I know of some linux boxes that are amazingly reliable. I've owned three or four at least and on a couple of them I've had up times exceeding one year. No fuss, no muss.
Another article claiming my OS is better than yours,
another article with virtually no information, and the
information therein is off-the-scale incomprehensible and
inconsistent.
Here's a casual observation: the article says,
"
Windows 2003 Server, in fact, led the popular Red
Hat Enterprise Linux with nearly 20 percent more annual
uptime.
"
Later in the article, this:
"..., On average,
individual enterprise Windows, Linux, and Unix servers
experienced 3 to 5 failures per server per year in 2005,
generating 10 to 19.5 hours of annual downtime for each
server.
"
Let's just say a Linux server has 24 hours of downtime a year
(higher than the "survey" says). That leaves 364 days of uptime
in a year, 365 days in a leap year.
Implied in the article then, a Windows 2003 server would have
to be "up" approximately 20% more to satisfy the "claim". Now,
I am not a calendar "expert", but I'm having a difficult time
believing that Windows 2003 server is up an average of 364 * 1.2,
or 436.8 days a year. If it is, I'm buying.
Also from the article: "..., But standard Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open
source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows
or Unix competitors, the survey said. The reason: the scarcity of
Linux and open source documentation...."
First, this is a survey, it hardly points to data that support
this survey, in my book a no-no when trying to prove a point.
Secondly, assuming there's truthiness in this, my inference from
the previous paragraph is, "Red Hat would be a little easier to
set up and use if it had better documentation..."
Disclaimer: following comments are based on the
assumption these new DVD formats and drives for PCs support
recording, an assumption not clear from the referenced article.
If the drives won't be capable of recording, the incentive to
consider either drive is even less.
All the recent roiling around locking down digital formats,
keeping them from consumers, begs the question, "why would anyone
pay extra, especially a couple hundred extra, for a computer with
a DVD drive they seemingly may not be able to use legally
anyway?"
The horizon is murky, it's not clear there will be much use
for these new DVD drives be they blu-ray or HD.
With the incredible leaps in hard drive capacity and declining
cost per gigabyte of storage (remember when it was described in
terms of cost per megabyte?), even the notion of using these new
high capacity DVDs for storage/backup is not compelling. People
are beginning to turn to Network Access Storage as that becomes
more affordable.
Also, there's is a growing trend in internet storage and
backup, one I think will become huge. So, even MORE of a reason
to not be interested in the new DVD drives.
Factor in the historically slow speeds and high failure rates of
recording to disc media (I've given up on this approach, I get a
write failure or corruption failure on creating data DVDs of about
one in ten at least, a prohibitively high failure rate in the
data world), even MORE reason to not buy.
As for gaming and movie viewing on PCs, ain't going to happen
in huge numbers. People still prefer to watch their movies on
real screens (bigger and bigger these days), and serious gamers
tend to have their favorite dedicated game box.
Finally, until the legislative dust has settled users don't
and won't know if there's even anything they could legally record
to the new DVDs. It's not entirely clear users are going to be
allowed to even make a backup copy of a purchased movie.
The industry, if they had half a brain, would be offering
incentives to get buyers to go for their format,
just for the sake of making the consumers roll the format-war
dice.
Man, I can't get enough of these Microsoft execs. Gawd
they're funny! Why the heck aren't they on NBC's "Last Comic
Standing"?
The story would be more interesting if there were a time
frame for the "amusing" (ha ha ha) anecdote. It's important to
know as it likely exposes the lie that is Microsoft's improved
security.
Consider that the "amusing" (ha ha ha) incident was fairly
recent -- it probably was sometime in the last
couple of years. That being the case it puts the time frame well
past Microsoft's hugely publicized security initiative -- the one
where ostensibly everything else was back-burner until the
security issues were fixed.
And now, Microsoft executives are exchanging "amusing" (ha ha
ha) stories on each other about how they can't even fix their own
system because it is so permeable to exploit attacks. This after
their promise and assurance the security issues would be
resolved.
Of course these "amusing" (ha ha ha) stories are to
demonstrate to us, the poor lay people, that they "get it", they
feel our pain, and this time they really really really
are going to fix their product. Of course the
catch is now they've decided to turn that into a revenue stream
for themselves. (Car analogy warning!: It's
like saying, here's your brand new car... you'll love it. Oh,
you want a fuel line filter to protect your engine so it
continues to run smoothly? We're working on that and we think we
have something for you -- and we'll install it for you and keep
it activated for $50 a year. Car analogy warning
off.)
Microsoft is making yet another promise now that they
understand and feel our pain. This time to they're really going
to fix it, but to make the pain a little less for them, they're
going to charge us.
What an "amusing" idea. I'm peeing my pants. Ha ha ha.
First, take the opportunity to jettison McAffee and Norton
because of incompatibility issues as a gift on a golden platter
from the internet world. I can't think of two more bolloxed
suites of software that wrap themselves around the axle and grind
a system to a crawl (sometimes to a halt). There are better
alternatives for protecting your systems, and they're usually
simpler, and lots of them are free (do a "search" in slashdot to
find a few references).
That said, while I'm not AJAX expert (yet), what are the
sypmtoms? How do the problems manifest? It doesn't make any
sense to me -- doesn't AJAX traverse the same route as HTTP? How
would there be any trigger to interfere with that?
Also, you mention you're trying to reduce load on your
database servers. From what I've read AJAX can produce the
inverse result, and in some articles and books I've seen
recommendations not to use AJAX techniques on already heavily
loaded database servers as AJAX can quickly overload fragile
databases (in transaction rates). Is this problem really
well-defined?
I looked at the Google page you referenced, I didn't see any
FAQ references specific to AJAX, was there specific Google help
you pointed to? (All I got was a Gmail Help center page:
Browser Support & Third Party Software.) I
guess I don't understand the statement of problem on this one,
I'll wait and see what the threads look like.
Still, don't let the golden opportunity to dump McAffee and
Norton pass without some consideration! (Though, I was unaware
"security programs don't appear to be compatible with the
emerging features of the Internet"... time to do some more
research.)
