Considering that only 2 of 3 people ever redeem vouchers from retail stores, what percentage will ever bother with this? I bet very few will ever know they have the opportunity, and even less will redeem the voucher.... sad way to do the settlement, imho.
I thought of that too. Maybe they'll make Microsoft mail the vouchers directly to everyone they have in their registration databases, that'd up the redemption quotient a lot. I remember back when Kodak got sued by Polaroid over their instant cameras and had to stop making them, they sent information out to us (since we had two) on how to get vouchers to use on new cameras. We certainly took advantage of it!
On another front, seeing as I'm in one of the states, you can bet I'll be keeping a close eye on whether the settlement gets approved, and be demanding my vouchers ASAP. If nothing else, I could use some new hardware (motherboard, CPU, RAM), and I'll be more than happy to let Microsoft buy it for me. Still sucks that they're letting them get away with their crap, but I'll take what I can get, I certainly can't afford to sue them further on my own.:(
Like: Hey, we've got all this money we can do whatever we want with : how about we go get new computers? guess what's installed on the computers that will be paid in the machines' price tag?
You know, Walmart.com still offers cheap computers ($199 I think it is) without MS Windows on them. Perhaps we should encourage them to advertise this little fact (and the pricing) heavily in the states/D.C. where the vouchers will be issued. Of course that'd probably royally piss Microsoft off, but I don't think Wal-mart terribly cares, they only use MS for their computer based learning, and I'm sure they'd be happy to change that if Microsoft really wanted to make them mad enough.
MS should be made to host a free, high bandwidth FTP site that mirrors all of the current distributions of Linux and similar free OS software. If nothing else, this would in part make up for all the money received by MS from their unfair "Microsoft tax" charged on nearly every commercial x86 PC; a tax paid for no services whatsoever by those who use only Linux, *BSD, or the like on said machine.
And who'd trust the ISOs they got off it? Sure, there'd be checksums and all, but given MS's past (and present) behaivors, I wouldn't be surprised to see them screwing with the releases, dropping out bytes here and there to hose the file (you know, must have been a bad spot on the disc...), or even changing the hashs/checksums to match (OK, maybe that's a bit too paranoid, but you get the idea). I know I'd never download a Linux/BSD/Etc. ISO off a Microsoft run FTP site, too risky.
As cynical as this post sounds, I really feel that NASA is in the wrong here if even a quarter of what the House letter says is true. If there's no approval from the government with regards to the OSP, even if it's fantastic, then there's no legitimate reason that NASA (a government agency) should continue with it.
IMNSHO*, this is the tinfoil-hat crowd up in arms again since this letter obviously shows the superhuge conspiracy by the PTB** to stop the spread of technology... give me a break.
Umm, last time I checked, congress didn't have to give explicit approval to every tiny little thing NASA/other agencies do. If the OSP falls under research into new technology, it's probably already gotten budgetary approval as just that.
Now if NASA had submitted it as a budget item and it got turned down, then that would be congress killing the program, but Congress sending them a letter like this is rather weird.
The drug stuff is a load of lies, like most things that people get told by those in power these days. One other poster suggested that the scientists behind that should try to cure cancer instead. However, the flaw behind that is that there is no money to be made.
As a followup, I highly recommend that anyone who really believes that illegal drugs are truly evil and hideous, and all that jazz, should go read A Drug War Carol. It is presented in comic format, for ease of reading for even those with the worst attention spans. And it will enlighten you to some really scary stuff as to WHY certain drugs are illegal, and why they'll probably stay that way. All information is backed up by supporting documents, mostly linked IIRC. Go on, read it, what have you got to lose? If you have a real justification for how you feel, then this won't change your mind now will it?
Actually, it's the other way around. Just because a few drugs are potentially harmful to society, why ban hundreds of totally unrelated substances?
And on a related front, why are some "illicit" drugs allowed to be used medically, but others aren't? (Such as Marijuana.)
For instance, I had a deviated septum repaired a few years ago (that's the bone in the nose). I found out at this point that it's standard to use cocaine in the operation, to keep the blood from clotting too much. They don't want it to clot up badly or it could cause complications before everything heals apparently. I remember my doctor told me this when I came in a week later to have everything cleaned out again. He mentioned they used to use cocaine solutions for that as well (wetting down the cotton before it was stuffed up the nose to break up any clots that were there and get the out of there), but had to stop because people would steal it from the rooms.
