Your only source of information is wikipedia? Didn't your mother teach you to not believe everything you read on the web? Half the other websites I found relating to similar devices, well they are all run by those conspiracy theorist nutcases who cannot accept facts like, Oswald killed Kennedy.
You mean the same Apple OS that you have to own their hardware for. It is quite possible it would fly off shelves (or at least do so in larger numbers) if it wasn't required to run on their hardware, or if their hardware didn't generally cost upwards of 2 or 3 times as much as the rest of PC hardware.
Hey I think there are still semi-intelligent arguments about whether or not virii constitute living organisms. I remember in school, my god that makes me sound old, there being some degree of debate, at least at the time, as to whether bacteria qualify as life. I forget the wonderful arguments as such, but virii certainly have some degree of reproduction.
Patents and Copyrights...two different things, unfortunately while the PTO and US Gov't have worked to prevent grand abuse to the patent system over time to limit the life (originally companies would file continuation applications to get tons of extensions, system use to be 17 yrs from allowance, it is now 20 from original filing), Congress has managed to do almost the exact opposite to the copyrights, in large part because large companies have been pushing for extensions to keep making money off their beloved characters.
I will be the first to admit that copyright laws in the US need a major re-write and there are a few companies in a good position right now to challenge the copyright laws and with the right arguments could force their change through the court systems. While this is unlikely to happen, I would love to see it happen. As for patent laws, oh I want the current bill in congress to get serious consideration, while not perfect it will fix some of the problems that make the process so long and will keep more of the litigation process in the office, and should help keep too many junk patents from getting issued...
But yeah, it is sad that are country seems a little bass-ackwards sometimes...
Really this statement in the news post is nothing more than inflammatory. How do you know for a fact that this isn't a wrongly issued patent? Are you an expert in this field, or even one of ordinary skill in the art? I have to play devil's advocate here because it seems to be the HIP thing to do on/. is bash the PTO. However, the patent's novelty, which is not in question, is not 100% known to the news poster. This sort of ignorant posting and rambling in news posts is the sort of thing that keeps/. from ever being taken seriously.
Now for the matter at hand, for a change this isn't a problem at the PTO, but the government at large and it would seem the courts. I think it is definitely underhanded, the scheme that Lucent pulled; however, it also calls into question the company that worked with them on this project. Obviously if they had some sort of contract or the like setup in the first place, they would be getting paid for their work, instead they apparently didn't do this and now are getting screwed. It is a shame, but hey a bit of blame can go both ways here...
Ummm? Perfect? You must've missed that memo on the imperfection that is everything. You are talking about an office that is taxed with tons of patents and who have to determine, in a limited amount of time, whether or not there exists any prior art for the invention. If you really want to blame someone, then perhaps blame Congress for keeping millions, if not billions, of dollars that the USPTO earns from fees. This money gets sent to other agencies and prevents the USPTO from hiring even more examiners, and therefore allowing for possibly more examination time?
Or in fact, blame inventors. For filing knowingly false and frivolous patents and trying to take advantage of an overworked and understaffed system? Don't forget that patent examiners also reject patents. There are a great number of patents that get rejected on the first several tries. There are enormous problems with the system, but it is foolish to blame any single part. Also because a patent case goes to court, does not mean it was wrongly issued, and many cases, especially to the Federal Circuit, are cases where companies are trying to get patents that were already rejected by the Examiner and in some cases the rejection was upheld by the internal Board of Patent Appeals.
It is a long chain to get a patent, and you will rarely hear of many that get issued on first tries. Do people make mistakes? Yes, we are after all...only human.
Actually point more toward the court system. With the exception of the Federal Circuit and SCOTUS most courts have a horrible misunderstanding of patent law and the patent process as a whole. And pointing blame at the USPTO? Of course that gets modded Insightful instead of offtopic or trolling, cause after all hating the PTO is cool thing to do on slashdot.
Violent overthrow of the government. Need I say more. We have the right to bear arms, not for our own protection from violence, but for that day when the government as a whole fails and some idiot winds up using influence with the military to turn the good US of A into some sort of military state to prevent those evil terrorists. Remember, it isn't freedom if you are giving up rights to stay safe...
