"Don't do a corporation unless you have serious starting capital, or you think someone may want to sue you". In this world, someone always wants to sue you.
You could start your business somewhere other than the U.S.?
"That's a very dificult argument to make when the site in question is someones bank or utilites company."
It might be worth putting "MSIE" into the user-agent field somewhere, when installing for non-technical people who use online banking a lot (although it's generally not reccommended, because website logfiles then make Mozilla look less popular than it really is)
I'm sure there's something odd about Mozilla users having to pretend to be MSIE to visit websites, when MSIE itself has to pretend to be Mozilla to visit websites. Do you think in the future, MSIE will have to pretend to be a mozilla browser pretending to be MSIE pretending to be Mozilla1?
Interesting too, that online banks demand that people use MSIE, given that it's the only browser to allow the "phishing" scam being used to attack bank customers, and that it still has the bug in SSL support which completely obliterates banks' "shout about how 'secure' our site is because it has SSL" website security.
"A step backwards for reputation of the Linux and open source communities"
Uhh, two things:
(a) Linux people don't write Windows viruses. That's the whole point, we don't need to run Windows anymore. You think these people are testing the virus in Wine?
(b) Open Source people aren't renowned for their interest in virus writing (although Free Software people are alleged to have an interest in viral-license writing!)
"I'm a poor speller too, but I found "spell check" and a proofreader, why can't you?"
The obvious answer is, that a spellchecker will likely give you the wrong words for a lot of things. We just tested a few spellcheckers last weekend, and even on the UK-English setting, most of them crossed out correctly-spelled words, and suggested american-style replacements.
They can be useful to look for typo's, or when learning a language (the easiest way to type accents in french is to leave them out and then spellcheck it), but if there's a wrong word in their CV, they're no good at telling you about it.
For anyone who knows how to use their chosen language, a spellchecker is probably not necessary, as they'll spend the whole time pressing "ignore" to URLs, numbers, and other non-words. And for someone who doesn't know how to spell, they risk the machine making some rather odd decisions for them...
Anyone trying to find a spelling error in this post, could you go to wiktionary instead, and update a few definitions. Thanks.
"A 2" line across the bottom was easy. Then I set about drawing the vertical. 3", then another 6 gradations... oh, wait a minute, each inch is subdivided into 16ths. Tricky. Grab calculator."
Look on the other end of the ruler (where the higher inch numbers are), and there should be a section with 1/10 inches. Specially designed for americans I believe, and for PCB designers (spacing between pins on an IC = 2.54mm or 1/10 inch)
"But, when everybody you trade with uses a different system, it might be time to reconsider"... said the consultant to his boss, looking at all the suppliers and customers using MS-Office...
How is that possible? The original owner of the patent will always have the power to prevent it being used. It would be nice, certainly, if someone could come up with a GPL-like patent license.
The UK department of trade and industry actually responsed to my concerns on software patents (sorry, computer implented inventions ugh!) by saying "the existance of copyright didn't stop Free Software, so why should patents be any different"?
Yes that's right, the DTI doesn't understand how patents work. Why am I not surprised?
"How can you be 'falling behind' if you're orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else in terms of installed base"
'Falling behind' in the sense of being able to operate in a diverse computing environment (i.e. a modern computing environment)
As to "features and performance" being required for people to change from MS-Office, are not features and performance completely irrelevant? People buy MS-Office because everyone else does, not because they like the features. They buy it because they're scared they won't be able to open documents sent by their suppliers if they choose anything else.
"A patented, closed, proprietary file format can't hurt anyone if no one is using it."
Especially now that AbiWord can read OpenOffice documents, and as anyone who dual-boots (or runs a mixed-OS network knows), OpenOffice is the easiest way to edit the same documents on different OS's.
Microsoft Office is falling behind. It's pretty pathethic to see it at work, not able to open any SXW documents. What, you need to install a second word-processor just to hold its hand and convert documents?
Plus, as anyone working on important documents knows, what happens when your hard-disk, printer, or motherboard fails. "Sorry, you are not authorised to install MS-Office on a second computer" it will tell you, as you try to print your dissertation late at night on a borrowed computer... having a CD you can install anywhere without worry certainly has its advantages.
"But in a contract situation, legal liability issues will inevitably crop up, Farber said, as would the issues of who do you sue and where do you sue."
Only in Verisign would the ability to sue someone be more important than a stable root-DNS server...
"But how much of their income last quarter was due to donations, and do they expect to be able to keep that up?"
Well, put it this way: they sell an operating system. It's better than MS-Windows. People who sell MS-Windows seem to be doing fairly well, so you'd expect Mandrake be doing fairly well too?
"The latest version I have is 2.91 winamp291_full.exe. Is there anything newer?"
Winamp 2.91 probably does everything you'll want from WinAmp. There is a later version (5), and there will probably be others, but they're unlikely to be things you'll need or want to download (read about the AOL influence in the article, it sounds like the only "innovation" planned is to put an AOL icon on the desktop as soon as they can override the original developers)
Basically, the upgrade path from WinAmp is FreeA*m or XMMS for the music-player functionality, and other programs (iRate, videoLan and other streaming programs, plus separate video-player) for other multimedia functionality.
