Slashdot Mirror


User: mpapet

mpapet's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
1,988
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 1,988

  1. Going Legit and Copyright Violations on Single Software Licence Shared 774,651 Times · · Score: 1

    Sure, I had $30,000 worth of pirate software when I was in college, and I went legit after my student discount was up

    And there you have it boys and girl. The exact reason why the vast majority of commercial software approve of violating the terms and conditions of using their software. You will in all likelihood become their customer.

    And what about the other users who don't go legit? Well, you certainly don't want them to use your competitor's software, right?

    Now, how does the evil BSA figure into this? Like the RIAA, they make an example out of an individual/organization to instill fear. Again, the idea is to discourage the violations, not actually prevent them from happening.

  2. Humorous Summary on Canon's Image Verification System Cracked · · Score: 1

    What Canon can do?

    -With current available models nothing
    -With future models blah... blah... blah...
    -Hire people who really understands security

    Having been on that side of the industry, there's no way Canon's putting a smart card chip in camera. Why? Cost mostly. And then there's the significant problem of communicating from the camera OS to the smart card chip. And then there's the significant increase in the cost of manufacturing.

    They aren't going to hire anyone either. This decision was made long ago and the constraints are still cost and calendar. Both extraordinarily tight.

    Canon will generally defame Skylarov to any agency that feigns interest and be generally dishonest about the whole thing.

  3. Extracting Value on Attachmate To Acquire Novell For $2.2B Cash · · Score: 1

    So not only are you battening down the hatches for the present when you lay them off, you're mortgaging your future by destroying the core intellectual base for the stuff you have.

    The buyers in this case and most others are not planning for a future. They are extracting as much wealth as possible as quickly as possible with no regard for a future that will never be. If it blows up in 2, 3, or five years is only a matter of finding more suckers to take money from while Novell's business prospects end.

    People with a mindset like yours are not valued because you are not looking to extract maximum value today with only a pretty presentation and pro-forma statements. You might add a little value to a pillager's target that is with certainty headed to bankruptcy and dissolution, but that's about it.

  4. "Linux Will Be Everywhere" Argument on Attachmate To Acquire Novell For $2.2B Cash · · Score: 1

    Hot news for you: Linux is many more places than Microsoft's products. You just don't know it. Millions of electronic devices use it. Yes, millions. Mostly invisible to you because it just works. When it **has** to work, there's some kind of Unix used.

    Windows has a niche and does a good job defending it. It's an "okay" desktop. Mostly they use the desktop like a cancer that bores into an office environment. Straight server applications? Expensive in most ways and comparably weak. It's below average-ness doesn't stop it from being sold because Microsoft knows the customer is not the geek, but the boss of the geek's boss who doesn't know anything about the geek's job.

    It looks like this deal keeps NetWare customers going for sure and forces the SuSe business to pay for itself. That will likely chop the head count of the group working on SuSe.

    Flame on!

  5. The lessons of "just okay" on The Software That Failed To Compete With Windows · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think sometimes the geeks forget the Marketing adage that most enduring products are functionally "just okay." Typically a successful product uses lots of cash to drown their competitors. Might makes right.

    Someone somewhere said "Early to bed. Early to rise. Advertise Advertise Advertise"

  6. Please, No SuperMicro on Best IT-infrastructure For a Small Company? · · Score: 1

    I've admined SuperMicro, Dell, and HP at this point and would strongly recommend a second hand HP. Lots of parts availability, *excellent* management software, while the servers themselves are practically ready to run with all kinds of redundancy. Cheap supermicro doesn't work out to be low-cost.

    Serversupply.com has tons of second-hand Proliants. You'll pay more than Craigslist, but less than new. Unless you *really* need tons of cpu horsepower, make sure the server has gigabit ethernet and Bob's yer Uncle. Get an old HP ultra320 SCSI storage array and load it up with 75+ GB drives for your storage. Yer bottleneck is always the network. Dead simple, cheap and reliable.

  7. Move Along... Nothing to See Here on Mystery Missile Launched Near LA · · Score: 1

    On the coast of California is a whole lotta military real estate some of it pretty secret judging by the number of ways to be discouraged from getting too close to the boundaries.

    Of course the military will deny it. 50 years from now a FOIA request might be interesting, but doubtful.

    A rocket launched off the California coast isn't special. Neither is something secret happening at one of the bases. Put the two together and it's a non-event.

  8. Re:Why not? on Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? · · Score: 1

    And if you ask them to wade that sea of ridiculousness they'll swiftly be lured back to the comort of the tried and true.

    Which is the precise reason why they are not good candidates for switching to Linux. There is no urgent need to switch. Leave them alone.

    Oracle and Microsoft to name *just* two companies piss off enough customers you'll have enough people desperately wanting to be rid of both to pay you well for an entire career.

  9. No F*ing Way on Should Being Competitive With Windows Matter For Linux? · · Score: 1

    No. A thousand times no.

    Most of your rant is incoherent middle Marketing management hyperbole.