I think the most important reason that Linus got rejected and surprisingly hasn't gotten rejected more places is because he has quite frankly waited to long. When a term becomes generic it is sort of hard to hold a Trademark over anyone and make a big fuss about it. It may vary by different countries but the same term can be trademarked multiple times so long as they are not crossing field, it is also important to rememble that symbols can be trademark if they are shown to be in someway unique.
Seriously, I think that the term Linux has been in use so long that it has become a fairly generic term. While protection of the name may be somewhat important, the fact that it is in use and fairly generic would prevent others from trademarking it, where it isn't trademarked (or should at least).
Oh good sir thank you so much. How I wish I had mod points for you! Seriously people seem to selectively forget that the US have saved a good many of their asses on a few occassions. I think the world likes to use the what have you done for me lately attitude, which seems to be nothing in their eyes. There was an editorial commentary or paper written a few years back post-9/11 that was written by a foreigner...Canadian if I remember, about how much the US has done for the world and despite the crap we take on a daily basis how open the country still is to refugees and political dissidents from other countries, let alone the "political dissidents" within our own country.
If memory serves me right, the conclusion was that the US would taking in as many people as it could to help any group of people in trouble or being persecuted in their homelands, but how many of the countries throughout the world would be willing to take in a single American if, forbid, some great tragedy or inquisition of some sort began in the US. It is important for people in other countries to remember that the big, bad USA is still going to come around and try to help free people stay free. Remember we have help control of more nuclear weapons for a long time, but we have not used them in years. Have we had chances? Yes, their use was discussed during the Korean War, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was even re-discussed recently.
I am glad to see some people around/. and some people in this country remember these things. It seems that everyone is too busy protesting (cause they are rich yuppie middle class losers afraid of defending their homes) when they haven't seen a war in years. I would challenge everyone to find a WWII vet on Nov. 11 (or heck before if you have time) and ask them what it was like to defend their homes. I would say ask a Vietnam War vet, but you need to find one that didn't drug his mind away during the war to do that, but I am sure despite a good many dissidents, you will still find people who were honored and proud to serve their country. And to those people who believe in defending their homeland from whatever present threat, I commend them.
Repeatable quests can have one purpose and that is the improvement of reputation with certain groups. To some people playing this can be important for getting other races mounts, though I am not sure of what other use reputation has. That as far as I can see is the main/only reason for repeatable quests, or for usable items where repeating the quest can help you get useful items. There are some quests like this in Blasted Lands that aren't too bad and Tanaris as well.
But yes, more new content would be nice and eventually we will see an expansion, we will see new zones (there are map slots available), and we will see the level cap raised (or eventually everyone will be 60 and there will be nothing to do). With the level cap increase you will once again have to create more quests and more rewards (more talent points will get ridiculous) for leveling.
Presently I am enthralled with Arathi Basin battleground, and find it quiet fun between instances and questing. I am yet to any of the raid instances as I can still get good groups capable of completing the ones at or around my level (53 warrior). This most recently includes Maraudon and Sunken Temple.
Yeah the Mac/Windows integration complaint by most sysadmins is total bullshit. They are almost fully integrable now and it really isn't that hard to do. OS X.3 really made this a fairly simple thing to do on a PROPERLY setup ActiveDirectory Domain (if there truly is such a thing). If said company is running a non-AD domain they could keep the headache and save the money buy setting up a domain on a Linux server. But most sysadmins are afraid of what they do not understand which is part of the reason why there are still some places using Novell instead of having switched fully over to Windows based storage servers.
This is sort of the same thing that has happened with large companies sticking with Windows 2k and in some rare cases NT. Sysadmins seem to like to keep things the same and never change, after all if you are MSCE for NT Server why bother getting an updated MCSE for 2003 and upgrade your servers, forget that you'll have a much harder time getting a job without an updated MCSE.
This actually reminds me of a former place of work, and if you are interested on learning more about this former place of work that is part of the public education system, feel free to send me messages, not signing NDAs is such a nice thing. Anyway, are IT manager had a single certification, for of all things Novell. This man does not even know how to reset passwords in an AD domain, and to make things worse takes all the cred from the real employees and of course blames them for what are usually his mistakes.
Let us say that this former place of work was switching to an all AD domain, ridding themselves completely of Novell (including Groupwise), and finally getting Exchange. The problem I have heard is that this change, which was suppose to be done by Feb. or March of this year has halted and is almost moving in reverse. This is by and large because of the lack of knowledge and poor management of not only my individual organization's manager but other managers as well.
