Challenge response doesn't really address the problem - it deals with the symptoms. And it doesn't work well if widely deployed.
It adds CPU and bandwidth overhead and if everybody and their mother has a unique identifier system (even with a 'little-letters-on-a-blurry background' system, which would cut peole who go just poll, download and read their email offline off or require HTML email) in place, spammers would just focus on defeating that.
Plus, c/r systems don't really work, unless they're properly implemented. If you shoot me an email and my c/r implementation sends you a challenge because you're not on my white list (provided, the from address is not spoofed) and your c/r system doesn't recognize my address as whitelisted and, in turn, sends me a c/r token we have a basic breakdown of communication (an indefinite mail loop, which hopefully one of our systems would notice).
This article demonstrates one of the main problems we are facing today.
I don't have a problem with RMS and I even agree with him on a lot of issues outside of IP law (where I, in the interest of full disclosure, mostly do not agree with him).
Richard is, despite what many people say, a good speaker and a good rhetoric. That's not the problem. The problem are those analogies and euphemisms that made pretty much anybody outside of IT go 'ummm. yeah... great...".
IT is not a text-based dungeon game and this is not 1986. You need to sell your ideas, you're not helping if you focus on R&D terminology (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with R&D, it's just not your target audience).
This is one of the reasons businesses don't take us seriously. Wake up - it's no longer us vs. them. If you want to convince people to switch to Linux you need to be professionell.
That's an interesting question. I was wondering if they could introduce a Sidekick Mini (like the iPod Mini) when I first saw them in a club around here.
I think that's just not going to happen anytime soon though (at least not without huge technological advances in terms of battery life or power consumption). What makes these things so desirable, aside from the cool factor, is that they're truly mobile devices. Mobile in the way that the 'mobile office' ads in the mid-90's promised.
Sure, my cell phone has WAP, an email client, Bluetooh (PDA interface) and God knows what not. But it's pretty much useless since the keypad makes typing a chore and the screen's just unuseable for real any work.
The Sidekick, on the other hand, just works. It's pretty easy to use, the screen has decent resolution and using the keyboard is at least not worse than using a PDA's stylus to input data.
The other major selling point is battery life. Being truly mobile isn't worth jack, if the thing's dead. That's why you need decent battery life and people have just come to expect their cell phones to last at least a couple of days on a single charge. And that's the expectation you basically have to meet when you introduce any cell phone-like device.
Now, if you made the Sidekick smaller, you'd evidently have three problems: reduced usability, less battery life and more heat. Especially the latter is a huge design problem if you plan to implement WLAN capabilities in the future (as the article hints).
Hence I don't think we're going to see drastically smaller Sidekick-like devices.
Certainly not if you're targeting this towards geeks or your average business customer. That's not the target audience they have in mind though - they're after the teen and twen markets.
You have better, more integrated and less fancy and shiny solutions available if you're looking for a mobile business solution (e.g. the Blackberries).
Paris Hilton probably won't win a Nobel prize and a lot of people tend to make fun of her but she does represent that glamerous, in-your-face party girl thing that their target audience (secretly) admires. And it is indeed catching on - it's not just that you see the Sidekick II featured in rap videos (that could be clever product placement, even though I doubt it -- remember the iPod/music video trend 50 Cent started). You also see them in all the places where people go to show off and be seen (ie. the hip bars and clubs, etc).
I think it's cool that they're re-releasing the games I grew up with. But I agree that it's mostly a nostalgia thing. Back in the days, this stuff used to be cutting edge. These days, it still feels nice to play pick up a controller and play one of the old games for a few minutes but it's different.
First of all, it really makes you feel like an old fart, especially if you have kids. And, trust me on this, these games are dorky and far from exciting to anyone who plays them for the game, and not for the memories and geek bragging rights. Plus, it just is not new, sexy technology any more. In the old days, we didn't mind typing up pages and pages of BASIC code - that was an integral part of the fun. Try doing that nowadays. Chances are you'll just feel it's pointless. Times do change.
There's some cool stuff going on in the do-it-yourself scene though. Over at the Xbox-Scene forums there's lots of discussion about creating custom controllers and even full-blown old-school arcades. And since the Xbox is pretty hackable, with MAME readily available (Sourceforge link), it's just a natural choice.
