I and some other people I know PREFER the Netscape integrated AIM. It doesn't throw popups at you by default, doesn't try to automatically log you in on startup, and looks better.
The integrated AIM is the selling point that will get me to upgrade to Netscape 7.2 from Mozilla 1.7.
A Netscape branded Firefox would be great. First of all because Firefox is a pretty stupid name, and regular users don't remember far back enough to associate Netscape with 'bloat' all the time. Making Firefox 1.0 The next Netscape Navigator would spread word-of-mouth even better than it is already. "Have you tried the new Netscape? It's really fast and no popups!"
Tarkin and Vader do for issuing the order (Tarkin gets double: he double-crossed Leia as he did so). The officer remains neutral because he was just following an order and was probably an NPC to begin with. The Emperor wasn't even there. Don't award him any for it this time, he makes up for it in RotJ.
The real question is: Who gets the experience points for knocking out Boba Fett? Han? Lando? The sarlacc? That stick Han accidentally hit him with? The jetpack? Or R2 for starting the whole mess?
"This Land is Your Land" Was written in fucking 1956. Who in the HELL thinks they ought to have some right to it? Copyright originally lasted only 30 years and even then, the kind of parody JibJab has done was WELL within its fair use bounds.
Walt Disney was closer than this to "ripping off" Steamboat Bill, Jr. (a work currently playing in theaters at the time!) when he put Mickey Mouse in "Steamboat Willie," and his work earned him a media empire and the adoration of millions. And it was LEGAL.
"This puts a completely different spin on the song," said Kathryn Ostien...
No shit, lady! That's what makes it creative and original! The fact that this is even an issue makes me so baffled and angry I lack the vocabulary to describe it. Is The Richmond Organization blinded so badly by God-only-knows-what that they will waste time, money, and lawyers to shut down a perfectly legitimate creative work? This creative work harms them in no way, yet they assault it. What can they gain by this? The song is fifty years old! The mind reels.
This whole lawsuit is testament to the truth of what I've been reading in Free Culture. Read this book. It's free to download, and extremely important if you care about anything vaguely related to this topic.
Yes but it's only because they're under the evil spell of "free" software! They don't realize that only a megacorporation is responsible enough to give our security the attention it deserves.
he is terminally paranoid. I understand that he has a vested interest in FUDing FOSS, but let's attack his argument for a second:
First of all, what truly important piece of software would possibly be part of open public development? I thought this was specialized enough of a field that the only people who had any competence with what you were making were already trusted anyway. Wasn't SELinux developed *inside the NSA* before it was released?
Secondly, assuming a vital piece of software WERE being developed publicly, someone trying to insert malicious code would have to make it past a few barriers, the first being the most complicated. He would have to: 1) Know what his deliberately inferior code would probably do in the finished product versus what a non-ciminal would want it to do. 2) Get it past the critical eye of a few other developers, 3) Slip through some kind of government screening. And all the while NOT make anyone suspicious.
And even then the results are not guaranteed. What is your cyberterrorist counting on? I sincerely doubt that he could have snuck a back door into the code given all those hoops. I don't think the deliberate bug can be both significant and unknown at the same time. Is he hoping that his bug will cause the software to make a slight miscalculation? Whoopty shit. Whatever agency he or she is working against will be annoyed for a little while and then fix the problem.
Even if his deliberate bug caused a catastrophic failure, it can and will be traced back to HIS contribution, and if some terrorist group stands up and says "Ha ha! Look what we did! And here's why!" (and if it's Al-Qaeda we can be almost certain of this) That man is immediately under FBI surveillance and probably arrest.
In any case, inserting a bug would be a lot of work. A lot of work for an uncertain return, and success will mean almost inevitable detection.
Why some terrorist would bother with this approach is beyond me. It's so much easier just to fill a truck with dynamite.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a BIOS is nearly negligible as far as making money. It comes on hardware which is sold for a price. So I don't quite see why PC manufacturers would be so put off by the idea.... Except that some hairy communist is trying to cram it down their throats.
But weren't there people trying to DRM the world through the BIOS? "Trusted Computing" and all that? The only way it can be trusted is if the source can be independently audited. Seeing companies scrambling to protect themselves from their customers only gives credence to the notion that corporate power is really getting out of hand.
