apple can reasonably do to prevent someone from distributing malicious software to users who trust the person distributing it and intentionally install it.
Removing the auto-install of widgets, replacing it with a "Are you sure you want to install this widget" dialog, is the reasonable solution, and brings it in line with how Safari acts when any other executable is downloaded.
Of course, theirs was a lot easy to develop than what grandparent poster is suggesting, since they wrote all of the licenses themselves specifically to match every possible combination of the variables they use.
The GPL and, for example, a Microsoft EULA, are so different that you'd need an advanced degree in symbolic logic to come up with ways to categorize them like that.
Yeah! How dare a commercial software developer attempt to sell their software.
It's a good thing the good people at Microsoft realized that all software should be given away for free, and thus made IE free out of the goodness of their hearts.
</sarcasm>
If you're sending messages to email addresses that didn't actually subscribe then yes, you're a spammer and you should be blocked.
A well-designed opt-in list won't have any fake addresses on it (although it may have messages to invalid addresses bounce is once-valid accounts stop working), because anyone with half a brain designing an opt-in list would require the addresses it's mailing to be validated by the recipients of the messages before sending them anything.
That's a nice theory, but it seems more likely that the more effective spam filtering gets, the more spam will be sent. If it takes 100x more messages to get the same results, the spammers will just send 100x more messages. And they'll need to turn even more machines into zombies to do it.
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My Powerbook sounds like a jet engine is starting up on my lap when it gets too warm. Granted it's an older titanium model and I haven't used any of the new ones, but it's definitely not silent.
Somehow I think his opinions are probably a bit different when it's his "intellectual property" on the line, though.
Can I set up a new cable network that broadcasts all of the Maverick's games if I pay them the cost of a season ticket? Sounds fair to me.
You can absolutely be awarded punitive damages in a a civil lawsuit. In criminal actions they're called "fines".
Not only is Jupiter not a star; it's also not as bright as Venus. The ISS is not as bright as either of them. It's also less bright than Sirius (the brightest star).
I was just waiting for some character to say, "You know, it's a shame no one thought of including some sort of emergency escape vehicle on the ISS when they built it."
Stupid writers.
Besides, who's going to buy a product that involves invalidating the warranty on their brand new computer? And do you want to be the one providing technical support for the things?
What, are California wines more dangerous to children or something? Idiots.
They're certainly not spending any money on competent copyediting.
I wouldn't count on regulators stopping Microsoft from acquiring a competitor any time soon if that's what they want to do.
But so what? Processors and transfer technologies are getting faster all the time, and hard drives keep getting bigger.
You sound like someone 20 years ago claiming that we'd never have digital pictures that are as high quality as real photographs, because you'd never be able to fit a significant quantity on a 800 KB floppy disk and they'd take forever to send over your 300 baud modem.
After all, just walking down the street is potentially dangerous and injuries put a burden on society.
Ever heard of a zip file?
Actually, since he's posting under a CC license, not only can I have my browser display his site any way I want to, I can also download the entire site and publish it myself in the format that I think looks best, for everyone else to come and look at instead of visiting his site.
We could already find this exact same speculation in comments on earlier slashdot stories, too. News? Hardly.
Shall we discuss the change in the change in growth rate, too? How about some even higher order differentials?
It absolutely, positively, does NOT run them. It installs them in a directory, which is read when you click the big plus sign at the bottom of the Dashboard screen. They're only run if you click on them there.
Yes, a decrease in growth does exactly equal the decrease in the rate of growth. That's what growth means. The rate of increase. The rate of growing.
Did you mean to say that a decrease in growth isn't the same thing as a decrease in the number of users? That's true, and maybe not as obvious to a lot of people as it should be.
Installing the widgets in a directory that Dashboard uses to make them available for use within its GUI without asking the user is definitely a bug (the one that's being fixed in the patch that's the subject of this article), but it's not as harmful as some people have suggested, and it's really not much different than offering a normal executable for download, and then sticking it somewhere that the user could click on it to execute it.
Is an icon stuck somewhere in Dashboard's GUI where a user will only see it if they're actually trying to add widgets to the set that's displayed on their screen more harmful than an icon in a folder on the desktop (or other default download location, if the user's set it)? Perhaps, but it's not like something that allows a remote website to execute arbitrary code by having a user navigate to the site, with no further user interaction.
In Safari, if the file happens to be a widget, it gets installed for you so you can activate it from within Dashboard. If it's a disk image containing an application, the disk image gets opened (in Tiger, with a warning) so the user can take the right steps to install the application.
There are substantial non-abusive uses of this technology and, right now, basically one abusive use of it (sending a file that will auto-install without having the website actually ask the user if he/she wants to install it.)
It's perfectly legitimate to have a site that contains a "Download my widget" link which sends the user to a page like this. Whether the widget can be harmful or not is irrelevant; there's nothing Apple can reasonably do to prevent someone from distributing malicious software to users who trust the person distributing it and intentionally install it.
Removing the auto-install of widgets, replacing it with a "Are you sure you want to install this widget" dialog, is the reasonable solution, and brings it in line with how Safari acts when any other executable is downloaded.
"MYOB" is a double-edged sword, hypocrite.
The GPL and, for example, a Microsoft EULA, are so different that you'd need an advanced degree in symbolic logic to come up with ways to categorize them like that.
It's a good thing the good people at Microsoft realized that all software should be given away for free, and thus made IE free out of the goodness of their hearts. </sarcasm>
A well-designed opt-in list won't have any fake addresses on it (although it may have messages to invalid addresses bounce is once-valid accounts stop working), because anyone with half a brain designing an opt-in list would require the addresses it's mailing to be validated by the recipients of the messages before sending them anything.
That's a nice theory, but it seems more likely that the more effective spam filtering gets, the more spam will be sent. If it takes 100x more messages to get the same results, the spammers will just send 100x more messages. And they'll need to turn even more machines into zombies to do it.