Well, Mozilla is not Netscape, as you obviously know. But they are related (in the sense, that Firefox, Sunbird, etc. are the next iteration and not just merely single components of one big suite).
Mozilla grew out of Netscape's decision to release the Navigator source code in '98 or '99. I won't go so far as to say they share the same codebase but they they are related.
Hence, it's not really fair to call Firefox a clone.
Regarding the GUI, I must say that I agree with you, at least in part. It's neither the worst nor the best I've ever seen and I can see why people (especially those who are used to the OS X interface) would consider it sub-par. I hope that will change Sunbird becomes skin-able.
The one cal/time management application I personally liked the most was the original Palm Desktop (the one that came with the old Palm IIIs). One nicely designed, fast, relatively small application that just worked.
That's an interesting thought. I don't think too many pirates will bother with this.
There are enough open servers out there. So there's really no reason for them to bother setting this up (which takes some knowledge), especially since there's no storage limit on open servers. And probably even more importantly, because sharing the login and password allows anyone to not just download but also to delete any files on that gmailfs 'device'.
On point that I haven't seen anyone bring up yet is that Google's probably counting on most average users to send and receive mostly non-binary emails. Text usually compresses really well. That's often not true for non-text, ie. binaries.
Provided the folks at Gmail use compression (I assume they do), they may not be planning to actually provide 1 GB per user.
I think there are two basic problems here. One has to do with age difference, and has to do with people's backgrounds.
Most mobile services are marketed towards the young & hip crowd (which used to be the 14-21 age bracket but now could be more accurately described as 7-24 for females and 6-18 for males). Many/.'ers, on the other hand, are either Seniors in HS, are in College or work. Having the coolest new gadgets for your friends to admire tends to become less important with age (as priorities change with age).
That's why there are some LBS (location based services) that are marketed towards adults (usually the business type, e.g. find a hotel nearby) and LBS that have a younger target audience in mind (e.g. this stuff).
The other issue is with people's backgrounds. When I was in High School, I had literally 100 'friends'. In reality, those 'friends' were nothing more than acquaintances. Nonetheless, it was important to say hi to everybody in the hall/cafeteria/whereever.
These days, I have a handful of close friends that I try to keep in touch with as much as possible. Sure, I probably still have dozens of acquaintances but most of those are work-related (ie. part of a professionell environment and not your private life). That's why it's easier for me to keep track of what my friends are up to.
I think a lot of the misunderstands in this thread have to do with the different concept of friendship people have. Well, just a thought.
Well, in a way you're completely right. The problem, as I see it though, is that during that early phase there will only be a few early adopters that have devices with distributed computing capabilities (introductory MSRP and basic economics of scale). So the benefits of having a grid-enabled device will be small to non-existent. Hence, fewer consumers will jump on the bandwagon (since the actual devices are (1) still expensive, and (2) do not really offer any additional functionality).
The only way to ensure mass adoption of wireless grid technology would be through either marketing or through subsidies. Both require deep pockets and manufacturers probably won't be too excited about this technology.
I was going to hold off and mod in this thread but there's one point I would like to make instead.
You address a valid point and your attitude is probably shared by many. However, there's also the bigger picture which few people take the time to look at (and I don't mean any single person).
These wireless grid concepts (at least the more sophisticated ones) are basically scalable, distributed computing solutions. They solve a lot of problems but also suffer from some of the problems that all distributed computer networks have.
The more common wireless grid devices become (provided this idea ever takes off) we'll likely see two major changes: on the one hand, efficiency will increase dramatically (more devices = a bigger ressource pool, common protocols, less overhead). And on the other hand, we'll see a change in how we view CE and mobile computing in general. Thing about it: most of the time our PDAs, cell phones, etc. don't actually do anything, but rather just idle.
Those spare CPU cycles could, however, be used by others in the grid which would in turn require their device to be less powerful (since they can depend on the network's CPU power and need to do less computing onboard).
