"But then we'd h ave to agree with other countries as to what color our lazer weapons would be"
Just because people change s to z in other words, doesn't mean it works with laser, which is an abbreviation.
Light Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation?
So if red is bad, the bad guys get red lasers, and the good guys get green? The Empire (and the USA) get green, while the Axes of Evil (and the rebel alliance) have to show their evility with red weapons?
Howabout the idea that closed-source software can decide whether your artwork is good enough or not, and take steps to prevent you using the tool if it dislikes what you create? The "dislike" test at the moment is whether you're printing money. But it's not that which is the problem, it's the idea that certain types of work cannot be created.
I know we're all sure this will never be extended to stop you modifying photos of celebrity faces, or spoof images of his Billness, and it will never get as far as preventing you publishing any essay which the software recognises to be critical of x (for various values of x)
Sorry, you can't burn this CD, we've detected that it doesn't contain the GPL license. Please make your programs Free Software, and try again.
"If I recall, openoffice/staroffice can open "encrypted" Word and Excel documents without the requirement of a password. I know this used to work for older versions..."
OpenOffice website says that they choose not to do this for "legal reasons". They don't mention any technical problems with the idea.
"Time to write another note to the folks at ThinkGeek: please add the Mars Watch to your Gadgets:: Watches lineup! I want a Mars Watch!"
Thinking about how difficult it is even to get a watch with the right date format here (i.e. not "m/d/y"), I'd be interested to see if anyone makes a watch configurable enough to use mars time. Can you even buy a 2004-01-13 format clock/calendar in any stores?
That said, I've just remembered the microwave in our kitchen (at work) might qualify... it's certainly not using the same length days as we are.
"Acorn got this aspect of GUI design right. You don't need a file selector. Opening or reading things is best done by clicking or dragging from an existing directory browser. Saving or outputting is easily done by dragging an icon that represents your file into an existing directory browser"
Also available in Rox (which runs within your existing Window Manager)
"STOP GIVING THEM FSCKING MARKETING IDEAS! I want an iPod for $100! I don't want 100 bucks worth of music. I don't want a stupid gift certificate or licensing or anything. I'm a dirt cheap geek who is thisclose to actually braving the redneck land of Wal-Mart to get a $99 PC that I can muck around with. You telling Apple all these different ways for them to charge me even more for a product I already think is overpriced"
Howabout a $100 mail-in rebate that you need to attach all your receipts to and goes via the bermuda-triangle postal service?
"the few cases where users screwed up their PCs have been outweighed by the constant demands for an engineer visit to carry out a trivial task using the admin password"
Yep, if you want to keep the admin password secret, at least make sure the computer's clock is accurate!
"They made the movie to make money off it and they are ensuring that they will make money off it by preventing illegal copies."
(a) They're not "preventing illegal copies", they're preventing recording devices in the theatre. If they wanted to prevent illegal copies, they would have said so in the wording of the law. They didn't. Probably beacuse copyright law already covers that.
(b) "They made the movie, and are preventing illegal copies"... so you seem to know who's responsible. Should the people who make movies also be making our laws? I think they should stick to making movies, and let the politicians write the laws.
(c) "ensuring that they will make money off it by preventing illegal copies" -- how does this help the movie producers make more money? Time and again, it's been shown that the people who watch movies on their computers also watch that movie at the cinema.
(d) "They made the movie to make money off it" -- should they be guaranteed the ability to make money even if their film is really bad? By trying to prevent people making an informed choice about the quality of the movie before seeing it, they're attempting to distort the capitalist system to a point where it doesn't work. That's un-American, and that's cheating.
What's elitist? I'm not going to read a website with high-colour animations, because I physically can't read things with Flash animations next to them. My brain can't concentrate on reading text when there's an animated hammer, or swirly crap, or strobing blue and red trying to grab my attention.
If a website has Flash on it, I won't read it, nor reccommend it, nor ever come back to it. That's not elitist, that's just something the website owners need to know when they wonder why people follow a link to their site, and then not read the article or any of the rest of the website.
"There is a reason that they put "place stamp here" on envelopes, and it's not because they think you don't know where it goes."