Personally before this I'd never known there was a medical use for cocaine, now I know better. I've always thought it silly that the government insists there can't be any medical uses for marijuana, especially so after learning that cocaine has some. As far as whether or not it improves quality of life for those terminally ill and in constant pain, I feel that if they're dying, and they even just think it helps, then let them have it. The psychosomatic response alone could be enough to help improve what time they have left. We allow terminally ill cancer patients to have morphine for the same reason (except it's proven to help with the pain), so why not?
This isn't a good comparison for the simple reason that no one is really trying to prevent kids from getting access to tobacco and alcohol, and the penalties for doing so are very, very light. If the laws regarding sale of tobacco and alcohol to minors were enforced with anything like the vigor applied to less dangerous illegal drugs, I am confident that the trade would drop off very sharply. If the average apathetic convenience store clerk or unscrupulous convenience store owner knew that one violation would lead to total forfeiture of all personal assets and 30 years to life -- as it can with possession of marijuana with intent to sell in some jurisdictions -- then you could bet your bottom dollar those clerks would check every ID and not sell a pack of cigarettes with a wink and a nod.
It'd help if we had more people who take the possibility of just losing their job from this more seriously too. I've been stuck working at Wal-mart for over a year now thanks to our lovely economy. I can lose my job not only for selling alcohol or tobacco without an ID, but for selling M rated games or R movies without one if I think the person appears under 17.
Seeing as I can't afford to lose my job, I take this so seriously that I refused to sell a M rated game one day to someone who turned 17 the next day. If all cashiers/convenience store clerks/etc. took this stance, then the vast majority of kids would never get hold of tobacco or alcohol, or hell, M rated game or R movies. (Oh yeah, and I must say, to the kid's credit, he was very understanding and didn't get upset, we could use more kids like him as well.)
Of course I unfortunately believe that the vast majority of kids get their tobacco and alcohol directly from parents, so even if everyone checked IDs and refused to sell to those underage, it might not help. Remember that story a while back about the hazing that went horribly wrong, with feces and other things being thrown at the kids, and landing several in the hospital? IIRC, the kids had kegs, bought by parents. Last I heard the local district attorney was looking into charging the parents, and I sure hope they did so.
Were the RIAA ever a "good" means to promote music
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Who Needs Radio?
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Interesting article, but I think it's clear to most anyone that the RIAA was never there to promote musicians, or even music. They simply exist to help pad the pockets of the music industry heads, and to lobby, lobby, lobby! I doubt you'd find a single musician that'd disagree.
As far as Radio being unimportant in promoting musicians, that's been that way for some time. Once radio stations consolidated heavily, and playlists became the same pretty much nationwide, all radio became was one large commercial for the artists the music studio honchos thought would bring them the biggest checks. When's the last time you heard anything decent on a radio station besides a public radio one?
Bottom line, commercial radio and the RIAA are, and have been obsolete, for some time, but they're (the RIAA especially) not about to go down without a fight. Let's just hope they don't manage to take out commercial music in all forms with them. Someone will find the way to make music both accessible and profitable for artists and the company(ies) promoting them in the future, but I somehow doubt it'll be any of the current big music studios out there now, and definitely not all the radio stations owned by that one big group (can't remember their name offhand).
No data should be able to harm a CD-ROM drive. I think that LG should be getting busy soon with making sure this doesn't happen in the future.
Well, it might be pertinent that LG drives seem to be the main CD/CD-RW/DVD drives Wal-mart sells. Perhaps LG quoted them so low a price they had to cut corners and ended up with this lovely firmware glitch as a result?
Well, I can't say I'll miss X10, if they don't recover from this. I was disgusted with their ubiqitous popunders, but more so the nature of them and their damn online ads. I don't want a popunder or add on a page that looks like I might be visiting a porno site while I'm at work! (Hell, I've seen porn sites that had women with more clothes covering them than some of the women in some of X10's ads.)
But on the other hand, now Advertisement Banners is free to license their popunder code to everyone out there. And suing X10 (and winning) has brought them tons of publicity.
Is this where I shoot myself in one foot and stab myself in the other and wait to see how long it takes me to bleed to death? If not, it kinda feels that way.
Read a report on this an hour ago. It seems that X10 has assets of $1-10M, and debts of $10-50M. The three brothers that won the settlement the other day are by far the biggest creditor, so I assume that they get first crack at any assets when X10 goes under. (My prediction there)
I guess that what they owe them didn't come down as a judgement against X10. I know you can't get judgements dismissed or lowered by filing bankruptcy (or at least an individual can't, so I would assume the same applies to corporate entities too.)