From the abstract: "Although spreadsheet programs are
used for small "scratchpad" applications, they are also used to
develop many large applications. In recent years, we have learned
a good deal about the errors that people make when they develop
spreadsheets. In general, errors seem to occur in a few percent
of all cells, meaning that for large spreadsheets, the issue is
how many errors there are, not whether an error exists. "
I think "how many errors, not whether an error exists" is just
as true for applications and programs written in any language or
using any technology. What's so insidious about spreadsheets is
their integrity and the difficulty to maintain that.
Once you start changing any complex spreadsheet you risk and
almost guarantee corrupting other parts of the spreadsheet
ostensibly okay. The spreadsheet is so inextricably integrated
to itself, you pull one string, and some widget a million miles
away suddenly misbehaves, though, you're unlikely to notice until
later, if at all.
IT should be strict about policy around spreadsheets...
spreadsheets are great powerful tools, but they shouldn't be
anointed as applications.
I worked on a team that created a large software development
workbench. A critical piece of this workbench included a suite
of spreadsheets with amazingly complex macros and formulae hidden
way out of the casual users' sight. Immediately upon release
(and much aligned with my warning and prediction) the workbench
fell apart on a daily, even hourly basis, among many teams out in
the field. Turns out users were deleting rows in the template
spreadsheets deemed irrelevant and unnecessary to their work.
Guess what got deleted along with the "unnecessary rows"? Yep,
chunks of macros critical to the proper function of the
workbench.
I am not a journalist, but how do these
guys get their credentials? Wil forwards an interesting thesis
about the advent of loss of privacy as more people jump on the
internet, but he forwards this under the aegis of Web 2.0.
Give Wil credit, he actually tries to define Web 2.0, but it's
probably the 10th definition I've seen. (For the record, my
definition more typically aligns with the advent of more
desktop-like and agile web/browser applications that start to
look and feel like desktop.)
However, I don't see the increased loss of privacy correlated
much at all to Web 2.0, unless you just consider that, over time,
people have less privacy, and that, over time, Web 2.0 continues
to evolve (whatever that means). For example, Wil cites:
"The one thing the Web 2.0 sites have in common is that they
are furiously mining information about you and your buddies. What
you like." Again, this has little to do with Web 2.0. That
"Web 2.0" is the current buzzword is the only relationship to
increased data-mining. Data-mining has been available,
happening, and increasing in the internet domain for years.
I think privacy has changed and evolved as a result of
increased communications networks... Web 2.0 has little to do
with that and is only a small part of it. As databases get
larger, networks get faster, data-mining gets smarter, computer
processors get faster, an end result is there is more data than
ever about more people than ever in more places than ever.
Whether that results in loss of privacy is an interesting
debate, but in my opinion not an assumption/axiom. For example,
the more data out there, the more it becomes environmental noise.
Interesting perhaps at first, and maybe for longer to specially
interested parties, but something we will adapt to. (As an
aside, I do think there's a learning curve for young people and
their interaction on sites like MySpace, they need to learn not
to put voluntarily so much personal information out there as to
make themselves vulnerable to predators, a lesson I
think they're learning.
Another result I find useful is that I get much more directly
targeted advertising than ever before. It's nice now, no more
tampax fliers in my mailbox, but it's handy to know Staples has a
new SD 1G card available for my camera at less than $100.
I wonder what their response will be to the request to
label their products and how their DRMed, and make it "crystal
clear" (nice irony) to the consumers. I propose they go even
further.
I've encountered a couple of CDs which had some message to the
effect, "while every attempt has been made to ensure an enjoyable
experience, blah, blah, blah,... we cannot guarantee this disc
will play on every and all of your devices." And, all of those
(btw, the print is so small, it's unreadable) actually did play
on my computer, and not in my car, and I had to go through a few
hoops to return what the store claimed was "non-returnable".
Since they are knowingly creating a corrupt version of what is
or should be a standard format (compact disc), it should be their
responsibility to allow the consumer to know positively
for sure what devices and manufacturers their product
will be guaranteed to play on. This, in
addition to the clear and explicit list of how the
tracks may be copied,.... all of the other suggestions in the
article.
From the article: "The group claims the industry is turning
media into a rent system, rather than a purchase system."
If that's the case, and it does appear that's
the industry's direction, they're changing the rules as they
previously existed, even more reason they should list
the constraints and restrictions of their product. By visual
inspection alone, it is impossible to look at a CD and know
whether it is of the "corrupt" ilk.
Does it seem ironic there are laws requiring "explicit lyrics"
warnings on CDs, and not information that explains whether or not
you can even play the damn things?
(would have posted this a moment sooner, took me a second to
find the "Read More..." link.;-) )
more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane
on
Death By DMCA
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This is cool, I don't have to change my "subject" lines for
posts any more... it's all about the entertainment industry's
state of mental health.
From the article: "These new capabilities did not
please Hollywood. Jamie Kellner, then CEO of Turner Broadcasting
System Inc., called skipping commercials "theft" and, along with
28 entertainment companies including major movie studios and
television networks--such as Disney, Paramount, Time Warner, Fox,
Columbia, ABC, NBC, and CBS--sued ReplayTV for contributing to
copyright infringement."
WTF? Skipping commercials is theft? FUCK YOU Jamie
Kellner.... FUCK YOU TBS, FUCK YOU Disney, Paramount, Time
Warner, Fox, Columbia, ABC, NBC and CBS! So, for those not using
some sort of tivo-like device, if they should step out to relieve
themselves, is THAT theft?
It galls that devices are being driven away from the
marketplace because they're too good. And it equally galls that
layer upon layer of obfuscation continues to be heaped on
existing technology, to the point that when something works, my
heart palpitates: is it the signal?, is it the unit?, or is the
FUCKING DRM that I somehow forgot to set correctly?
Also from the article (referring to the ability to create
"unencumbered digital tuners": "The entertainment companies do
not like the flexibility of these home-built machines--or, more
significant to them, the flexibility of the machines that
consumer electronics manufacturers could offer under the current
copyright law and its Betamax rule." WTF?, again?
They don't like the flexibility of these machines? I'm
willing to bet somewhere in their ad campaigns they're bragging
on some feature they're offering as flexible,
etc. Gawd, I hate the industry.
