So by virtue of their "monopoly", you're suggesting that they should be forbidden to set MSN as the default search engine for IE.
Then, are you suggesting that the first time a user runs IE, it should ask them which search engine to use?
And who gets to pick which search engines are on the list of choices? What about some of the lesser-known ones? Should they be included? Surely they will cry foul, too.
And for that matter, I suppose the *order* that the choices appear on the search engine list could be construed as anti-competitive, too? Or would it be best if the order were randomized?
What about the homepage? Is setting that to MSN unfair for all of the other portals? Should that be a choice?
What about the users who don't freakin' care and just want to find something? At what point do you draw the line?
The longterm winner is the one that can first come to market with a downloadable delivery method.
It doesn't have to be super fast (you can choose your download in the morning and have it ready tonight), it doesn't have to be unlimited (people will pay $2-4 like they currently do), and it doesn't have to be open (most people don't care about DRM). It just has to be mostly reliable, current blockbuster hits, and very very easy to use.
Whoever that is (Netflix, Hollywood, Blockbuster, Comcast, or NewCompanyYetToBeNamed) will most certainly reign while the others scramble to catch up.
I got real pissed off at GM Cars for including a GM Radio in their GM Car.
Sure, I know I can change it to some other brand like Clarion or Bose. But damnit, the default installation was a GM Radio and that's just not right.
Clarion and Bose should file a complaint, because clearly GM Radios have a monopoly on GM cars and it's anti-competitive for GM Cars.
Re:Again the basic rules apply
on
Phishers Get Phoney
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm pretty sure that if I call my *real* bank, and use the automated system to get my balance, I'm going to need to enter my account number and PIN.
If the phishing scam were to say "To check your balance, call this number and enter your PIN".. I could easily see someone falling for that.
What if the scam evolves to having a real human answer the phone, and the "employee" asks for their account number. Then says they need to verify the social, maiden name, etc. This is SOP for a real bank, and it sounds like the scammers are getting gutsier with their practices. I don't see this being that far off.
No kidding! This is dumb for two very important reasons:
1) You can't copy-and-paste text from the article, unless what you want happens to be at a non-clickable column. This is dumb because if someone wants to cite their article in another work, they will just get frustrated and find another article.
2) Unless you're running some crazy-high resolution, you have to scroll down about 100px to see the bottom of the columns. This means you have now scrolled the ad banner at the top of the page off the screen. If I were that advertiser, I'd be quite pissed.
But then again, since when have traditional papers made the transition to web in a smart way?
I'm certainly no expert, but I would have to assume that even encyclopedias like Britannica have had their share of articles which deliberately left information out or included something that others disagreed with.
In fact, such a process has probably been going on for hundreds of years. We know it happens with mainstream media, why do some assume that encyclopedias are not prone to the same editorialization?
What about all the history textbooks that we read as children and later learned the truth?
It's for that reason why I think Wikipedia is great. Sure, you occasionally get someone filling an article for their own gain or beliefs, but at least the majority of those edits are made public and the audience can decide what they believe.
In the cast of the "real" books -- that is hardly the case.
EE upsets me as well, for the same reasons you listed. If I see the question on EE, it's usually not more than a few more clicks until I can find the right answer on some message board and get it for free.
And with EE, you never know if the "answer" is exactly what you're looking for or will even work right.
My question though, how the heck did you tell Google never to include EE in your searches? I know the -site command, but how did you make that default?
There is a tiny little shareware app I cannot live without called IrvanView (www.irvanview.com).
This fast little app will display just about any image you can give it, do simple cropping and rotating, save out as various formats, do all sorts of amazing batch conversions, and more, and it is LIGHTENINGN FAST.
It's not a replacement for Photoshop or anything, but it sure beats the built-in Picture Viewer.
I've made it the default viewer for all graphic files, and assigned it a hotkey for launching at will.
I'm thinking there may be more to this than just what some of our insurance carriers have today.
I have PacifiCare and while it has a nice website that lets me do a number of things, it still leaves a lot to desire in terms of collaboration with all the parties concerned.
If my dentist needs information, it still requires a phone call. Likewise, to book with my doctor, I have to call them or get called back. Bills are still sent via mail, and carrier-vendor communication is horribly archaic. Perhaps this system will improve that.
No doubt that big big companies are not using Microsoft for servers. Although a few do, the majority do not.
My stance is that those big big companies represent a very small portion of businesses. And while the Bank of Americas and EBays and Googles and General Motors probably don't have many MS servers, I would wager that 90% of every business with fewer than 500 employees is probably running MS for their internal file, print, email, collaboration, intranet servers. And that's the majority.
Forgive me for not knowing exactly which Netcraft survey you're referencing, but from my own personal experience it's not that way at all.
Sure, the majority of *websites* are served by Linux/Unix machines. No doubt there.
But if you're talking about typical business servers (ie: print servers, file servers, application servers, email/calendaring servers, collaboration servers, intranet servers, etc) I think you would find most of them are running Microsoft.