But of course Stallman, like an idiot, still insists that people adapt to HIS vocabulary. He begins the interview with paragraphs of definitions. It's his lone insistence on cumbersome terminology that makes me completely fed up with listening to him--and I'm usually on his side! How sad is that? Imagine how a proprietary mind would react!
The biggest obstacle for the acceptance of Free Software is still Richard Stallman. For Pete's sake, man, ATTEMPT to understand *other people*.
Weren't we seeing the ATi cards outperforming nVidia by disgusting margins on HL2 benchmarks?
Is there some kind of under-the-table manipulation going on here? Is ATi trying to leverage HL2 to sell more cards? Is nVidia doing the same with Doom3?
Or are both companies going to release new drivers soon and even the whole thing out?
I'm just going to wait and see. And upgrade after HL2 has been out for six months. THEN I'll play these games. I usually buy a game after it has earned a reputation. Then I'll know for sure whether it's good or not. Besides, I'd like to afford double the system requirements for these things when I finally do upgrade. Can't have choppy frames ruining the immersion effect.
At the beginning of the last school year, my university had just finished upgrading their systems from NT-something to all WindowsXP. Every lab was populated entirely with WinXP boxen, save the one Mac in the Education lab, and the few standalone Macs reserved for special tasks like publishing, and graphic/video editing.
Guess what happened at the beginning of that semester? All it took was one student (there were probably more) bringing his Dell Paperweight 6800, plugging it into the school's network, and WHOOPS! The entire University has the Blaster virus! Mail, networking, and Internet services were locked down for WEEKS. Some students had to find expensive communication workarounds in order to stay in touch with home. The rest were just supremely annoyed.
All because some jackass thought Windows was the all-important platform.
If a university admin isn't smart enough to realize that it's useful to know how to use something besides Windows, I think he DESERVES the shit that hits when a virus breaks out. It would have been simple to avoid. Before I graduate this place I'm going to make a formal proposal that half the lab machines be upgraded to RHEL. Maybe it'll bring the local MS spook^H^H^H^H^Hrepresentative out of hiding.
I know first hand that a software monoculture is certainly a problem when it comes to resilience against viruses, and security altogether. The network could surely have been better protected against the invasion of a virus to begin with, but a heterogenous network is a very safe fallback position if something sneaks through.
I also think writing and knowingly distributing malware should be punishable by 10 years, or caning--or 10 years of caning. Bastards.
I predit they're going to market this thing to the moon and back, and people will buy it, but it will only gain MSFT a few more red numbers. They're just probing for a new market. Nothing special. Maybe they CHOSE Fiat because they want to give people "the affordable OnStar". At least in the auto industry they can't pull stunts like they have with software. They can't just throw the beta into the cars and expect people to accept it.
But the IBM case isn't about copyrights; it's about a contract violation! SCO's complaint has nothing to do with a copyright claim involving Linux! IBM were the ones who dragged Linux into this!
I don't see why ANY company would agree to deal with Microsoft anymore. The trail of bodies stretches all the way back to the QDOS guy.
Perhaps these people deal with them thinking they can "handle" Microsoft? Or think that it won't be in Microsoft's interest to stab them in the back? I guess some don't realize that Microsoft is, at most, inconvenienced by the law. They sure as hell aren't subject to it.
Even if they HAD "broken in". Free security audit! It sounds like what they were doing were things you can do without cracking much of anything. IM and email packets are flying around the network willy-nilly, unencripted. It's only a matter of time before someone takes the effort to look at them...how on earth do they get punished for THAT? Then again, I guess it's easier to just make a thing illegal than it is to actually protect yourself against it.
Dammit I thought the days of people pissing themselves over "hackers" were over.
Going to the moon first would probably make Mars a whole lot more feasible. Launching something from lunar orbit would be a hell of a lot cheaper than launching it from the ground on Earth.
If we can get to the moon, we can more easily get at passing asteroids, which means trillions of dollars in minerals, metals and ore. Build it on the moon, then throw it at Mars at a fraction of the fuel cost.
Now that we're sufficiently off the topic of life on Mars, I shall conclude my post.
We need common, uencumbered data formats. XML might be key here.
Anything simple and extensible will do, so any features slapped onto the future applications that deal with the data maintain backward compatibility almost forever. This shouldn't be that hard to accomplish.
