Everybody is focusing on those two guys smiling together, instead of looking at why they called the press release together, and why what they announced is considered important enough to warrant a Ballmer/McNealy co-presentation!
The reason why this is news, is that both companies, along with a ton of other groups of all sorts of sizes and purposes, have been working on creation of standards that will allow web authentication on the internet to cross boundaries of OS platform, browser platform, and development platform. The Metadata Exchange and Interop protocols are just two of a whole HOST of protocols that are going to link everything up.
Some of you will say - who cares? But the technology they are working on now will be used in the future by most people, on most platforms, to access protected web content.
That's pretty big. This little niche of the industry is set to explode into mainstream consciousness, just wait and see...
If you want to be ahead of the curve:
Check out the Fact Sheet from the MS-Sun announcement.
So for now, it sounds like it will be exploited as a very expensive roller-coaster ride, not a mode of transportation...
But then, it is hard to imagine what kind of profit flying payloads could make, it seems like it is a long way to go up, in order to go a (relatively) short distance across/around...
Is anyone else having flashbacks to Heinlein novels?
Aha, I was lacking in vision... I hadn't really thought of the 'documentary' style of blogging, I was just thinking about people wanting to state their opinions & insights to the world, and I couldn't imagine why they would need to do that on video.
I stand corrected - the value of that content is definitely worth the bandwidth...
The *content* definitely doesn't have to have mass appeal to be interesting... if it had mass appeal, it would probably just become a TV show.
But the medium *does* need mass appeal (or at least some kind of critical mass) to become the 'next big thing'. The value of the medium has to outweigh the inconvenience, I think. I can read about cool concerts coming up in my town in a blog easier than I can download the video and watch it. And I can't see what extra value would come out of watching it instead of reading it.
Perhaps I am just lacking the vision and imagination to come up with blog content that *has* to be watched. But that raises a new set of questions. Would only the good-looking bloggers be popular video bloggers? Could people pay attention to what that person says, without judging them by their appearance first?
My take is, people watch absolute drivel on tv for HOURS because it is presented to them conveniently, when they could have, in that time, gone to the net and found something they really liked. They watch the news because it is easier than buying a newspaper. When it is easier to watch a blog than to read it, I suppose that video blogging will 'catch on'... but that isn't to say that small communities of focused individuals won't derive a ton of use out of the medium long before that ever happens, if it ever even does...
If video blogging becomes popular, it will be on the coattails of something like Podcasting.
It is hard for me to imagine choosing to sit at a computer and watch someone talk, compared to being able to listen to them talk, anywhere, anytime, on my iPod.
Unless they are doing something interesting... well that leaves out the realms of home-reno, reality-tv, & porno, I guess (-:
Excellent point (nice to see a lucent reply, too)...
But I'd sure like to have a little more company. Boys are great, but sometimes they are seriously lacking in the sense of humor department. They can suck the life from a workplace in no seconds flat, if there aren't a few girls around to keep them on their toes.
I am proud of the fact that I am a chick who can cut it with the boys. But at the same time, I am starting to realize that what I always perceived as weakness in the majority of my gender is actually a strength. I am an anomaly, in that I love this industry. I fiercely love my chosen career and it gives me joy. But coming here, to slashdot, I have found legions of jaded, unhappy, bitter men who are in this technology industry and hate it. And it occurs to me that the women are smarter anyways. They are the ones who figure out that they won't be happy and walk away, compared to all these guys who stick it out, and then spend the rest of their lives unhappy and complaining...
So maybe if we can find a way to make comp sci a more satisfying career for women other than the six I know who made it through university, we can also make it happy for all these poor lost slashdotters, who knows. It seems like it is at least worth researching.
Thank you for the Bravo, by the way! It made my day.
For crying out loud, the only thing the majority of you seem to be able to say is: "but men and women are different".
The whole point is not to make women more like men. If the only answer to getting more women into Comp Sci was to make women more like men, then we might as well all save our collective (very repetitive) breath.