There are three potential big problems I see with this though:
Battery life. The more our devices actually 'work', the more power they consume. Add the network/radio overhead which generally tends to consume quite a bit of power on top of that and you have a problem. People have to come to accept a certain standard of usability though. So you either need to limit power consumption, and hence cripple a mobile device's effectivity as a grid note or add bigger batteries.
Manufacturers. They basically won't like this. It takes a less powerful device to accomplish the same task. So why buy a new gizzmo if you can just use some nearby grid node.
And lastly, sheer economics. For this to work, people would have to see benifits now. Nobody wants to buy a new PDA that has less battery life just to be part of something big if there's no immediate gain. And, due to the fact that you need a whole bunch of grid nodes in order to have a useful network of some sort, that just won't happen.
"Hmm, if I buy this now I might get free Internet access two years down the road. In the meantime, everybody's freeloading off of me though (since there's nobody else whose device you could use). I think not."
Well, vi (or one of its derivatives) IS the only text editor you're guaranteed to find on any Unix system, unless you consider using echo and pipes 'editing'.
And in some environments you may simply not be allowed to introduce external software (often for security reasons; sometimes to limit liability and keep the insurance underwriters happy).
But that's not the main selling point, at least not to me. Vi isn't all that great because it's available. Most systems these days have a whole bunch of text editors ready for anybody to use.
Vi's strength is speed and consistency. Vi and virtually all of its clones just plain work. Out-of-the-box without any config file twisting or learning new stuff. The GUI just is consistent.
And since many of us have been using vi for years or even decades, it's almost like second nature. And, if you don't have to think about how to make your text editor perform whatever it is you're trying to do, you can focus on the task at hand, hence increasing productivity and speed.
Afterall, this is macrumors we're talking about here. It's an excellent site that I visit often myself. But they do have a tendency to be quite a bit off (read: wrong) sometimes.
I guess to a certain degree that does come with the territory (being a rumor site and all) but I remember reading the speculations, which then somehow became 'accepted facts' for literally weeks. And guess what, all the 'facts' with regard to storage size and MSRP were way off. Reading the comments section during and especially after Steve Job's keynote speech (when he reavelad the iPod) was a lot of fun.
Orkut should have an upgrade right now, providing an "official group language" field for groups, so one can tell if they're joining the "Simpsons - English" or "Simpsons - Portuguese" groups.
It already does in a way. When you create a new group you can select the interface language. This does, however, not show up when you're not the community's creator.
If you join a community that has a Spanish interface, chances are communications there will be in Spanish.
I agree though that this doesn't really help with the problem at hand which is people taking over English-speaking communities and flooding them with foreign-language content (which is probably one of the rudest thing you can do on Orkut, as far as I am concerned - it's not that hard to start your own community).
Google's Orkut dev team should probably have a look at this when they redesign the community section (and they should really really implement sub-categories while they're at it).
Very true. Remeber this/. story about Blizzard using BT to distribute their demos?
I realize that BT is used to distribute a lot of questionable, if not infringing content but the same is true for cars. My point is, there are very few, if any, third parties (ie. non-users) that use the FastTrack network to distribute their products. There are, however, quite a few that seem to use the BT protocol.
And to add two more things: bragging rights and the thought of getting stuff for free. The latter is really important in our society. It doesn't really matter if you save any money at all - it's all about the sensation.
My girl-friend does this all the time: when she goes grocery shopping she will usually take advantage of those buy-three-get-one-free deals. Even on stuff like milk. So we'd have four jugs of milk sitting in the fridge. Eventually we'd throw two away - resulting in a net loss. But at the store, it actually felt like saving money.
Cool. Lite-On has been semi-officially supported modifying and, to a lesser extent, even hacking their firmware.
Well before the 401s came out, there were rumours - originating from "usually well-informed sources" - that there would be a "leak" to allow it to burn DVD-R media (the 401s is a DVD+RW drive).
And, yup, that's exactly what happened. Yes, DVD-R support is still somewhat shaky and, the whole thing is mostly a result of volounteer work. But Lite-On has, at least from what I hear, been pretty supportive.
Lately though, they seem to have pulled the plug because of pressure from other manufacturers and patent attorneys (those drives are officially DVD+R drives so Lite-On would not be paying royalties to use the DVD-R standard).