So, technology continues to improve in quantum leaps, but the
governor that is the RIAA/MPAA consortium does everything in
their power to ensure technology is crippled to their whims, to
enhance their power and profit.
Has anyone read Player Piano by Vonnegut?
Great book... pretty good story about technology and designed
obsolescence, and the collapse therein of a society... I won't
give away the ending, it's worth reading.
Has the RIAA seen the quality of the videos on youtube?
We're not talking about redistribution of DVDs here, these are
snippets people find interesting and worth sharing. And the
quality of these videos is something you'd only look at in tiny
resolution on a computer, and probably only once or twice.
From the article: "Viral video sharing would not have been
an issue just 18 months ago, when the labels still viewed music
videos as a promotional tool for selling albums. Now that
their efforts have created interest in their videos, they want to
take it away in any form except for what they dictate.
The RIAA and MPAA remind me of an old Peanuts cartoon, where
Lucy takes all of Linus' toys away, and leaves him a rubber band
to play with... I've got to dig that up, it's so appropriate (do
you remember it?).
These videos surfacing on youtube and other video sites are
free publicity and advertising for the subjects!
I'm beginning to think the RIAA has some bizarre credo, something
along the lines of, "No matter what!, we MUST stop any sharing,
enjoyment, distribution of ANYTHING that we can possible stamp
with OUR ownership!". I'm also convinced the people running RIAA
are totally insane.
There's an adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity".
Eventually, the RIAA and MPAA may prove that wrong. Idiots.
Last paragraph of the article, from an India employee
losing his (or her) job:
"On May 15, Apple officials addressed us and
were highly appreciative of the workforce and the task it would
execute in India. I wonder why they never said anything even
then," said another fired employee.
Yeah, there are a lot of U.S. employees familiar with that
feeling. Welcome to the global market.
Personally, I find it just as offensive companies whimsically
shift work forces, often at high personal and financial cost to
employees caught unawares, whether it be in the U.S.
or India. I'd like to say, "see how it feels?",
but I find no satisfaction in that. I guess the global economy
does apply globally. It really does become about money on ledger
sheets, and little about the workforce and impact on people just
trying to make a living. Meanwhile CEOs and other execs reap
massive rewards, usually with little relationship to how well
their company does because of these decisions.
(That said, the article is far too short on detail to
understand exactly what prompted and triggered the change in
plans for Apple.)
Uh... no, they're not illegal. If someone is doing something in another country that is legal there, and you don't like it, you can dislike it all you want but you cannot do anything about it. They are legal. Individual purchasers may not be doing something legal, however.
I actually used the term "legitimate" which can be interpreted as "legal", but wasn't the context I used (though it is the context you inferred, sorry about that). By legitimate, I'd refer you to definition 2., or 4., in Merriam Webster.
If technically legal, allofmp3 was, in my opinion, intentionally positioning themselves to be a conduit of extremely cheap mainstream music to consumers they most likely knew to be purchasing illegally, that is, in the United States. In the landscape that is the internet, distinctions are blurred to most consumers.
But, ultimately consumers assume responsibility to discern, they don't always succeed, sometimes only because they didn't understand better. Regardless, enough business for allofmp3 makes allofmp3 "legally" profitable in their domain, but makes their largest customer base, the U.S., a convenient (and sometimes unwitting) scapegoat.
All of the coverage I've seen that goes into detail state that the site has a warning that you're responsible for following local laws. Stop shifting blame onto people that don't deserve that, and take some fucking personal responsibility.
It's long enough ago I don't remember specific details -- I do remember something about "you the consumer" are responsible for ensuring what you do is legal... I think as I described above this places undue responsibility for what that ultimately means to the casual consumer. I know for my own standing, I couldn't find anything that explicit said buying an mp3 from allofmp3 was illegal, it was murky enough to give me pause and, as you phrase it, "take some fucking responsibility". And as I said in my original post, if I bought anything, it was only one or two tracks to sample the site. (BTW, do you have to be so harsh?)
..., Oh, wait, apparently personal responsibility is out of style.
Next time, think a bit before posting something that stupid.
I will agree with paragraph one -- sometimes I think personal responsibility is out of style. That's too bad, I hope the pendulum swings back. But as to "thinking a bit before posting something that stupid", I had tried to do just that. I'm sorry it came off as stupid to you. C'est la vie.
As a "subscriber", I get the preview of articles with the
blurb: See any serious problems with this story?
Email our on-duty editor. at the bottom. This
gives opportunity to correct errors (doesn't happen much) and
more importantly help stem the tide of dupes. I replied, told
them "DUPE, BIG TIME", but alas. (It's a dupe of
Tom's Hardware Looks at Microsoft Vista Beta.)
So, since it's a dupe, and I already posted to that story,
feel free to read my
post again.
(I don't mind the occasional dupe, I wonder why a mechanism to
prevent them is offered if it isn't used. Sigh.)
Long ago as Napster faded into the sunset (in its old form, at
least) a friend turned me onto allofmp3. Promised me it was only
$.10 a track and the selection was amazing. I went
there, I signed up, I think I even may have purchased a few
tracks.
But the more I looked at it, the more uneasy I felt about how
legitimate it could be. This latest story confirms my hunch...
they aren't. This
other related article from Wired goes into further detail.
Apparently allofmp3 is already offering downloads for the latest
Red Hot Chili Peppers' as are tracks from the latest Shakira
album (you can tell I'm from the vinyl age, still calling them
"albums"). The prices are 1/10 the iTunes rates, and while the
article doesn't say, it would seem allofmp3 has no contract or
agreement to sell these tracks.
(From the Wired article: "..., World music downloading
leader iTunes charges a fixed 99 cents per song, but the Russian
site offers tracks for a 10th of that price. Songs from the Red
Hot Chili Peppers' new double album, Stadium Arcadium, cost
between 10 and 16 cents. The whole of Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, the
latest album by Colombian pop star Shakira, can be had for just
$1.40...., ")
I like what allofmp3 has tried to do, offer a vast array of
music at much more reasonable prices than the
rest of the world, but it does them, and the rest of us who would
demand a more fair distribution model irreparable damage. The
more "we" are labeled as criminals by our own actions, the more
fodder for their argument. And, the more likely DRM becomes
more onerous and intrusive and constraining.