    - Interface design that specifically and completely bars programmers from participating
    So, how would GUI's get done? Really. Because IDE's have tried over the decades and none has succeeded. Zero. There's another toolkit that inevitably follows the last big thing in GUI's.

    If you say something along the lines of "a gui should be as simple as scripting" I agree, and KDE4, XFCE4 have it. Your bash script magically appears as a nice gui in some cases. winetricks.sh comes to mind.

    Acceptance of proprietary drivers when offered
    Done. ATI, Nvidia, Epson and HP(networking driver) are three examples that have binary drivers and the distros have done a good job at integrating them. The companies behind them have been pretty good to the Free software community too. (Epson exception. Epson printers work, only sort-of compared to HP's full featureset)
    Provision of real, available, phone-based technical support
    I know this industry and I don't see any of this for software. Apple? Briefly. Adobe? cha-ching! Oracle? Microsoft? More money for support. If you need it, just look around and you'll find it. The AOL of Linux, Ubuntu will hold your hand for a reasonable fee. Red Hat will hold your hand for an Enterprise contract. HP? IBM? They all got it.

    - Real, complete documentation
    I don't accept this. Most apps have great man pages. Certainly as good as what passes for documentation included in a Microsoft OS release. Not as good as some of the commercial UNIXes, but great in most cases. Man pages are certainly enough in most cases. Please, do not take this as an opportunity to tell me about the ONE app you downloaded from who knows where having nothing to do with the distro you used. It's not a legitimate complaint.

    If you want to wail and moan about how it shouldn't be necessary to dig through man pages, then you are applying a completely wrong standard to general purpose desktop operating systems.

  10. Re:Easier for all of us? on Bloom Laptop Designed For Easy Disassembly · · Score: 1

    If they got rid of most of the screws from these things, it would solve so many problems.

    Except most of the screws are a *critical* structural features.

  11. Buzzword Quotient on Bloom Laptop Designed For Easy Disassembly · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The advertisement is a buzzword masterpiece. You only mentioned one of many flaws.

    The goal in this team's Ivy League education is to learn how to string buzzwords together to generate interest in fundamentally flawed ideas.

    Good to know the ruling class is staying busy.

  12. An Advert Disguised as News on Bloom Laptop Designed For Easy Disassembly · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It's an Auto*desk advertisement and more Ivy League B.S.

    If a team at a State College did this, then it would be an Auto*Desk advert that would be discarded. But because it's an unworkable idea from STANFORD it deserves consideration?

    -Thin, light and modular assembly are conflicting demands in portable computers.
    -Multi-purpose, generally powerful portable computers with modular assembly would resemble a 10 year old laptop.

  13. The Real Shocker on Meta-Research Debunks Medical Study Findings · · Score: 1

    ... is it took a meta review to bring this forward. What do you think will happen when University research funding sources are corporations with very specific short term interests?

    The social phenomena described is quite common. People in general trust the messages coming from some sources more than others. Being high on the trust ladder is what Marketing people are hoping to achieve with their efforts. My favorite example in the "trust the messenger" department is Microsoft. How many times over how many years does it take before people will disregard their "yeah, we've got that feature" a year or more out from a product release? Lots. Doesn't matter though. The same people that trust Microsoft after being routinely mislead then defend Microsoft. They trust Microsoft. Pharma does the same thing.

  14. What About Tivo? on FSF Announces Hardware Endorsement Criteria · · Score: 1

    chip to check for digital signatures to prove the code is "authorized"

    Which is exactly what Tivo did with their Linux stack. Modify the Linux stack in a Tivo and the device is broken due to some kind of hashing.

    I think the FSF is on the right track, but the inexorable problems of clever people circumventing the GPL will turn a good idea into an unpleasant situation.

    If the FSF made the essence of the label basically GPL friendly hardware with no binary software blobs with some limited backward kernel version support, then I think they'd have a winner. BSD could potentially leverage off the FSF work of making sure the device is open enough to write drivers. A better revenue opportunity for the FSF would be if they did the testing so the hardware manufacturers don't have to acquire the people to do meet the FSF label requirements.

    Where the FSF might get into trouble is attempting to shut out Apple and Microsoft. Just ignore them. The more Microsoft and Apple restrain/monetize personal use, the more Free software will be in use. It's the only way forward.

  15. Disagree on FSF Announces Hardware Endorsement Criteria · · Score: 1

    If it "Works with Windows", is "Made for Macs", and is "FSF Compatible" no sane manufacturer is not going to want to mention all three.

    Disagree. Device manufacturers look at the cost (time and money) of the process required to license the logo/badge and decide that way. If the FSF have a sensible cost and process, then a little more testing to attract a growing segment is worth it.

    The FSF is 100% wrong if they attempt to exclude Microsoft and Apple compatibility logos. Hardware can be simultaneously GPL friendly and proprietary at the same time. Look at HP printers as an example. Binary blobless source code for the operating system part of their devices is available in Linux. They have traditional IP restricted binaries for Apple and Microsoft.