There is a further annoyance. Try sending someone an.exe file (such as a self-extracting archive for example), and the recipient will find they cannot open it - it's been removed.
There's no client side setting to change this security feature to 'off', so you end up having to ask the sender to rename the file to something other than.exe.
There's a whole host of other extensions it doesn't work with either, such as.js and.bat.
While I applaud the defaulting to high security, it will only lead to less security when it gets uninstalled and an older version put in its place that will let you send the needed files.
I like the approach The Bat! uses, which is to warn you about any attachment that can potentially contain malignant code with a nicely detailed information box. It recommends you save the attachment to disc and virus scan it first. You have three options, save (the default if you hit enter), open and cancel. Granted most lusers would still open the damn thing, but at least you can still use the software to send/receive E-mail securely and still send/receive the files you need to while you're at it. (The Bat!'s also been immune to pretty much all the E-mail worms in the last few years, it uses its own built-in viewer, and defaults everything to high security.
Oh yeah, and it's not that hard for novices to use it. My Mom uses it now, I insisted on her having it instead of Eudora or Outlook/Outlook Express. She's happy with it.
So this could provide a new way for Office-based attacks to bypass defenses.
It's a new feature thought up by their focus on security. Unfortunately we all thought they meant security for the end user, but they really meant security for the virus writers and systems administrators/help desk/tech support/etc. folks. It's just Bill's way of boosting the economy and keeping the IT field alive.
Course then all those extra jobs needed from this nightmare will get shipped overseas and the US IT market will continue to swirl down the commode heading to the sewer.:P
...the king of floating document formats. Once again, Microsoft is changing it's formats, in an attempt to force users to upgrade their software, as well as lockout 3rd party apps and OS's.
This is why I prefer Corel Wordperfect myself, they've not changed file formats since version 6 (I think that's right), and they're up to what's officially version 11 or 12 one. (Now branded by year, not a number.)
Wow, imagine if Microsoft hired engineers smart enough to design a file format that could last through 5-6 versions! Why Hell might freeze over real nice!
Just wait until the IRM server gets comprimized, there is no such thing privacy in the digital world, If don't want something leaked, don't put it on a computer connected to the internet or has a disk drive on it. I say it gets cracked tonight!
Better yet, wait until the IRM server gets compromised, noone notices, and then the New York Times gets hacked and everyone's personal info and documents show up instead of a paper the next morning.
Oh wait, bad newspaper example, noone would notice.:) Make that the Wall Street Journal.
Their Mac business unit is one of the most profitable divisions, so one would think that this concern would have made it up the corporate ladder.
This is Microsoft we're talking about. While they may have an undisputed monopoly on OS software now, they remain scared they might lose that advantage. (One has to wonder if perhaps MS management doesn't think they can hold their own in a truly fair and equal market.) Because of that, MS doesn't want to really do great things for Macintosh.
<Microsoft Mentality Mode>
If we did, why, more people might actually buy Macs and then they wouldn't need copies of Windows, and DEAR GOD, our stock just dropped 1 billionth of a cent because we thought of that, quick have Bill go spout off some more random nonsense about why Linux is bad, and write a new check to SCO to renew that license and tell them to get to the linux-bashing quick, our stockholders will kill us if our stocks goes down ANY!!!!! </Microsoft Mentality Mode>
Of course I mean all that tounge-in-cheek, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out there are members of the upper management at MS HQ that have nightmares along the above lines -- nightly.
Here's a link that doesn't require a login to view.
Reading up on it, it looks like you may be only able to use at online stores that are in the Paypal shops section of the site. Not sure though off-hand.
Also for the initial paypal bashing post owner : not everyone's paypal experience is as bad as what you had to hate them that much. If you know what you are getting into and not trying to defraud the system, why worry ?
I had an initial reaction somewhat like yours, but I also felt I ought to check out the site they linked (Paypal Sucks) and was rather shocked by what I found there. In fact, I suggest everyone read the beginning of this thread, from an ex-Paypal Middle Manager. Everything in that forum is pretty scary stuff actually, lots of people with frozen accounts for no reason they know of, and Paypal won't tell them why, etc. So, don't write them off as just a Paypal basher, after all I read, I'm probably going to delete my Paypal account I've had for about 2-3 years, there's enough on that site to scare me enough to no longer be comfortable using Paypal.
Is it really that hard to sign up for a credit card? I have the credit card companies absolutely throwing themselves at my *feet* trying to get me to sign up for more credit cards. And my credit rating is *bad*.