We know that many women are smart. We know that many women are excellent problem-solvers. We just don't yet know how to inspire women to use their talents in the Comp Sci field. That is where the challenge is. It isn't in getting women to change. The challenge is finding a way to think outside the traditional, linear box that Comp Sci sits in right now, to come up with the way that this vast, untapped group of people can use their own skills in a way that satisfies them and inspires them!
And, by the way, yes I'm a girl geek, yes I am good at what I do, and no, somehow playing with dolls as a child did not naturally predispose me to be a nurse or a teacher. That's right, I am feminine - analytical - and a geek and proud of it. The fact that I act like a girl (and have since birth) has nothing to do with whether or not I am capable of getting a comp sci degree. I'm very sorry to disappoint you... Just because we're different does not mean we cannot accomplish the same goals.
Typing is an applied skill, just like reading and writing.
In the same way that speed-reading is probably not a critical skill to teach to every child, typing at 120 wpm is probably not necessary either.
But just because speed-reading is too specialized, doesn't mean that reading at a comfortable speed isn't important!
Teaching kids to touch-type, not necessarily speedily, but comfortably, should be a priority for schools everywhere. I'm amazed that anyone could think that proficiency at this incredibly common medium of communication is not critical.
It isn't new to mix different songs from different albums - when I was a kid the cool thing was to make "mix" tapes with a double tape deck, and trade them around. It was always more fun to listen to somebody else's mix tape than your own, because that element of unpredictability was there.
The technology has changed, but the desire to listen to an varied list of music, in an order that is surprising, has nothing to do with "the kids today" and their short attention span.
The really great thing about today's technology isn't that you can shuffle all sorts of albums, but that you can include only the songs on the album that you like in the shuffle. That is the huge advantage over putting 5 cds into the changer and hitting 'shuffle'.
Lawsuit aside, what about this guy's sense of professional ethics? Regardless of what TOS the AC site put up, or whether the guy could get away with it on a technicality, who wants that type of person working at their company?
And if I was his boss at WestJet, I'd be nervously trying to figure out what data this guy will 'volunteer' once he leaves his current employment...
It has been pointed out that the data he retrieved from WestJet, he retrieved after he left, and therefore didn't steal it - but the existence of the server, and the fact that he could access it - is information that this guy had a professional obligation to keep to himself.
I hope WestJet takes care of him, 'cause I can't imagine him working anywhere else now...
Personally, I would add one more app - Visio. It isn't in the ballpark of the 3 apps that you have listed as far as units sold/installed, but the community of users that do have it on their desktop represent (imo) a key demographic.
Of course, I'm in that demographic, so perhaps I am biased (-: And if I thought for a single nanosecond that microsoft would port Viso to linux, I would have to also be delusional.
But should someone create a quality replacement for visio, I would migrate my company laptop to a free unix of some sort and never look back...
I checked PubLaw for a definition of the Right of Publicity, which also mentions the Right of Privacy, which "protects an individual from the emotional anguish resulting from the publication of private facts that are embarrassing, intimate or portray someone in a false light that is highly offensive" -- originally, I was thinking more of the latter as being not really so important for dead guys (-:
So if that's the case, why on earth do we have.com.org etc?
If you want truth in advertising, then the biggest, best-known company or individual using a given name should really just be given the name, right? Why even bother registering? We could just go by annual income...
Really, what difference is it in confusion between going to jrrtolkien.com and seeing ads, than it is to go to tolkien.com and see nothing, because that's what happens, when you try it. This is why we have google...
Porn sites who buy domains that have nothing to do with porn should be outlawed
I suppose, but when I go looking for porn, I do not necessarily immediately type "porn.com" into the address box of my browser...
Would it have made a difference to you then, if there had been a LoTR fan site at jrrtolkien.com?
If I google on tolkien, I do not find celebrity1000.com in the top 200 entries returned, so I really fail to see how they could possibly could interfere in anybody's search for anything...
Alberta Hot Rods is getting better publicity by having you all surf to the site in outrage, increasing their hit count by a bzillion times, than they probably ever EVER had by the few people who type "jrrtolkien.com" into their browser on a whim...
