... that after the first attempt to move the rover without success, they pointed the camera down and realized that the little guy was propped up on four cinder blocks...
I work at a very large company that allows unrestricted access to any webmail provider. Let me repeat that: You can use any webmail provider you want from within their network. So long as you use their proxy (obviously).
What's their secret? They take care of preventing stupid users from downloading crap themselves, meaning they scan at their proxy and/or firewall boundaries (I'm not a network admin here so I don't know exactly how it works).
This has been the policy for at least five years and they've never had a single problem. Never.
If a large financial services company can do it, I don't know why everyone else can't either. So you're asking the wrong question - instead, ask "how can I provide a better service to my users by allowing them to access their webmail and also maintain my network security?"
I've worked at companies that either completely or selectively block webmail access. Nothing personal, but you and other network admins like you suck rocks as far as I'm concerned. Trusting or distrusting the webmail provider because they do X or Y is supremely stupid because you're basically bending over for them and waiting for the inevitable vulnerability to show up. What, are you going to go to your CTO and say "well, I didn't trust Microsoft and AOL, but I thought Yahoo was OK! It's not my fault!"?
You should know better and you should do better. If you can't, just block all webmail and stop complaining about what other companies do or fail to do. It's your network and your responsibility.
OT, I don't know what Microsoft charges for OEM licenses over there (Denmark?), but I hope it's a hell of a lot more, because the people who run the EU are a bunch of lawless protectionist sucktards that think it's double plus OK to nail Microsoft with petty demands using stupid claims of "unfair competition" by Real, who could not compete with WMP (bad as WMP is) if their life depended on it with their horrible cuasi-spyware "products" that no one in their right mind would use unless they're forced-bundled with new boxes.
Damn, I must remember to do the slashbot thing. OK:
M$ Winblows (WIndoze!!) is teh suxx and Linux roolz!!1! Bwah, bwah, why can't Dell$ and every other company give me what I want?? Bwah, bwah.
My most sincere apologies to the drooling calf that wasted his mod points on me. Won't happen again.
I guess maybe it's a matter of taste... IE3 was certainly "better" than IE2, but I personally don't agree that it was close to *NS2*, let alone NS3. I just sort of skip IE2 because it was a non-entity in most respects.
Also, remember that it wasn't until IE3 that the first version of "Mail and News" (which later became OE) appeared. NS had shipped POP/SMTP and NNTP clients from the very first NS2 beta. That was also a big advantage for NS, because otherwise you were mostly stuck with Eudora on Win3x.
Oh, and come to think of it, Eudora is another example of sucky software losing out to sucky software from Microsoft by virtue of its own suckiness.
The price that a company like Dell gets on an OEM version of Windows XP Home is about $38. For smaller OEMs it's about $43-45. XP Pro must be around ten dollars over that (which is why I HATE IT when they charge almost $100 to upgrade, but that's hardly Microsoft's fault). Vista pushed up the OEM license prices by about three to five dollars for the XP equivalents, and possibly more for things like the Ultimate version (but probably didn't break the $55 barrier).
In short, nothing that would justify twitter's claim that a PC that goes for $400 should go for $200 because of "M$" or whatever.
OT, I don't know what Microsoft charges for OEM licenses over there (Denmark?), but I hope it's a hell of a lot more, because the people who run the EU are a bunch of lawless protectionist sucktards that think it's double plus OK to nail Microsoft with petty demands using stupid claims of "unfair competition" by Real, who could not compete with WMP (bad as WMP is) if their life depended on it with their horrible cuasi-spyware "products" that no one in their right mind would use unless they're forced-bundled with new boxes.
One, you are theorizing that "M$" adds hundreds of dollars to the cost of a PC. Would you care to back that claim up for us? Do you actually claim that the $200 computer does not exist because of "M$"?
Two, if this "anti-competitive" pressure exists, why is Dell even contemplating the shift to offer Linux preloaded?