You're talking about those "You're Preapproved for the Bank Of CowboyNeal's Premium Gold-Pressed Latinum Visa Card!" letters you get all the time? Read the fine print, it'll say "subject to credit approval," blah blah blah. Basically all you're "pre-approved" for is filling out the application and making them check to see if they think you're qualifed for a card or not.
Now granted, I've never understood how this is completely legal and not false advertising of a sort (remember that Publishers Clearing House had to change their ways after that huge lawsuit about their "You may already be a Winner" but the fine print says "Not yet, you gotta at least send this back, and while you don't have to buy anything, we want you to do something to the envelope to show if you did or not so we'll know how to..... umm, file it!"? Heck the credit card offers don't even come in saying MAY be approved, so they're worse. But that's starting to stray way off-tppic.:)
You don't get congress to go against measures like this (i.e., measures that assure corporate "donations") unless there is a *really* massive demonstration. The kind that the American public has not shown any sort of willingness or poise to do in oh-so-many years.
On the bright side, if the RIAA keeps on the way it has, they very well manage to cause the American people to drag themselves out of their collective apathy and do a massive demonstration. The signs are there pointing to it happening, CD sales continue to drop, file sharing increses (or stays the same) as the lawsuits fly, customers complain about a lack of choice constantly. (And I'm talking the absolute average (and even below-average) Joe Consumers here.) The RIAA obviously has lots of lawyers, and no common sense whatsoever, all they need to do is go hang out in the local Wal-mart (of equivalent) electronic's dept. for one day, and they'd hear how massively discontent the American public is with them on all fronts, not just their misguided strategy for stopping file-sharers.
This would be great, as the Recording Industry obviously is one of the largest "donors" to politicians. If they become horridly tainted, what politician would take money from them? And once the public rises up, who's to say they won't move on to their next group of businesses they're sick of? I know the general discontent against software EULAs is going up each year.
It would be understandable if he were making copies of the CDs and selling thousands of them, but it says non-commercial infringers.
What in the hell is a non-commercial infringer? Does this mean if I record Mp3s of songs I wrote (and own the copyrights to), I could end up in jail for distributing them by P2P? I know I'm not a lawyer, but this certainly seems a possibility the way this has been worded.
Remember: When you contact your representative, do NOT e-mail. Congressmen do not take e-mails seriously. E-mailing tells the congressman that you don't care enough about the issue to actually sit down and put effort into your contact.
While I know this is very true, it sadly tells me that our elected representatives do not take all information passed along to them by their constituency (who they are supposed to represent, NOT the special interests and big business) seriously, or even bother to pay attention to it.
Quite frankly, in this day and age, if a congressman(/woman) doesn't take E-mail correspondence on an issue seriously, they have no damned business being an elected representative. Look at how many people have computers, and Internet access now, and even those who don't, can quite easily access both at nearly any public library. In fact, E-mail correspondence gives a greater voice to the poor, for whom a 34 cent stamp might mean losing part of a meal (seeing as you can get a loaf of bread at Wal-mart nowadays for 50 cents, this is very much true.) Given that, it is even more wrong for any elected representative to give short shrift, or ignore, any E-mail correspondence to them. I know one of my two US senators (not naming names, but they're majority leader in the senate:P) flat-out ignores E-mail. Guess who I _WON'T_ vote for ever again, irregardless of his record on any issue?
If you take the time to write your congressman/woman on any issue, be sure to include a note that you find it apalling they won't take E-mail correspondence seriously, and feel free to quote my reasoning, it's time they learned we're not living in 1903, but 2003. (And yes, I am doing the same, especially to one in particular.)
The second point, accountability, is where managers, in my experience get concerned. While it was great that the company didn't get mugged on licenses, the learning curve for the admins is relatively steep compared to Monopolized Systems that are managed at the crayon level.
I don't know about this one, in my experience, it's always been at least 10 times harder to figure out where Microsoft's monkeys, umm, I mean engineers, decided to hide the damned controls to change what I need to change. Under Linux/Solaris/Etc. if I can't find it on my own in a few minutes, then there's something wrong with me.
Personally I'm not a big fan of GUI systems administration, I can get the same things done at least 10 times faster from a command line (including MS products, when a command line option exists), than I can from a GUI. I absolutely despised IRIX when I had to deal with it because about half the things you'd do from the command line wouldn't freaking work!!!! You _HAD_ to do them from the damned GUI or the OS would just laugh at you and do as it pleased.