It also means there's a square printed logo, right about where a postage-paid logo would normally go. So the envelope looks postage-paid at first glance, until you look closer at the writing.
It's basically a way of taunting your customers: "Nyeeeh, not only do you have to pay our bill, but you've got to buy a stamp as well"
Would the council really refuse to collect an unstamped envelope if they were sent a $800 cheque, but had to pay 20c postage to receive it? (dumb question, this is the government..)
"Medicine: It will have a complete medical history of you"
Let's see... are there any secure PDAs available yet? I have a USB hard-disk sitting next to me, and I still worry about it being stolen, to the point where all data on it is PGP-encrypted.
Are we gonna use the ambulanceman's public-key (private key on his USB key) to encrypt our medical data? Or just stoure our SSN as an index to the ubiquitous database-on-everybody that will be more visible then than it is now...
"about time you gave your country a nice easy name."
You try finding our country on a drop-down list, where you don't know if it's listed under (A)ngleterre, (B)ritain, (E)ngland, (G)reat Britain, (R)oyame-unis, or (U)nited Kingdom, or whether they've put it at the top of the list, rather than in alphabetical order...
Although it's less confusing than reading "E.U." (european union) as an abbreviation, and realising that it's referring to the United States (Etats-Unis)
"multiple monitors on flight sims looks good... I've seen a setup with three- it's just nice"
We use 10 displays for flight sims (4 projectors for outside world, plus LCDs for instruments), and they tend to have at least one computer per display to control it, each one running an image rendering program, and synchronising over the network.
"after all, the alternative, which is commonly used across the world, is to give the police guns, require them to give a warning, and then have them shoot you dead. But I guess Orwell didn't write about that, so it's not a problem then? it isn't government control anyway, it's at worst excessive police powers. but anything that keeps police from using deadly force is worth discussing without getting hysterical."
Uhh, here in the UK, the police don't shoot people who drive too fast. It might be different where you live, but they seem to reserve the firearms for more serious situations.
"Not a scientifically valid survey. Click to learn more."
MSNBC says that their polls are not representative because people offer to vote rather than being asked. I would think that being asked to vote at the end of reading an article on the subject in question might also influence things. But they don't seem to mention the people with a list of transparent proxies, a copy of LWP, and no cookies. Apparently MSN is immune to that, to the extent that it doesn't merit a warning.
Yep. 12/31/2003 for example. Can't beat middle-endian for dates...
Re:source code escrow not very useful
on
Source Code Escrow
·
· Score: 1
"The biggest problem I would have with this type of escrow situation is that there is no way to know how clean and maintainable the code is until the original developers are gone."
The obvious answer is to insist that software written for you is Free Software -- that way, many of your programmers' competitors have a chance to become familiar enough with the code that, should the original company fail, there is a community of people ready to take your money to maintain it.
The additional testing from unrelated developers trying to run the code on weird configurations should also force your programming company to develop something which *is* maintainable by others, or at least to warn you at a very early stage if the source-code is obfuscated crap.
"40 GB iPod has 40,000,000,000 bytes, which in the binary system is about 37.25 GB"
Interestingly, both the internal software on my Nomad Zen NX, and the supplied "Creative MediaSource" software list my "60GB" Zen as having 57.2GB total storage.
And this is the official software from the same company which wrote "60GB" in big letters on the front of the device.
Slashdot Mirror
"But then we'd h ave to agree with other countries as to what color our lazer weapons would be"
Just because people change s to z in other words, doesn't mean it works with laser, which is an abbreviation.
Light Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation?
So if red is bad, the bad guys get red lasers, and the good guys get green? The Empire (and the USA) get green, while the Axes of Evil (and the rebel alliance) have to show their evility with red weapons?
"Security invasion? Privacy invasion? Where?"
Howabout the idea that closed-source software can decide whether your artwork is good enough or not, and take steps to prevent you using the tool if it dislikes what you create? The "dislike" test at the moment is whether you're printing money. But it's not that which is the problem, it's the idea that certain types of work cannot be created.
