This is the exact case that I have made for Free GPL software all the time. The cost of hiring a professional GNU/Linux/FS Guru will still be substantially cheaper than all the liscenses of MS.
Also if a feature is desperately needed, and even the Guru cannot implement it. Launch a bounty scheme to allow other programmers to be able to incorporate the features. End of the day someone gets paid, everyone benifits.. and its still cheaper than MS.
2. The so-called "viral" provisions in the GPL that require any derivitive software to be governed by the same license is perfectly consistent with U.S. Copyright laws. Many software source licenses contain similar provisions regarding derivitive works. The SCO case against IBM is partially built on such a derivitive work provision.
damn.. now you have given old Darly boy his next excuse.. If IBM can do anythign they can with our code, we can do anything we like with GPL code
I agree with everything you said about WinAMP. it is simply the best player i have. Plays MODs (rememeber them) and plays with great sound. I have a soundblaster Live connected via an old school Pioneer HIFI amp powering two large Celestion Ditton Speakers. Winamp gives the best quality by far. Also there is one thing that WinAMP has all the others beat by, The Media Library. Love it or hate it. Its the fastest way to find a song and play it.
My only beef with WinAMP5 is its inability to "seek" into WMV video files:(
This seems to be a "problem" only in North America where u get companies charging for inbound messages. Almost every other country does NOT charge for inbound messages, even when roaming (I am on T-Mobile UK)..
But i feel your pain, My Ex, when she was in Canada used to have to pay 10c to recieve a message i sent from old O2 tarrif for free!;)
Its great to see the two agencies working together. Althoguh, being british, I was sad to see that Beagle failed, however, I was equally proud when NASA successed in landing spirit.
Lets hope Mars Express and Spirit/Opportunity can work together well and together retrieve better scientific data than each coudl possibly recieve on its own.
> hasn't had much sucess lately (due to the > Arianne and Beagle 2 fiascos)
Beagle 2 was a late "add on" to the Mars Express Mission... Beagle 2 was developed by the British. Attributing the failure of Beagle 2 to ESA is tantamount to saying there is UNIX code in Linux.
The Mars Express is SUCCESFULL, and is already returning clear stereo pictures of the Martian surface.
I am still sorry Beagle 2 failed.. but dont catogorise the whole mission a failure for ESA, just because of one part. rememebr the original mission did NOT include a lander....
It appears this censorship will not be activated unless asked. Which is good in terms of cunsumer rights, but introduces a number of loopholes where under-18's can still view pr0n..
For example its still very easy to purchase a Pre-Paid SIM card from a shop, and have it workign immeadiately, without having to register. MANY kids do that (espeically asian/indian.. i should know) so that they can keep "private" calls away from parents prying eyes. Its NOT uncommon to have more than one SIM card these days in the UK. These kids are still equally at risk from dodgy geezers contacting them. they are already using a "secret" SIM to contact "secret" boyfriends/etc...
Secondly, using GPRS and a computer (Or the P800/P900 smartphones for example) will immeadiately bypass the wap server, and use the real internet anyway, making the censorship a moot point. Admittedly most kids are NOT going to own such equipment/connections.
All in all this is simply a policy of "pleasing" worried concerns, withotu really doing much....
*For those who do not understand what a SIM card is, its the small smartcard used in GSM phones which store the subscribers number and account information. Thsi tiny card can be kept hidden, and swapped with one already in the phone.
Looking at those prices, the equivelent phones are still cheaper than the US over here in the UK!
And before you say the words "Plan" well even OFF a plan, those same phones are *much* cheaper here. and on a plan, we get many phones for free what you have to pay through your teeth.
BUT, what defines UNIX is what the TOG (The Open Group) says. As far as that is concerned, only The Open Group can define what UNIX is (or state what derives from UNIX). And copyright is owned by Novell. All SCO can fight for is the rights to the ORIGINAL code created by AT&T, together with ammendments IT has added.
Both solutions are still too platform specific for my taste.
I would complete it as an MVC product, hiring: - a competant DB designer to design a decent database - contract a DBA in enhance performance of said database - hire a competant programmer in the art of developing good business, and tast oriented objects. - a decent web designer/graphic designer to create the front end.