  16. 'Problem' is not Extensions on Opera Embraces Extensions For v.11 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If Opera has a 'problem' it's that it's most well-known as software one needs to buy versus Firefox and IE being included in the purchase of a Windows product.

    They must be given a huge amount of respect for staying relevant and commercially viable versus costless competitors.

    I'm glad they are doing extensions. While I live underneath a rainbow with unicorns and fairies, I'd suggest making Firefox extensions portable to Opera.

  17. And Nothing(?) Was Gained on IBM and Oracle To Collaborate On OpenJDK · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I get that java is *the* enterprise-y choice for applications, but I still don't get it. I don't see the economic incentive for Oracle to keep this project, so I'm guessing the bulk of the Dev work is transitioning to IBM.

    What is communicated as a collaboration is more a transition for what would have likely gone abandonware with a rats nest of Intellectual Property issues perpetually constraining re-use.

    Please, correct me if I'm wrong because I never got Java from the beginning.

  18. OSX Doesn't Make Money on The Hackintosh Guide · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Long ago (in computer industry terms), OSX got Apple back on the road to financial success. OSX has become a favored, octogenarian at Apple. Treated well, but generally irrelevant to other projects.

    Every time there's a consumer buying content for one of Apple's dedicated entertainment devices, they are made richer. The best part of this scheme is two-fold.
    1. It's early days for dedicated entertainment devices like the ipad and even the iphone. Tons of money yet to be taken from the consumer while the personal use doctrine is being dismantled.
    2. The distribution of entertainment is a U.S. government sanctioned oligopoly. Apple has become an blessed member of the oligopoly.

    Contrast the scale of those revenue generating opportunities with the general purpose computer (OSX) where once the tower/laptop is sold, that's about the end of the revenue stream.

  19. mod parent up on Solar Power On the White House · · Score: 1

    This comment is accurate. The one it is replying to is pure vitriol.

  20. "Economic Sense" is a Scam on Solar Power On the White House · · Score: 1

    I'm all for renewable energy when and if it starts making economic sense,

    "Economic sense" is a perfectly circular argument. No matter the conditions presented, 'economic sense' can be used to defend it. As in, "solar power doesn't make economic sense because it's more expensive than burning coal." This argument is impenetrable because the externalities of your favorite ideas cannot and do not ever get factored in. I'll refrain from some other logical problems in your post.

    How about kitchen utensils made with a lead alloy? Cheap and durable! It makes perfect economic sense. And yet, for some strange reason I have to pay many times the price for my preferred lead alloy utensils for 18/8 stainless steel utensils. Damn that evil inefficient government that prefers healthy workers over lead-poisoned ones.

    Today's lesson: The 'economic sense' argument is used to fleece taxpayers/consumers all of the time. The fundamental premise is to capture some profit and shift the costs away from the enterprise.

  21. Don't Get Out Much? on SEC Blames Computer Algorithm For 'Flash Crash' · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What I detect is that the smartest & most motivated people do NOT inhabit the regulatory agencies

    That is by design. The agency wasn't ever going to go away, but their efficacy sure did in the holy pursuit of unfettered Capitalism. What has that gotten the majority of Americans who believed in the wisdom and efficacy of deregulation?

    -Banking system on national life support.
    -Consumers with no confidence in many forms of economic activity.
    -A series of economic bubbles

    It never works out and yet voters are more than willing to get screwed again under the new mantra of "fiscal austerity." That's more pocket picking for the recovering Capitalists living in your parent's basement.

  22. WordPress is Over the GPL Hump on Microsoft Migrating Live Spaces Users To WordPress · · Score: 1

    At some point in a successful project, it seems as though the people using the project cross a line such that they are generally discouraged by the scale/complexity of the code to do anything other than use it as-is.

    I'd say WordPress crossed that line a long time ago.

  23. Bullet Meets Foot on Microsoft Migrating Live Spaces Users To WordPress · · Score: 1

    I am stunned they didn't move everyone onto a dotnetnuke service regardless of the fact it's not great. If this is a "dead weight" scenario, then I have a feeling Microsoft's on the long road to shedding customers. The R&D value of running a blogging platform as an established social media is dead too?

    When did Microsoft stop leveraging assets to achieve strategic successes that harmonize the enterprise?

    Seriously though, that's pretty damning they can't pick a Free project out of obscurity and come up with a vaguely similar dotnet solution.

  24. Lens Not Included? on Apertus, the Open Source HD Movie Camera · · Score: 1

    I don't get it. The crux of image acquisition is the lens and they don't include one?

    I don't see how that contraption could possibly penetrate the production side of entertainment industry. What is the market for this device?

  25. Message of the Day on Tech's Dark Secret, It's All About Age · · Score: 1

    Do your best to incorporate today's buzz-words into your daily work. It gives you something substantial to discuss when meeting a potential employer.

    Some programmers are confined/defined by the programming requirements of their current employer. The impression it leaves is one where the potential employee is clearly skilled but not a 'good fit.' This does not solve the wide gap between getting paid well and the many common programming work.