How do Hotmail manage to shorten an existing password? I mean, unless Hotmail store the clear text version of the password all they have is a hash or something, and they can't work out a shorter version of the cleartext password from the hash... can they?
But why should I be limited to 'CD Quality'? Linn Records have it right, I think. You can get the same recording at various quality levels, and for certain kinds of recordings I am more than happy to part with 20 quid for an album which is what they charge for 24bit 192kHz FLAC.... plus I don't want to consume space in my home to store my music collection.
I think the key point here is that choice is good. The music industry needs to start responding to market demand.
Koreans slightly beaten to it by The London Electrobus Company founded in 1906 which ran for a couple of years. Well that's what Wikipedia says so it must be true!
The problem with passwords is we all have to 'remember' so many of the darned things.
I really wish I could authenticate by being able to decrypt a secret using my private OpenPGP key. That way I would only need to remember one password, and changing that regularly would be something I could imagine. Changing the swarm of passwords I currently have to deal with is just inconcevable.
>It was the EU, in 2004, along with some other governments, that asked >Microsoft to submit their formats for standardization. So now they >don't like this?
Microsoft were asked to make the specifications available, they were not asked to pretend that their proprietary formats and protocols were standards.
All Microsoft had to do was allow others to interoperate with their stuff. They have resisted both the US courts (which is why the consent degree was extended in the US) and in the EU (which is why Microsoft were fined) and instead have engaged in a very damaging campaign which is undermining the standards process itself.
In this, Microsoft really are the bad guys. It's a shame.
>Business is not based on good or evil but profit and loss. One should >never expect business to do anything but maximize its profits.
Being on the board of a company means that you have accepted a duty of care for that company. Intel volunteered to accept such a duty with respect to OLPC. Intel failed in their duty to OLPC and even appear to have abused their position.
If the Intel board felt that meaningful membership of the OLPC board was not in Intel shareholders best interests they should have never signed up, but they did and they let OLPC down badly.
Perhaps the individual directors who took on the duty of care for OLPC on behalf of Intel have demonstrated that they are not up to the job of being a director... for any company.
>The BBC could have used something like Ogg Theora, but then 95% of users would have had to >download and install something to play it.
>The thing that always gets me about open source zealots who complain "Flash is proprietary" >is that they offer no solution.
Theora (or something like it) was indeed the right solution, or at least the foundation for one. If anyone could make that happen, the BBC could. They certainly had the budget and the staff. The BBC could then have made a browser plugin available, much like the plugin one must download to play Flash media.
This would have been a quite viable approach, and so meets your demand for a "solution".
But, instead of an open solution the BBC intend to deliver content using at least two proprietary formats. The owners of those formats must be jumping for joy having received such a gift (a billion dollar value!) from the BBC - at licence payers expense.
I would buy and use Keynote if it could open/save my presentation as an ODF file. Keynote is an impressive tool, but it does not accommodate my work pieces.
I too am waiting for something like FLAC encoded CD quality (or better) downloadable recordings before I get back into seriously buying music again. There are companies doing this already. For example Linn (search for "linn flac" in Google).
As for your "calling bullshit" on the quality thing, you might be right but really and truly my Linn LP12 still blows the socks of a CD player in my experience. I could not tell you exactly why, but I can tell you that I really do enjoy listening to a piece of music on my Linn vs. anything else. It's just more satisfying and to me that kind of equates to "quality".
Exactly. This is an example of why software idea patents are so bad. Ideas like these can always be taken further, unless you fear being sued for patent infringement. Who did what first has nothing to do with this. Patent battles are fought and won by the party with the biggest budget for lawyers. I bet both Microsoft and Apple will be able to keep working in this space because of a combination of their patents and money. Everybody else will be in the freezer. So sad.
>let's not forget that it's still against the law when it does happen
Sure, but it's a stupid law as it stands and it should be changed. Clearly laws like these can be changed *because they are being changed right now*, though the changes seem to be making things worse.
Something that Ubuntu (and most other distros) should get a big credit for is package management. It's not just about adding and removing programs, it's about having a coherent universe of packages which are all managed and patched in a consistent way. By missing this the reviewer did Ubuntu a great disservice.
"Disclaimer: I work for Dell.... The difficulty is being able to support every distro of Linux. It's impossible. I say that one is picked, say Ubuntu and support that with proper drivers and support."
In that case can Dell please just pick the one they like best and support that? As has been said elsewhere here, the key thing is to have supported drivers, I can then choose the distro I want to work with.
And for hardware support, surely it would not be so hard to require that people boot from a live CD when making a support call? That way the hardware could be checked out against a very stable benchmark significantly reducing the chance that system software problems obscure a hardware issue.
Wouldn't it be nice if the judge could rule that the public good would be best served by seeing the case through, and did indeed ruled so in this case?
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps the real study is: How will people react to this study?
This DARPA work sound like it's in the same space as the Pandas library. I hope they can work together.
How do Hotmail manage to shorten an existing password? I mean, unless Hotmail store the clear text version of the password all they have is a hash or something, and they can't work out a shorter version of the cleartext password from the hash ... can they?
But why should I be limited to 'CD Quality'? Linn Records have it right, I think. You can get the same recording at various quality levels, and for certain kinds of recordings I am more than happy to part with 20 quid for an album which is what they charge for 24bit 192kHz FLAC. ... plus I don't want to consume space in my home to store my music collection.
I think the key point here is that choice is good. The music industry needs to start responding to market demand.
