Re:Am I safe just running Microsoft stuff?
on
Indemnification Roundup
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It comes back to accountability, which is a problem in the world of OSS. If there is tainted code in the Windows source that spurs a lawsuit, you can bet that this lawsuit will be on Microsoft's hands, not on users of its software.
In some sense, it's similar to the Napster (the Napster of yesteryear, not the name-whoring music store) vs. Kazaa from the RIAA's perspective. Microsoft is like Napster in that there is a central place of accountability, so the RIAA can just go there (in this case, Napster's servers) to settle their beef. Kazaa however (or bittorrent/whatever), is like the opensource world. There is no single place of accountability and therefore the problem has to be solved at the users end. I'm not saying that the kernel does have SCO's code, but if it did, wouldn't you like to know who's accountable.
With the Open Source community, this problem is a dangerous one. Since every user has access to the source code, and every user is potentially a kernel hacker, does this not make every user somewhat accountable? (yes, this argument is stretched a little thin, but its food for thought).
Re:Am I safe just running Microsoft stuff?
on
Indemnification Roundup
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· Score: 5, Informative
I suppose it's somewhat analagous to volcano insurance. Everything's cool until your house is covered in soot.
Do I need to buy or worry about this kind of stuff when I buy Microsoft software?
No, but then Microsoft software is all done in house. 95% (give or take) of software included in a Red Hat distribution was not created by Red Hat, so they don't have the same level of accountability as Microsoft. With an indemnification plan, they are taking on the accountability of the linux kernel writers, which might give a justified peace of mind to any potential customer.
The new stuff in Tiger seems more like icing on the cake than the drastic improvements we got from Jaguar and Panther. Any word if this puppy's still gonna cost $130?
It may be easy to scoff at Fedex as being lower-than-thou gruntwork, but you shouldn't look at it so lightly.
I'm currently working at UPS doing the gruntiest of grunt-work, and as much as I dislike the job sometimes, there are some things to really appreciate -- immense job security, yearly pay increases, and incredible benefits.
I'm not familiar with Fedex but if it's anything like UPS, you could do much worse than doing a year of gruntwork in order to get a position more suited to your skills. Yeah, it may suck a little bit, but you would probably have more job security than you could ever hope to have at most jobs.
It may seem like a negative that they only hire "within their ranks", but this helps ensure job security among those loyal to the company.
During times like these, working for a bulletproof company (i.e. one that isn't going to be affected at a whim of economic downturn or terrorism scare) may be one of the best and most reliable ways to go.
Re:What's he going to swing on?
on
Spider-Man in India
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· Score: 2, Informative
In the book, all of the US cities are written "city, state" (e.g. Atlanta, Georgia), and non-US cities are written "city, country" (e.g. Melbourne, Australia). I just didn't feel like typing all of the states out, and I typed out "Australia" because it seemed more significant a political mass than a US state.
plus I'm a little partial towards Australia, so I didn't mind exercising my fingers a bit:)
Re:What's he going to swing on?
on
Spider-Man in India
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From "The Top 10 of Everything 1997" (a bit dated but relevant nonetheless)
Top 10 world cities with most skyscrapers (skyscraper == habitable buildings of over 500ft/152m):
Cityname followed by number of skyscrapers
1 NYC 131 2 Chicago 47 3 Houston 27 4 Los Angeles 21 5 Hong Kong 20 6 Dallas 17 7 Melbourne, Australia 16 8 San Francisco 15 9 Boston 14 10 Atlanta 13 10 Singapore 13 10 Sydney, Australia 13
Spiderman would be a little subpar anyway outside of New York.
if this is the same thing. But I live in Washington and I got a check earlier this year for about $13 from a class-action suit to compensate for overpriced CDs. I just deposited it in my bank account and went on my way.
Why the RIAA sould just give random CDs instead of credit for free music (how about a deal with Apple?:) is beyond me.
Communism sucks. (in the voice of peter griffin in the episode where lois learns martial arts)/ducks
Google represents the future. The organization and archival of information is one of the most important markets out there. We are one step closer towards an age of 99% free information (with a few ads to pay the bills of course:). Imagine the library of congress indexing every book (every word in every book), and having them accessible for some sort of reasonable fee. It would completely alter the way people research and utilize information.
That would bring a tear to my eye. "I have a dream that one day, all different architectures can work together in a single cluster, and processors will be judged not by the flavor of their bits, but by the speed of their results."
Assuming everything does go well in Iraq (the future is still muddy as of now), I wonder how your typical Slashdotter will respond (say 5/10 years in the future). Will there be doublespeak "I was for it all along", will Bush get any credit?
I'm genuinely curious. (This isn't really anything anyone can answer now. You can attempt to, but I'll make my own observations when/if the time comes)
If things go south (even further then they are now), I think I can anticipate the responses, so I don't need any insight there.:)
Instead of trying to incite anger by giving vague summaries of stories, the editors should just be more blatant, like so:
"Here we have all the straw we need to construct a good strawman. Now we are going to bind the straw together to create arms and legs. You can almost see the neo-con blood flowing through it. Doesn't it make you angry? Now we need to connect the joints to create a fluid body. Doesn't he remind you of big brother? Now for the head, we use this prebuilt paper-maché mold of the Devil.. oops, I mean George Bush. Sounds Orwellian to me. Now beat the fucking shit out of it!!!"