Three, I assume you've worked as an OEM or VAR/integrator before, since you seem to be sure that Dell can "demand hardware" of one type of another at their level without regards to cost and availability. Is that correct?
Of course, all this came to a screeching halt once IE became dominant in the marketplace and Microsoft no longer needed to compete.
Exactly. The problem comes after they attain +95% market share, when they stagnate development of their browser and the state of web standards along with it. But not before. They cleaned Netscape's clock fair and square as far as I'm concerned.
The Java WM debacle is a bette example of Microsoft using their already existing marketshare to negative effect.
If that's the only way you can rationalize it, fine. Myself, I used to think you were being paid by someone to discredit people who work for the advancement of free software.
I'm going to go home and play with my little girls now
You take all this way too seriously. I could care less if you're a neuro surgeon saving lives left and right between coffee breaks. But here? Your problem is that you have essentially nothing to show for your efforts. How many times have you posted your anual "XXXX is the year of Linux" deal? What, seven years and counting? Maybe one day you'll understand that you'd be far more efficient if you didn't come across as such an asshole. Slashdot mod points are not real, you know. They don't validate your existence.
Thanks twitter, I think I'm all grown up now and I can figure out when I need to be "liberated".
I love that you have lots of free time because your computers "work", and I'm trapped with "M$ Windoze workarounds" yet I have all this free time to "harrass" you. You don't even read what you write, do you?
As to the rest of your post, it's just the usual paranoid schizo "join us or die" zealot bullshit that doesn't even merit a response. It's always amusing to see you whining about "FUD" when it's about the only thing you have left as your desperation over your failure to do anything meaningful becomes more and more evident.
Did Netscape (The leader in browser software at the time) have unrealistic expectations when Microsoft crushed them by illegally leveraging its OS monopoly?
Ah, NS is a really, really bad example. You should have picked another one. Shall we?
Once upon a time, NS was king of the hill. People couldn't download Navigator 2 enough, and NS was flying high. NSN2 was an excellent browser, bar none. Then came NSN3. Kinda iffy. A lot of people would stay away from it. But Netscape was awash in IPO capital and they were having an identity crisis and they couldn't figure out if they were writing a "collaboration platform" or a web browser and an email/NNTP client. And yet, they were still on top. By that time IE3 had been released. It sucked ROCKS. It sucked so hard that it was laughably being used to download the Netscape browser by people who for some reason also had IE3. Then, with Netscape still in the lead, Microsoft released IE4. Remember, IE would NOT be bundled with an OS until Windows 98. It wasn't bundled with W95 at all, except at the very tail end of OSR2.
And then NS4 saw the light of day. Holy shit, NS4 was the worst piece of crap ever released by any software company. It was dead slow, it crashed with alarming frequency and it looked like crap. Compared to IE4, it was a dinosaur that was hardly worth running at all. So, people used IE4 because it was inherently superior to the competition. You don't have to take my word for that, BTW. Go read jzw's essays on the topic. About the only thing it had going for it was that it was cross-platform.
Do you remember using Linux in 1998-99? Do you? Remember which browser RH used to ship with? It was NS4. Did you enjoy using it? I sure as hell didn't. It sucked even more on Linux than on Windows.
So Netscape fucked themselves with gusto, fucked up their plan to influence the direction of the W3C (blink!) and control web standards, and when they finally figured out they were indeed utterly fucked, they went to the government to whine about how "evil" Microsoft had "destroyed" them by bundling IE with Windows. And the rest is history.
Now, if this bundling is so damaging to "competitors", how come it took years for WMP to gain traction? Why did so many people simply download Real, Winamp, Sonique, MusicMatch, etc? Because they were all better than the piece of crap WMP. Why are so many people using Firefox now? Why? Because Firefox is better than IE6. If NS4 had been an actually usable application, Microsoft could have bundled until the cows came home and they would have never gained 90% of the browser market. Never.