Also interesting is the focus of the article, the barrier for
Russia to enter into the World Trade Organization. I couldn't
care less about that aspect, it seems a big stick and out of
proportion that Russia should bear... but that's political
schtick. I think the even bigger issue is this has put allofmp3
on everybody's radar, which of course means the RIAA, Congress,
progress (i.e., the opposite of congress), etc.
And if allofmp3 is selling rogue mp3s, it's bad for the anti-DRM
community.
It's an eternal adage, and how true it always seems to be:
"If it seems to good to be true, it probably is."
Back in the mid-80s I attended a seminar in Atlanta, it was
about automated software engineering... and tools and workbenches
that would take as input specifications and design parameters and
would crank out entire suites of software/applications. (Heck,
there was even a new acronym for it, can't remember what it was,
but it was a hot, hot, hot button for a few years.) We were
pretty much warned our careers were over, automation was here to
generate what we as professionals had studied years to create.
It never happened. It never came close to happening. We are
as far away today or further from tools that can generate
applications transcendentally.
I was skeptical then, I'm skeptical now. Tools like the ones
described are useful, but they're not foolproof, and they hardly
supplant the intuition and "art" that is programming.
At best tools are an adjunct to the software development
process, not to be a replacement for common sense testing and
design and code walkthroughs. I could construct many scenarios
that logically would be consistent but have no relationship to
the desired end of the application, i.e., a logic consistency
tool would not detect a problem. Any poorly designed system with
these "new" tools applied will merely be rigorously poor systems.
As for the prime example (in the Scientific American article)
of the Denver International Airport
baggage handling debacle, I doubt logic analysis tools would have
had much impact on the success or failure of that effort. I knew
people involved in the project, and "logic consistency" in their
software was the least of their problems. (I would have loved to
been on a team to design and develop that system -- I think it
was a cool concept, and ultimately VERY feasible... )
I did get one benefit from the Atlanta Seminar -- I got a
football signed by Fran Tarkenton (he was CEO of one of the
startup companies fielding a software generating workbench).
E-mail shouldn't really go away, we need to recreate it from
scratch with builtin security, authentication, encryption, etc,
and those mechanisms need to be as transparent as today's e-mail.
EOF
E-mail will probably go that way, but I don't see it being
recreated from scratch. Postfix evolved out of perceived
difficulties with sendmail (still one of my favorite packages...
obtuse, obtuse, obtuse, but lots of fun.) while in-flight.
The fixes for e-mail likely will also occur in-flight...
there's too much momentum, and too many transactions dependent on
e-mail for it to stop, then go.
The single most important step for me would be transparent
authentication, via certs, whatever. As phishing becomes more
insidious and the stakes go up, someday someone (or a bunch of
someones) will be phished severely, escalating the urgency of
authentication. It may start out clunky (ever tried to get
friends and family to do PGP handshakes?), but as with other
technology I think it can be done with transparency.
E-mail stays... (btw, if you want to send e-mail feedback to
the author, this
is the link.
Yeah I wonder about that, I'm supposed to have DSL
(Verizon), always suspected it to be a bit slow: here are my
test results: download: 783kbs, upload: 138kbs.
I don't have my contract here, but that seems slow. I'm moving
from this house, or I'd check further into it. (I just checked, I'm paying for the high speed connections, my test results are about 1/3 what "up to" speeds should be...)
My download speeds feel sluggish, the upload speeds are a
little painful. My biggest objection to the upload speed results
is they are just barely better than ISDN. WTF?
(BTW, go here
if you want to see what your speeds are... It's a test site to
see if your connection speed supports VOIP. Mine BARELY could.)
Also, while a "top ten" list is always subjective, I think
it'd be instructive to at least include Galloping
Gertie as honorable mention, another design which had been
identified as flawed. This Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge began
swaying wildly as it set up its own harmonic resonance in a
typical Puget Sound winter wind storm and eventually ripped apart
and collapsed into the Sound. Interestingly the original Galloping
Gertie could and would have sustained the fatal winds by
strategically placed holes in the beams.
I've tried the two top recommended music recommend-ers:
last.fm, and Pandora. Love them both.
I had to futz with the last.fm ergonomics, and find if I
haven't used it in a while, I have to re-figure some of the stuff
out. I find that annoying. But, it has great features, great
recommendations, and features.
Pandora, I found to be easier to use, simpler and more elegant
in design. I especially like the "sharing" of your personal
stations, and love the "most popular" station feature. This is a
great site, and a great experience.
For Pandora, though they've talked about fixing it, and I
don't know where they are on this, I was disappointed to not be
able to create a Classical Music station. That's a pretty big
negative for me.
(Also, if you try Pandora, an odd behavior: if you click the
"Minimize" button in the Pandora window (not the browser
minimizer), it pops out into its own independent window. That's
hardly "minimizing", though I find it convenient.)
And, while these may be free services, they've ended up
costing me a small fortune. I've been exposed to so much cool
music I'd not heard, I've ended up buying about 20 CDs I'd never
have otherwise bought.
okay, I am about half way through this review (a MUCH better review than the "other" one from yesterday, BTW), fighting off connection resets from the/. effect (that happens to ComputerWorld?!?).
One thought, wasn't Microsoft describing Vista as People Ready? OMG, this layer upon layer of interface and configuration is stupifying. It's a chore just to read about all of the control interfaces, it's looking like a nightmare to expect general users to find it "People Ready".
For those of you who regularly provide support for friends and family, you might want to look into some kind of long distance usage plan (if you have long distance support for friends and family), cuz you're going to be spending a lot more time on the phone than you did in the past.
Or, figure out how to get VNC up and running in the new Vista -- probably you're best bet.
First, a question, I don't know what the default setting
for StarOffice is as to macro execution. Is it turned on by
default?
Regardless, it's no secret of mystery even if by default macro
execution is on in StarOffice, the vulnerability is in the OS
infrastructure. If this happened on a Un*x machine (Sun, HP,
Linux, BSD), the damage would be confined and limited to what the user
had unprotected. It would be highly unusual for a Un*x user hit
with a StarOffice macro exploit to have enough exposure to
compromise the system.