So fear of change, this is what keeps them from changing. Back to the topic at hand, can this exploit do anything serious to Linux users who are smart and don't run as root?
Seriously, Microsoft is primarily concerned with Google because I think deep down they fear that Google will decide to hop into their much more lucrative fields (i.e. Operating Systems and Office Suites). Microsoft is fighting a losing battle online. They got a late jump on the internet. Everything they have tried online, from webmail, to messenging to internet service started too late and could not compete with AOL (as much as I hate saying that) and now losing to broadband.
Look at sights used for web searches and of the major ones, MSN has to be one of the least used. I am sure some people do not mind the clunky and overloaded website design, but most people I know prefer the cleaner google, or heck even Yahoo is typically cleaner in appearance then MSN.
MSN Messenger is quite seriously a joke. Here is a service that few people really use. AOL IM stills has the majority share here as well since they were one of the original IM services. They also bought up another "original", ICQ. Yahoo, I believe is probably 2nd in the IM race and has a strong support base from its e-mail service and people who use Yahoo as a primary search tool.
I think Microsoft needs to stop worrying about trying to make too much money off of their web-based applications and continue to focus on their bread-winners, Microsoft Windows (TM) and the Office series. Quite simply these bring in more money, and there is no real foreseeable end to the need for Operating Systems and Office suites. But in typical fashion, they will try to buy their way into a market and be the anti-thesis to innovators.
Don't forget: Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Double Dragon, the considerably worse Mortal Kombat sequel, and god knows how many others I missed.
Also remember, that Mortal Kombat was probably the best of the fighting games (that I remember) to be made into a movie. I mean it did have Christopher Lambert in it!
Seriously I see one reason to use Office 2003 over older versions of Office...Outlook. By far the program that got the largest overhaul by in 2003. Using Office 2000 at work I nearly want to through my computer through a wall some days using an old outdated and quite frankly poor Outlook 2000.
I am sort of thinking though that since we have programs that specifically function as add-ons for Office, we might be on the verge of going open-source. I believe this solely because the add-on is actually of simple functionality and it would be infinitely cheaper to make a similar program for OOo and not have to pay the outrageous M$ licenses. But it probably just a dream...
Ugly in linux? I will have to pay more attention when I get home but last I remember it looks practically the same on Linux (FC3) running laptop as it does on my Windows XP running desktop.
This goes back to arguments in a forum the other day. I do not want to have to turn off features. The idea in a consumer driven world is choice where you ADD not SUBTRACT. Its like saying, our model X comes with feature Y standard that has a service fee Z. Of course you can opt out of the Y and not pay service fee Z. I see these two in the same light because I like my freedom of choice to be me saying YES not having to constantly say NO...
Remind me how your little theory works? Under current systems most books that are readily available can easily be grabbed at a B&N, Borders, your library, or anywhere else you might find books...you can scan it easily enough and pick up from a few quick points whether it is crap or not. There is also a HUGE resource of book critics and book reviews, if you can weed out the crap over at Amazon.
The unknown and small authors really cannot complain. Their books already aren't selling, and this service makes them more searchable since title and keyword searches are often useless without actual book text. Also it puts words into context of the usage in the book making it much more useful. So for them it shouldn't be a huge concern.
Finally, to answer most peoples concerns about copyright usage, I think Google is going to take the Fair Use stance on this. By arguing they are simply making it easier for users to find out what books they want they are helping book sellers and publishers. In reality we are slowly heading towards a more self-publishing method in books because most small authors reach such niche markets in science and tech fields that no one wants to pay to publish them.
I think if Google has spent near as much on lawyers as they have on top quality R&D employees they may be able to fight this thing to an angle of possibly even changing the horrible copyright laws in the US that mostly benefit large companies with the "neverending" copyright.
I have seen these wonderful "telecine" and even the best are still noticeably camera captures. IT isn't flicker that points them out. It is horrid color bleed and particularly white outs where the brights over range the camera and blotch the whole screen out. Of course the occassional bobbing head or person walking completely in front of the camera is also fully entertaining. Finally, the sound is still fairly attrocious on most cam caps, and even if they are using tripods they really need to learn how to sit the damn this so it doesn't shake...or they are just dumb...Actually where are your numbers for digital equipment coming from? I think it is slightly more prolific then you might realize. Though I am not sure about the movies released on the format...