But it's always nice to blame Microsoft for other people's fuckups, eh?
And I said, there are other examples - it's not like they're angelic or anything. But Netscape? Cry me a big, fat river.
I never said not to use their software or that people shouldn't.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to have this discussion with you. I have no doubt you're the nicest person in the whole world, but my original "flamebait" was not directed at you. It was directed at the kind of people who fit the mold of my description and that unfortunately seem to be a rather large majority. I really don't have the patience for that. Nothing personal. You seem like an articulate, intelligent person and I wish more people in the FLOSS community would strive for that.
And besides, the mods have spoken! There's no point on going on with this.
I love you guys, and all this new M$ tone that spews forth here.
Has it occurred to you just for a second that people actually naming you around here might be a sign that you're doing something wrong? Or are you still chalking that up to Microsoft's expensive and concerted effort to stalk you personally on Slashdot?
more inflammatory than informative
I'm sorry twitter, but what exactly do you find "inflammatory" here? I'll tell you: You don't. There's nothing there to be taken as a personal insult (which is how you seem to take it), but it works wonders with the mods, doesn't it? Every single one of your posts is an exercise in weird cuasi-intellectual prose with lots of weasel words thrown in that for some reason always reward you with your beloved mod points. More often than not you never actually say anything, but your posts look good and have some "M$ WIndoze" goodness, so everything is honky dory.
let it be a lesson for those who consider working
Between this and your sockpuppet account you've posted more than seven thousand times. Have you ever considered doing something actually useful for free software instead? All that time, trying to influence (I guess?) the group of people most likely to agree with you in the first place. If that's not a perfect example of your beloved "intentional waste" punchline, I don't know what is.
The party line of FLOSS fans is the promotion of free and open source software and advancement of the computer industry in general.
According to Richard Stallman, because I write "closed-source propietary" software, I am immoral and should find another line of work. How does that tie in to the usual "oh, but we're all nice" party line? I will not generalize to the point of claiming every single person associated with open source has the same views, just that there are enough of them to be a problem.
They are criminals profiting by hurting the computer industry.
"Criminals" is another one of those weasel words, eh? Please show me where Microsoft was convicted in a criminal court of a crime. I'd love to see that.
That aside, I think the industry is doing just fine, with the exception of the patent issue, which amusingly has hurt Microsoft more than most. More often than not the FLOSS claim that Microsoft "hinders" them is centered around disappointment over unrealistic expectations of fame and fortune, not to mention conveniently forgetting that Microsoft is hardly the only commercial software in the world.
it doesn't need to be that way
No, it doesn't. And the solution to that problem does not necessarily involve not using their software, much as you'd like to present it as fact.
You're the only one that wrote leetspeak crap about sucking, so stop trying to pass it off as "the community."
Please don't insult my intelligence with disingenuous flowery prose that plays to the mods, and I'll avoid that as well. Fair?
I'm pretty sure what the comments on this story will be like. But I think that Microsoft recognize the problem they have with FLOSS and are trying (or pretending at least) to co-exist. The FLOSS party line seems to be the eventual "destruction" of Microsoft. When the chips are down people will look at this and say "well, at least Microsoft did X and Y, but the vociferous mass of FLOSS evangelists spend their time howling for blood in creative spelling"
I see that every day around here and elsewhere. The different degrees of "M$ WINDOZE IS TEH SUX AND I HATE U LINUX ROXX LOL!!!1!" are getting to be completely ridiculous and will eventually hurt more than they help. People (you know, out there, not "here") by and large don't have a negative view of Microsoft, and ultimately that's what matters.
Common sense should have prevented them from adding those same features to a fucking fileformat standard.
Then you're back at square one, whining about the "hidden APIs" and how anti-competitive they are.
Why on earth should a file format spec cover backwards compatibility? Can you name other sane file formats that do it?