Perhaps Google (and other US/non-France companies) who keep getting hit with this rather silly verdicts from France (why is it pretty much everytime we hear of a silly/weird verdict against a US company, it's from France?) should just drop their.fr domains (or just make them a static page with a write-up of why it's no longer working), and block all.fr users from accessing their US domains. That might get the French people to finally tell their government what they think of suck silliness.
Of course then, the French government would probably cry foul and whine about that as well.
Slashdot Mirror
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Considering that only 2 of 3 people ever redeem vouchers from retail stores, what percentage will ever bother with this? I bet very few will ever know they have the opportunity, and even less will redeem the voucher.... sad way to do the settlement, imho.
I thought of that too. Maybe they'll make Microsoft mail the vouchers directly to everyone they have in their registration databases, that'd up the redemption quotient a lot. I remember back when Kodak got sued by Polaroid over their instant cameras and had to stop making them, they sent information out to us (since we had two) on how to get vouchers to use on new cameras. We certainly took advantage of it!On another front, seeing as I'm in one of the states, you can bet I'll be keeping a close eye on whether the settlement gets approved, and be demanding my vouchers ASAP. If nothing else, I could use some new hardware (motherboard, CPU, RAM), and I'll be more than happy to let Microsoft buy it for me. Still sucks that they're letting them get away with their crap, but I'll take what I can get, I certainly can't afford to sue them further on my own. :(
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Like: Hey, we've got all this money we can do whatever we want with : how about we go get new computers? guess what's installed on the computers that will be paid in the machines' price tag?
You know, Walmart.com still offers cheap computers ($199 I think it is) without MS Windows on them. Perhaps we should encourage them to advertise this little fact (and the pricing) heavily in the states/D.C. where the vouchers will be issued. Of course that'd probably royally piss Microsoft off, but I don't think Wal-mart terribly cares, they only use MS for their computer based learning, and I'm sure they'd be happy to change that if Microsoft really wanted to make them mad enough.-
MS should be made to host a free, high bandwidth FTP site that mirrors all of the current distributions of Linux and similar free OS software. If nothing else, this would in part make up for all the money received by MS from their unfair "Microsoft tax" charged on nearly every commercial x86 PC; a tax paid for no services whatsoever by those who use only Linux, *BSD, or the like on said machine.
And who'd trust the ISOs they got off it? Sure, there'd be checksums and all, but given MS's past (and present) behaivors, I wouldn't be surprised to see them screwing with the releases, dropping out bytes here and there to hose the file (you know, must have been a bad spot on the disc...), or even changing the hashs/checksums to match (OK, maybe that's a bit too paranoid, but you get the idea). I know I'd never download a Linux/BSD/Etc. ISO off a Microsoft run FTP site, too risky.-
As cynical as this post sounds, I really feel that NASA is in the wrong here if even a quarter of what the House letter says is true. If there's no approval from the government with regards to the OSP, even if it's fantastic, then there's no legitimate reason that NASA (a government agency) should continue with it.
IMNSHO*, this is the tinfoil-hat crowd up in arms again since this letter obviously shows the superhuge conspiracy by the PTB** to stop the spread of technology
... give me a break.
Umm, last time I checked, congress didn't have to give explicit approval to every tiny little thing NASA/other agencies do. If the OSP falls under research into new technology, it's probably already gotten budgetary approval as just that.Now if NASA had submitted it as a budget item and it got turned down, then that would be congress killing the program, but Congress sending them a letter like this is rather weird.
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The drug stuff is a load of lies, like most things that people get told by those in power these days. One other poster suggested that the scientists behind that should try to cure cancer instead. However, the flaw behind that is that there is no money to be made.
As a followup, I highly recommend that anyone who really believes that illegal drugs are truly evil and hideous, and all that jazz, should go read A Drug War Carol. It is presented in comic format, for ease of reading for even those with the worst attention spans. And it will enlighten you to some really scary stuff as to WHY certain drugs are illegal, and why they'll probably stay that way. All information is backed up by supporting documents, mostly linked IIRC. Go on, read it, what have you got to lose? If you have a real justification for how you feel, then this won't change your mind now will it?-
Actually, it's the other way around. Just because a few drugs are potentially harmful to society, why ban hundreds of totally unrelated substances?
And on a related front, why are some "illicit" drugs allowed to be used medically, but others aren't? (Such as Marijuana.)For instance, I had a deviated septum repaired a few years ago (that's the bone in the nose). I found out at this point that it's standard to use cocaine in the operation, to keep the blood from clotting too much. They don't want it to clot up badly or it could cause complications before everything heals apparently. I remember my doctor told me this when I came in a week later to have everything cleaned out again. He mentioned they used to use cocaine solutions for that as well (wetting down the cotton before it was stuffed up the nose to break up any clots that were there and get the out of there), but had to stop because people would steal it from the rooms.