If designed well, you will have a maintainable system, that can be accessed with a web browser, and good potential for easy code maintenance.
yes. and lets see how long it takes for some kiddie to "tunnel" into your NON-password protected computer.. thought one of the million security holes... and replace your "explorer.exe" with ahem.. somethign that *really* explorers (as opossed to explode)
erm lets see....
In my household, IE is BANNED on all computers connecting to my precious home network.
Parents are scared of Mozilla, plus i have had it UP TO MY EYEBALLS tryign to support mozilla for them. (They need their Media Player ActiveX control)...
Compromise, install Netscape 7.1, enable pop-up blocking, clear "allow list" (Net7.1 comes with a HUGE list of AOL sites in the allow list)
What do we have, Mozill 1.4 dressed in Netscape skin. and guess what? My parents feel comfortable, and they LOVE it. I am happy too, as I dont have to deal with Bonsai Buddy, Gator and the like.
Now all i have to do is figure out how to "upgrade" the back end to Mozilla 1.6, whilst still keeping the front end.
When AOL introduced a cut price ISP in the UK, they called it Netscape Online, using Communicator 4.7 because that browser was sufficiently bloated, and crap.
Yes and thats the matter I have been trying to tell people for a LONG time. 3 years ago, even geeks were saying Netscape is dead, blah blah blah. Mozilla is too bloated. XUL is a mistake... blah blah blah.
I have been advocating Mozilla since they released the "raptor" engine.
The raptor engine was a technology preview, consisting of a simple browser with only back/reload/location bar. and its total size fitted on a floppy disk. Small and simple as it was, it rendered CSS better than any browser there. Simple and elegant, certainly better than the bloated unstable mess that was supposed to become Netscape 5 (Netscape was flagged by WSP for poor standards support, and it was IE that was gettign the credit).
Due to tradmark issues (yes mozilla.org had tradmark issues even at the start) Raptor got renamed to Gecko/NGLayout.
Then the desicion was made to drop the Netscape Communicator code, and switch to Gecko, the mandate being to bring a standards compliant browser. People groaned "Oh no, just bring out *a* browser, ASAP".
Then Mozilla switched to using XPFE to ease crossplatform efforts, instead of custom interfaces, leading to the next set of groans, "Oh my god its going to be slow/bloated/unstable"
Mozilla got trashed, and cited as a failure of Open Source, by both Geeks and IT journalists. IE got praised... for both standards compliance and Stability.
Netscape released Netscape 6.... BIG GROANS.... caused a rapid stink. Critisism all over the place.
All thsi time, Mozilla said.. wait and see... it will be the best when finished...
Now what do we have?
Mozilla/MozillaFirebird/Netscape7.1, the stable/fast/compliant broswer... the BEST browser bar none... Based on X-Platform XUL... Open Source success.... blah blah blah.
The point I am making is, I woudl liek to congratulate the Mozilla team for creatign a WORLD CLASS browser, dispite all the unfair critism they have face. I admire their strength to continue with their beliefs despite worldwide critism, and proving the world + its dog wrong, when the time came right. Thank you for your creation.
I also congratulate AOL/Netscape for funding this massive project, in spite of it "looking bad" on the record books during the early stages.
And those who are reading this.. remember OSS is not always magic.. it requires hard work and belief.. but the fundamentals still hold true.. OSS rocks.
Fundamentally, I agree.
I am not fond of WMP9's DRM capabilities, but i have switched them off. Nor do i Like WMP9's Visualisations (littel bit cheesy). And the skins are too bloated, or too simple, nothign in between. Its Media Library is very comprehensive, but has some issues here and there regarding ID3 tags. Its Media Libraary search capability, althoguh adequete, does not match Winamps search as you type feature. It doesnt support OGG files. And as far as i know, has no support for MIDI lyrics.
BUT, it is a fine player, and plays videos well, and has a far less "bloated" and "advert laden" feel as Real One/Music Match, etc. I like its miniplayer on minimise to task bar feature. I use it for playing DVD's.
I dont enjoy it for MP3/OGG/MIDI/MOD playback, but for that i use Winamp.
Both players are always installed and updated. both work well with my Logitech cordless keyboard. And both are stable.
ALthough i agree that forced bundling is a problem. but the software itself is not that bad.. (unlike IE...)
Blue tooth is a remarkably secure system requiring PIN numbers and autentication to do any form of connection.