1. Video codecs are ever changing and there is no real standard for encoded video. Anyone who has downloaded videos knows that the different groups use different encodings, often, and that sometimes these encoding do weird things. This goes more so for older downloads of the show that is several years old, because most the encoding schemes that groups use have changed in that span. I am sure a good many people remember when VCD and the whole MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 were still big.
2. Space becomes an issue with video. You are no longer getting thousands of programs, typically, with 20 GB drives. In most good encodings today your average 30 min show is 175 MB and your average hour show is 350 MB. Movies range all over the place, but since they want to keep things CD friendly you will usually see 700 MB or 1400 MB movies. Of course the 1400 MB are usually split to two 700 MB.
3. There is also the issue of the CPU power necessary to rip and encode movies. Most home users can rip their CDs to MP3s without too much hassel, and without too much time. Movies take longer though, and people are often not willing to let their computers work (assuming they would even know how to do it) for that long of a time.
4. The lack of legitimate downloads available. This is key. Since broadband isn't reaching everyone as quickly as some would hope, the download time for legit videos would be enormous for many home users. Those with broadband could possibly benefit, but setting price points becomes an issue unto itself. Also you deal almost exclusively with studios here, since not many movies or TV shows have a single star who could/would sign over rights where the studio would not.
5. Finally, easy integration with easy technology is of course a must. The problem is there is not a wide variety of consumer grade media players available. Most media players are playing to a mostly niche market who openly look for the devices and have TONS of media to stream over a network. Without many big electronics makers building these units, there is not a lot of support for individual consumers who want to buy their products from the "trusted" Sony's and Toshiba's.
These reasons outline some of the biggest points preventing the small portable video players. I should probably also point out small screen size for some users is an issue. Personally at the $500 or so some of the current devices go for, I would much rather spend the extra $300-$500 to get a laptop and have extra functionality with the much larger screen size.
I think there is a long way to go before the portable video player becomes a truly wanted item that is actually marketable outside a niche market.,
Interesting enough, some people in the industries are upset at theaters, of course a theater insider then said stop making crap, for the low numbers and talked about dual releasing dvds and movies at the same time. Will it happen? Probably not, but the lower turn-around time is happening, even if it is slowly.
Seriously, how many pirated copies of TOP movies actually make their way into the world via cameras? I mean, most the cam caps I have seen are horrible, poor audio and poor video, nothing I want to watch, especially on an HDTV. The GOOD copies come from screener versions of the movies. Heck some even have the, if you are watching this call...
Also with new digital equipment at theaters I am starting to wonder if some people working these booths haven't found some new way to offload the movies and possibly make copies that way. It just seems that there are too many HIGH quality rips coming out to possibly be the result of geeks with cameras.
Finally, while ticket prices are arguably high, I do not believe the real problem is ticket prices so much as nothing people are wanting to see. Actually I am more annoyed with the theater to dvd turn around time. I would honestly prefer this get as short as 3 months even on GOOD movies. Once again the digital formats available make this transition a lot more feasible, and most the extras are filmed during production or shortly post-prod anyway. So the three months release time should be enough to clean them up and release great DVDs....
If only the intelligent and tech-saavy people were running these industries nowadays and not the old fossils who developed the industry into what it is...
I actually assert that mouse gestures are unimportant because they are still used by a minority. Seeing as IE is still the majority, and that by default (and possibly not at all, unless some "add-on" is available) does not support them, well a majority of people will never even see them.
Ummm, why is my integrated IRC client not persuasive? You forget that both bittorrent and IRC are used by a minority of online individuals. I know a great many people who are "saavy" in the computers and aren't overly aware of IRC. Is my point I prefer FF, yeah to some degree. Nobody gives a shit? Well you cared enough to read it...And then what makes the Parent to my post any better? Because he apparently likes Opera? I thought Forums were suppose to be about equal discuss and not about zealotry. Will I give Opera a try now that it is free? Probably, and we will see if I actually like it. But most the "features" spoken of by the PARENT to my post are not something I am looking for. And honestly I was just countering his points, you will find the majority of users don't need/want the Opera integrations because the majority of users are well...still using IE. And unless Opera can catch FF in usage, well then I guess that would show that even the majority-minority don't want/need them either...