It seems you and all your friends are nitpicking compatibility because you don't care about it. That's all well and good. Out there in the real world though, it's pretty important.
you must consider that their interests in the long term are unrelated at best or opposite yours at worst in the long term
It's been fine so far - 16 years and counting. I have a real hard time with these "in the long term you're screwed" when the alternatives to Microsoft's software didn't exist even three years ago. In this industry 16 years is as good as it gets. Isn't RedHat obsoleting their RHEL installations after three years now? Yeah, that's where I want to go, away from the "evil" Microsoft. And the "evil" IBM. Either that or sign up as a C hacker? Thanks, but I'm fine.
I'm sorry, unless you're making one of your "I hate M$ and so should you" leaps of faith, you'll have to go back and show me where I said or implied that.
Microsoft's interests are parallel to my own insofar as their software does what I need it to do. Otherwise I wouldn't be their customer. Or Sun's. Or IBM's. I find that mixing business with religion just doesn't work. Best tool for the job and all that.
I fail to see how it can't be. If that's the "price" you need to pay to get rid of the "secret" implementation, then you need to decide if it's worth it. Microsoft can't just throw away billions of existing documents out there to make a few people happy.
Besides... the whole idea of using XML for this is brain dead. ODF or OOXML or whatever, it's stupid and shortsighted. A binary format that was well documented would have been much better. Regardless of standardization or openess, ODF and OOXML seem like solutions for a problem that we didn't have, but because it's "XML-based" everyone think it's really cool. The trillions of CPU cycles wasted on parsing those masses of redundant markup to bring up a memo are just mind-boggling.
Slashdot Mirror
That sounds... not hygienic.
Well, other than being forced to see BASIC code, nothing bad happened =)
... that after the first attempt to move the rover without success, they pointed the camera down and realized that the little guy was propped up on four cinder blocks...
Your point?
What's their secret? They take care of preventing stupid users from downloading crap themselves, meaning they scan at their proxy and/or firewall boundaries (I'm not a network admin here so I don't know exactly how it works).
This has been the policy for at least five years and they've never had a single problem. Never.
If a large financial services company can do it, I don't know why everyone else can't either. So you're asking the wrong question - instead, ask "how can I provide a better service to my users by allowing them to access their webmail and also maintain my network security?"
I've worked at companies that either completely or selectively block webmail access. Nothing personal, but you and other network admins like you suck rocks as far as I'm concerned. Trusting or distrusting the webmail provider because they do X or Y is supremely stupid because you're basically bending over for them and waiting for the inevitable vulnerability to show up. What, are you going to go to your CTO and say "well, I didn't trust Microsoft and AOL, but I thought Yahoo was OK! It's not my fault!"?
You should know better and you should do better. If you can't, just block all webmail and stop complaining about what other companies do or fail to do. It's your network and your responsibility.
Damn, I must remember to do the slashbot thing. OK:
My most sincere apologies to the drooling calf that wasted his mod points on me. Won't happen again.
Also, remember that it wasn't until IE3 that the first version of "Mail and News" (which later became OE) appeared. NS had shipped POP/SMTP and NNTP clients from the very first NS2 beta. That was also a big advantage for NS, because otherwise you were mostly stuck with Eudora on Win3x.
Oh, and come to think of it, Eudora is another example of sucky software losing out to sucky software from Microsoft by virtue of its own suckiness.
In short, nothing that would justify twitter's claim that a PC that goes for $400 should go for $200 because of "M$" or whatever.
OT, I don't know what Microsoft charges for OEM licenses over there (Denmark?), but I hope it's a hell of a lot more, because the people who run the EU are a bunch of lawless protectionist sucktards that think it's double plus OK to nail Microsoft with petty demands using stupid claims of "unfair competition" by Real, who could not compete with WMP (bad as WMP is) if their life depended on it with their horrible cuasi-spyware "products" that no one in their right mind would use unless they're forced-bundled with new boxes.
Nothing personal =)
Two, if this "anti-competitive" pressure exists, why is Dell even contemplating the shift to offer Linux preloaded?