This is especially true if you look at the small/mid-sized market. Around here, I can't think of a single business that is running a non-MS server somewhere in their operation -- except for highly specialized services needed in the financal or health industries -- and even then it's one machine among a dozen MS servers.
It's tutorials like this that help MS Office keep its marketshare, and ensure that Office 2006's only real competition is against prior versions of Office.
No serious business is going to have its employees use OpenOffice when, for less than $400 per desktop, can buy Office and save on employee training, collaboration, and efficiency.
> Yep, on a bank PC, inside the firewall, with a USB stick of completely unkown provenance. I bet their IT security guys would've had a fit, if they'd known!
I would argue that their IT "security" guys should probably have been fired then, for not disabling the USB port from within Windows. It's a simple Windows permission and can be done on a standalone workstation or through the entire network in Active Directory.
The current version of Student/Teacher Edition is just around $130. And there's no "upgrade" required. And, you can legally install it on up to three computers in the home.
It's the *full* version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
I'm sure the 2007 version will be similarly positioned. Not quite the "arm" that you are joking about.
Actually this link suggests that major mobile vendors will be providing the upgrade for free for all phones that have WM 5.0. If the experience is anything like the upgrade I recently did on my MPX-220, it will be painless and an easy download off the website.
Everyone on/. consistently bashes the current IP/patent system and the PTO, always offering heaps of reasons why it sucks.
This guy, an actual *professional* in that field, comes up with some ideas and spends the time to think them through, document them, review them with peers, and even has a huge body (IEEE) behind him.
Yet 90% of the posts on here are negative, with absolutely no substantial suggestions that would improve the situation.
I never claimed that the politicans themselves were doing the work, but I would certainly expect that they knew about the work being done. They certainly have the capacity to understand what wikipedia is, and I highly doubt any editing would have been done without their knowledge -- or at the very least, the knowledge of a district office manager.
Slashdot Mirror
So by virtue of their "monopoly", you're suggesting that they should be forbidden to set MSN as the default search engine for IE.
Then, are you suggesting that the first time a user runs IE, it should ask them which search engine to use?
And who gets to pick which search engines are on the list of choices? What about some of the lesser-known ones? Should they be included? Surely they will cry foul, too.
And for that matter, I suppose the *order* that the choices appear on the search engine list could be construed as anti-competitive, too? Or would it be best if the order were randomized?
What about the homepage? Is setting that to MSN unfair for all of the other portals? Should that be a choice?
What about the users who don't freakin' care and just want to find something? At what point do you draw the line?
The longterm winner is the one that can first come to market with a downloadable delivery method.
It doesn't have to be super fast (you can choose your download in the morning and have it ready tonight), it doesn't have to be unlimited (people will pay $2-4 like they currently do), and it doesn't have to be open (most people don't care about DRM). It just has to be mostly reliable, current blockbuster hits, and very very easy to use.
Whoever that is (Netflix, Hollywood, Blockbuster, Comcast, or NewCompanyYetToBeNamed) will most certainly reign while the others scramble to catch up.
I got real pissed off at GM Cars for including a GM Radio in their GM Car.
Sure, I know I can change it to some other brand like Clarion or Bose. But damnit, the default installation was a GM Radio and that's just not right.
Clarion and Bose should file a complaint, because clearly GM Radios have a monopoly on GM cars and it's anti-competitive for GM Cars.
I'm pretty sure that if I call my *real* bank, and use the automated system to get my balance, I'm going to need to enter my account number and PIN.
If the phishing scam were to say "To check your balance, call this number and enter your PIN".. I could easily see someone falling for that.
What if the scam evolves to having a real human answer the phone, and the "employee" asks for their account number. Then says they need to verify the social, maiden name, etc. This is SOP for a real bank, and it sounds like the scammers are getting gutsier with their practices. I don't see this being that far off.
No kidding! This is dumb for two very important reasons:
1) You can't copy-and-paste text from the article, unless what you want happens to be at a non-clickable column. This is dumb because if someone wants to cite their article in another work, they will just get frustrated and find another article.
2) Unless you're running some crazy-high resolution, you have to scroll down about 100px to see the bottom of the columns. This means you have now scrolled the ad banner at the top of the page off the screen. If I were that advertiser, I'd be quite pissed.
But then again, since when have traditional papers made the transition to web in a smart way?
I'm certainly no expert, but I would have to assume that even encyclopedias like Britannica have had their share of articles which deliberately left information out or included something that others disagreed with.
In fact, such a process has probably been going on for hundreds of years. We know it happens with mainstream media, why do some assume that encyclopedias are not prone to the same editorialization?
What about all the history textbooks that we read as children and later learned the truth?
It's for that reason why I think Wikipedia is great. Sure, you occasionally get someone filling an article for their own gain or beliefs, but at least the majority of those edits are made public and the audience can decide what they believe.
In the cast of the "real" books -- that is hardly the case.