OTOH, while it is getting better in Windows, there
are still far too many users set up with admin privileges, and
we're a long way from sufficient education and
reconfiguration such that a typical Windows user has safe access
so exploits succeed in only local impact.
Macros in documents are almost evil, I hate that everything
sent somehow has to have its own life-force, but in properly
configured systems, they're manageable. (I don't object to
macros, I use them all the time, but to make them "required" to
get the full effect of e-mail is annoying.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't think anyone's mentioned this yet...
I know of some linux boxes that are amazingly reliable. I've owned three or four at least and on a couple of them I've had up times exceeding one year. No fuss, no muss.
The box? TiVo. ymmv
Another article claiming my OS is better than yours, another article with virtually no information, and the information therein is off-the-scale incomprehensible and inconsistent.
Here's a casual observation: the article says, "
" Later in the article, this: " Let's just say a Linux server has 24 hours of downtime a year (higher than the "survey" says). That leaves 364 days of uptime in a year, 365 days in a leap year.Implied in the article then, a Windows 2003 server would have to be "up" approximately 20% more to satisfy the "claim". Now, I am not a calendar "expert", but I'm having a difficult time believing that Windows 2003 server is up an average of 364 * 1.2, or 436.8 days a year. If it is, I'm buying.
Also from the article: "..., But standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Linux distributions from "niche" open source vendors, are offline more and longer than either Windows or Unix competitors, the survey said. The reason: the scarcity of Linux and open source documentation...."
First, this is a survey, it hardly points to data that support this survey, in my book a no-no when trying to prove a point. Secondly, assuming there's truthiness in this, my inference from the previous paragraph is, "Red Hat would be a little easier to set up and use if it had better documentation..."
Disclaimer: following comments are based on the assumption these new DVD formats and drives for PCs support recording, an assumption not clear from the referenced article. If the drives won't be capable of recording, the incentive to consider either drive is even less.
All the recent roiling around locking down digital formats, keeping them from consumers, begs the question, "why would anyone pay extra, especially a couple hundred extra, for a computer with a DVD drive they seemingly may not be able to use legally anyway?"
The horizon is murky, it's not clear there will be much use for these new DVD drives be they blu-ray or HD.
With the incredible leaps in hard drive capacity and declining cost per gigabyte of storage (remember when it was described in terms of cost per megabyte?), even the notion of using these new high capacity DVDs for storage/backup is not compelling. People are beginning to turn to Network Access Storage as that becomes more affordable.
Also, there's is a growing trend in internet storage and backup, one I think will become huge. So, even MORE of a reason to not be interested in the new DVD drives.
Factor in the historically slow speeds and high failure rates of recording to disc media (I've given up on this approach, I get a write failure or corruption failure on creating data DVDs of about one in ten at least, a prohibitively high failure rate in the data world), even MORE reason to not buy.
As for gaming and movie viewing on PCs, ain't going to happen in huge numbers. People still prefer to watch their movies on real screens (bigger and bigger these days), and serious gamers tend to have their favorite dedicated game box.
Finally, until the legislative dust has settled users don't and won't know if there's even anything they could legally record to the new DVDs. It's not entirely clear users are going to be allowed to even make a backup copy of a purchased movie.
The industry, if they had half a brain, would be offering incentives to get buyers to go for their format, just for the sake of making the consumers roll the format-war dice.
Man, I can't get enough of these Microsoft execs. Gawd they're funny! Why the heck aren't they on NBC's "Last Comic Standing"?
The story would be more interesting if there were a time frame for the "amusing" (ha ha ha) anecdote. It's important to know as it likely exposes the lie that is Microsoft's improved security.
Consider that the "amusing" (ha ha ha) incident was fairly recent -- it probably was sometime in the last couple of years. That being the case it puts the time frame well past Microsoft's hugely publicized security initiative -- the one where ostensibly everything else was back-burner until the security issues were fixed.
And now, Microsoft executives are exchanging "amusing" (ha ha ha) stories on each other about how they can't even fix their own system because it is so permeable to exploit attacks. This after their promise and assurance the security issues would be resolved.
Of course these "amusing" (ha ha ha) stories are to demonstrate to us, the poor lay people, that they "get it", they feel our pain, and this time they really really really are going to fix their product. Of course the catch is now they've decided to turn that into a revenue stream for themselves. (Car analogy warning!: It's like saying, here's your brand new car... you'll love it. Oh, you want a fuel line filter to protect your engine so it continues to run smoothly? We're working on that and we think we have something for you -- and we'll install it for you and keep it activated for $50 a year. Car analogy warning off.)
Microsoft is making yet another promise now that they understand and feel our pain. This time to they're really going to fix it, but to make the pain a little less for them, they're going to charge us.
What an "amusing" idea. I'm peeing my pants. Ha ha ha.
First, take the opportunity to jettison McAffee and Norton because of incompatibility issues as a gift on a golden platter from the internet world. I can't think of two more bolloxed suites of software that wrap themselves around the axle and grind a system to a crawl (sometimes to a halt). There are better alternatives for protecting your systems, and they're usually simpler, and lots of them are free (do a "search" in slashdot to find a few references).
That said, while I'm not AJAX expert (yet), what are the sypmtoms? How do the problems manifest? It doesn't make any sense to me -- doesn't AJAX traverse the same route as HTTP? How would there be any trigger to interfere with that?
Also, you mention you're trying to reduce load on your database servers. From what I've read AJAX can produce the inverse result, and in some articles and books I've seen recommendations not to use AJAX techniques on already heavily loaded database servers as AJAX can quickly overload fragile databases (in transaction rates). Is this problem really well-defined?
I looked at the Google page you referenced, I didn't see any FAQ references specific to AJAX, was there specific Google help you pointed to? (All I got was a Gmail Help center page: Browser Support & Third Party Software.) I guess I don't understand the statement of problem on this one, I'll wait and see what the threads look like.
Still, don't let the golden opportunity to dump McAffee and Norton pass without some consideration! (Though, I was unaware "security programs don't appear to be compatible with the emerging features of the Internet"... time to do some more research.)