One of the funniest 419 scam-related sites that, as far as I can see, hasn't been mentioned yet is Ebolamonkeyman. If you haven't seen it be sure to check it out (if you want to see your favorite porn starts, uh... I mean celebrities scam scammers, that is).
NO, because, Firefox (and I think also Mozilla) now have a function to automatically dowload new versions or security fixes.
Yes, that is true (to be fair: Windows Update can be set up to download patches automatically too though).
What I find somewhat annoying is that it doesn't seem to work. I had Firefox 0.9.1 (which is what I'm running) check for updates using the "Check now" function in the advanced dialog. And it reported that there were no updates available. I was able to reproduce this on three different computers and, at least as far as I can see from here, it's not a firewall issue.
Now, I realize that this is bug is easily fixable - heck, one small configuration change - and I did fix it on my computers back when it was first reported on full-disclosure. Your average computer user just might not be up to date or even remotely interested in computer security news. They just want their stuff to work. And when their software tells them that there are no updates available, they usually don't bother to check if that's indeed true.
My point is if there's an auto-update function people will expect it to work and we should really make sure that it does.
IBM implented this, and actually a whole lot more, in OS/2 Warp.
They had a complete voice recognition system which was IIRC sold seperately though (but integrated nicely into the OS). One of the two main selling points was presentations.
The other was word processing which was the make-or-break point and where the big problem lied. It just too long to train the application and, more importantly, to actually compose a quick letter using voice recognition. I remember using it at presentations though and with the limited vocabulary used in that environment it work pretty well (despite the dorkiness factor of picking up a seperate microphone and slooowly saying "next", instead of just using the mouse right in front of you).
I used to use nobody@localhost but that hardly ever works any more. Then I used nobody@replay.com (back in the days, replay used to run a remailer and they didn't mind anyone using their 'blackhole' address).
These days, I just use Mailinator. They offer throw-away email addresses for free and automatically delete any mail the account receives after a few hours. That way, I can actually confirm registrations and the like but don't have to worry about spam. And I do not bother innocent third parties, such as the nowhere.com domain owners.
I have implemented a custom, mostly script-based system on my email server around '99 (heavily modifed since then) that I use to handle my incoming email. Since I have many not-so-technically-inclined friends and customers who might still use some broken, legacy MUA (often old Outlook versions; my pet peeve being eletronic greeting cards that almost all spam filters - for obvious reasons - classify as spam and that tend to be a real PITA if you miss them) my filters can't be too strict. Therefore I use a tweaked spamassassin setup that relies on both, whitelists and, in some cases, a very simple challenge/response system. I also have filters that notify me on my cell phone (the business phone) when new mail that matches certain criterias arrives. Additonally, my cell phones are reachable by email, too. Also, I have my IMAP account checked by software on my PDA (WiFi setup) semi-regularly. To complement this setup, I have a WAP gateway on one of my servers that I use occasionally to check my emails if I'm out in the countryside w/ no wireless coverage.
This combination of somewhat-aggressive filtering and redundant notification works pretty well for me.
As you eloquently point out though, this certainly isn't for everyone (especially since it required a fair amount of hacking when I set it up; there might be easier ways to accomplish what I'm doing these days but I'm sticking with the never-change-a-running-system rule;)).
Regarding the point you raise about organizing email in a database-style system, I'm looking forward to what the good folks at Google can come up with. I'll be keeping a close eye on GMail, especially with the recent Google Groups intregations stuff.
Anyway, I'm a little surprised this on/. As far as I am concerned, phones suck. I use them because I have to. It's a more "instant" form of communication than email provided you manage to get the person you need to speak to on the phone. And it's the standard, as most everyone has either a landline or a cellphone but many (well, let's make that 'some') people still don't have email accounts and/or don't check them regularly.
That being said, I really dislike phones. As far as I am concerned, they're about the rudest form of communication, at least in a business environment. By chosing to make a call instead of emailing the person, you're chosing the easy way out. Basically you prioritize your time over their's. They have to talk to you even though they might be busy or doing something else. In a business environment, there are few people who can just ignore the phone.