WHat is actually happening here is the OBEX transfer part is beign utilised. Any Bluetooth phone that is set to discoverable will accept certain OBEX information (usually just vCards, and vCal files, and maybe notes). The phone ideally will accept the information and ask the user if he/she woudl liek the add the recieved infomation into their phonebook/calendar/notes. it is EXACTLY like the beam facility of Palm units, and others, just using Bluetooth for non-line of sight transfers.
What people do in "BlueJacking" is create a dummy addressbook entry, and send it to the unsuspecting user (usually Nokia users.. more on that later). I did it beofre once, when i was at a resteraunt and this idiot with a Nokia camera phoen was showing off and making a nuisence in front of some girls he was entertaining. So i sent a address "vCard" with the name "Stop Playing with yr BRICK" from my phone to his (his phone was discovered as "poser"?!!?!??!?!) SHoudl haev seen the look on his face.. especially in front of the girls..
However (unless you are a Nokia 7650/6310i/6xxx user) You have nothign to worry. Most phoens ship with bluetooth off or in none discoverable mode. The SOny Ericssons only stay "discoverable" for a maximum of three minuites. The blueJackign craze started in the (Sony)Ericsson community when it was discovered some (if not most) Nokia Bluetooth phones were shipped default with Bluetooth on and discoverable, so it was a prank to those users!
As was pointed out, it is extremely easy to make a phoen none discoverable, and most ppl have cottoned on.
So as for "spam" via blue tooh, it isnt going to happen, unless you are EXTREMELY stupid... then again..... there is a hell of a lot of stupid people:O
again my point exactly. userbase of Outlook is HIGH. to get this one "genuinely" good feature, you have to "upgrade" by buying a new software.
I agree with yout point on thunderbird. I do not use Thunderbird for email, i use Pegasus instead (it prevents extrenal IMG by default, and has NO scripting support)
Spam makes money for Microsoft and others. There will be very little or extra feature sin Outlook 2003 to convince corporate users to buy into it. So instead of doign the right things, and issuing a "patch" to existing versions, they sell the patch with this "fix" as a "killer feature"...
I for one do not care too much. Coz this is job security for me.
And here is another "advise" to Geeks out there. Dont bitch and moan about M$'s latest exploit... Its job security for us, as we are needed to fix things when they go wrong (with a fat call out fee). If we cant mend the ways of some companies.. lets "exploit" their exploits, and get rich doing so.
BLATANT Conspiracy theory, I know, but with the current situation (SCO, MS, etc) who knows.
- Current Virii spread most effectively via MS email products.
- Said products COULD have been "fixed" a long time ago.
- Features that SHOULD have been incorporated into Oulook (prevent external IMG in HTML email, selective Scripting disable, etc) are implemented by other vendors = profit for said vedors.
i take it he is a younger bro?
haha! reminds me of my sis.
She practically lives in my room, stolen a wardobe to keep her "overflowing stuff".. yet if i ever step into her room (liek the many times i had to turn off her stereo, coz she forgot), MAJOR HELL BREAK OUT!
grrr.. siblings, cant live with em, no anger outlet without em!
againt this shows the difference between Europe and the USA. I live in the UK, and number portablity is painless, free, and well organised to the point that people dont even think tiwice about it. Although oftel says 2 weeks at max to transfer, it usually happens within days. cellphoen operators cannot refuse to do it.
more importantly, thanks to the strict regultations, number portability gives an EXTREME amount of power to the users.
For example, if I ever feel that TMobile (my provider) is not performing as well as i expect, i simply threaten to ask for my PAC number (a number provided to port your number) and its suprising how far they will bend back to help you:) especially with me being a good revenue costomer for them!:)
Slashdot Mirror
Last communications between NASA and Spirit....
NASA: MOVE FORWARD 10
SPIRIT: 10? Ok 10 METERS [whir.. Trundle]
NASA: NO NO. 10 FEET!
SPIRIT: OOPS..
NASA: WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?! REQUEST STATUS REPORT!
SPIRIT: LOCATION - OLD RIVERBED
GOOD NEWS - FOUND WATER
BETTER NEWS - LOTS OF WATER
BAD NEWS - NOT WATERPROO...#%$&#..... Bzzzzzzzzzzzt
NASA: DAMN!!!!!!!
Yes..
