In HP's defense, my dad bought a laptop from them, and a few months later it stopped posting. After a short phone call with a support representative, who basically took everything at face value, he was given an address to ship the defective laptop to. Two days later he's got a new laptop delivered free of charge.
I think that's the only positive story I've heard about HP's customer service though. It certainly doesn't speak well for them that they'd try to blame a stuck key problem on the software. It makes even less sense that the company would bother to back up that decision instead of just letting the customer have what they want. Apparently it's no longer profitable to make the customer happy.
Anyhow, what is really missing in all of this discussion is a response from the patent submitter or the persons in charge of accepting the patent; we never get this on Slashdot nor the stories referred to. Since the patent appears to be so unbelievable, I am very curious as to what their official response would be. Perhaps some IT journalist can get one?
Actually this makes perfect sense. Burning software has access very close to the hardware, and that sort of thing can change drastically with a new operating system. In the case of upgrading from Windows 95/98 to 2000/XP, they added a new HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer). In the case of 2000/XP to Vista, there's a DRM layer being added. In each of those cases, the manner in which the hardware was accessed changed, and the number of intermediate steps increased.
Obviously you don't understand chess or politics. "Blatant" is usually not the term used to describe the victor. The fact that he's come this far on brute force is a testament to the sorry state of our government, not to his skill or intelligence.
I think the Paris Hilton analogy fits more with the current residents than with the game world itself... And yeah, the residents that I've seen have mainly been what PR has shown me. So that's probably not an accurate stereotype (ha!) for all SL players.
Second Life is an environment whose main purpose is social. It gives people a place to express their artistic creativity, and take advantage of freedoms that they can't find in their real lives. They take the concept of player created content to a whole new level, and that's impressive. Not only do they give the player the freedom to make what they want, they also provide incentive to, in the fact that they have IP rights over their creations and can sell them to other players.
I read somewhere that SL was inspired largely by Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. There, I can't fault them either. There are few books that would be better inspiration for an online world. There's still a wide gap though, both technological and societal, between Stephenson's concept and Second Life. The immersiveness is not quite there for me yet. I see it more as a hip hangout place for... those who fit nicely (and willingly) into stereotypical groups... to meet. I.E. MySpace 3D.
In addition to showing us a grand picture of the future of society, Stephenson also showed us many of the problems associated with such a world. This world too has its own share of misery. The very fact that we have to escape to another world to feel free... That says something. Those who try to escape from their problems are doomed to drag them along. And even as people escape to this new frontier, the corporations will follow them. We've already seen a couple big companies jump on the SL boat.
While in many ways this is new, it's also following a pattern. The pattern of any major frontier. Right now it's in the Wild West stage... once big businesses move in they're going to pull legistation with them, and it's going to get mucked down in beaurocratic non-sense.
So I'm waiting. I'm curious to see how this all works out, but I really don't see any personal advantage for me in joining SL right now. More time/effort/money dedication than an MMO, and essentially the same social exposure... No thanks guys, I'll pass. Good luck, I'll be keeping an eye out, but it's not for me right now.
Mod parent up! This isn't offtopic, it's exactly what the debate should be about. In the grand scheme of things, nobody will care about X-box mods 20 years down the road. The thing we should be worried about is the precedence this is setting for giving the power to large corporations and taking it away from individuals. This is a continuing trend as our judicial systems are manipulated to pull the cash from the consumer and feed it to the corporation.
I think it's pretty sick that the purpose of our courts has been so far twisted away from its orriginal intent. I mean, weren't the courts founded to protect the little guys from those with power? If the current motto of our court systems is "might makes right" then what purpose do they serve? What's the difference between Microsoft having thought police patrolling our neighborhoods, and the government doing it for them?
UK, US, same thing. Today's governments are tools of the rich, not unbiased arbitrators. The wonderful thing about democracy is you get to vote on which croud of rich assholes to give your money to. Yeah, your vote counts for someone, but unless you have frequent flyer miles on the company jet, it probably isn't you.
I popped my Windows keys off years ago after getting sick of dying in full screen games. Now I can see the grime building up down there, through the empty pits. Dishwasher sounds like a good idea, but for now... Oh well... still vastly improved my online life expectancy.:)
Sadly people tend to not call him on it since people just seam to belive even the dumbest things he says.
Oh no, people do believe the smartest things that President Bush says. The problem is, this doesn't even hit the list of top ten dumbest things he's said. People are too busy sorting through the other trash he's spewed to bother with minor logical deficiencies.
Students at my university used to use their PDAs to change the channels and/or mute the collegeTV sets in the cafeteria, which they found to be annoying and disruptive.
Eventually the school reaized they couldn't stop students from controlling the TVs with their wireless devices, and they simply removed them, as it was against the contract with collegeTV not to have them blaring in the ears of the students.
Heaven forbid the target audience should get some advertisement-free peace and quiet time...
"So... do you use a password on your accounts? After all, that's security through obscurity, right?"
Whether or not you use a password has little to do with obscurity. The question is whether or not the algorithm used to make the key is publicly known.
I do agree with you that "STO" is not necessarilly bad. If a company is obtaining security through obscurity, then not only do you not have the key to the lock, you don't even know how the lock works.