By emailing me instead, I could have dealt with your problem on my own terms and allocated time based on my current schedule (that the caller's certainly not aware of), needs and priorities. Should I not see your email in time (which is unlikely since my mail server notifies me of some new emails (procmail is great, isn't it) via text message) you could still call.
That's why I have two cell phones. I use one during business hours, the number is on my business cards and if you call me on it during business hours I will answer, period. The other is my personal phone. It's small enough that I can easily take it everywhere, the number is not listed and only known to family, friends and customers who have expressed that they might need to reach me. Family and friends can call me anytime, no matter what. Same goes for customers, but they have to pay me (depends on the contract but usually I charge tripple) if they need me when I'm off. They're aware of that and don't bother me with trivial problems. If something important comes up, they know how to reach me though. Everybody's happy.
So generally, I do prefer email or text messaging to phone calls. That way, I get to choose who I talk to. As far as I am concerned, it's a lot more polite to email me than to call me at 9 in the morning when I might still be asleep.
Erm, hold on a sec. They have substantial evidence that their license is being wilfully violated by corporate entities (read: companies use their stuff and make money out of it), right?
I could understand not going after individuals or non-profits, or if the licensee that's in violation made an honest mistake and fixes it. But what these companies are doing is just the equivilant of giving the finger.
Why in the world don't they get themselves a good lawyer on a contingency basis (hell, if they have a clear case, like it appears they have, they could probably get pro bono representation) and make them stop? Even if it's just a C&D and a recovery of damages claim. Any lawyer should be able to handle that.
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It adds CPU and bandwidth overhead and if everybody and their mother has a unique identifier system (even with a 'little-letters-on-a-blurry background' system, which would cut peole who go just poll, download and read their email offline off or require HTML email) in place, spammers would just focus on defeating that.
Plus, c/r systems don't really work, unless they're properly implemented. If you shoot me an email and my c/r implementation sends you a challenge because you're not on my white list (provided, the from address is not spoofed) and your c/r system doesn't recognize my address as whitelisted and, in turn, sends me a c/r token we have a basic breakdown of communication (an indefinite mail loop, which hopefully one of our systems would notice).
I don't have a problem with RMS and I even agree with him on a lot of issues outside of IP law (where I, in the interest of full disclosure, mostly do not agree with him).
Richard is, despite what many people say, a good speaker and a good rhetoric. That's not the problem. The problem are those analogies and euphemisms that made pretty much anybody outside of IT go 'ummm. yeah... great...".
IT is not a text-based dungeon game and this is not 1986. You need to sell your ideas, you're not helping if you focus on R&D terminology (I'm not saying there's anything wrong with R&D, it's just not your target audience).
This is one of the reasons businesses don't take us seriously. Wake up - it's no longer us vs. them. If you want to convince people to switch to Linux you need to be professionell.
Well, check this out. Apparently you can still sell a poster she made for ~$400.
I think that's just not going to happen anytime soon though (at least not without huge technological advances in terms of battery life or power consumption). What makes these things so desirable, aside from the cool factor, is that they're truly mobile devices. Mobile in the way that the 'mobile office' ads in the mid-90's promised.
Sure, my cell phone has WAP, an email client, Bluetooh (PDA interface) and God knows what not. But it's pretty much useless since the keypad makes typing a chore and the screen's just unuseable for real any work.
The Sidekick, on the other hand, just works. It's pretty easy to use, the screen has decent resolution and using the keyboard is at least not worse than using a PDA's stylus to input data.
The other major selling point is battery life. Being truly mobile isn't worth jack, if the thing's dead. That's why you need decent battery life and people have just come to expect their cell phones to last at least a couple of days on a single charge. And that's the expectation you basically have to meet when you introduce any cell phone-like device.
Now, if you made the Sidekick smaller, you'd evidently have three problems: reduced usability, less battery life and more heat. Especially the latter is a huge design problem if you plan to implement WLAN capabilities in the future (as the article hints).
Hence I don't think we're going to see drastically smaller Sidekick-like devices.
You have better, more integrated and less fancy and shiny solutions available if you're looking for a mobile business solution (e.g. the Blackberries).