This is the exact case that I have made for Free GPL software all the time. The cost of hiring a professional GNU/Linux/FS Guru will still be substantially cheaper than all the liscenses of MS.
Also if a feature is desperately needed, and even the Guru cannot implement it. Launch a bounty scheme to allow other programmers to be able to incorporate the features. End of the day someone gets paid, everyone benifits.. and its still cheaper than MS.
Hmmm... anyone found any "computers" with MP3's on SCO's network??? Any of you karma whores wanna "report" it to the RIAA?
:)
Hmmm.. if it comes to court, dilemma.. who to support!
damn.. now you have given old Darly boy his next excuse.. If IBM can do anythign they can with our code, we can do anything we like with GPL code
I agree with everything you said about WinAMP. it is simply the best player i have. Plays MODs (rememeber them) and plays with great sound. I have a soundblaster Live connected via an old school Pioneer HIFI amp powering two large Celestion Ditton Speakers. Winamp gives the best quality by far. Also there is one thing that WinAMP has all the others beat by, The Media Library. Love it or hate it. Its the fastest way to find a song and play it.
:(
My only beef with WinAMP5 is its inability to "seek" into WMV video files
Colin, you are sounding like a Brit now.. oops.. actually you shoudl have said "You lazy bugger"...
;)
At least your got the British Sarcasm
Nope.. Mars Express was the main mission.. Beagle was a last minuite add on...
yikes!!! pay for inbound SMS???
;)
This seems to be a "problem" only in North America where u get companies charging for inbound messages. Almost every other country does NOT charge for inbound messages, even when roaming (I am on T-Mobile UK)..
But i feel your pain, My Ex, when she was in Canada used to have to pay 10c to recieve a message i sent from old O2 tarrif for free!
Its great to see the two agencies working together. Althoguh, being british, I was sad to see that Beagle failed, however, I was equally proud when NASA successed in landing spirit.
Lets hope Mars Express and Spirit/Opportunity can work together well and together retrieve better scientific data than each coudl possibly recieve on its own.
Best wishes to NASA's Opportunity Rover!
> hasn't had much sucess lately (due to the
> Arianne and Beagle 2 fiascos)
Beagle 2 was a late "add on" to the Mars Express Mission... Beagle 2 was developed by the British. Attributing the failure of Beagle 2 to ESA is tantamount to saying there is UNIX code in Linux.
The Mars Express is SUCCESFULL, and is already returning clear stereo pictures of the Martian surface.
I am still sorry Beagle 2 failed.. but dont catogorise the whole mission a failure for ESA, just because of one part. rememebr the original mission did NOT include a lander....
It appears this censorship will not be activated unless asked. Which is good in terms of cunsumer rights, but introduces a number of loopholes where under-18's can still view pr0n..
For example its still very easy to purchase a Pre-Paid SIM card from a shop, and have it workign immeadiately, without having to register. MANY kids do that (espeically asian/indian.. i should know) so that they can keep "private" calls away from parents prying eyes. Its NOT uncommon to have more than one SIM card these days in the UK. These kids are still equally at risk from dodgy geezers contacting them. they are already using a "secret" SIM to contact "secret" boyfriends/etc...
Secondly, using GPRS and a computer (Or the P800/P900 smartphones for example) will immeadiately bypass the wap server, and use the real internet anyway, making the censorship a moot point. Admittedly most kids are NOT going to own such equipment/connections.
All in all this is simply a policy of "pleasing" worried concerns, withotu really doing much....
*For those who do not understand what a SIM card is, its the small smartcard used in GSM phones which store the subscribers number and account information. Thsi tiny card can be kept hidden, and swapped with one already in the phone.
Looking at those prices, the equivelent phones are still cheaper than the US over here in the UK!
And before you say the words "Plan" well even OFF a plan, those same phones are *much* cheaper here. and on a plan, we get many phones for free what you have to pay through your teeth.
Competition really works..
BUT, what defines UNIX is what the TOG (The Open Group) says. As far as that is concerned, only The Open Group can define what UNIX is (or state what derives from UNIX). And copyright is owned by Novell. All SCO can fight for is the rights to the ORIGINAL code created by AT&T, together with ammendments IT has added.
Both solutions are still too platform specific for my taste.
I would complete it as an MVC product, hiring:
- a competant DB designer to design a decent database
- contract a DBA in enhance performance of said database
- hire a competant programmer in the art of developing good business, and tast oriented objects.