What's really holding it back is, once again, the paradigm that Microsoft pioneered. "We came up with the format, so if you want to read this at all--PAY UP!" This makes communication with the PRESENT difficult, much less pereserving information for the future.
There is a lot of information flying around the Internet. Useful, factual information. But it's sometimes useless for research because the Internet is so ethereal. There's nothing consistent to reference. A news article will be there one week and gone the next. We need two things: First, we need software (or data, anyway) that will survive format changes into the 23rd century. Second, we need a reliable, academically recognized repository of information published on the Web.
...I'd rather not see him in the news until MSFT actually does something.
There have been a lot of words coming out of Redmond lately but almost nothing of a tangible nature.
Just shut up and do what you're going to do, Microsoft. I'm buying Nintendo's console anyway. (I don't see why these kids keep saucing their pants over HALO. It's not THAT good of a game.)
The BSD communities alone are just about enough to sell me on using a BSD. They're not as ready to jump into flamewars as some others can be. If there's an unresolvable disagreement, one side will just fork it and everybody still gets along. If I had the fortitude to switch to BSD I probably would. Being part of such a level-headed group would be much easier on the nerves when looking for help.
Or am I mistaken? These are just my perceptions from the outside. Is the BSD Way not as rosy as I picture it?
Dell: We've begun offering Linux as another desktop OS.
MSFT: We know you've been dealing with this--Open Source--for some time now. We're willing to give you a clean slate, a 75% discount on Windows, if you help us bring a known danger to the software industry to its knees.
Dell: Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I've got a better one. How about: you give us the discount, and we keep selling Linux computers. {flips off the MS rep}
MSFT: What good is a Linux computer--if you are unable to sell Windows?
Dell: {Picks up phone} Hello, Department of Justice?
DoJ: Yeah, we know all about it. We're sending Donald Rumsfeld, and he's bringing his Sodomy Bat of Justice.
Slashdot Mirror
That icon with the Mozilla critter behind the N, I was reminded a little of this.
I and some other people I know PREFER the Netscape integrated AIM. It doesn't throw popups at you by default, doesn't try to automatically log you in on startup, and looks better.
The integrated AIM is the selling point that will get me to upgrade to Netscape 7.2 from Mozilla 1.7.
A Netscape branded Firefox would be great. First of all because Firefox is a pretty stupid name, and regular users don't remember far back enough to associate Netscape with 'bloat' all the time. Making Firefox 1.0 The next Netscape Navigator would spread word-of-mouth even better than it is already. "Have you tried the new Netscape? It's really fast and no popups!"
Tarkin and Vader do for issuing the order (Tarkin gets double: he double-crossed Leia as he did so). The officer remains neutral because he was just following an order and was probably an NPC to begin with. The Emperor wasn't even there. Don't award him any for it this time, he makes up for it in RotJ.
The real question is: Who gets the experience points for knocking out Boba Fett? Han? Lando? The sarlacc? That stick Han accidentally hit him with? The jetpack? Or R2 for starting the whole mess?
Walt Disney was closer than this to "ripping off" Steamboat Bill, Jr. (a work currently playing in theaters at the time!) when he put Mickey Mouse in "Steamboat Willie," and his work earned him a media empire and the adoration of millions. And it was LEGAL.
"This puts a completely different spin on the song," said Kathryn Ostien...
No shit, lady! That's what makes it creative and original! The fact that this is even an issue makes me so baffled and angry I lack the vocabulary to describe it. Is The Richmond Organization blinded so badly by God-only-knows-what that they will waste time, money, and lawyers to shut down a perfectly legitimate creative work? This creative work harms them in no way, yet they assault it. What can they gain by this? The song is fifty years old! The mind reels.
This whole lawsuit is testament to the truth of what I've been reading in Free Culture. Read this book. It's free to download, and extremely important if you care about anything vaguely related to this topic.
Yes but it's only because they're under the evil spell of "free" software! They don't realize that only a megacorporation is responsible enough to give our security the attention it deserves.
he is terminally paranoid. I understand that he has a vested interest in FUDing FOSS, but let's attack his argument for a second:
First of all, what truly important piece of software would possibly be part of open public development? I thought this was specialized enough of a field that the only people who had any competence with what you were making were already trusted anyway. Wasn't SELinux developed *inside the NSA* before it was released?
