I work for a tax software company. Last year the IRS and many state governments were forced to remove their free online tax services because they competed with private tax software providers.
How is it that the state of Indiana can provide a free product that competes directly with everyone from yahoo mail to wordperfect and get away with it. I'm guessing this site won't be up for long - the courts will shut time down in a hurry.
I thought of this recently while reading the article about Sun wanting to open source Solaris.
My theory is that Microsoft is planning on moving Windows to Linux. With IBM, HP, Dell, Oracle, Sun, etc.... on board with linux, and Apple now running OSX on a unix platform, it's just a matter of time before they can't compete at all. There are two many big guns throwing resources into Linux, and sharing the benefits.
I think they will open source all of the underlying architecture - (NTFS, Word doc format) and just when the whole world is thinking Microsoft is a good guy, they will release the still proprietary Windows for Linux, Microsoft Office for Linux, MSVC for Linux,.Net for Linux, SQL Server for Linux, the list is endless. I think they will do this as soon as they start losing significant Market Share to Linux workstations - which with all of the virus/spyware problems lately may not be as far off as we think.
Bill Gates may not be the smartest programmers ever, but he is a GENIUS when it comes to taking advantage of the market and making his products invaluable to the users. There is no way he will let Linux steal his billions.
Unlike the conservative outlets in the US which try to pretend they are "fair and balanced"
You know what the funniest thing about this country is? Nobody EVER thinks anybody is 'fair and balanced'. If you are conservative you think the news outlets, Hollywood, etc.. are liberal. If you are liberal you think the news outlets, Hollywood, etc... are conservative. If you are black you think every white person is racist. If you are male you think every female is feminist. If you are woman you think every man is a pig. If you are straight you think there's a big gay conspiracy. If you are gay you think everyone is a homophobe. Of course I'm stereotyping, but I'm pretty sure nobody is as corrupt or biased as we all think they are.
As far as your comments concerning the US's track record for freedom of speech - most of the restrictions on the items you cite are imposed by public opinion, not the government.
For example, cable television stations are not under FCC regulations regarding content, but most still adhere to nudity and profanity standards. Some, like IFC, most movie channels, HBO, etc.. do not, but the majority do. Why? They are concerned about their ratings and public opinion, not any kind of legal ramifications.
In another example, I am a Sirius radio subscriber. Again, they are not subject to FCC regulations as to content. A few months ago they created an additional comedy station for adult content. Appearantly they felt that their customer base wanted a comedy station without vulgarity.
OK, that all makes sense. Here's what I don't understand. A jury of his peers determined he was not guilty. How can a civil court demand damages for a crime that a criminal court says he did not commit.
If he's not guilty of the original crime, how can he have caused the damages. OTOH, if was guilty of the original crime, then the criminal court was wrong and there is a problem with the system.
Seems to me that a defendant in civil court should just be able to bring the criminal verdict as evidence of their innocence and the judge would dismiss the civil suit.
You have a great point, but there is one other thing that is driving Sun to join the Open Source community.
Eventually Linux will be better on the high-end than Solaris. With so many companies and individuals getting on board and contributing it's inevitable that Linux will eventually be the best OS for any platform. If Sun continues to stick with closed source Solaris it will eventually lose the competitive advantage it currently enjoys.
If Sun releases Solaris as Open Source it can continue to establish itself as a Linux provider and generate more revenue in the long run.
Or use your own silly webmail system. That's exactly what I have done, registered a domain and found a cheap place to host it. My email address will 'never' change and the hosting company setup squirrelmail for me (not that I couldn't have done it myself).
No, scientific principles demand no such thing. There is no law of nature to be proven or disproven. No fundemental theorem to examine. Nothing scientific at all.
Call me crazy, but "Nothing scientific at all" sounds like you meant there was nothing scientific at all. I still think Archaeology would qualify as "scientific".
No, scientific principles demand no such thing. There is no law of nature to be proven or disproven. No fundemental theorem to examine. Nothing scientific at all.
So Archaeology is not science? I suppose there is no scientific demand to investigate Mayan ruins, US Civil war battlefields, ancient Babylon, etc...
Wow, how long do you think it will be before this is abused.