From the abstract: "Although spreadsheet programs are used for small "scratchpad" applications, they are also used to develop many large applications. In recent years, we have learned a good deal about the errors that people make when they develop spreadsheets. In general, errors seem to occur in a few percent of all cells, meaning that for large spreadsheets, the issue is how many errors there are, not whether an error exists. "
I think "how many errors, not whether an error exists" is just as true for applications and programs written in any language or using any technology. What's so insidious about spreadsheets is their integrity and the difficulty to maintain that.
Once you start changing any complex spreadsheet you risk and almost guarantee corrupting other parts of the spreadsheet ostensibly okay. The spreadsheet is so inextricably integrated to itself, you pull one string, and some widget a million miles away suddenly misbehaves, though, you're unlikely to notice until later, if at all.
IT should be strict about policy around spreadsheets... spreadsheets are great powerful tools, but they shouldn't be anointed as applications.
I worked on a team that created a large software development workbench. A critical piece of this workbench included a suite of spreadsheets with amazingly complex macros and formulae hidden way out of the casual users' sight. Immediately upon release (and much aligned with my warning and prediction) the workbench fell apart on a daily, even hourly basis, among many teams out in the field. Turns out users were deleting rows in the template spreadsheets deemed irrelevant and unnecessary to their work. Guess what got deleted along with the "unnecessary rows"? Yep, chunks of macros critical to the proper function of the workbench.
I am not a journalist, but how do these guys get their credentials? Wil forwards an interesting thesis about the advent of loss of privacy as more people jump on the internet, but he forwards this under the aegis of Web 2.0.
Give Wil credit, he actually tries to define Web 2.0, but it's probably the 10th definition I've seen. (For the record, my definition more typically aligns with the advent of more desktop-like and agile web/browser applications that start to look and feel like desktop.)
However, I don't see the increased loss of privacy correlated much at all to Web 2.0, unless you just consider that, over time, people have less privacy, and that, over time, Web 2.0 continues to evolve (whatever that means). For example, Wil cites: "The one thing the Web 2.0 sites have in common is that they are furiously mining information about you and your buddies. What you like." Again, this has little to do with Web 2.0. That "Web 2.0" is the current buzzword is the only relationship to increased data-mining. Data-mining has been available, happening, and increasing in the internet domain for years.
I think privacy has changed and evolved as a result of increased communications networks... Web 2.0 has little to do with that and is only a small part of it. As databases get larger, networks get faster, data-mining gets smarter, computer processors get faster, an end result is there is more data than ever about more people than ever in more places than ever.
Whether that results in loss of privacy is an interesting debate, but in my opinion not an assumption/axiom. For example, the more data out there, the more it becomes environmental noise. Interesting perhaps at first, and maybe for longer to specially interested parties, but something we will adapt to. (As an aside, I do think there's a learning curve for young people and their interaction on sites like MySpace, they need to learn not to put voluntarily so much personal information out there as to make themselves vulnerable to predators, a lesson I think they're learning.
Another result I find useful is that I get much more directly targeted advertising than ever before. It's nice now, no more tampax fliers in my mailbox, but it's handy to know Staples has a new SD 1G card available for my camera at less than $100.
I wonder what their response will be to the request to label their products and how their DRMed, and make it "crystal clear" (nice irony) to the consumers. I propose they go even further.
I've encountered a couple of CDs which had some message to the effect, "while every attempt has been made to ensure an enjoyable experience, blah, blah, blah, ... we cannot guarantee this disc
will play on every and all of your devices." And, all of those
(btw, the print is so small, it's unreadable) actually did play
on my computer, and not in my car, and I had to go through a few
hoops to return what the store claimed was "non-returnable".
Since they are knowingly creating a corrupt version of what is or should be a standard format (compact disc), it should be their responsibility to allow the consumer to know positively for sure what devices and manufacturers their product will be guaranteed to play on. This, in addition to the clear and explicit list of how the tracks may be copied, .... all of the other suggestions in the
article.
From the article: "The group claims the industry is turning media into a rent system, rather than a purchase system." If that's the case, and it does appear that's the industry's direction, they're changing the rules as they previously existed, even more reason they should list the constraints and restrictions of their product. By visual inspection alone, it is impossible to look at a CD and know whether it is of the "corrupt" ilk.
Does it seem ironic there are laws requiring "explicit lyrics" warnings on CDs, and not information that explains whether or not you can even play the damn things?
(would have posted this a moment sooner, took me a second to find the "Read More..." link. ;-) )
This is cool, I don't have to change my "subject" lines for posts any more... it's all about the entertainment industry's state of mental health.
From the article: "These new capabilities did not please Hollywood. Jamie Kellner, then CEO of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., called skipping commercials "theft" and, along with 28 entertainment companies including major movie studios and television networks--such as Disney, Paramount, Time Warner, Fox, Columbia, ABC, NBC, and CBS--sued ReplayTV for contributing to copyright infringement."
WTF? Skipping commercials is theft? FUCK YOU Jamie Kellner.... FUCK YOU TBS, FUCK YOU Disney, Paramount, Time Warner, Fox, Columbia, ABC, NBC and CBS! So, for those not using some sort of tivo-like device, if they should step out to relieve themselves, is THAT theft?
It galls that devices are being driven away from the marketplace because they're too good. And it equally galls that layer upon layer of obfuscation continues to be heaped on existing technology, to the point that when something works, my heart palpitates: is it the signal?, is it the unit?, or is the FUCKING DRM that I somehow forgot to set correctly?
Also from the article (referring to the ability to create "unencumbered digital tuners": "The entertainment companies do not like the flexibility of these home-built machines--or, more significant to them, the flexibility of the machines that consumer electronics manufacturers could offer under the current copyright law and its Betamax rule." WTF?, again?
They don't like the flexibility of these machines? I'm willing to bet somewhere in their ad campaigns they're bragging on some feature they're offering as flexible, etc. Gawd, I hate the industry.
So, technology continues to improve in quantum leaps, but the governor that is the RIAA/MPAA consortium does everything in their power to ensure technology is crippled to their whims, to enhance their power and profit.
Has anyone read Player Piano by Vonnegut? Great book... pretty good story about technology and designed obsolescence, and the collapse therein of a society... I won't give away the ending, it's worth reading.