Personally before this I'd never known there was a medical use for cocaine, now I know better. I've always thought it silly that the government insists there can't be any medical uses for marijuana, especially so after learning that cocaine has some. As far as whether or not it improves quality of life for those terminally ill and in constant pain, I feel that if they're dying, and they even just think it helps, then let them have it. The psychosomatic response alone could be enough to help improve what time they have left. We allow terminally ill cancer patients to have morphine for the same reason (except it's proven to help with the pain), so why not?
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This isn't a good comparison for the simple reason that no one is really trying to prevent kids from getting access to tobacco and alcohol, and the penalties for doing so are very, very light. If the laws regarding sale of tobacco and alcohol to minors were enforced with anything like the vigor applied to less dangerous illegal drugs, I am confident that the trade would drop off very sharply. If the average apathetic convenience store clerk or unscrupulous convenience store owner knew that one violation would lead to total forfeiture of all personal assets and 30 years to life -- as it can with possession of marijuana with intent to sell in some jurisdictions -- then you could bet your bottom dollar those clerks would check every ID and not sell a pack of cigarettes with a wink and a nod.
It'd help if we had more people who take the possibility of just losing their job from this more seriously too. I've been stuck working at Wal-mart for over a year now thanks to our lovely economy. I can lose my job not only for selling alcohol or tobacco without an ID, but for selling M rated games or R movies without one if I think the person appears under 17.Seeing as I can't afford to lose my job, I take this so seriously that I refused to sell a M rated game one day to someone who turned 17 the next day. If all cashiers/convenience store clerks/etc. took this stance, then the vast majority of kids would never get hold of tobacco or alcohol, or hell, M rated game or R movies. (Oh yeah, and I must say, to the kid's credit, he was very understanding and didn't get upset, we could use more kids like him as well.)
Of course I unfortunately believe that the vast majority of kids get their tobacco and alcohol directly from parents, so even if everyone checked IDs and refused to sell to those underage, it might not help. Remember that story a while back about the hazing that went horribly wrong, with feces and other things being thrown at the kids, and landing several in the hospital? IIRC, the kids had kegs, bought by parents. Last I heard the local district attorney was looking into charging the parents, and I sure hope they did so.
As far as Radio being unimportant in promoting musicians, that's been that way for some time. Once radio stations consolidated heavily, and playlists became the same pretty much nationwide, all radio became was one large commercial for the artists the music studio honchos thought would bring them the biggest checks. When's the last time you heard anything decent on a radio station besides a public radio one?
Bottom line, commercial radio and the RIAA are, and have been obsolete, for some time, but they're (the RIAA especially) not about to go down without a fight. Let's just hope they don't manage to take out commercial music in all forms with them. Someone will find the way to make music both accessible and profitable for artists and the company(ies) promoting them in the future, but I somehow doubt it'll be any of the current big music studios out there now, and definitely not all the radio stations owned by that one big group (can't remember their name offhand).
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No data should be able to harm a CD-ROM drive. I think that LG should be getting busy soon with making sure this doesn't happen in the future.
Well, it might be pertinent that LG drives seem to be the main CD/CD-RW/DVD drives Wal-mart sells. Perhaps LG quoted them so low a price they had to cut corners and ended up with this lovely firmware glitch as a result?But on the other hand, now Advertisement Banners is free to license their popunder code to everyone out there. And suing X10 (and winning) has brought them tons of publicity.
Is this where I shoot myself in one foot and stab myself in the other and wait to see how long it takes me to bleed to death? If not, it kinda feels that way.
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Read a report on this an hour ago. It seems that X10 has assets of $1-10M, and debts of $10-50M. The three brothers that won the settlement the other day are by far the biggest creditor, so I assume that they get first crack at any assets when X10 goes under. (My prediction there)
I guess that what they owe them didn't come down as a judgement against X10. I know you can't get judgements dismissed or lowered by filing bankruptcy (or at least an individual can't, so I would assume the same applies to corporate entities too.)-
There is a further annoyance. Try sending someone an
.exe file (such as a self-extracting archive for example), and the recipient will find they cannot open it - it's been removed.
While I applaud the defaulting to high security, it will only lead to less security when it gets uninstalled and an older version put in its place that will let you send the needed files.There's no client side setting to change this security feature to 'off', so you end up having to ask the sender to rename the file to something other than .exe.