Enter one Melvin P. Thornowsky, CS major, geek with taped glasses and pants a little tight around the armpits. Of course, our hero has a HUGE crush on Miss Bambi Vanderbilt, sophomore member of the local Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Melvin finally gets the nerve up to ask the beautiful, yet not all that smart Bambi out. Of course, he goes down in flames.
As revenge Melvin hacks Bambi's brand new laptop that her Daddy bought her and adds a nice pirated copy of "Flesh Gordon". Next time she hooks up to the campus network to check Cosmopolitan Online the MPAA Storm Troopers show up and take her to Jail. The whole Vanderbilt family is embarrassed, Bambi is disinherited and has to move in with Rocko, her secret boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks.
First, no one ever said Linux was invulnerable, just inherently more secure.
Second, I actually read the story. There are three methods of access to the compromised machines listed in the article:
"sniffing passwords, cracking passwords from other compromised systems, or by triggering vulnerabilities in remotely accessible services."
Windows is vulnerable to both sniffing passwords and cracking passwords from other systems, so the only Linux specific problems are in the remotely accessible services. The article lists two specific Linux exploits that were used to access these systems, do_brk() and mremap(). I then read the security alerts for these two exploits. do_brk() is specifically vulnerable to attacks by rsync and mremap() appears to only be useful for local permissions escalation (meaning a password has already been cracked).
Having never worked in a University, I don't know how hard security is to maintain, but in my environment I don't run rsync on any machine that is accessible to unauthorized personnel. Looks like this could easily be attributed to poor system administration. A good firewall would have taken care of all of these problems without having to patch the kernel.
Huh, few Linux desktop advocates consider retraining? Interesting since every Linux desktop article I've seen in the last 2 years mentioned the cost of retraining.
My perception could be completely wrong, but most Microsoft Office users I know don't have a clue how to do anything but the most rudimentary document creation in Word, or the most basic spreadsheet creation in Excel. Couple that with the incompatibility problems we run into because we aren't willing to shell out $300/year/user to upgrade to the latest greatest Office Suite and the cost of retraining seems like much less of a hurdle.
It's taken a while, but MS's stranglehold on the desktop is finally starting to slip. OpenOffice is a good product, MS's upgrades are too complicated and too expensive and, most importantly, Linux is starting to make inroads with large vendors. All of these factors will help bolster the Linux Desktop and make the "chicken and the egg" problem work against Microsoft, rather than for them.
OK Pavlov, what happens when our highly intelligent drivers figure out that the light's going to change anyway, but the cops are out solving real crimes, so they can just run the stupid thing.
Most people don't speed because they want to get there faster, the speed just to speed. I don't know about your town, but where I live the only time it's really possible to speed is when the traffic is light and you could probably get away with blowing through an early red light anyway.
Looks to me like it would be MUCH more intelligent to make all of the lights and speed limits dynamic so they would provide optimum traffic flow at all times of the day.
Can't reference your stats for you, but I can tell you that there isn't Jack for jobs here.
Denver (tech center) and CO Springs have some jobs right now, but they are few and far between. Longmont, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc... are absolutely dead. There aren't any tech jobs here right now at all. Not sure how we were number 2 last year and number 3 this year.
Unlike PC's vs. Palm vs. Tablets is not the same as Cable vs. Satellite. The only advantage of a land-line system vs. Satellite I know of in my area is cost effective Internet Access and local cable access channels.
My Satellite TV is cheaper, higher quality signal, and I get at least as many channels as the cable company offers - with the exception of the local channels showing the city council meetings and elementary school plays.
I don't think you can call anything a monopoly if there are competitive choices. Every car has strengths and weaknesses, so do cable providers vs. satellite providers. It doesn't mean they aren't competitive, comperable services.
Re:Free of Floating Window
on
Gimp Hits 2.0
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My problem with GIMP is that I lose the main toolbar window. It gets lost behind various images, layer windows, tool property windows, etc.. When I need to change tools I have to go hunting for the right window.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a tax software company. Last year the IRS and many state governments were forced to remove their free online tax services because they competed with private tax software providers.
How is it that the state of Indiana can provide a free product that competes directly with everyone from yahoo mail to wordperfect and get away with it. I'm guessing this site won't be up for long - the courts will shut time down in a hurry.
I thought of this recently while reading the article about Sun wanting to open source Solaris.