- a decent web designer/graphic designer to create the front end.
If designed well, you will have a maintainable system, that can be accessed with a web browser, and good potential for easy code maintenance.
yes. and lets see how long it takes for some kiddie to "tunnel" into your NON-password protected computer.. thought one of the million security holes... and replace your "explorer.exe" with ahem.. somethign that *really* explorers (as opossed to explode)
or if you have a "windows" keyboard:
+ R
cmd
takes.. hmm about 2 secs
erm lets see.... In my household, IE is BANNED on all computers connecting to my precious home network. Parents are scared of Mozilla, plus i have had it UP TO MY EYEBALLS tryign to support mozilla for them. (They need their Media Player ActiveX control)... Compromise, install Netscape 7.1, enable pop-up blocking, clear "allow list" (Net7.1 comes with a HUGE list of AOL sites in the allow list) What do we have, Mozill 1.4 dressed in Netscape skin. and guess what? My parents feel comfortable, and they LOVE it. I am happy too, as I dont have to deal with Bonsai Buddy, Gator and the like. Now all i have to do is figure out how to "upgrade" the back end to Mozilla 1.6, whilst still keeping the front end.
Of course its bloatware, laden with Ads!
:)
When AOL introduced a cut price ISP in the UK, they called it Netscape Online, using Communicator 4.7 because that browser was sufficiently bloated, and crap.
Ironic that this time round, they are using IE
What Mozilla is not bloated or crap enough, eh??
Yes and thats the matter I have been trying to tell people for a LONG time. 3 years ago, even geeks were saying Netscape is dead, blah blah blah. Mozilla is too bloated. XUL is a mistake... blah blah blah.
I have been advocating Mozilla since they released the "raptor" engine.
The raptor engine was a technology preview, consisting of a simple browser with only back/reload/location bar. and its total size fitted on a floppy disk. Small and simple as it was, it rendered CSS better than any browser there. Simple and elegant, certainly better than the bloated unstable mess that was supposed to become Netscape 5 (Netscape was flagged by WSP for poor standards support, and it was IE that was gettign the credit).
Due to tradmark issues (yes mozilla.org had tradmark issues even at the start) Raptor got renamed to Gecko/NGLayout.
Then the desicion was made to drop the Netscape Communicator code, and switch to Gecko, the mandate being to bring a standards compliant browser. People groaned "Oh no, just bring out *a* browser, ASAP".
Then Mozilla switched to using XPFE to ease crossplatform efforts, instead of custom interfaces, leading to the next set of groans, "Oh my god its going to be slow/bloated/unstable"
Mozilla got trashed, and cited as a failure of Open Source, by both Geeks and IT journalists. IE got praised... for both standards compliance and Stability.
Netscape released Netscape 6.... BIG GROANS.... caused a rapid stink. Critisism all over the place.
All thsi time, Mozilla said.. wait and see... it will be the best when finished...
Now what do we have?
Mozilla/MozillaFirebird/Netscape7.1, the stable/fast/compliant broswer... the BEST browser bar none... Based on X-Platform XUL... Open Source success.... blah blah blah.
The point I am making is, I woudl liek to congratulate the Mozilla team for creatign a WORLD CLASS browser, dispite all the unfair critism they have face. I admire their strength to continue with their beliefs despite worldwide critism, and proving the world + its dog wrong, when the time came right. Thank you for your creation.
I also congratulate AOL/Netscape for funding this massive project, in spite of it "looking bad" on the record books during the early stages.
And those who are reading this.. remember OSS is not always magic.. it requires hard work and belief.. but the fundamentals still hold true.. OSS rocks.
Fundamentally, I agree. I am not fond of WMP9's DRM capabilities, but i have switched them off. Nor do i Like WMP9's Visualisations (littel bit cheesy). And the skins are too bloated, or too simple, nothign in between. Its Media Library is very comprehensive, but has some issues here and there regarding ID3 tags. Its Media Libraary search capability, althoguh adequete, does not match Winamps search as you type feature. It doesnt support OGG files. And as far as i know, has no support for MIDI lyrics. BUT, it is a fine player, and plays videos well, and has a far less "bloated" and "advert laden" feel as Real One/Music Match, etc. I like its miniplayer on minimise to task bar feature. I use it for playing DVD's. I dont enjoy it for MP3/OGG/MIDI/MOD playback, but for that i use Winamp. Both players are always installed and updated. both work well with my Logitech cordless keyboard. And both are stable. ALthough i agree that forced bundling is a problem. but the software itself is not that bad.. (unlike IE...)