"Dont underestimate this. Go read that letter. Its designed to appeal directly to the politician in every fasion you can possibly do so."
"Allowing other countries to have software is a national security disaster!"
Yeah, sounds like the sort of thing which would fool an intelligent person... not.
With the quanity of very obvious factual inaccuracy in that letter, it starts to make the arguments based on those facts laughable. For example, they claim that RMS doesn't support being able to make money from software, which would surprise anyone who paid him to do work on Emacs. And then go on to suggest that anything which stops SCO from making money should be stopped by the government?
Well dang, the Microsoft Office license stops me from making money too, maybe the government should scrap that?
Can we have a Lego keyboard? Just have buckling spring 2x2x3-block-sized keyswitches, and flat keytops you can press onto them, then build your own base, shaped however you like.
Seems odd, that many people would spend hundreds of dollars on additional CPU speed, RAM, or graphics card memory that they'll only rarely notice, yet don't spend any money on the mouse and keyboard, which they use constantly... These things are the most important part of your computer experience, no?
Anyone who's constantly moving their scrollwheel to browse websites, might like the Logitech mouses... two buttons at the side you can map up to "slowly scroll downwards" and "slowly scroll upwards"
Mozilla people will like having a middle-button that's different from the scroll-wheel, so you don't scroll as you open links in a new tab... in WindowMaker, this can save you from an awful lot of 5th-button window drags...
Keyboards... are the buckling spring ones best, or the natural keyboards? Does anyone actually trust wireless keyboards to type their passwords on? Does anyone use wireless mouses, or do the batteries make them too heavy?
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't do a corporation unless you have serious starting capital, or you think someone may want to sue you". In this world, someone always wants to sue you.
You could start your business somewhere other than the U.S.?
Sue them all, let the courts sort them out...
"'Even if x were true, it'd still be false.' :-P"
I don't care who is he is, that offends me as a programmer.
Well our way of writing "x = x + 1" offends mathematicians too...
"The EU has some real teeth when it comes to noncompetitive practices. The maximum is something like 10% of annual earnings (could be profit). Ouch."
That could pay for Jon Johansen's expenses with some left over...
"That's a very dificult argument to make when the site in question is someones bank or utilites company."
It might be worth putting "MSIE" into the user-agent field somewhere, when installing for non-technical people who use online banking a lot (although it's generally not reccommended, because website logfiles then make Mozilla look less popular than it really is)
I'm sure there's something odd about Mozilla users having to pretend to be MSIE to visit websites, when MSIE itself has to pretend to be Mozilla to visit websites. Do you think in the future, MSIE will have to pretend to be a mozilla browser pretending to be MSIE pretending to be Mozilla1?
Interesting too, that online banks demand that people use MSIE, given that it's the only browser to allow the "phishing" scam being used to attack bank customers, and that it still has the bug in SSL support which completely obliterates banks' "shout about how 'secure' our site is because it has SSL" website security.
"Out of work MCSE?"
Surely not...
"A step backwards for reputation of the Linux and open source communities"
Uhh, two things:
(a) Linux people don't write Windows viruses. That's the whole point, we don't need to run Windows anymore. You think these people are testing the virus in Wine?
(b) Open Source people aren't renowned for their interest in virus writing (although Free Software people are alleged to have an interest in viral-license writing!)
"I'm a poor speller too, but I found "spell check" and a proofreader, why can't you?"
The obvious answer is, that a spellchecker will likely give you the wrong words for a lot of things. We just tested a few spellcheckers last weekend, and even on the UK-English setting, most of them crossed out correctly-spelled words, and suggested american-style replacements.
They can be useful to look for typo's, or when learning a language (the easiest way to type accents in french is to leave them out and then spellcheck it), but if there's a wrong word in their CV, they're no good at telling you about it.
For anyone who knows how to use their chosen language, a spellchecker is probably not necessary, as they'll spend the whole time pressing "ignore" to URLs, numbers, and other non-words. And for someone who doesn't know how to spell, they risk the machine making some rather odd decisions for them...
Anyone trying to find a spelling error in this post, could you go to wiktionary instead, and update a few definitions. Thanks.
"A 2" line across the bottom was easy. Then I set about drawing the vertical. 3", then another 6 gradations... oh, wait a minute, each inch is subdivided into 16ths. Tricky. Grab calculator."
Look on the other end of the ruler (where the higher inch numbers are), and there should be a section with 1/10 inches. Specially designed for americans I believe, and for PCB designers (spacing between pins on an IC = 2.54mm or 1/10 inch)
".tar.bz2.asc"
Outlook: One attachment was deleted for potentially containing a virus (RULE 354: "more than one file extension")...
"Milk has moved over to metric without much fuss"
Now sold in convenient multiples of 568 millilitres...
"But, when everybody you trade with uses a different system, it might be time to reconsider" ... said the consultant to his boss, looking at all the suppliers and customers using MS-Office...