I know we're all sure this will never be extended to stop you modifying photos of celebrity faces, or spoof images of his Billness, and it will never get as far as preventing you publishing any essay which the software recognises to be critical of x (for various values of x)
Sorry, you can't burn this CD, we've detected that it doesn't contain the GPL license. Please make your programs Free Software, and try again.
"All Dell has to do is digitally sign the word files with gpg."
Dell customers...
Enough clue to use GPG...
I'm not seeing the connection here?
"If I recall, openoffice/staroffice can open "encrypted" Word and Excel documents without the requirement of a password. I know this used to work for older versions..."
OpenOffice website says that they choose not to do this for "legal reasons". They don't mention any technical problems with the idea.
"Time to write another note to the folks at ThinkGeek: please add the Mars Watch to your Gadgets :: Watches lineup! I want a Mars Watch!"
Thinking about how difficult it is even to get a watch with the right date format here (i.e. not "m/d/y"), I'd be interested to see if anyone makes a watch configurable enough to use mars time. Can you even buy a 2004-01-13 format clock/calendar in any stores?
That said, I've just remembered the microwave in our kitchen (at work) might qualify... it's certainly not using the same length days as we are.
"Acorn got this aspect of GUI design right. You don't need a file selector. Opening or reading things is best done by clicking or dragging from an existing directory browser. Saving or outputting is easily done by dragging an icon that represents your file into an existing directory browser"
Also available in Rox (which runs within your existing Window Manager)
"STOP GIVING THEM FSCKING MARKETING IDEAS! I want an iPod for $100! I don't want 100 bucks worth of music. I don't want a stupid gift certificate or licensing or anything. I'm a dirt cheap geek who is thisclose to actually braving the redneck land of Wal-Mart to get a $99 PC that I can muck around with. You telling Apple all these different ways for them to charge me even more for a product I already think is overpriced"
Howabout a $100 mail-in rebate that you need to attach all your receipts to and goes via the bermuda-triangle postal service?
"Why would you want to re-encode an AAC to an MP3?"
Because you have something which plays MP3s?
"the few cases where users screwed up their PCs have been outweighed by the constant demands for an engineer visit to carry out a trivial task using the admin password"
Yep, if you want to keep the admin password secret, at least make sure the computer's clock is accurate!
"They made the movie to make money off it and they are ensuring that they will make money off it by preventing illegal copies."
(a) They're not "preventing illegal copies", they're preventing recording devices in the theatre. If they wanted to prevent illegal copies, they would have said so in the wording of the law. They didn't. Probably beacuse copyright law already covers that.
(b) "They made the movie, and are preventing illegal copies"... so you seem to know who's responsible. Should the people who make movies also be making our laws? I think they should stick to making movies, and let the politicians write the laws.
(c) "ensuring that they will make money off it by preventing illegal copies" -- how does this help the movie producers make more money? Time and again, it's been shown that the people who watch movies on their computers also watch that movie at the cinema.
(d) "They made the movie to make money off it" -- should they be guaranteed the ability to make money even if their film is really bad? By trying to prevent people making an informed choice about the quality of the movie before seeing it, they're attempting to distort the capitalist system to a point where it doesn't work. That's un-American, and that's cheating.
"Quit being so damn elitist"
What's elitist? I'm not going to read a website with high-colour animations, because I physically can't read things with Flash animations next to them. My brain can't concentrate on reading text when there's an animated hammer, or swirly crap, or strobing blue and red trying to grab my attention.
If a website has Flash on it, I won't read it, nor reccommend it, nor ever come back to it. That's not elitist, that's just something the website owners need to know when they wonder why people follow a link to their site, and then not read the article or any of the rest of the website.
"Now for the informative part of by rant:
try www.hardocp.com
or www.anandtech.com
or www.aceshardware.com"
www.hardocp.com:
Do you want to install Macromedia Flash?
No, fuck off annoying animated unblockable advertising crap.
www.anandtech.com:
Do you want to install Macromedia Flash?
No, fuck off annoying animated unblockable advertising crap.
www.aceshardware.com:
Do you want to install Macromedia Flash?
No, fuck off annoying animated unblockable advertising crap.