.Net for Linux, SQL Server for Linux, the list is endless. I think they will do this as soon as they start losing significant Market Share to Linux workstations - which with all of the virus/spyware problems lately may not be as far off as we think.
My theory is that Microsoft is planning on moving Windows to Linux. With IBM, HP, Dell, Oracle, Sun, etc.... on board with linux, and Apple now running OSX on a unix platform, it's just a matter of time before they can't compete at all. There are two many big guns throwing resources into Linux, and sharing the benefits.
I think they will open source all of the underlying architecture - (NTFS, Word doc format) and just when the whole world is thinking Microsoft is a good guy, they will release the still proprietary Windows for Linux, Microsoft Office for Linux, MSVC for Linux,
Bill Gates may not be the smartest programmers ever, but he is a GENIUS when it comes to taking advantage of the market and making his products invaluable to the users. There is no way he will let Linux steal his billions.
Plus, how much better would the rest of the staff's job be if we had cuddly puppies to put up with rather than all those surly programmers.
Unlike the conservative outlets in the US which try to pretend they are "fair and balanced"
You know what the funniest thing about this country is? Nobody EVER thinks anybody is 'fair and balanced'. If you are conservative you think the news outlets, Hollywood, etc.. are liberal. If you are liberal you think the news outlets, Hollywood, etc... are conservative. If you are black you think every white person is racist. If you are male you think every female is feminist. If you are woman you think every man is a pig. If you are straight you think there's a big gay conspiracy. If you are gay you think everyone is a homophobe. Of course I'm stereotyping, but I'm pretty sure nobody is as corrupt or biased as we all think they are.
As far as your comments concerning the US's track record for freedom of speech - most of the restrictions on the items you cite are imposed by public opinion, not the government.
For example, cable television stations are not under FCC regulations regarding content, but most still adhere to nudity and profanity standards. Some, like IFC, most movie channels, HBO, etc.. do not, but the majority do. Why? They are concerned about their ratings and public opinion, not any kind of legal ramifications.
In another example, I am a Sirius radio subscriber. Again, they are not subject to FCC regulations as to content. A few months ago they created an additional comedy station for adult content. Appearantly they felt that their customer base wanted a comedy station without vulgarity.
I do, I'm writing this from a Slack 9.1 machine with KDE 3.1 at home. We have six machines in the office setup this way, and I have one at home.
I'm sure Trojan could create a product to fit a cell phone, but why????
OK, that all makes sense. Here's what I don't understand. A jury of his peers determined he was not guilty. How can a civil court demand damages for a crime that a criminal court says he did not commit.
If he's not guilty of the original crime, how can he have caused the damages. OTOH, if was guilty of the original crime, then the criminal court was wrong and there is a problem with the system.
Seems to me that a defendant in civil court should just be able to bring the criminal verdict as evidence of their innocence and the judge would dismiss the civil suit.
You have a great point, but there is one other thing that is driving Sun to join the Open Source community.
Eventually Linux will be better on the high-end than Solaris. With so many companies and individuals getting on board and contributing it's inevitable that Linux will eventually be the best OS for any platform. If Sun continues to stick with closed source Solaris it will eventually lose the competitive advantage it currently enjoys.
If Sun releases Solaris as Open Source it can continue to establish itself as a Linux provider and generate more revenue in the long run.
Or use your own silly webmail system. That's exactly what I have done, registered a domain and found a cheap place to host it. My email address will 'never' change and the hosting company setup squirrelmail for me (not that I couldn't have done it myself).
Yet again, I quote
No, scientific principles demand no such thing. There is no law of nature to be proven or disproven. No fundemental theorem to examine. Nothing scientific at all.
Call me crazy, but "Nothing scientific at all" sounds like you meant there was nothing scientific at all. I still think Archaeology would qualify as "scientific".
No, scientific principles demand no such thing. There is no law of nature to be proven or disproven. No fundemental theorem to examine. Nothing scientific at all.
So Archaeology is not science? I suppose there is no scientific demand to investigate Mayan ruins, US Civil war battlefields, ancient Babylon, etc...
Umm... yeah... they wanted a really tall building.
You're right. And Melvin P. Thornowsky is such a popular name these days.
I write the post, I get to make up the names. Besides, it would only take one.