Don't feel bad though - lots of people have trouble finding porn on the internet, I understand your dilemma...
I hate to be unpopular, but the guy is dead, right? Does he really have the same rights to his name as somebody who is alive?
Can anyone who's making money off their dead relatives make a case for the name? Seems to me that neither of the parties actually suing for or using the name actually *wrote* LoTR...
I've been investigating Mambo - it's opensource, content can be managed without programming knowledge, and all sorts of modules, such as threaded forums, blogs, etc are available (not sure about photo albums though). Same sort of backend as others that have been discussed, PHP/mySQL/apache.
I've had a tour of the administration site for my friend's mambo install, and it sure does look sweet...
It isn't that you *need* it, but it makes your life easier. If you install perl 5.8.x, a lot of the prerequisite modules for SA get installed at the same time. I started out trying to install SA 2.6 using the native perl that comes with Solaris 8 (v. 5.005 IIRC) and I found that I got stuck in a nasty downwards spiral of module prerequisites. Of course part of the problem is that I'm too paranoid to run the 'perl -MCPAN' downloader in a root window either (-:
So no, v. 2.6 will work with almost any version of perl. It's just a matter of how many modules you have to manually update.
I have SA 2.6 running as a plugin to the SunONE Messaging Server (v5.2), in BAREBONES mode (ie no RBL, no Bayesian, nothing but perl regex) and it filtered 591 spam from my bosses mailbox alone on the first weekend. 12 or 13 managed to sneak through.
Since then, I've downloaded a bunch of rules from The SA Custom Rule Emporium and almost nothing gets through.
If this guy had trouble, it is the fault of the documentation, not the product. Either that, or he was dumb enough not to upgrade to perl 5.8 or above, and spent forever installing modules.
He says:
SpamAssassin is the perfect example of first-generation techniques becoming outmoded by advances in spamming technology
Funny how when you install an old version of the product, it seems outmoded, hmmm?
As a matter of fact, this is a subject I have thought about quite a bit lately... although I always took the "king" part a bit more metaphorically (-:
To seek to 'know the very truth of each thing' is a tough road to travel, although I agree with you that it is the striving that can deliver us to our destiny, whatever that may be.
However, I think it is easy to propose a new kind of aristocracy, when you yourself are part of it. Plenty of wise, educated Aryan people agreed when Hitler said:
"Every manifestation of human culture, every product of art, science and technical skill, which we see before our eyes today, is almost exclusively the product of Aryan creative power"
Is that similar to how you would describe your proposed ruling authority? What makes your proposal different? Yah, I know, you aren't planning on eradicating an entire race of people. But you could. You'd have that power. Who could stop you?
So what you're saying, setting aside the tangent of trying to decide if it's possible or not, is that you want to be ruled by a Philosopher King. I'm interested to know whether you aspire to be one yourself?
Those who let themselves be taken in by the multiple deceptions of politics, news, advertising and public relations, are doomed, like the more gullible members of the radio audience in 1938, to play a role in other people's dramas, while mistakenly believing that they are reacting to something genuine.
So how are we to tell whether we've been taken in or not? When a hurricane hits some remote part of the country, a newscaster tells us. When somebody famous dies, a newscaster tells us. These are things that can be independently verified. But when we are told by a newscaster that we are being targetted by weapons of mass destruction (or invaded by aliens) - where do we go for the so-called real information? For everything I read or watch, there is someplace I can go to hear the exact opposite. Other than descending into apathy, I don't believe there is a way that you can be sure that you are not an unwitting pawn in this game of global spin... all you can do is decide which side you'd like to be the pawn FOR...
yah, ok it's a bit of a troll post, but humor me, will ya?
Slashdot Mirror
Everybody is focusing on those two guys smiling together, instead of looking at why they called the press release together, and why what they announced is considered important enough to warrant a Ballmer/McNealy co-presentation!