Secondly, assuming a vital piece of software WERE being developed publicly, someone trying to insert malicious code would have to make it past a few barriers, the first being the most complicated. He would have to: 1) Know what his deliberately inferior code would probably do in the finished product versus what a non-ciminal would want it to do. 2) Get it past the critical eye of a few other developers, 3) Slip through some kind of government screening. And all the while NOT make anyone suspicious.
And even then the results are not guaranteed. What is your cyberterrorist counting on? I sincerely doubt that he could have snuck a back door into the code given all those hoops. I don't think the deliberate bug can be both significant and unknown at the same time. Is he hoping that his bug will cause the software to make a slight miscalculation? Whoopty shit. Whatever agency he or she is working against will be annoyed for a little while and then fix the problem.
Even if his deliberate bug caused a catastrophic failure, it can and will be traced back to HIS contribution, and if some terrorist group stands up and says "Ha ha! Look what we did! And here's why!" (and if it's Al-Qaeda we can be almost certain of this) That man is immediately under FBI surveillance and probably arrest.
In any case, inserting a bug would be a lot of work. A lot of work for an uncertain return, and success will mean almost inevitable detection.
Why some terrorist would bother with this approach is beyond me. It's so much easier just to fill a truck with dynamite.
Microsoft is loathed.
SCO is amusing.
So now the web mag that nobody reads will be owned by someone else I pay no attention to.
And somehow it's news.
God I love slashdot.
Sounds to me like that time those guys on Easter Island decided boats were a waste of time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a BIOS is nearly negligible as far as making money. It comes on hardware which is sold for a price. So I don't quite see why PC manufacturers would be so put off by the idea.... Except that some hairy communist is trying to cram it down their throats.
But weren't there people trying to DRM the world through the BIOS? "Trusted Computing" and all that? The only way it can be trusted is if the source can be independently audited. Seeing companies scrambling to protect themselves from their customers only gives credence to the notion that corporate power is really getting out of hand.
But of course Stallman, like an idiot, still insists that people adapt to HIS vocabulary. He begins the interview with paragraphs of definitions. It's his lone insistence on cumbersome terminology that makes me completely fed up with listening to him--and I'm usually on his side! How sad is that? Imagine how a proprietary mind would react!
The biggest obstacle for the acceptance of Free Software is still Richard Stallman. For Pete's sake, man, ATTEMPT to understand *other people*.
Weren't we seeing the ATi cards outperforming nVidia by disgusting margins on HL2 benchmarks?
Is there some kind of under-the-table manipulation going on here? Is ATi trying to leverage HL2 to sell more cards? Is nVidia doing the same with Doom3?
Or are both companies going to release new drivers soon and even the whole thing out?
I'm just going to wait and see. And upgrade after HL2 has been out for six months. THEN I'll play these games. I usually buy a game after it has earned a reputation. Then I'll know for sure whether it's good or not. Besides, I'd like to afford double the system requirements for these things when I finally do upgrade. Can't have choppy frames ruining the immersion effect.
At the beginning of the last school year, my university had just finished upgrading their systems from NT-something to all WindowsXP. Every lab was populated entirely with WinXP boxen, save the one Mac in the Education lab, and the few standalone Macs reserved for special tasks like publishing, and graphic/video editing.
Guess what happened at the beginning of that semester? All it took was one student (there were probably more) bringing his Dell Paperweight 6800, plugging it into the school's network, and WHOOPS! The entire University has the Blaster virus! Mail, networking, and Internet services were locked down for WEEKS. Some students had to find expensive communication workarounds in order to stay in touch with home. The rest were just supremely annoyed.
All because some jackass thought Windows was the all-important platform.
If a university admin isn't smart enough to realize that it's useful to know how to use something besides Windows, I think he DESERVES the shit that hits when a virus breaks out. It would have been simple to avoid. Before I graduate this place I'm going to make a formal proposal that half the lab machines be upgraded to RHEL. Maybe it'll bring the local MS spook^H^H^H^H^Hrepresentative out of hiding.
I know first hand that a software monoculture is certainly a problem when it comes to resilience against viruses, and security altogether. The network could surely have been better protected against the invasion of a virus to begin with, but a heterogenous network is a very safe fallback position if something sneaks through.
I also think writing and knowingly distributing malware should be punishable by 10 years, or caning--or 10 years of caning. Bastards.
I googled, wiki'd, used dictionary.reference.com, then thesaurus ... I was losing hope until I found this page.