Wow, how long do you think it will be before this is abused.
Enter one Melvin P. Thornowsky, CS major, geek with taped glasses and pants a little tight around the armpits. Of course, our hero has a HUGE crush on Miss Bambi Vanderbilt, sophomore member of the local Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Melvin finally gets the nerve up to ask the beautiful, yet not all that smart Bambi out. Of course, he goes down in flames.
As revenge Melvin hacks Bambi's brand new laptop that her Daddy bought her and adds a nice pirated copy of "Flesh Gordon". Next time she hooks up to the campus network to check Cosmopolitan Online the MPAA Storm Troopers show up and take her to Jail. The whole Vanderbilt family is embarrassed, Bambi is disinherited and has to move in with Rocko, her secret boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks.
MPAA - ruining lives one campus at a time.
Come On!!! Can't we remember Point Break too? It was really the same character as Ted Theodore Logan, just after some college.
First, no one ever said Linux was invulnerable, just inherently more secure.
Second, I actually read the story. There are three methods of access to the compromised machines listed in the article:
"sniffing passwords, cracking passwords from other compromised systems, or by triggering vulnerabilities in remotely accessible services."
Windows is vulnerable to both sniffing passwords and cracking passwords from other systems, so the only Linux specific problems are in the remotely accessible services. The article lists two specific Linux exploits that were used to access these systems, do_brk() and mremap(). I then read the security alerts for these two exploits. do_brk() is specifically vulnerable to attacks by rsync and mremap() appears to only be useful for local permissions escalation (meaning a password has already been cracked).
Having never worked in a University, I don't know how hard security is to maintain, but in my environment I don't run rsync on any machine that is accessible to unauthorized personnel. Looks like this could easily be attributed to poor system administration. A good firewall would have taken care of all of these problems without having to patch the kernel.
Huh, few Linux desktop advocates consider retraining? Interesting since every Linux desktop article I've seen in the last 2 years mentioned the cost of retraining.
My perception could be completely wrong, but most Microsoft Office users I know don't have a clue how to do anything but the most rudimentary document creation in Word, or the most basic spreadsheet creation in Excel. Couple that with the incompatibility problems we run into because we aren't willing to shell out $300/year/user to upgrade to the latest greatest Office Suite and the cost of retraining seems like much less of a hurdle.
It's taken a while, but MS's stranglehold on the desktop is finally starting to slip. OpenOffice is a good product, MS's upgrades are too complicated and too expensive and, most importantly, Linux is starting to make inroads with large vendors. All of these factors will help bolster the Linux Desktop and make the "chicken and the egg" problem work against Microsoft, rather than for them.
OK Pavlov, what happens when our highly intelligent drivers figure out that the light's going to change anyway, but the cops are out solving real crimes, so they can just run the stupid thing.
Most people don't speed because they want to get there faster, the speed just to speed. I don't know about your town, but where I live the only time it's really possible to speed is when the traffic is light and you could probably get away with blowing through an early red light anyway.
Looks to me like it would be MUCH more intelligent to make all of the lights and speed limits dynamic so they would provide optimum traffic flow at all times of the day.
But why would I purchase this easily traceable item on Ebay when I have a whole arsenal available at Villains Supply?
Can't reference your stats for you, but I can tell you that there isn't Jack for jobs here.
Denver (tech center) and CO Springs have some jobs right now, but they are few and far between. Longmont, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc... are absolutely dead. There aren't any tech jobs here right now at all. Not sure how we were number 2 last year and number 3 this year.
Scroll up.
Unlike PC's vs. Palm vs. Tablets is not the same as Cable vs. Satellite. The only advantage of a land-line system vs. Satellite I know of in my area is cost effective Internet Access and local cable access channels.
My Satellite TV is cheaper, higher quality signal, and I get at least as many channels as the cable company offers - with the exception of the local channels showing the city council meetings and elementary school plays.
I don't think you can call anything a monopoly if there are competitive choices. Every car has strengths and weaknesses, so do cable providers vs. satellite providers. It doesn't mean they aren't competitive, comperable services.
My problem with GIMP is that I lose the main toolbar window. It gets lost behind various images, layer windows, tool property windows, etc.. When I need to change tools I have to go hunting for the right window.
Sure, we don't need nukes. We could just duck.