The reason why this is news, is that both companies, along with a ton of other groups of all sorts of sizes and purposes, have been working on creation of standards that will allow web authentication on the internet to cross boundaries of OS platform, browser platform, and development platform. The Metadata Exchange and Interop protocols are just two of a whole HOST of protocols that are going to link everything up.
Some of you will say - who cares? But the technology they are working on now will be used in the future by most people, on most platforms, to access protected web content.
That's pretty big. This little niche of the industry is set to explode into mainstream consciousness, just wait and see...
If you want to be ahead of the curve:
Check out the Fact Sheet from the MS-Sun announcement.
Check out the WS-* White Paper
Check out Microsoft's Vision For an Identity Metasystem
Check out the Liberty Alliance Technology Review
And if prefer blogs to White Papers, check out Kim Cameron's Blog. That's really the happening place in Identity Management right now...
Pixie
So for now, it sounds like it will be exploited as a very expensive roller-coaster ride, not a mode of transportation...
But then, it is hard to imagine what kind of profit flying payloads could make, it seems like it is a long way to go up, in order to go a (relatively) short distance across/around...
Is anyone else having flashbacks to Heinlein novels?
Pixie
That is pretty cool, you're right.
Aha, I was lacking in vision... I hadn't really thought of the 'documentary' style of blogging, I was just thinking about people wanting to state their opinions & insights to the world, and I couldn't imagine why they would need to do that on video.
I stand corrected - the value of that content is definitely worth the bandwidth...
Thanks!
Pixie
The *content* definitely doesn't have to have mass appeal to be interesting... if it had mass appeal, it would probably just become a TV show.
But the medium *does* need mass appeal (or at least some kind of critical mass) to become the 'next big thing'. The value of the medium has to outweigh the inconvenience, I think. I can read about cool concerts coming up in my town in a blog easier than I can download the video and watch it. And I can't see what extra value would come out of watching it instead of reading it.
Perhaps I am just lacking the vision and imagination to come up with blog content that *has* to be watched. But that raises a new set of questions. Would only the good-looking bloggers be popular video bloggers? Could people pay attention to what that person says, without judging them by their appearance first?
My take is, people watch absolute drivel on tv for HOURS because it is presented to them conveniently, when they could have, in that time, gone to the net and found something they really liked. They watch the news because it is easier than buying a newspaper. When it is easier to watch a blog than to read it, I suppose that video blogging will 'catch on'... but that isn't to say that small communities of focused individuals won't derive a ton of use out of the medium long before that ever happens, if it ever even does...
Cheers,
Pixie
If video blogging becomes popular, it will be on the coattails of something like Podcasting.
It is hard for me to imagine choosing to sit at a computer and watch someone talk, compared to being able to listen to them talk, anywhere, anytime, on my iPod.
Unless they are doing something interesting... well that leaves out the realms of home-reno, reality-tv, & porno, I guess (-:
Pixie
Excellent point (nice to see a lucent reply, too)...
But I'd sure like to have a little more company. Boys are great, but sometimes they are seriously lacking in the sense of humor department. They can suck the life from a workplace in no seconds flat, if there aren't a few girls around to keep them on their toes.
I am proud of the fact that I am a chick who can cut it with the boys. But at the same time, I am starting to realize that what I always perceived as weakness in the majority of my gender is actually a strength. I am an anomaly, in that I love this industry. I fiercely love my chosen career and it gives me joy. But coming here, to slashdot, I have found legions of jaded, unhappy, bitter men who are in this technology industry and hate it. And it occurs to me that the women are smarter anyways. They are the ones who figure out that they won't be happy and walk away, compared to all these guys who stick it out, and then spend the rest of their lives unhappy and complaining...
So maybe if we can find a way to make comp sci a more satisfying career for women other than the six I know who made it through university, we can also make it happy for all these poor lost slashdotters, who knows. It seems like it is at least worth researching.
Thank you for the Bravo, by the way! It made my day.
Cheers,
Pixie
For crying out loud, the only thing the majority of you seem to be able to say is: "but men and women are different".
The whole point is not to make women more like men. If the only answer to getting more women into Comp Sci was to make women more like men, then we might as well all save our collective (very repetitive) breath.