Yeah yeah, mod me as troll or whatever, but you know its true.
In all honesty though, I am puzzled by it. I mean, Slashdot must generate some good ad revenue, so why can't they afford some decent editors? There are mods at forums working for free that do a better job.
I can't believe the amount of Microsoft astroturfing going on around here nowadays
It is in response to anti-Microsoft FUD. Some of the insults/complaints thrown at Microsoft around here are completely ridiculous imho.
Two of the most popular complaints are that Microsoft creates bloatware, and that they force users into a strict upgrade cycle. How many other companies are actively supporting products that came out 6 years ago? When Longhorn comes out, its going to scale very well to the hardware (i.e. , if your hardware is subpar, the interface will be at Win2k quality, and will scale up accordingly).
What I find especially amusing about this is that Apple seems to get by with nary a complaint. As much as I love Apple, OSX is very bloated, yet does not scale to the hardware at all (i.e. OSX is the same whether you install it on 300Mhz G3 or 2.5Ghz G5), and Apple barely supports (if at all) any non-current version of their OS.
Yet, almost all complaints will continue to be lodged at Microsoft, and praise will be thrown at Apple as if they are some bride-to-be.
Everytime i open a new hotmail account, it is filled with spam the next day. My yahoo accounts on the other hand get very little even though I use them daily (I don't put them on sign-up forms, but I send and receive email daily) . What's up with this crap? Have spammers hacked Hotmails customer database or what?
The Mission Impossible movies are going to have to think of a new way to transmit mission information. Once this technology becomes completely mainstream, the whole "this tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds" won't be so hip and cool, and you'll hear moms in the theater saying "Just like our Little Mermaid discs at home".
Anyone have any ideas for Mission Impossible to stay ahead of the game?
Slashdot Mirror
It comes back to accountability, which is a problem in the world of OSS. If there is tainted code in the Windows source that spurs a lawsuit, you can bet that this lawsuit will be on Microsoft's hands, not on users of its software.
In some sense, it's similar to the Napster (the Napster of yesteryear, not the name-whoring music store) vs. Kazaa from the RIAA's perspective. Microsoft is like Napster in that there is a central place of accountability, so the RIAA can just go there (in this case, Napster's servers) to settle their beef. Kazaa however (or bittorrent/whatever), is like the opensource world. There is no single place of accountability and therefore the problem has to be solved at the users end. I'm not saying that the kernel does have SCO's code, but if it did, wouldn't you like to know who's accountable.
With the Open Source community, this problem is a dangerous one. Since every user has access to the source code, and every user is potentially a kernel hacker, does this not make every user somewhat accountable? (yes, this argument is stretched a little thin, but its food for thought).
I suppose it's somewhat analagous to volcano insurance. Everything's cool until your house is covered in soot.
Do I need to buy or worry about this kind of stuff when I buy Microsoft software?
No, but then Microsoft software is all done in house. 95% (give or take) of software included in a Red Hat distribution was not created by Red Hat, so they don't have the same level of accountability as Microsoft. With an indemnification plan, they are taking on the accountability of the linux kernel writers, which might give a justified peace of mind to any potential customer.
most of the moovies on p2p networks comes from the dvds distributed to preview them
What's a "moovie"? Is that some kind of cow beastiality?
I feel the need for some airstrikes... not to make light of the damage an airstrike can cause, but come on, they're spammers.
It appears that one of the basic requirements for writing a film these days (and I like to write) is to have not only no knowledge of science
It's a friggin movie about a highschool student that has the powers of a spider!
and you're banging off about realism?!
Yeah, thats awesome.
We try to get away from cards because of inherent insecurity, and now we entrust biometric info to a card. When will it end?
Imagine if you were able to bring your own background information with you when you were fingerprinted.
I thought the purpose of biometric security was to have a database of info about people, not to verify that they are infact the true owner of a card.
The new stuff in Tiger seems more like icing on the cake than the drastic improvements we got from Jaguar and Panther. Any word if this puppy's still gonna cost $130?
'Windows XP Starter Edition'
:)
Isn't that kinda redundant???
Yes you are.
It may be easy to scoff at Fedex as being lower-than-thou gruntwork, but you shouldn't look at it so lightly.
I'm currently working at UPS doing the gruntiest of grunt-work, and as much as I dislike the job sometimes, there are some things to really appreciate -- immense job security, yearly pay increases, and incredible benefits.
I'm not familiar with Fedex but if it's anything like UPS, you could do much worse than doing a year of gruntwork in order to get a position more suited to your skills. Yeah, it may suck a little bit, but you would probably have more job security than you could ever hope to have at most jobs.
It may seem like a negative that they only hire "within their ranks", but this helps ensure job security among those loyal to the company.
During times like these, working for a bulletproof company (i.e. one that isn't going to be affected at a whim of economic downturn or terrorism scare) may be one of the best and most reliable ways to go.