Paris Hilton probably won't win a Nobel prize and a lot of people tend to make fun of her but she does represent that glamerous, in-your-face party girl thing that their target audience (secretly) admires. And it is indeed catching on - it's not just that you see the Sidekick II featured in rap videos (that could be clever product placement, even though I doubt it -- remember the iPod/music video trend 50 Cent started). You also see them in all the places where people go to show off and be seen (ie. the hip bars and clubs, etc).
First of all, it really makes you feel like an old fart, especially if you have kids. And, trust me on this, these games are dorky and far from exciting to anyone who plays them for the game, and not for the memories and geek bragging rights. Plus, it just is not new, sexy technology any more. In the old days, we didn't mind typing up pages and pages of BASIC code - that was an integral part of the fun. Try doing that nowadays. Chances are you'll just feel it's pointless. Times do change.
There's some cool stuff going on in the do-it-yourself scene though. Over at the Xbox-Scene forums there's lots of discussion about creating custom controllers and even full-blown old-school arcades. And since the Xbox is pretty hackable, with MAME readily available (Sourceforge link), it's just a natural choice.
Mozilla grew out of Netscape's decision to release the Navigator source code in '98 or '99. I won't go so far as to say they share the same codebase but they they are related.
Hence, it's not really fair to call Firefox a clone.
Regarding the GUI, I must say that I agree with you, at least in part. It's neither the worst nor the best I've ever seen and I can see why people (especially those who are used to the OS X interface) would consider it sub-par. I hope that will change Sunbird becomes skin-able.
The one cal/time management application I personally liked the most was the original Palm Desktop (the one that came with the old Palm IIIs). One nicely designed, fast, relatively small application that just worked.
There are enough open servers out there. So there's really no reason for them to bother setting this up (which takes some knowledge), especially since there's no storage limit on open servers. And probably even more importantly, because sharing the login and password allows anyone to not just download but also to delete any files on that gmailfs 'device'.
On point that I haven't seen anyone bring up yet is that Google's probably counting on most average users to send and receive mostly non-binary emails. Text usually compresses really well. That's often not true for non-text, ie. binaries.
Provided the folks at Gmail use compression (I assume they do), they may not be planning to actually provide 1 GB per user.
Most mobile services are marketed towards the young & hip crowd (which used to be the 14-21 age bracket but now could be more accurately described as 7-24 for females and 6-18 for males). Many /.'ers, on the other hand, are either Seniors in HS, are in College or work. Having the coolest new gadgets for your friends to admire tends to become less important with age (as priorities change with age).
That's why there are some LBS (location based services) that are marketed towards adults (usually the business type, e.g. find a hotel nearby) and LBS that have a younger target audience in mind (e.g. this stuff).
The other issue is with people's backgrounds. When I was in High School, I had literally 100 'friends'. In reality, those 'friends' were nothing more than acquaintances. Nonetheless, it was important to say hi to everybody in the hall/cafeteria/whereever.
These days, I have a handful of close friends that I try to keep in touch with as much as possible. Sure, I probably still have dozens of acquaintances but most of those are work-related (ie. part of a professionell environment and not your private life). That's why it's easier for me to keep track of what my friends are up to.
I think a lot of the misunderstands in this thread have to do with the different concept of friendship people have. Well, just a thought.
So the benefits of having a grid-enabled device will be small to non-existent. Hence, fewer consumers will jump on the bandwagon (since the actual devices are (1) still expensive, and (2) do not really offer any additional functionality).
The only way to ensure mass adoption of wireless grid technology would be through either marketing or through subsidies. Both require deep pockets and manufacturers probably won't be too excited about this technology.
You address a valid point and your attitude is probably shared by many. However, there's also the bigger picture which few people take the time to look at (and I don't mean any single person).
These wireless grid concepts (at least the more sophisticated ones) are basically scalable, distributed computing solutions. They solve a lot of problems but also suffer from some of the problems that all distributed computer networks have.
The more common wireless grid devices become (provided this idea ever takes off) we'll likely see two major changes: on the one hand, efficiency will increase dramatically (more devices = a bigger ressource pool, common protocols, less overhead). And on the other hand, we'll see a change in how we view CE and mobile computing in general. Thing about it: most of the time our PDAs, cell phones, etc. don't actually do anything, but rather just idle.