We know that many women are smart. We know that many women are excellent problem-solvers. We just don't yet know how to inspire women to use their talents in the Comp Sci field. That is where the challenge is. It isn't in getting women to change. The challenge is finding a way to think outside the traditional, linear box that Comp Sci sits in right now, to come up with the way that this vast, untapped group of people can use their own skills in a way that satisfies them and inspires them!
And, by the way, yes I'm a girl geek, yes I am good at what I do, and no, somehow playing with dolls as a child did not naturally predispose me to be a nurse or a teacher. That's right, I am feminine - analytical - and a geek and proud of it. The fact that I act like a girl (and have since birth) has nothing to do with whether or not I am capable of getting a comp sci degree. I'm very sorry to disappoint you... Just because we're different does not mean we cannot accomplish the same goals.
Ug. Now y'all got me riled up....
Pixie
Typing is an applied skill, just like reading and writing.
In the same way that speed-reading is probably not a critical skill to teach to every child, typing at 120 wpm is probably not necessary either.
But just because speed-reading is too specialized, doesn't mean that reading at a comfortable speed isn't important!
Teaching kids to touch-type, not necessarily speedily, but comfortably, should be a priority for schools everywhere. I'm amazed that anyone could think that proficiency at this incredibly common medium of communication is not critical.
These people are on drugs.
It isn't new to mix different songs from different albums - when I was a kid the cool thing was to make "mix" tapes with a double tape deck, and trade them around. It was always more fun to listen to somebody else's mix tape than your own, because that element of unpredictability was there.
The technology has changed, but the desire to listen to an varied list of music, in an order that is surprising, has nothing to do with "the kids today" and their short attention span.
The really great thing about today's technology isn't that you can shuffle all sorts of albums, but that you can include only the songs on the album that you like in the shuffle. That is the huge advantage over putting 5 cds into the changer and hitting 'shuffle'.
Pixie
Lawsuit aside, what about this guy's sense of professional ethics? Regardless of what TOS the AC site put up, or whether the guy could get away with it on a technicality, who wants that type of person working at their company?
And if I was his boss at WestJet, I'd be nervously trying to figure out what data this guy will 'volunteer' once he leaves his current employment...
It has been pointed out that the data he retrieved from WestJet, he retrieved after he left, and therefore didn't steal it - but the existence of the server, and the fact that he could access it - is information that this guy had a professional obligation to keep to himself.
I hope WestJet takes care of him, 'cause I can't imagine him working anywhere else now...
Pixie
Personally, I would add one more app - Visio. It isn't in the ballpark of the 3 apps that you have listed as far as units sold/installed, but the community of users that do have it on their desktop represent (imo) a key demographic.
Of course, I'm in that demographic, so perhaps I am biased (-: And if I thought for a single nanosecond that microsoft would port Viso to linux, I would have to also be delusional.
But should someone create a quality replacement for visio, I would migrate my company laptop to a free unix of some sort and never look back...
Pixie
Aha, that was exactly what I needed to know...
I checked PubLaw for a definition of the Right of Publicity, which also mentions the Right of Privacy, which "protects an individual from the emotional anguish resulting from the publication of private facts that are embarrassing, intimate or portray someone in a false light that is highly offensive" -- originally, I was thinking more of the latter as being not really so important for dead guys (-:
Thanks again for setting me on the right trail.
Pixie
So if that's the case, why on earth do we have .com .org etc?
If you want truth in advertising, then the biggest, best-known company or individual using a given name should really just be given the name, right? Why even bother registering? We could just go by annual income...
Really, what difference is it in confusion between going to jrrtolkien.com and seeing ads, than it is to go to tolkien.com and see nothing, because that's what happens, when you try it. This is why we have google...
Pixie
Hehehe, somebody should change their name to Mr/Ms Alberta Hotrods, and sue for THAT domain name (-:
That'd teach em...
Pixie
Would it have made a difference to you then, if there had been a LoTR fan site at jrrtolkien.com?