Three, I assume you've worked as an OEM or VAR/integrator before, since you seem to be sure that Dell can "demand hardware" of one type of another at their level without regards to cost and availability. Is that correct?
Exactly. The problem comes after they attain +95% market share, when they stagnate development of their browser and the state of web standards along with it. But not before. They cleaned Netscape's clock fair and square as far as I'm concerned.
The Java WM debacle is a bette example of Microsoft using their already existing marketshare to negative effect.
Only a hopelessly stupid, deluded extremist could hope to pass that as an argument.
If that's the only way you can rationalize it, fine. Myself, I used to think you were being paid by someone to discredit people who work for the advancement of free software.
You take all this way too seriously. I could care less if you're a neuro surgeon saving lives left and right between coffee breaks. But here? Your problem is that you have essentially nothing to show for your efforts. How many times have you posted your anual "XXXX is the year of Linux" deal? What, seven years and counting? Maybe one day you'll understand that you'd be far more efficient if you didn't come across as such an asshole. Slashdot mod points are not real, you know. They don't validate your existence.
I love that you have lots of free time because your computers "work", and I'm trapped with "M$ Windoze workarounds" yet I have all this free time to "harrass" you. You don't even read what you write, do you?
As to the rest of your post, it's just the usual paranoid schizo "join us or die" zealot bullshit that doesn't even merit a response. It's always amusing to see you whining about "FUD" when it's about the only thing you have left as your desperation over your failure to do anything meaningful becomes more and more evident.
Ah, NS is a really, really bad example. You should have picked another one. Shall we?
Once upon a time, NS was king of the hill. People couldn't download Navigator 2 enough, and NS was flying high. NSN2 was an excellent browser, bar none. Then came NSN3. Kinda iffy. A lot of people would stay away from it. But Netscape was awash in IPO capital and they were having an identity crisis and they couldn't figure out if they were writing a "collaboration platform" or a web browser and an email/NNTP client. And yet, they were still on top. By that time IE3 had been released. It sucked ROCKS. It sucked so hard that it was laughably being used to download the Netscape browser by people who for some reason also had IE3. Then, with Netscape still in the lead, Microsoft released IE4. Remember, IE would NOT be bundled with an OS until Windows 98. It wasn't bundled with W95 at all, except at the very tail end of OSR2.
And then NS4 saw the light of day. Holy shit, NS4 was the worst piece of crap ever released by any software company. It was dead slow, it crashed with alarming frequency and it looked like crap. Compared to IE4, it was a dinosaur that was hardly worth running at all. So, people used IE4 because it was inherently superior to the competition. You don't have to take my word for that, BTW. Go read jzw's essays on the topic. About the only thing it had going for it was that it was cross-platform.
Do you remember using Linux in 1998-99? Do you? Remember which browser RH used to ship with? It was NS4. Did you enjoy using it? I sure as hell didn't. It sucked even more on Linux than on Windows.
So Netscape fucked themselves with gusto, fucked up their plan to influence the direction of the W3C (blink!) and control web standards, and when they finally figured out they were indeed utterly fucked, they went to the government to whine about how "evil" Microsoft had "destroyed" them by bundling IE with Windows. And the rest is history.
Now, if this bundling is so damaging to "competitors", how come it took years for WMP to gain traction? Why did so many people simply download Real, Winamp, Sonique, MusicMatch, etc? Because they were all better than the piece of crap WMP. Why are so many people using Firefox now? Why? Because Firefox is better than IE6. If NS4 had been an actually usable application, Microsoft could have bundled until the cows came home and they would have never gained 90% of the browser market. Never.
But it's always nice to blame Microsoft for other people's fuckups, eh?