Those spare CPU cycles could, however, be used by others in the grid which would in turn require their device to be less powerful (since they can depend on the network's CPU power and need to do less computing onboard).
There are three potential big problems I see with this though:
"Hmm, if I buy this now I might get free Internet access two years down the road. In the meantime, everybody's freeloading off of me though (since there's nobody else whose device you could use). I think not."
And in some environments you may simply not be allowed to introduce external software (often for security reasons; sometimes to limit liability and keep the insurance underwriters happy).
But that's not the main selling point, at least not to me. Vi isn't all that great because it's available. Most systems these days have a whole bunch of text editors ready for anybody to use.
Vi's strength is speed and consistency. Vi and virtually all of its clones just plain work. Out-of-the-box without any config file twisting or learning new stuff. The GUI just is consistent.
And since many of us have been using vi for years or even decades, it's almost like second nature. And, if you don't have to think about how to make your text editor perform whatever it is you're trying to do, you can focus on the task at hand, hence increasing productivity and speed.
To each his own though, I guess. :)
I guess to a certain degree that does come with the territory (being a rumor site and all) but I remember reading the speculations, which then somehow became 'accepted facts' for literally weeks. And guess what, all the 'facts' with regard to storage size and MSRP were way off. Reading the comments section during and especially after Steve Job's keynote speech (when he reavelad the iPod) was a lot of fun.
It already does in a way. When you create a new group you can select the interface language. This does, however, not show up when you're not the community's creator.
If you join a community that has a Spanish interface, chances are communications there will be in Spanish.
I agree though that this doesn't really help with the problem at hand which is people taking over English-speaking communities and flooding them with foreign-language content (which is probably one of the rudest thing you can do on Orkut, as far as I am concerned - it's not that hard to start your own community).
Google's Orkut dev team should probably have a look at this when they redesign the community section (and they should really really implement sub-categories while they're at it).
I'm so proud of my fellow /.'ers. ;)
I realize that BT is used to distribute a lot of questionable, if not infringing content but the same is true for cars. My point is, there are very few, if any, third parties (ie. non-users) that use the FastTrack network to distribute their products. There are, however, quite a few that seem to use the BT protocol.
My girl-friend does this all the time: when she goes grocery shopping she will usually take advantage of those buy-three-get-one-free deals. Even on stuff like milk. So we'd have four jugs of milk sitting in the fridge. Eventually we'd throw two away - resulting in a net loss. But at the store, it actually felt like saving money.
Well before the 401s came out, there were rumours - originating from "usually well-informed sources" - that there would be a "leak" to allow it to burn DVD-R media (the 401s is a DVD+RW drive).
And, yup, that's exactly what happened. Yes, DVD-R support is still somewhat shaky and, the whole thing is mostly a result of volounteer work. But Lite-On has, at least from what I hear, been pretty supportive.
Lately though, they seem to have pulled the plug because of pressure from other manufacturers and patent attorneys (those drives are officially DVD+R drives so Lite-On would not be paying royalties to use the DVD-R standard).
One of the funniest 419 scam-related sites that, as far as I can see, hasn't been mentioned yet is Ebolamonkeyman. If you haven't seen it be sure to check it out (if you want to see your favorite porn starts, uh... I mean celebrities scam scammers, that is).
Yes, that is true (to be fair: Windows Update can be set up to download patches automatically too though).
What I find somewhat annoying is that it doesn't seem to work. I had Firefox 0.9.1 (which is what I'm running) check for updates using the "Check now" function in the advanced dialog. And it reported that there were no updates available. I was able to reproduce this on three different computers and, at least as far as I can see from here, it's not a firewall issue.
Now, I realize that this is bug is easily fixable - heck, one small configuration change - and I did fix it on my computers back when it was first reported on full-disclosure. Your average computer user just might not be up to date or even remotely interested in computer security news. They just want their stuff to work. And when their software tells them that there are no updates available, they usually don't bother to check if that's indeed true.
My point is if there's an auto-update function people will expect it to work and we should really make sure that it does.