"There is a reason that they put "place stamp here" on envelopes, and it's not because they think you don't know where it goes."
It also means there's a square printed logo, right about where a postage-paid logo would normally go. So the envelope looks postage-paid at first glance, until you look closer at the writing.
It's basically a way of taunting your customers: "Nyeeeh, not only do you have to pay our bill, but you've got to buy a stamp as well"
Would the council really refuse to collect an unstamped envelope if they were sent a $800 cheque, but had to pay 20c postage to receive it? (dumb question, this is the government..)
"HTML email is an abomination that must be stopped. It's bigger than necessary, it's ugly and it's the spammer's friend."
Which turns out to be pretty damned useful as a filter. "if HTML and not from a known Hotmail account then delete"
"Anyone else find it funny that "Just use Mozilla" would have taken care of over half of these?"
But not the "secure your computer by visiting Windows Update regularly" one...
"Medicine: It will have a complete medical history of you"
Let's see... are there any secure PDAs available yet? I have a USB hard-disk sitting next to me, and I still worry about it being stolen, to the point where all data on it is PGP-encrypted.
Are we gonna use the ambulanceman's public-key (private key on his USB key) to encrypt our medical data? Or just stoure our SSN as an index to the ubiquitous database-on-everybody that will be more visible then than it is now...
"I don't know the details [of putting big metal grilles around each turbine]... Is anyone an expert?"
Suffice to say, the experts have designed and installed many thousands of turbines without ever considering that idea...
"about time you gave your country a nice easy name."
You try finding our country on a drop-down list, where you don't know if it's listed under (A)ngleterre, (B)ritain, (E)ngland, (G)reat Britain, (R)oyame-unis, or (U)nited Kingdom, or whether they've put it at the top of the list, rather than in alphabetical order...
Although it's less confusing than reading "E.U." (european union) as an abbreviation, and realising that it's referring to the United States (Etats-Unis)
"multiple monitors on flight sims looks good... I've seen a setup with three- it's just nice"
We use 10 displays for flight sims (4 projectors for outside world, plus LCDs for instruments), and they tend to have at least one computer per display to control it, each one running an image rendering program, and synchronising over the network.
"after all, the alternative, which is commonly used across the world, is to give the police guns, require them to give a warning, and then have them shoot you dead. But I guess Orwell didn't write about that, so it's not a problem then? it isn't government control anyway, it's at worst excessive police powers. but anything that keeps police from using deadly force is worth discussing without getting hysterical."
Uhh, here in the UK, the police don't shoot people who drive too fast. It might be different where you live, but they seem to reserve the firearms for more serious situations.
"Not a scientifically valid survey. Click to learn more."
MSNBC says that their polls are not representative because people offer to vote rather than being asked. I would think that being asked to vote at the end of reading an article on the subject in question might also influence things. But they don't seem to mention the people with a list of transparent proxies, a copy of LWP, and no cookies. Apparently MSN is immune to that, to the extent that it doesn't merit a warning.
"Our numbers are written backwards?"
Yep. 12/31/2003 for example. Can't beat middle-endian for dates...
"The biggest problem I would have with this type of escrow situation is that there is no way to know how clean and maintainable the code is until the original developers are gone."
The obvious answer is to insist that software written for you is Free Software -- that way, many of your programmers' competitors have a chance to become familiar enough with the code that, should the original company fail, there is a community of people ready to take your money to maintain it.
The additional testing from unrelated developers trying to run the code on weird configurations should also force your programming company to develop something which *is* maintainable by others, or at least to warn you at a very early stage if the source-code is obfuscated crap.
"40 GB iPod has 40,000,000,000 bytes, which in the binary system is about 37.25 GB"
Interestingly, both the internal software on my Nomad Zen NX, and the supplied "Creative MediaSource" software list my "60GB" Zen as having 57.2GB total storage.
And this is the official software from the same company which wrote "60GB" in big letters on the front of the device.
"don't worry, someone will post the entire... uh... text."
;-)
Ok, howabout pictures and text albeit with only a standard Linus photo.
Don't all rush to add your own names