"Some of us still use non-bloated window managers like WindowMaker, Blackbox, IceWM, and Enlightenment that don't use the GTK/QT libraries."
Some of us do that, then have to wait for the libraries to load anyway, for kppp and kmail to work...
"GNU Patent License, anyone?"
How is that possible? The original owner of the patent will always have the power to prevent it being used. It would be nice, certainly, if someone could come up with a GPL-like patent license.
The UK department of trade and industry actually responsed to my concerns on software patents (sorry, computer implented inventions ugh!) by saying "the existance of copyright didn't stop Free Software, so why should patents be any different"?
Yes that's right, the DTI doesn't understand how patents work. Why am I not surprised?
"How can you be 'falling behind' if you're orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else in terms of installed base"
'Falling behind' in the sense of being able to operate in a diverse computing environment (i.e. a modern computing environment)
As to "features and performance" being required for people to change from MS-Office, are not features and performance completely irrelevant? People buy MS-Office because everyone else does, not because they like the features. They buy it because they're scared they won't be able to open documents sent by their suppliers if they choose anything else.
"A patented, closed, proprietary file format can't hurt anyone if no one is using it."
Especially now that AbiWord can read OpenOffice documents, and as anyone who dual-boots (or runs a mixed-OS network knows), OpenOffice is the easiest way to edit the same documents on different OS's.
Microsoft Office is falling behind. It's pretty pathethic to see it at work, not able to open any SXW documents. What, you need to install a second word-processor just to hold its hand and convert documents?
Plus, as anyone working on important documents knows, what happens when your hard-disk, printer, or motherboard fails. "Sorry, you are not authorised to install MS-Office on a second computer" it will tell you, as you try to print your dissertation late at night on a borrowed computer... having a CD you can install anywhere without worry certainly has its advantages.
"Or you could disguise it as a crack house."
Judging from nanog emails, that would be the first place network operators would look for Verisign executives...
"But in a contract situation, legal liability issues will inevitably crop up, Farber said, as would the issues of who do you sue and where do you sue."
Only in Verisign would the ability to sue someone be more important than a stable root-DNS server...
"But how much of their income last quarter was due to donations, and do they expect to be able to keep that up?"
Well, put it this way: they sell an operating system. It's better than MS-Windows. People who sell MS-Windows seem to be doing fairly well, so you'd expect Mandrake be doing fairly well too?
"BPI objected to this on the grounds that CD-WOW was violating their copyrights by not buying the CDs from Europe."
How can you possibly violate a copyright by buying something?
"The latest version I have is 2.91 winamp291_full.exe. Is there anything newer?"
Winamp 2.91 probably does everything you'll want from WinAmp. There is a later version (5), and there will probably be others, but they're unlikely to be things you'll need or want to download (read about the AOL influence in the article, it sounds like the only "innovation" planned is to put an AOL icon on the desktop as soon as they can override the original developers)
Basically, the upgrade path from WinAmp is FreeA*m or XMMS for the music-player functionality, and other programs (iRate, videoLan and other streaming programs, plus separate video-player) for other multimedia functionality.
"Dont underestimate this. Go read that letter. Its designed to appeal directly to the politician in every fasion you can possibly do so."
"Allowing other countries to have software is a national security disaster!"
Yeah, sounds like the sort of thing which would fool an intelligent person... not.
With the quanity of very obvious factual inaccuracy in that letter, it starts to make the arguments based on those facts laughable. For example, they claim that RMS doesn't support being able to make money from software, which would surprise anyone who paid him to do work on Emacs. And then go on to suggest that anything which stops SCO from making money should be stopped by the government?
Well dang, the Microsoft Office license stops me from making money too, maybe the government should scrap that?
"Also, us Americans are woefully ignorant, even of our own geography."
browne[(is france in europe yes or no)]@hotmail.com...
"davidATamazingDOTcom"
That sounds good, until you meet an AOL user, and she asks "why isn't my email to you getting through?"
Where did you send it?
john (dot) doe (at) mydomain (dot) com
Can we have a Lego keyboard? Just have buckling spring 2x2x3-block-sized keyswitches, and flat keytops you can press onto them, then build your own base, shaped however you like.
Want to change it? Pull it apart and start again!
Seems odd, that many people would spend hundreds of dollars on additional CPU speed, RAM, or graphics card memory that they'll only rarely notice, yet don't spend any money on the mouse and keyboard, which they use constantly... These things are the most important part of your computer experience, no?
Anyone who's constantly moving their scrollwheel to browse websites, might like the Logitech mouses... two buttons at the side you can map up to "slowly scroll downwards" and "slowly scroll upwards"
Mozilla people will like having a middle-button that's different from the scroll-wheel, so you don't scroll as you open links in a new tab... in WindowMaker, this can save you from an awful lot of 5th-button window drags...
Keyboards... are the buckling spring ones best, or the natural keyboards? Does anyone actually trust wireless keyboards to type their passwords on? Does anyone use wireless mouses, or do the batteries make them too heavy?