The premise behind open source, as I understand it, is using algoriths that are very difficult to crack even when you know exactly how they work. With closed source, the danger is that the designers might choose to asume that their algorithm will remain secret, and base their security on that fact. If closed source developers assumed that their software would eventually be operating in a worst case scenario (open source), and used algorithms that maintained security even after the source was compromised, closed source would actually be considerably more secure. Deadlines, profit motives, and decreasing execution time give incentive to trim the edges though, so security is skimped in favor of other considerations, because they figure they can rely on obscurity to make up for good code.
That is where the problem lies. Not in the fact that they don't show us the code, but that the code wasn't good to begin with. Truth is, the perfect coder WOULD be better off developing closed source. I wouldn't waste your time searching for a perfect coder though... God's the only one that might fit the ticket, and my guess is he's not employed by Microsoft.
the hearing impaired couldn't do much with audio signals.
"The city should also consider looking in audio crossing signals for the hearing impaired and signs that count down the number of seconds left to cross, Victor said."
Read the heading and couldn't help laughing... looks like another aspiring English major is seeking to impress us all with big shiny words. Why bother reading the actual article? The word density is probably higher, and most likely it STILL manages to contribute less meaningful information than even the heading did...
Well it seems that the entire source code wasn't leaked, as I expected from the title, but what would befall Microsoft if that *did* happen?
I seriously don't think the NT line could handle it... Sure they've got people working on fixing it, but as has been mentioned before, they're fixing it from a closed source standpoint. They're assuming from the beginning that no one knows their algorithms for creating encryption keys, CD keys... anything. If the source code were to be exposed this whole design strategy would fall apart.
What really frightens me is the fact that there are ATM machines and other integral systems out there running Windows. If the source code were leaked, the whole world would be effected.
It just scares the hell out of me to have so much of the world relying on a couple gigabytes of code not getting out... All it would take is one martyr, one person willing to sacrifice himself to take out Microsoft. Then the whole system fails.
The very possibility of Windows source code being leaked at some point is a *very* strong argument for open source. We need to get off the Microsoft boat before it sinks and drowns us all...
Slashdot Mirror
In HP's defense, my dad bought a laptop from them, and a few months later it stopped posting. After a short phone call with a support representative, who basically took everything at face value, he was given an address to ship the defective laptop to. Two days later he's got a new laptop delivered free of charge.
I think that's the only positive story I've heard about HP's customer service though. It certainly doesn't speak well for them that they'd try to blame a stuck key problem on the software. It makes even less sense that the company would bother to back up that decision instead of just letting the customer have what they want. Apparently it's no longer profitable to make the customer happy.
"...using one of my spare open licenses." Yeah, I use a crac^H^H^H^H spare copy too!
You're new here, aren't you. :-P
Actually this makes perfect sense. Burning software has access very close to the hardware, and that sort of thing can change drastically with a new operating system. In the case of upgrading from Windows 95/98 to 2000/XP, they added a new HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer). In the case of 2000/XP to Vista, there's a DRM layer being added. In each of those cases, the manner in which the hardware was accessed changed, and the number of intermediate steps increased.
http://www.kmfms.com/
For every Microsoft poster I see, I'm stapling two of these nearby!
Obviously you don't understand chess or politics. "Blatant" is usually not the term used to describe the victor. The fact that he's come this far on brute force is a testament to the sorry state of our government, not to his skill or intelligence.
FTA: There was no immediate word on the contents of the device, but officials told CBS 5 Tuesday that the debris left behind was not radiological.
*slaps forehead*
That settles it. Reporters are all on crack. What the hell does a blown up window have to do with nuclear bombs?
TERROR!
The internet was invented by Al Gore. Noob.
I think the Paris Hilton analogy fits more with the current residents than with the game world itself... And yeah, the residents that I've seen have mainly been what PR has shown me. So that's probably not an accurate stereotype (ha!) for all SL players.
Second Life is an environment whose main purpose is social. It gives people a place to express their artistic creativity, and take advantage of freedoms that they can't find in their real lives. They take the concept of player created content to a whole new level, and that's impressive. Not only do they give the player the freedom to make what they want, they also provide incentive to, in the fact that they have IP rights over their creations and can sell them to other players.
I read somewhere that SL was inspired largely by Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. There, I can't fault them either. There are few books that would be better inspiration for an online world. There's still a wide gap though, both technological and societal, between Stephenson's concept and Second Life. The immersiveness is not quite there for me yet. I see it more as a hip hangout place for... those who fit nicely (and willingly) into stereotypical groups... to meet. I.E. MySpace 3D.
In addition to showing us a grand picture of the future of society, Stephenson also showed us many of the problems associated with such a world. This world too has its own share of misery. The very fact that we have to escape to another world to feel free... That says something. Those who try to escape from their problems are doomed to drag them along. And even as people escape to this new frontier, the corporations will follow them. We've already seen a couple big companies jump on the SL boat.
While in many ways this is new, it's also following a pattern. The pattern of any major frontier. Right now it's in the Wild West stage... once big businesses move in they're going to pull legistation with them, and it's going to get mucked down in beaurocratic non-sense.