</vent> Thanks, I feel better now.
Has the RIAA seen the quality of the videos on youtube? We're not talking about redistribution of DVDs here, these are snippets people find interesting and worth sharing. And the quality of these videos is something you'd only look at in tiny resolution on a computer, and probably only once or twice.
From the article: "Viral video sharing would not have been an issue just 18 months ago, when the labels still viewed music videos as a promotional tool for selling albums. Now that their efforts have created interest in their videos, they want to take it away in any form except for what they dictate.
The RIAA and MPAA remind me of an old Peanuts cartoon, where Lucy takes all of Linus' toys away, and leaves him a rubber band to play with... I've got to dig that up, it's so appropriate (do you remember it?).
These videos surfacing on youtube and other video sites are free publicity and advertising for the subjects! I'm beginning to think the RIAA has some bizarre credo, something along the lines of, "No matter what!, we MUST stop any sharing, enjoyment, distribution of ANYTHING that we can possible stamp with OUR ownership!". I'm also convinced the people running RIAA are totally insane.
There's an adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity". Eventually, the RIAA and MPAA may prove that wrong. Idiots.
Last paragraph of the article, from an India employee losing his (or her) job:
Yeah, there are a lot of U.S. employees familiar with that feeling. Welcome to the global market.
Personally, I find it just as offensive companies whimsically shift work forces, often at high personal and financial cost to employees caught unawares, whether it be in the U.S. or India. I'd like to say, "see how it feels?", but I find no satisfaction in that. I guess the global economy does apply globally. It really does become about money on ledger sheets, and little about the workforce and impact on people just trying to make a living. Meanwhile CEOs and other execs reap massive rewards, usually with little relationship to how well their company does because of these decisions.
(That said, the article is far too short on detail to understand exactly what prompted and triggered the change in plans for Apple.)
I actually used the term "legitimate" which can be interpreted as "legal", but wasn't the context I used (though it is the context you inferred, sorry about that). By legitimate, I'd refer you to definition 2., or 4., in Merriam Webster.
If technically legal, allofmp3 was, in my opinion, intentionally positioning themselves to be a conduit of extremely cheap mainstream music to consumers they most likely knew to be purchasing illegally, that is, in the United States. In the landscape that is the internet, distinctions are blurred to most consumers.
But, ultimately consumers assume responsibility to discern, they don't always succeed, sometimes only because they didn't understand better. Regardless, enough business for allofmp3 makes allofmp3 "legally" profitable in their domain, but makes their largest customer base, the U.S., a convenient (and sometimes unwitting) scapegoat.
It's long enough ago I don't remember specific details -- I do remember something about "you the consumer" are responsible for ensuring what you do is legal... I think as I described above this places undue responsibility for what that ultimately means to the casual consumer. I know for my own standing, I couldn't find anything that explicit said buying an mp3 from allofmp3 was illegal, it was murky enough to give me pause and, as you phrase it, "take some fucking responsibility". And as I said in my original post, if I bought anything, it was only one or two tracks to sample the site. (BTW, do you have to be so harsh?)
I will agree with paragraph one -- sometimes I think personal responsibility is out of style. That's too bad, I hope the pendulum swings back. But as to "thinking a bit before posting something that stupid", I had tried to do just that. I'm sorry it came off as stupid to you. C'est la vie.
Let me save you some time, this is a dupe.
As a "subscriber", I get the preview of articles with the blurb: See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor. at the bottom. This gives opportunity to correct errors (doesn't happen much) and more importantly help stem the tide of dupes. I replied, told them "DUPE, BIG TIME", but alas. (It's a dupe of Tom's Hardware Looks at Microsoft Vista Beta.)
So, since it's a dupe, and I already posted to that story, feel free to read my post again.
(I don't mind the occasional dupe, I wonder why a mechanism to prevent them is offered if it isn't used. Sigh.)
The RIAA wears panties? You sure you're not confusing them with the MPAA?
If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
Long ago as Napster faded into the sunset (in its old form, at least) a friend turned me onto allofmp3. Promised me it was only $.10 a track and the selection was amazing. I went there, I signed up, I think I even may have purchased a few tracks.
But the more I looked at it, the more uneasy I felt about how legitimate it could be. This latest story confirms my hunch... they aren't. This other related article from Wired goes into further detail. Apparently allofmp3 is already offering downloads for the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers' as are tracks from the latest Shakira album (you can tell I'm from the vinyl age, still calling them "albums"). The prices are 1/10 the iTunes rates, and while the article doesn't say, it would seem allofmp3 has no contract or agreement to sell these tracks.
(From the Wired article: "..., World music downloading leader iTunes charges a fixed 99 cents per song, but the Russian site offers tracks for a 10th of that price. Songs from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new double album, Stadium Arcadium, cost between 10 and 16 cents. The whole of Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, the latest album by Colombian pop star Shakira, can be had for just $1.40...., ")
I like what allofmp3 has tried to do, offer a vast array of music at much more reasonable prices than the rest of the world, but it does them, and the rest of us who would demand a more fair distribution model irreparable damage. The more "we" are labeled as criminals by our own actions, the more fodder for their argument. And, the more likely DRM becomes more onerous and intrusive and constraining.
Also interesting is the focus of the article, the barrier for Russia to enter into the World Trade Organization. I couldn't care less about that aspect, it seems a big stick and out of proportion that Russia should bear... but that's political schtick. I think the even bigger issue is this has put allofmp3 on everybody's radar, which of course means the RIAA, Congress, progress (i.e., the opposite of congress), etc. And if allofmp3 is selling rogue mp3s, it's bad for the anti-DRM community.
It's an eternal adage, and how true it always seems to be: "If it seems to good to be true, it probably is."
I won't be satisfied until Adobe ports Photoshop to cell phones. Now we're talking.
Back in the mid-80s I attended a seminar in Atlanta, it was about automated software engineering... and tools and workbenches that would take as input specifications and design parameters and would crank out entire suites of software/applications. (Heck, there was even a new acronym for it, can't remember what it was, but it was a hot, hot, hot button for a few years.) We were pretty much warned our careers were over, automation was here to generate what we as professionals had studied years to create.