And I said, there are other examples - it's not like they're angelic or anything. But Netscape? Cry me a big, fat river.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to have this discussion with you. I have no doubt you're the nicest person in the whole world, but my original "flamebait" was not directed at you. It was directed at the kind of people who fit the mold of my description and that unfortunately seem to be a rather large majority. I really don't have the patience for that. Nothing personal. You seem like an articulate, intelligent person and I wish more people in the FLOSS community would strive for that.
And besides, the mods have spoken! There's no point on going on with this.
Cheers.
No. What part of criminal did you miss?
Has it occurred to you just for a second that people actually naming you around here might be a sign that you're doing something wrong? Or are you still chalking that up to Microsoft's expensive and concerted effort to stalk you personally on Slashdot?
I'm sorry twitter, but what exactly do you find "inflammatory" here? I'll tell you: You don't. There's nothing there to be taken as a personal insult (which is how you seem to take it), but it works wonders with the mods, doesn't it? Every single one of your posts is an exercise in weird cuasi-intellectual prose with lots of weasel words thrown in that for some reason always reward you with your beloved mod points. More often than not you never actually say anything, but your posts look good and have some "M$ WIndoze" goodness, so everything is honky dory.
Between this and your sockpuppet account you've posted more than seven thousand times. Have you ever considered doing something actually useful for free software instead? All that time, trying to influence (I guess?) the group of people most likely to agree with you in the first place. If that's not a perfect example of your beloved "intentional waste" punchline, I don't know what is.
According to Richard Stallman, because I write "closed-source propietary" software, I am immoral and should find another line of work. How does that tie in to the usual "oh, but we're all nice" party line? I will not generalize to the point of claiming every single person associated with open source has the same views, just that there are enough of them to be a problem.
"Criminals" is another one of those weasel words, eh? Please show me where Microsoft was convicted in a criminal court of a crime. I'd love to see that.
That aside, I think the industry is doing just fine, with the exception of the patent issue, which amusingly has hurt Microsoft more than most. More often than not the FLOSS claim that Microsoft "hinders" them is centered around disappointment over unrealistic expectations of fame and fortune, not to mention conveniently forgetting that Microsoft is hardly the only commercial software in the world.
No, it doesn't. And the solution to that problem does not necessarily involve not using their software, much as you'd like to present it as fact.
Please don't insult my intelligence with disingenuous flowery prose that plays to the mods, and I'll avoid that as well. Fair?
I see that every day around here and elsewhere. The different degrees of "M$ WINDOZE IS TEH SUX AND I HATE U LINUX ROXX LOL!!!1!" are getting to be completely ridiculous and will eventually hurt more than they help. People (you know, out there, not "here") by and large don't have a negative view of Microsoft, and ultimately that's what matters.
And when he asks you if you have specific examples of this, what are you going to point him to?
Reality hurts.
Then you're back at square one, whining about the "hidden APIs" and how anti-competitive they are.
It seems you and all your friends are nitpicking compatibility because you don't care about it. That's all well and good. Out there in the real world though, it's pretty important.
It's been fine so far - 16 years and counting. I have a real hard time with these "in the long term you're screwed" when the alternatives to Microsoft's software didn't exist even three years ago. In this industry 16 years is as good as it gets. Isn't RedHat obsoleting their RHEL installations after three years now? Yeah, that's where I want to go, away from the "evil" Microsoft. And the "evil" IBM. Either that or sign up as a C hacker? Thanks, but I'm fine.
Microsoft's interests are parallel to my own insofar as their software does what I need it to do. Otherwise I wouldn't be their customer. Or Sun's. Or IBM's. I find that mixing business with religion just doesn't work. Best tool for the job and all that.
Besides... the whole idea of using XML for this is brain dead. ODF or OOXML or whatever, it's stupid and shortsighted. A binary format that was well documented would have been much better. Regardless of standardization or openess, ODF and OOXML seem like solutions for a problem that we didn't have, but because it's "XML-based" everyone think it's really cool. The trillions of CPU cycles wasted on parsing those masses of redundant markup to bring up a memo are just mind-boggling.