MSNBC: Money pit
MSN/Hotmail: Money pit
XBOX: HUGE money pit
Fiat: ???
Profit!
I predit they're going to market this thing to the moon and back, and people will buy it, but it will only gain MSFT a few more red numbers. They're just probing for a new market. Nothing special. Maybe they CHOSE Fiat because they want to give people "the affordable OnStar". At least in the auto industry they can't pull stunts like they have with software. They can't just throw the beta into the cars and expect people to accept it.
But the IBM case isn't about copyrights; it's about a contract violation! SCO's complaint has nothing to do with a copyright claim involving Linux! IBM were the ones who dragged Linux into this!
(in the IBM case, they have actually said this.)
I don't see why ANY company would agree to deal with Microsoft anymore. The trail of bodies stretches all the way back to the QDOS guy.
Perhaps these people deal with them thinking they can "handle" Microsoft? Or think that it won't be in Microsoft's interest to stab them in the back? I guess some don't realize that Microsoft is, at most, inconvenienced by the law. They sure as hell aren't subject to it.
Even if they HAD "broken in". Free security audit! It sounds like what they were doing were things you can do without cracking much of anything. IM and email packets are flying around the network willy-nilly, unencripted. It's only a matter of time before someone takes the effort to look at them...how on earth do they get punished for THAT? Then again, I guess it's easier to just make a thing illegal than it is to actually protect yourself against it.
Dammit I thought the days of people pissing themselves over "hackers" were over.
Not if The Mule has anything to say about it.
Going to the moon first would probably make Mars a whole lot more feasible. Launching something from lunar orbit would be a hell of a lot cheaper than launching it from the ground on Earth.
If we can get to the moon, we can more easily get at passing asteroids, which means trillions of dollars in minerals, metals and ore. Build it on the moon, then throw it at Mars at a fraction of the fuel cost.
Now that we're sufficiently off the topic of life on Mars, I shall conclude my post.
...any semblance of freedom or sanity--yes. Big Brother just might.
But even if BB does manage to turn the world of entertainment into a fascist police state... it won't last. Therefore I've stopped fretting.
We need common, uencumbered data formats. XML might be key here.
Anything simple and extensible will do, so any features slapped onto the future applications that deal with the data maintain backward compatibility almost forever. This shouldn't be that hard to accomplish.
What's really holding it back is, once again, the paradigm that Microsoft pioneered. "We came up with the format, so if you want to read this at all--PAY UP!" This makes communication with the PRESENT difficult, much less pereserving information for the future.
There is a lot of information flying around the Internet. Useful, factual information. But it's sometimes useless for research because the Internet is so ethereal. There's nothing consistent to reference. A news article will be there one week and gone the next. We need two things: First, we need software (or data, anyway) that will survive format changes into the 23rd century. Second, we need a reliable, academically recognized repository of information published on the Web.
There have been a lot of words coming out of Redmond lately but almost nothing of a tangible nature.
Just shut up and do what you're going to do, Microsoft. I'm buying Nintendo's console anyway. (I don't see why these kids keep saucing their pants over HALO. It's not THAT good of a game.)
The chief job of a book's first chapter--heck, the first page--is to get the reader salivating for more.
You're trying to tell me that giving a potential reader/player that preliminary taste of the story would be COUNTERPRODUCTIVE?
The BSD communities alone are just about enough to sell me on using a BSD. They're not as ready to jump into flamewars as some others can be. If there's an unresolvable disagreement, one side will just fork it and everybody still gets along. If I had the fortitude to switch to BSD I probably would. Being part of such a level-headed group would be much easier on the nerves when looking for help.
Or am I mistaken? These are just my perceptions from the outside. Is the BSD Way not as rosy as I picture it?
Dell: We've begun offering Linux as another desktop OS.
MSFT: We know you've been dealing with this--Open Source--for some time now. We're willing to give you a clean slate, a 75% discount on Windows, if you help us bring a known danger to the software industry to its knees.
Dell: Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I've got a better one. How about: you give us the discount, and we keep selling Linux computers. {flips off the MS rep}
MSFT: What good is a Linux computer--if you are unable to sell Windows?
Dell: {Picks up phone} Hello, Department of Justice?
DoJ: Yeah, we know all about it. We're sending Donald Rumsfeld, and he's bringing his Sodomy Bat of Justice.