It never happened. It never came close to happening. We are as far away today or further from tools that can generate applications transcendentally.
I was skeptical then, I'm skeptical now. Tools like the ones described are useful, but they're not foolproof, and they hardly supplant the intuition and "art" that is programming.
At best tools are an adjunct to the software development process, not to be a replacement for common sense testing and design and code walkthroughs. I could construct many scenarios that logically would be consistent but have no relationship to the desired end of the application, i.e., a logic consistency tool would not detect a problem. Any poorly designed system with these "new" tools applied will merely be rigorously poor systems.
As for the prime example (in the Scientific American article) of the Denver International Airport baggage handling debacle, I doubt logic analysis tools would have had much impact on the success or failure of that effort. I knew people involved in the project, and "logic consistency" in their software was the least of their problems. (I would have loved to been on a team to design and develop that system -- I think it was a cool concept, and ultimately VERY feasible... )
I did get one benefit from the Atlanta Seminar -- I got a football signed by Fran Tarkenton (he was CEO of one of the startup companies fielding a software generating workbench).
Short version of story:
E-mail shouldn't really go away, we need to recreate it from scratch with builtin security, authentication, encryption, etc, and those mechanisms need to be as transparent as today's e-mail.
EOF
E-mail will probably go that way, but I don't see it being recreated from scratch. Postfix evolved out of perceived difficulties with sendmail (still one of my favorite packages... obtuse, obtuse, obtuse, but lots of fun.) while in-flight.
The fixes for e-mail likely will also occur in-flight... there's too much momentum, and too many transactions dependent on e-mail for it to stop, then go.
The single most important step for me would be transparent authentication, via certs, whatever. As phishing becomes more insidious and the stakes go up, someday someone (or a bunch of someones) will be phished severely, escalating the urgency of authentication. It may start out clunky (ever tried to get friends and family to do PGP handshakes?), but as with other technology I think it can be done with transparency.
E-mail stays... (btw, if you want to send e-mail feedback to the author, this is the link.
Yeah I wonder about that, I'm supposed to have DSL (Verizon), always suspected it to be a bit slow: here are my test results: download: 783kbs, upload: 138kbs. I don't have my contract here, but that seems slow. I'm moving from this house, or I'd check further into it. (I just checked, I'm paying for the high speed connections, my test results are about 1/3 what "up to" speeds should be...)
My download speeds feel sluggish, the upload speeds are a little painful. My biggest objection to the upload speed results is they are just barely better than ISDN. WTF?
(BTW, go here if you want to see what your speeds are... It's a test site to see if your connection speed supports VOIP. Mine BARELY could.)
The Kansas City Hyatt was a disaster, but it wasn't because of bad design, but actually, "Construction issues led to a subtle but flawed design change that doubled the load on the connection between the fourth floor walkway support beams and the rods carrying the weight of the second floor walkway. This new design could barely handle the dead load weight of the structure itself, much less the weight of the spectators standing on it". The original design would have been safe but what seemed an innocuous change completely changed the dynamics of load bearing, a result easily derived by any first year physics student.
Also, while a "top ten" list is always subjective, I think it'd be instructive to at least include Galloping Gertie as honorable mention, another design which had been identified as flawed. This Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge began swaying wildly as it set up its own harmonic resonance in a typical Puget Sound winter wind storm and eventually ripped apart and collapsed into the Sound. Interestingly the original Galloping Gertie could and would have sustained the fatal winds by strategically placed holes in the beams.
I've tried the two top recommended music recommend-ers: last.fm, and Pandora. Love them both.
I had to futz with the last.fm ergonomics, and find if I haven't used it in a while, I have to re-figure some of the stuff out. I find that annoying. But, it has great features, great recommendations, and features.
Pandora, I found to be easier to use, simpler and more elegant in design. I especially like the "sharing" of your personal stations, and love the "most popular" station feature. This is a great site, and a great experience.
For Pandora, though they've talked about fixing it, and I don't know where they are on this, I was disappointed to not be able to create a Classical Music station. That's a pretty big negative for me.
(Also, if you try Pandora, an odd behavior: if you click the "Minimize" button in the Pandora window (not the browser minimizer), it pops out into its own independent window. That's hardly "minimizing", though I find it convenient.)
And, while these may be free services, they've ended up costing me a small fortune. I've been exposed to so much cool music I'd not heard, I've ended up buying about 20 CDs I'd never have otherwise bought.
okay, I am about half way through this review (a MUCH better review than the "other" one from yesterday, BTW), fighting off connection resets from the /. effect (that happens to ComputerWorld?!?).
One thought, wasn't Microsoft describing Vista as People Ready? OMG, this layer upon layer of interface and configuration is stupifying. It's a chore just to read about all of the control interfaces, it's looking like a nightmare to expect general users to find it "People Ready".
For those of you who regularly provide support for friends and family, you might want to look into some kind of long distance usage plan (if you have long distance support for friends and family), cuz you're going to be spending a lot more time on the phone than you did in the past.
Or, figure out how to get VNC up and running in the new Vista -- probably you're best bet.
From page 2: Instead, Microsoft is focused on casting off its yolk as the industry's security whipping boy.
A little egg in the author's face perhaps? I'd rather Microsoft casting off the yoke.
I wish I could add you to my friends list.
First, a question, I don't know what the default setting for StarOffice is as to macro execution. Is it turned on by default?
Regardless, it's no secret of mystery even if by default macro execution is on in StarOffice, the vulnerability is in the OS infrastructure. If this happened on a Un*x machine (Sun, HP, Linux, BSD), the damage would be confined and limited to what the user had unprotected. It would be highly unusual for a Un*x user hit with a StarOffice macro exploit to have enough exposure to compromise the system.
OTOH, while it is getting better in Windows, there are still far too many users set up with admin privileges, and we're a long way from sufficient education and reconfiguration such that a typical Windows user has safe access so exploits succeed in only local impact.
Macros in documents are almost evil, I hate that everything sent somehow has to have its own life-force, but in properly configured systems, they're manageable. (I don't object to macros, I use them all the time, but to make them "required" to get the full effect of e-mail is annoying.)