There's a whole host of other extensions it doesn't work with either, such as .js and .bat.
I like the approach The Bat! uses, which is to warn you about any attachment that can potentially contain malignant code with a nicely detailed information box. It recommends you save the attachment to disc and virus scan it first. You have three options, save (the default if you hit enter), open and cancel. Granted most lusers would still open the damn thing, but at least you can still use the software to send/receive E-mail securely and still send/receive the files you need to while you're at it. (The Bat!'s also been immune to pretty much all the E-mail worms in the last few years, it uses its own built-in viewer, and defaults everything to high security.
Oh yeah, and it's not that hard for novices to use it. My Mom uses it now, I insisted on her having it instead of Eudora or Outlook/Outlook Express. She's happy with it.
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So this could provide a new way for Office-based attacks to bypass defenses.
It's a new feature thought up by their focus on security. Unfortunately we all thought they meant security for the end user, but they really meant security for the virus writers and systems administrators/help desk/tech support/etc. folks. It's just Bill's way of boosting the economy and keeping the IT field alive.Course then all those extra jobs needed from this nightmare will get shipped overseas and the US IT market will continue to swirl down the commode heading to the sewer. :P
...the king of floating document formats. Once again, Microsoft is changing it's formats, in an attempt to force users to upgrade their software, as well as lockout 3rd party apps and OS's.
This is why I prefer Corel Wordperfect myself, they've not changed file formats since version 6 (I think that's right), and they're up to what's officially version 11 or 12 one. (Now branded by year, not a number.)Wow, imagine if Microsoft hired engineers smart enough to design a file format that could last through 5-6 versions! Why Hell might freeze over real nice!
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Just wait until the IRM server gets comprimized, there is no such thing privacy in the digital world, If don't want something leaked, don't put it on a computer connected to the internet or has a disk drive on it. I say it gets cracked tonight!
Better yet, wait until the IRM server gets compromised, noone notices, and then the New York Times gets hacked and everyone's personal info and documents show up instead of a paper the next morning.Oh wait, bad newspaper example, noone would notice. :) Make that the Wall Street Journal.
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Their Mac business unit is one of the most profitable divisions, so one would think that this concern would have made it up the corporate ladder.
This is Microsoft we're talking about. While they may have an undisputed monopoly on OS software now, they remain scared they might lose that advantage. (One has to wonder if perhaps MS management doesn't think they can hold their own in a truly fair and equal market.) Because of that, MS doesn't want to really do great things for Macintosh.<Microsoft Mentality Mode>
If we did, why, more people might actually buy Macs and then they wouldn't need copies of Windows, and DEAR GOD, our stock just dropped 1 billionth of a cent because we thought of that, quick have Bill go spout off some more random nonsense about why Linux is bad, and write a new check to SCO to renew that license and tell them to get to the linux-bashing quick, our stockholders will kill us if our stocks goes down ANY!!!!!
</Microsoft Mentality Mode>
Of course I mean all that tounge-in-cheek, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out there are members of the upper management at MS HQ that have nightmares along the above lines -- nightly.
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Will sell in increments of $50.00/month with a $15.00 charge for the first $50.00 and $7.00 for each increment of $50.00 after the initial increment.
Ouch. Can you say price gouging children? Good, I knew you could. Now let's return to the friendly folks in theWith sincere apologies to Mr. Rogers, please don't have God strike me down or anything. :)
Here's a link that doesn't require a login to view. Reading up on it, it looks like you may be only able to use at online stores that are in the Paypal shops section of the site. Not sure though off-hand.
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Also for the initial paypal bashing post owner : not everyone's paypal experience is as bad as what you had to hate them that much. If you know what you are getting into and not trying to defraud the system, why worry ?
I had an initial reaction somewhat like yours, but I also felt I ought to check out the site they linked (Paypal Sucks) and was rather shocked by what I found there. In fact, I suggest everyone read the beginning of this thread, from an ex-Paypal Middle Manager. Everything in that forum is pretty scary stuff actually, lots of people with frozen accounts for no reason they know of, and Paypal won't tell them why, etc. So, don't write them off as just a Paypal basher, after all I read, I'm probably going to delete my Paypal account I've had for about 2-3 years, there's enough on that site to scare me enough to no longer be comfortable using Paypal.-
Is it really that hard to sign up for a credit card? I have the credit card companies absolutely throwing themselves at my *feet* trying to get me to sign up for more credit cards. And my credit rating is *bad*.