EE upsets me as well, for the same reasons you listed. If I see the question on EE, it's usually not more than a few more clicks until I can find the right answer on some message board and get it for free.
And with EE, you never know if the "answer" is exactly what you're looking for or will even work right.
My question though, how the heck did you tell Google never to include EE in your searches? I know the -site command, but how did you make that default?
There is a tiny little shareware app I cannot live without called IrvanView (www.irvanview.com).
This fast little app will display just about any image you can give it, do simple cropping and rotating, save out as various formats, do all sorts of amazing batch conversions, and more, and it is LIGHTENINGN FAST.
It's not a replacement for Photoshop or anything, but it sure beats the built-in Picture Viewer.
I've made it the default viewer for all graphic files, and assigned it a hotkey for launching at will.
I'm thinking there may be more to this than just what some of our insurance carriers have today.
I have PacifiCare and while it has a nice website that lets me do a number of things, it still leaves a lot to desire in terms of collaboration with all the parties concerned.
If my dentist needs information, it still requires a phone call. Likewise, to book with my doctor, I have to call them or get called back. Bills are still sent via mail, and carrier-vendor communication is horribly archaic. Perhaps this system will improve that.
Especially if they pulled all 100,000 360s.
No doubt that big big companies are not using Microsoft for servers. Although a few do, the majority do not.
My stance is that those big big companies represent a very small portion of businesses. And while the Bank of Americas and EBays and Googles and General Motors probably don't have many MS servers, I would wager that 90% of every business with fewer than 500 employees is probably running MS for their internal file, print, email, collaboration, intranet servers. And that's the majority.
Forgive me for not knowing exactly which Netcraft survey you're referencing, but from my own personal experience it's not that way at all.
Sure, the majority of *websites* are served by Linux/Unix machines. No doubt there.
But if you're talking about typical business servers (ie: print servers, file servers, application servers, email/calendaring servers, collaboration servers, intranet servers, etc) I think you would find most of them are running Microsoft.
This is especially true if you look at the small/mid-sized market. Around here, I can't think of a single business that is running a non-MS server somewhere in their operation -- except for highly specialized services needed in the financal or health industries -- and even then it's one machine among a dozen MS servers.
It's tutorials like this that help MS Office keep its marketshare, and ensure that Office 2006's only real competition is against prior versions of Office.
No serious business is going to have its employees use OpenOffice when, for less than $400 per desktop, can buy Office and save on employee training, collaboration, and efficiency.
... and I learn that Zelda turns 20. As if I didn't feel old already!
On a related note, I was thinking that someone should make a movie based on the Zelda series, in the same light as LoTR.
And then I watched Doom and thought, "Oh god no. Please don't ruin Zelda by turning it into a movie."
> Yep, on a bank PC, inside the firewall, with a USB stick of completely unkown provenance. I bet their IT security guys would've had a fit, if they'd known!
I would argue that their IT "security" guys should probably have been fired then, for not disabling the USB port from within Windows. It's a simple Windows permission and can be done on a standalone workstation or through the entire network in Active Directory.
> while Social Puppet is giving on-screen characters human non-verbal communication behaviors
/. crowd? You know, something that teaches us how to act in social situations like bars and parties?
Can they release an expansion pack for the
And no, Leisure Suit Larry doesn't count.
The current version of Student/Teacher Edition is just around $130. And there's no "upgrade" required. And, you can legally install it on up to three computers in the home.
It's the *full* version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
I'm sure the 2007 version will be similarly positioned. Not quite the "arm" that you are joking about.
Actually this link suggests that major mobile vendors will be providing the upgrade for free for all phones that have WM 5.0. If the experience is anything like the upgrade I recently did on my MPX-220, it will be painless and an easy download off the website.
0 6/02-12GlobalPartnerSupportPR.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/feb
Well, that explains most of the recent Slashdot headlines.
.. where if you're Microsoft, you can't win.
Give AV for free and you're anti-competition.
Sell AV and you're milking the customer for every dime.
Don't do anything and you just make crappy software and don't care about security.
I *literally* don't think he knows what the word means.
Everyone on /. consistently bashes the current IP/patent system and the PTO, always offering heaps of reasons why it sucks.
This guy, an actual *professional* in that field, comes up with some ideas and spends the time to think them through, document them, review them with peers, and even has a huge body (IEEE) behind him.
Yet 90% of the posts on here are negative, with absolutely no substantial suggestions that would improve the situation.
China leaders blast Microsoft for bowing to US pressure to reduce monopoly status
Slashdot readers expode trying to decide to defend Google and Microsoft or Free Speech and US Congressmen.
So basically what you're telling us is, when it comes to fact-checking, publishers are just as lazy as slashdot editors.
I never claimed that the politicans themselves were doing the work, but I would certainly expect that they knew about the work being done. They certainly have the capacity to understand what wikipedia is, and I highly doubt any editing would have been done without their knowledge -- or at the very least, the knowledge of a district office manager.