Koreans slightly beaten to it by The London Electrobus Company founded in 1906 which ran for a couple of years. Well that's what Wikipedia says so it must be true!
The problem with passwords is we all have to 'remember' so many of the darned things.
I really wish I could authenticate by being able to decrypt a secret using my private OpenPGP key. That way I would only need to remember one password, and changing that regularly would be something I could imagine. Changing the swarm of passwords I currently have to deal with is just inconcevable.
I always refer to it as MOO-XML (Microsoft Office Open - XML). It makes things clearer.
>Quite honestly, if (like me) you are a European, I guess it's time to kick some butt and make Europe more democratic.
Write to them via WriteToThem.com
I have.
>It was the EU, in 2004, along with some other governments, that asked
>Microsoft to submit their formats for standardization. So now they
>don't like this?
Microsoft were asked to make the specifications available, they were not asked to pretend that their proprietary formats and protocols were standards.
All Microsoft had to do was allow others to interoperate with their stuff. They have resisted both the US courts (which is why the consent degree was extended in the US) and in the EU (which is why Microsoft were fined) and instead have engaged in a very damaging campaign which is undermining the standards process itself.
In this, Microsoft really are the bad guys. It's a shame.
>blew by Wall Street's expectations for a second consecutive quarter.
Microsoft earns money around the world, but reports the result in USD.
The USD has fallen significantly, so MS results look high. Discount the currency windfall and things are not so rosy.
>Anyone who says that the interface is revolutionary or different is trying to put a nice spin on it.
Have you shown it to a child? If so, what was their reaction?
>Business is not based on good or evil but profit and loss. One should
... for any company.
>never expect business to do anything but maximize its profits.
Being on the board of a company means that you have accepted a duty of care for that company. Intel volunteered to accept such a duty with respect to OLPC. Intel failed in their duty to OLPC and even appear to have abused their position.
If the Intel board felt that meaningful membership of the OLPC board was not in Intel shareholders best interests they should have never signed up, but they did and they let OLPC down badly.
Perhaps the individual directors who took on the duty of care for OLPC on behalf of Intel have demonstrated that they are not up to the job of being a director
>So when is Sun going to turn control of ODF over to a standards body?
The ODF spec is managed by OASIS and approved by ISO. I understand that Sun had no more control than any other party on the OASIS committee.
c.f. http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=office
>The BBC could have used something like Ogg Theora, but then 95% of users would have had to
>download and install something to play it.
>The thing that always gets me about open source zealots who complain "Flash is proprietary"
>is that they offer no solution.
Theora (or something like it) was indeed the right solution, or at least the foundation for one. If anyone could make that happen, the BBC could. They certainly had the budget and the staff. The BBC could then have made a browser plugin available, much like the plugin one must download to play Flash media.
This would have been a quite viable approach, and so meets your demand for a "solution".
But, instead of an open solution the BBC intend to deliver content using at least two proprietary formats. The owners of those formats must be jumping for joy having received such a gift (a billion dollar value!) from the BBC - at licence payers expense.
I would buy and use Keynote if it could open/save my presentation as an ODF file. Keynote is an impressive tool, but it does not accommodate my work pieces.
Mac addresses can be changed so even they are not a guarantee.
I too am waiting for something like FLAC encoded CD quality (or better) downloadable recordings before I get back into seriously buying music again. There are companies doing this already. For example Linn (search for "linn flac" in Google).
As for your "calling bullshit" on the quality thing, you might be right but really and truly my Linn LP12 still blows the socks of a CD player in my experience. I could not tell you exactly why, but I can tell you that I really do enjoy listening to a piece of music on my Linn vs. anything else. It's just more satisfying and to me that kind of equates to "quality".
Exactly. This is an example of why software idea patents are so bad. Ideas like these can always be taken further, unless you fear being sued for patent infringement. Who did what first has nothing to do with this. Patent battles are fought and won by the party with the biggest budget for lawyers. I bet both Microsoft and Apple will be able to keep working in this space because of a combination of their patents and money. Everybody else will be in the freezer. So sad.
:-)
Good guess, but wrong on all counts. I am a content creator and as it happens I do not infringe on the copyrights of others.
I still think it's a stupid law. Copyright is fine, the current configuration has gone way, way to far.
>let's not forget that it's still against the law when it does happen
Sure, but it's a stupid law as it stands and it should be changed. Clearly laws like these can be changed *because they are being changed right now*, though the changes seem to be making things worse.
Something that Ubuntu (and most other distros) should get a big credit for is package management. It's not just about adding and removing programs, it's about having a coherent universe of packages which are all managed and patched in a consistent way. By missing this the reviewer did Ubuntu a great disservice.
Psion did hardware of this nature years ago. It was a sad day indeed when they stopped doing hardware to focus exclusively on the Simbian OS.
"Disclaimer: I work for Dell. ...
The difficulty is being able to support every distro of Linux. It's impossible. I say that one is picked, say Ubuntu and support that with proper drivers and support."
In that case can Dell please just pick the one they like best and support that? As has been said elsewhere here, the key thing is to have supported drivers, I can then choose the distro I want to work with.
And for hardware support, surely it would not be so hard to require that people boot from a live CD when making a support call? That way the hardware could be checked out against a very stable benchmark significantly reducing the chance that system software problems obscure a hardware issue.
Wouldn't it be nice if the judge could rule that the public good would be best served by seeing the case through, and did indeed ruled so in this case?
> But until then, learn to love Windows.
What a depressing notion.
I for one hope that there will be some competition in the future.