So I'm waiting. I'm curious to see how this all works out, but I really don't see any personal advantage for me in joining SL right now. More time/effort/money dedication than an MMO, and essentially the same social exposure... No thanks guys, I'll pass. Good luck, I'll be keeping an eye out, but it's not for me right now.
Who will use their pipes if they block google?
Mod parent up! This isn't offtopic, it's exactly what the debate should be about. In the grand scheme of things, nobody will care about X-box mods 20 years down the road. The thing we should be worried about is the precedence this is setting for giving the power to large corporations and taking it away from individuals. This is a continuing trend as our judicial systems are manipulated to pull the cash from the consumer and feed it to the corporation.
I think it's pretty sick that the purpose of our courts has been so far twisted away from its orriginal intent. I mean, weren't the courts founded to protect the little guys from those with power? If the current motto of our court systems is "might makes right" then what purpose do they serve? What's the difference between Microsoft having thought police patrolling our neighborhoods, and the government doing it for them?
UK, US, same thing. Today's governments are tools of the rich, not unbiased arbitrators. The wonderful thing about democracy is you get to vote on which croud of rich assholes to give your money to. Yeah, your vote counts for someone, but unless you have frequent flyer miles on the company jet, it probably isn't you.
Studies have shown that prolonged exposure to math can cause cancer!
Gay Bill Abandons Microsoft Rights
I popped my Windows keys off years ago after getting sick of dying in full screen games. Now I can see the grime building up down there, through the empty pits. Dishwasher sounds like a good idea, but for now... Oh well... still vastly improved my online life expectancy. :)
Everyone knows Word's grammar checker sucks. We've known that since it came out. It's not news, cus it isn't new!
If you were playing the soundtrack to Grease, how could that be great? I think your hardware is irrelevant in this case. :)
Oh no, people do believe the smartest things that President Bush says. The problem is, this doesn't even hit the list of top ten dumbest things he's said. People are too busy sorting through the other trash he's spewed to bother with minor logical deficiencies.
Students at my university used to use their PDAs to change the channels and/or mute the collegeTV sets in the cafeteria, which they found to be annoying and disruptive. Eventually the school reaized they couldn't stop students from controlling the TVs with their wireless devices, and they simply removed them, as it was against the contract with collegeTV not to have them blaring in the ears of the students. Heaven forbid the target audience should get some advertisement-free peace and quiet time...
"So ... do you use a password on your accounts? After all, that's security through obscurity, right?"
Whether or not you use a password has little to do with obscurity. The question is whether or not the algorithm used to make the key is publicly known.
I do agree with you that "STO" is not necessarilly bad. If a company is obtaining security through obscurity, then not only do you not have the key to the lock, you don't even know how the lock works.
The premise behind open source, as I understand it, is using algoriths that are very difficult to crack even when you know exactly how they work. With closed source, the danger is that the designers might choose to asume that their algorithm will remain secret, and base their security on that fact. If closed source developers assumed that their software would eventually be operating in a worst case scenario (open source), and used algorithms that maintained security even after the source was compromised, closed source would actually be considerably more secure. Deadlines, profit motives, and decreasing execution time give incentive to trim the edges though, so security is skimped in favor of other considerations, because they figure they can rely on obscurity to make up for good code.
That is where the problem lies. Not in the fact that they don't show us the code, but that the code wasn't good to begin with. Truth is, the perfect coder WOULD be better off developing closed source. I wouldn't waste your time searching for a perfect coder though... God's the only one that might fit the ticket, and my guess is he's not employed by Microsoft.
the hearing impaired couldn't do much with audio signals. "The city should also consider looking in audio crossing signals for the hearing impaired and signs that count down the number of seconds left to cross, Victor said."
Read the heading and couldn't help laughing... looks like another aspiring English major is seeking to impress us all with big shiny words. Why bother reading the actual article? The word density is probably higher, and most likely it STILL manages to contribute less meaningful information than even the heading did...
You're surrounded by the /. crowd. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for someone to do it for free... and free is MUCH better than $227k.
Well it seems that the entire source code wasn't leaked, as I expected from the title, but what would befall Microsoft if that *did* happen?
I seriously don't think the NT line could handle it... Sure they've got people working on fixing it, but as has been mentioned before, they're fixing it from a closed source standpoint. They're assuming from the beginning that no one knows their algorithms for creating encryption keys, CD keys... anything. If the source code were to be exposed this whole design strategy would fall apart.
What really frightens me is the fact that there are ATM machines and other integral systems out there running Windows. If the source code were leaked, the whole world would be effected.
It just scares the hell out of me to have so much of the world relying on a couple gigabytes of code not getting out... All it would take is one martyr, one person willing to sacrifice himself to take out Microsoft. Then the whole system fails.
The very possibility of Windows source code being leaked at some point is a *very* strong argument for open source. We need to get off the Microsoft boat before it sinks and drowns us all...
Its just *us* and *them*! Mel Gibson was right! Dear God no, I thought that was a movie! Time to start boobie trapping the house!
Copyright (C) 2003 by Orson Scott Card. nice way to end it all, eh?