You're talking about those "You're Preapproved for the Bank Of CowboyNeal's Premium Gold-Pressed Latinum Visa Card!" letters you get all the time? Read the fine print, it'll say "subject to credit approval," blah blah blah. Basically all you're "pre-approved" for is filling out the application and making them check to see if they think you're qualifed for a card or not.Now granted, I've never understood how this is completely legal and not false advertising of a sort (remember that Publishers Clearing House had to change their ways after that huge lawsuit about their "You may already be a Winner" but the fine print says "Not yet, you gotta at least send this back, and while you don't have to buy anything, we want you to do something to the envelope to show if you did or not so we'll know how to..... umm, file it!"? Heck the credit card offers don't even come in saying MAY be approved, so they're worse. But that's starting to stray way off-tppic. :)
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You don't get congress to go against measures like this (i.e., measures that assure corporate "donations") unless there is a *really* massive demonstration. The kind that the American public has not shown any sort of willingness or poise to do in oh-so-many years.
On the bright side, if the RIAA keeps on the way it has, they very well manage to cause the American people to drag themselves out of their collective apathy and do a massive demonstration. The signs are there pointing to it happening, CD sales continue to drop, file sharing increses (or stays the same) as the lawsuits fly, customers complain about a lack of choice constantly. (And I'm talking the absolute average (and even below-average) Joe Consumers here.) The RIAA obviously has lots of lawyers, and no common sense whatsoever, all they need to do is go hang out in the local Wal-mart (of equivalent) electronic's dept. for one day, and they'd hear how massively discontent the American public is with them on all fronts, not just their misguided strategy for stopping file-sharers.This would be great, as the Recording Industry obviously is one of the largest "donors" to politicians. If they become horridly tainted, what politician would take money from them? And once the public rises up, who's to say they won't move on to their next group of businesses they're sick of? I know the general discontent against software EULAs is going up each year.
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It would be understandable if he were making copies of the CDs and selling thousands of them, but it says non-commercial infringers.
What in the hell is a non-commercial infringer? Does this mean if I record Mp3s of songs I wrote (and own the copyrights to), I could end up in jail for distributing them by P2P? I know I'm not a lawyer, but this certainly seems a possibility the way this has been worded.-
Remember: When you contact your representative, do NOT e-mail. Congressmen do not take e-mails seriously. E-mailing tells the congressman that you don't care enough about the issue to actually sit down and put effort into your contact.
While I know this is very true, it sadly tells me that our elected representatives do not take all information passed along to them by their constituency (who they are supposed to represent, NOT the special interests and big business) seriously, or even bother to pay attention to it.Quite frankly, in this day and age, if a congressman(/woman) doesn't take E-mail correspondence on an issue seriously, they have no damned business being an elected representative. Look at how many people have computers, and Internet access now, and even those who don't, can quite easily access both at nearly any public library. In fact, E-mail correspondence gives a greater voice to the poor, for whom a 34 cent stamp might mean losing part of a meal (seeing as you can get a loaf of bread at Wal-mart nowadays for 50 cents, this is very much true.) Given that, it is even more wrong for any elected representative to give short shrift, or ignore, any E-mail correspondence to them. I know one of my two US senators (not naming names, but they're majority leader in the senate :P) flat-out ignores E-mail. Guess who I _WON'T_ vote for ever again, irregardless of his record on any issue?
If you take the time to write your congressman/woman on any issue, be sure to include a note that you find it apalling they won't take E-mail correspondence seriously, and feel free to quote my reasoning, it's time they learned we're not living in 1903, but 2003. (And yes, I am doing the same, especially to one in particular.)
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The second point, accountability, is where managers, in my experience get concerned. While it was great that the company didn't get mugged on licenses, the learning curve for the admins is relatively steep compared to Monopolized Systems that are managed at the crayon level.
I don't know about this one, in my experience, it's always been at least 10 times harder to figure out where Microsoft's monkeys, umm, I mean engineers, decided to hide the damned controls to change what I need to change. Under Linux/Solaris/Etc. if I can't find it on my own in a few minutes, then there's something wrong with me.Personally I'm not a big fan of GUI systems administration, I can get the same things done at least 10 times faster from a command line (including MS products, when a command line option exists), than I can from a GUI. I absolutely despised IRIX when I had to deal with it because about half the things you'd do from the command line wouldn't freaking work!!!! You _HAD_ to do them from the damned GUI or the OS would just laugh at you and do as it pleased.
Of course then, the French government would probably cry foul and whine about that as well.