They had a complete voice recognition system which was IIRC sold seperately though (but integrated nicely into the OS). One of the two main selling points was presentations.
The other was word processing which was the make-or-break point and where the big problem lied. It just too long to train the application and, more importantly, to actually compose a quick letter using voice recognition. I remember using it at presentations though and with the limited vocabulary used in that environment it work pretty well (despite the dorkiness factor of picking up a seperate microphone and slooowly saying "next", instead of just using the mouse right in front of you).
These days, I just use Mailinator. They offer throw-away email addresses for free and automatically delete any mail the account receives after a few hours. That way, I can actually confirm registrations and the like but don't have to worry about spam. And I do not bother innocent third parties, such as the nowhere.com domain owners.
I have implemented a custom, mostly script-based system on my email server around '99 (heavily modifed since then) that I use to handle my incoming email. Since I have many not-so-technically-inclined friends and customers who might still use some broken, legacy MUA (often old Outlook versions; my pet peeve being eletronic greeting cards that almost all spam filters - for obvious reasons - classify as spam and that tend to be a real PITA if you miss them) my filters can't be too strict. Therefore I use a tweaked spamassassin setup that relies on both, whitelists and, in some cases, a very simple challenge/response system. I also have filters that notify me on my cell phone (the business phone) when new mail that matches certain criterias arrives. Additonally, my cell phones are reachable by email, too. Also, I have my IMAP account checked by software on my PDA (WiFi setup) semi-regularly. To complement this setup, I have a WAP gateway on one of my servers that I use occasionally to check my emails if I'm out in the countryside w/ no wireless coverage.
This combination of somewhat-aggressive filtering and redundant notification works pretty well for me.
As you eloquently point out though, this certainly isn't for everyone (especially since it required a fair amount of hacking when I set it up; there might be easier ways to accomplish what I'm doing these days but I'm sticking with the never-change-a-running-system rule ;)).
Regarding the point you raise about organizing email in a database-style system, I'm looking forward to what the good folks at Google can come up with. I'll be keeping a close eye on GMail, especially with the recent Google Groups intregations stuff.
Anyway, I'm a little surprised this on /. As far as I am concerned, phones suck. I use them because I have to. It's a more "instant" form of communication than email provided you manage to get the person you need to speak to on the phone. And it's the standard, as most everyone has either a landline or a cellphone but many (well, let's make that 'some') people still don't have email accounts and/or don't check them regularly.
That being said, I really dislike phones. As far as I am concerned, they're about the rudest form of communication, at least in a business environment. By chosing to make a call instead of emailing the person, you're chosing the easy way out. Basically you prioritize your time over their's. They have to talk to you even though they might be busy or doing something else. In a business environment, there are few people who can just ignore the phone.
By emailing me instead, I could have dealt with your problem on my own terms and allocated time based on my current schedule (that the caller's certainly not aware of), needs and priorities. Should I not see your email in time (which is unlikely since my mail server notifies me of some new emails (procmail is great, isn't it) via text message) you could still call.
That's why I have two cell phones. I use one during business hours, the number is on my business cards and if you call me on it during business hours I will answer, period. The other is my personal phone. It's small enough that I can easily take it everywhere, the number is not listed and only known to family, friends and customers who have expressed that they might need to reach me. Family and friends can call me anytime, no matter what. Same goes for customers, but they have to pay me (depends on the contract but usually I charge tripple) if they need me when I'm off. They're aware of that and don't bother me with trivial problems. If something important comes up, they know how to reach me though. Everybody's happy.
So generally, I do prefer email or text messaging to phone calls. That way, I get to choose who I talk to. As far as I am concerned, it's a lot more polite to email me than to call me at 9 in the morning when I might still be asleep.
I could understand not going after individuals or non-profits, or if the licensee that's in violation made an honest mistake and fixes it. But what these companies are doing is just the equivilant of giving the finger.
Why in the world don't they get themselves a good lawyer on a contingency basis (hell, if they have a clear case, like it appears they have, they could probably get pro bono representation) and make them stop? Even if it's just a C&D and a recovery of damages claim. Any lawyer should be able to handle that.