If I google on tolkien, I do not find celebrity1000.com in the top 200 entries returned, so I really fail to see how they could possibly could interfere in anybody's search for anything...
Alberta Hot Rods is getting better publicity by having you all surf to the site in outrage, increasing their hit count by a bzillion times, than they probably ever EVER had by the few people who type "jrrtolkien.com" into their browser on a whim...
Don't feel bad though - lots of people have trouble finding porn on the internet, I understand your dilemma...
*grin*
Pixie
I hate to be unpopular, but the guy is dead, right? Does he really have the same rights to his name as somebody who is alive?
Can anyone who's making money off their dead relatives make a case for the name? Seems to me that neither of the parties actually suing for or using the name actually *wrote* LoTR...
Just an alternative opinion...
Pixie
Ouch! Modded from a 1 to a ZERO within 10 minutes of posting the comment...
I must be a bad, bad person... or somebody out there is an Ayn Rand hater with mod points to burn.
Whoohoo! The downwards spiral into trolldom has commenced! Bring it on, baby...
*grin*
Pixie
Wow, that's right out of 'Atlas Shrugged'. Crazy.
All you gotta do is change Orren Hatch to Orren Boyle...
In fact I can't think of a better definition of a second-hander than the RIAA. Except maybe the RIAA's lawyers...
Pixie
I've been investigating Mambo - it's opensource, content can be managed without programming knowledge, and all sorts of modules, such as threaded forums, blogs, etc are available (not sure about photo albums though). Same sort of backend as others that have been discussed, PHP/mySQL/apache.
I've had a tour of the administration site for my friend's mambo install, and it sure does look sweet...
Pixie
It isn't that you *need* it, but it makes your life easier. If you install perl 5.8.x, a lot of the prerequisite modules for SA get installed at the same time. I started out trying to install SA 2.6 using the native perl that comes with Solaris 8 (v. 5.005 IIRC) and I found that I got stuck in a nasty downwards spiral of module prerequisites. Of course part of the problem is that I'm too paranoid to run the 'perl -MCPAN' downloader in a root window either (-:
So no, v. 2.6 will work with almost any version of perl. It's just a matter of how many modules you have to manually update.
Sorry for any confusion...
Pixie
Since then, I've downloaded a bunch of rules from The SA Custom Rule Emporium and almost nothing gets through.
If this guy had trouble, it is the fault of the documentation, not the product. Either that, or he was dumb enough not to upgrade to perl 5.8 or above, and spent forever installing modules.
He says:
Funny how when you install an old version of the product, it seems outmoded, hmmm?
Sheesh.
Pixie
At last, some people with CONSCIENCE!
Maybe at last, I'll be able to complain loud enough so that nobody ever says "on top" again either.
Oh, and I'd also like to complain about all those people called "missionaries" too...
And no one should EVER use the word "sad" either, ewww.
It's just disgusting, in any context!
*chuckle*
Pixie
To seek to 'know the very truth of each thing' is a tough road to travel, although I agree with you that it is the striving that can deliver us to our destiny, whatever that may be.
However, I think it is easy to propose a new kind of aristocracy, when you yourself are part of it. Plenty of wise, educated Aryan people agreed when Hitler said:
Is that similar to how you would describe your proposed ruling authority? What makes your proposal different? Yah, I know, you aren't planning on eradicating an entire race of people. But you could. You'd have that power. Who could stop you?Just food for thought...
Pixie
Pixie
So how are we to tell whether we've been taken in or not? When a hurricane hits some remote part of the country, a newscaster tells us. When somebody famous dies, a newscaster tells us. These are things that can be independently verified. But when we are told by a newscaster that we are being targetted by weapons of mass destruction (or invaded by aliens) - where do we go for the so-called real information? For everything I read or watch, there is someplace I can go to hear the exact opposite. Other than descending into apathy, I don't believe there is a way that you can be sure that you are not an unwitting pawn in this game of global spin... all you can do is decide which side you'd like to be the pawn FOR...
yah, ok it's a bit of a troll post, but humor me, will ya?
Pixie