In the book, all of the US cities are written "city, state" (e.g. Atlanta, Georgia), and non-US cities are written "city, country" (e.g. Melbourne, Australia). I just didn't feel like typing all of the states out, and I typed out "Australia" because it seemed more significant a political mass than a US state.
:)
plus I'm a little partial towards Australia, so I didn't mind exercising my fingers a bit
From "The Top 10 of Everything 1997" (a bit dated but relevant nonetheless)
Top 10 world cities with most skyscrapers (skyscraper == habitable buildings of over 500ft/152m):
Cityname followed by number of skyscrapers
1 NYC 131
2 Chicago 47
3 Houston 27
4 Los Angeles 21
5 Hong Kong 20
6 Dallas 17
7 Melbourne, Australia 16
8 San Francisco 15
9 Boston 14
10 Atlanta 13
10 Singapore 13
10 Sydney, Australia 13
Spiderman would be a little subpar anyway outside of New York.
PANTS! UnderPANTS
Blast, upon detailed review of the episode, I have concluded that you are correct.
They really have my balls in a salad shooter.
They prefer to be referred to as Underwear Gnomes (patent pending).
if this is the same thing. But I live in Washington and I got a check earlier this year for about $13 from a class-action suit to compensate for overpriced CDs. I just deposited it in my bank account and went on my way.
:) is beyond me.
Why the RIAA sould just give random CDs instead of credit for free music (how about a deal with Apple?
Communism sucks. (in the voice of peter griffin in the episode where lois learns martial arts) /ducks
:). Imagine the library of congress indexing every book (every word in every book), and having them accessible for some sort of reasonable fee. It would completely alter the way people research and utilize information.
Google represents the future. The organization and archival of information is one of the most important markets out there. We are one step closer towards an age of 99% free information (with a few ads to pay the bills of course
That would bring a tear to my eye. "I have a dream that one day, all different architectures can work together in a single cluster, and processors will be judged not by the flavor of their bits, but by the speed of their results."
I fsck'n hate hotmail because of this. Don't you just wanna kick spammers right in the nuts?
Assuming everything does go well in Iraq (the future is still muddy as of now), I wonder how your typical Slashdotter will respond (say 5/10 years in the future). Will there be doublespeak "I was for it all along", will Bush get any credit?
:)
I'm genuinely curious. (This isn't really anything anyone can answer now. You can attempt to, but I'll make my own observations when/if the time comes)
If things go south (even further then they are now), I think I can anticipate the responses, so I don't need any insight there.
I actually heard reports that they were running Linux on Xbox, until they realized the Xbox would make a better weapon against the US invasion.
By throwing the Xboxes at US soldiers? I don't think anyone could survive that....
are starting to get annoying.
Instead of trying to incite anger by giving vague summaries of stories, the editors should just be more blatant, like so:
"Here we have all the straw we need to construct a good strawman. Now we are going to bind the straw together to create arms and legs. You can almost see the neo-con blood flowing through it. Doesn't it make you angry? Now we need to connect the joints to create a fluid body. Doesn't he remind you of big brother? Now for the head, we use this prebuilt paper-maché mold of the Devil.. oops, I mean George Bush. Sounds Orwellian to me. Now beat the fucking shit out of it!!!"
Yeah yeah, mod me as troll or whatever, but you know its true.
In all honesty though, I am puzzled by it. I mean, Slashdot must generate some good ad revenue, so why can't they afford some decent editors? There are mods at forums working for free that do a better job.
It is in response to anti-Microsoft FUD. Some of the insults/complaints thrown at Microsoft around here are completely ridiculous imho. Two of the most popular complaints are that Microsoft creates bloatware, and that they force users into a strict upgrade cycle. How many other companies are actively supporting products that came out 6 years ago? When Longhorn comes out, its going to scale very well to the hardware (i.e. , if your hardware is subpar, the interface will be at Win2k quality, and will scale up accordingly).
What I find especially amusing about this is that Apple seems to get by with nary a complaint. As much as I love Apple, OSX is very bloated, yet does not scale to the hardware at all (i.e. OSX is the same whether you install it on 300Mhz G3 or 2.5Ghz G5), and Apple barely supports (if at all) any non-current version of their OS.
Yet, almost all complaints will continue to be lodged at Microsoft, and praise will be thrown at Apple as if they are some bride-to-be.
Now all we need are dice and a board.
I see your British ability to conserve ammo, and raise you an airstrike.
Just kidding, the DoD hasn't gotten back to me yet.
Hopefully all the insightful and interesting posts will come soon.. from those that are actually Reading TFA now. :)
Everytime i open a new hotmail account, it is filled with spam the next day. My yahoo accounts on the other hand get very little even though I use them daily (I don't put them on sign-up forms, but I send and receive email daily) . What's up with this crap? Have spammers hacked Hotmails customer database or what?
The Mission Impossible movies are going to have to think of a new way to transmit mission information. Once this technology becomes completely mainstream, the whole "this tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds" won't be so hip and cool, and you'll hear moms in the theater saying "Just like our Little Mermaid discs at home".
Anyone have any ideas for Mission Impossible to stay ahead of the game?