Blue tooth is a remarkably secure system requiring PIN numbers and autentication to do any form of connection.
:O
WHat is actually happening here is the OBEX transfer part is beign utilised. Any Bluetooth phone that is set to discoverable will accept certain OBEX information (usually just vCards, and vCal files, and maybe notes). The phone ideally will accept the information and ask the user if he/she woudl liek the add the recieved infomation into their phonebook/calendar/notes. it is EXACTLY like the beam facility of Palm units, and others, just using Bluetooth for non-line of sight transfers.
What people do in "BlueJacking" is create a dummy addressbook entry, and send it to the unsuspecting user (usually Nokia users.. more on that later). I did it beofre once, when i was at a resteraunt and this idiot with a Nokia camera phoen was showing off and making a nuisence in front of some girls he was entertaining. So i sent a address "vCard" with the name "Stop Playing with yr BRICK" from my phone to his (his phone was discovered as "poser"?!!?!??!?!) SHoudl haev seen the look on his face.. especially in front of the girls..
However (unless you are a Nokia 7650/6310i/6xxx user) You have nothign to worry. Most phoens ship with bluetooth off or in none discoverable mode. The SOny Ericssons only stay "discoverable" for a maximum of three minuites. The blueJackign craze started in the (Sony)Ericsson community when it was discovered some (if not most) Nokia Bluetooth phones were shipped default with Bluetooth on and discoverable, so it was a prank to those users!
As was pointed out, it is extremely easy to make a phoen none discoverable, and most ppl have cottoned on.
So as for "spam" via blue tooh, it isnt going to happen, unless you are EXTREMELY stupid... then again..... there is a hell of a lot of stupid people
again my point exactly. userbase of Outlook is HIGH. to get this one "genuinely" good feature, you have to "upgrade" by buying a new software.
I agree with yout point on thunderbird. I do not use Thunderbird for email, i use Pegasus instead (it prevents extrenal IMG by default, and has NO scripting support)
Spam makes money for Microsoft and others. There will be very little or extra feature sin Outlook 2003 to convince corporate users to buy into it. So instead of doign the right things, and issuing a "patch" to existing versions, they sell the patch with this "fix" as a "killer feature"...
I for one do not care too much. Coz this is job security for me.
And here is another "advise" to Geeks out there. Dont bitch and moan about M$'s latest exploit... Its job security for us, as we are needed to fix things when they go wrong (with a fat call out fee). If we cant mend the ways of some companies.. lets "exploit" their exploits, and get rich doing so.
BLATANT Conspiracy theory, I know, but with the current situation (SCO, MS, etc) who knows.
- Current Virii spread most effectively via MS email products.
- Said products COULD have been "fixed" a long time ago.
- Features that SHOULD have been incorporated into Oulook (prevent external IMG in HTML email, selective Scripting disable, etc) are implemented by other vendors = profit for said vedors.
- MSN hotmail = spam magnet. Solution = MSN 8 = profit.
- more Virii & Spam = more attraction towards centralised email & buddy listing; Largest of which = MSN.
- moving towards a Microsoft "internet"??????
hmmmmmmmm
i take it he is a younger bro? haha! reminds me of my sis. She practically lives in my room, stolen a wardobe to keep her "overflowing stuff".. yet if i ever step into her room (liek the many times i had to turn off her stereo, coz she forgot), MAJOR HELL BREAK OUT! grrr.. siblings, cant live with em, no anger outlet without em!
againt this shows the difference between Europe and the USA. I live in the UK, and number portablity is painless, free, and well organised to the point that people dont even think tiwice about it. Although oftel says 2 weeks at max to transfer, it usually happens within days. cellphoen operators cannot refuse to do it.
:) especially with me being a good revenue costomer for them! :)
more importantly, thanks to the strict regultations, number portability gives an EXTREME amount of power to the users.
For example, if I ever feel that TMobile (my provider) is not performing as well as i expect, i simply threaten to ask for my PAC number (a number provided to port your number) and its suprising how far they will bend back to help you