Seriously, are we going to have some grand organization like the Book Publishing Association of America (BPAA) or the like now? Like the outdated methods the music industry uses, the trouble is even larger in the book industry. Thousands of books and authors are never read by millions of people because they are rare and obscure. There are research papers and knowledge to be grabbed that people cannot find because they are collecting dust in those dark libraries that are getting fewer and fewer visitors.
Simple fact is, that it is more convenient and more cost effective to distribute written matter online, and making it searchable is key to making it easy to find. Good ol' Dewey's system is beginning to show its age and things are not always easy to fine. Even the ISBN does not always work since a great many books never receive a number. Honestly, this should turn into a great thing for books and knowledge. If they truly secure it like they say they can, then we can expect sales of the obscure books to increase as people begin to discover informative works and educational pieces that have collected dust. More known works will also grab peoples attention now as they will be more easily accessible for searching as well...
Boy ain't technology a swell invention, if only people would embrace it like they said they would for years...
Slashdot Mirror
Your only source of information is wikipedia? Didn't your mother teach you to not believe everything you read on the web? Half the other websites I found relating to similar devices, well they are all run by those conspiracy theorist nutcases who cannot accept facts like, Oswald killed Kennedy.
You mean the same Apple OS that you have to own their hardware for. It is quite possible it would fly off shelves (or at least do so in larger numbers) if it wasn't required to run on their hardware, or if their hardware didn't generally cost upwards of 2 or 3 times as much as the rest of PC hardware.
Hey I think there are still semi-intelligent arguments about whether or not virii constitute living organisms. I remember in school, my god that makes me sound old, there being some degree of debate, at least at the time, as to whether bacteria qualify as life. I forget the wonderful arguments as such, but virii certainly have some degree of reproduction.
Patents and Copyrights...two different things, unfortunately while the PTO and US Gov't have worked to prevent grand abuse to the patent system over time to limit the life (originally companies would file continuation applications to get tons of extensions, system use to be 17 yrs from allowance, it is now 20 from original filing), Congress has managed to do almost the exact opposite to the copyrights, in large part because large companies have been pushing for extensions to keep making money off their beloved characters.
I will be the first to admit that copyright laws in the US need a major re-write and there are a few companies in a good position right now to challenge the copyright laws and with the right arguments could force their change through the court systems. While this is unlikely to happen, I would love to see it happen. As for patent laws, oh I want the current bill in congress to get serious consideration, while not perfect it will fix some of the problems that make the process so long and will keep more of the litigation process in the office, and should help keep too many junk patents from getting issued...
But yeah, it is sad that are country seems a little bass-ackwards sometimes...
Really this statement in the news post is nothing more than inflammatory. How do you know for a fact that this isn't a wrongly issued patent? Are you an expert in this field, or even one of ordinary skill in the art? I have to play devil's advocate here because it seems to be the HIP thing to do on /. is bash the PTO. However, the patent's novelty, which is not in question, is not 100% known to the news poster. This sort of ignorant posting and rambling in news posts is the sort of thing that keeps /. from ever being taken seriously.
Now for the matter at hand, for a change this isn't a problem at the PTO, but the government at large and it would seem the courts. I think it is definitely underhanded, the scheme that Lucent pulled; however, it also calls into question the company that worked with them on this project. Obviously if they had some sort of contract or the like setup in the first place, they would be getting paid for their work, instead they apparently didn't do this and now are getting screwed. It is a shame, but hey a bit of blame can go both ways here...
Yeah, but at least it still had DOS.
R.I.P DOS
Ummm? Perfect? You must've missed that memo on the imperfection that is everything. You are talking about an office that is taxed with tons of patents and who have to determine, in a limited amount of time, whether or not there exists any prior art for the invention. If you really want to blame someone, then perhaps blame Congress for keeping millions, if not billions, of dollars that the USPTO earns from fees. This money gets sent to other agencies and prevents the USPTO from hiring even more examiners, and therefore allowing for possibly more examination time?
Or in fact, blame inventors. For filing knowingly false and frivolous patents and trying to take advantage of an overworked and understaffed system? Don't forget that patent examiners also reject patents. There are a great number of patents that get rejected on the first several tries. There are enormous problems with the system, but it is foolish to blame any single part. Also because a patent case goes to court, does not mean it was wrongly issued, and many cases, especially to the Federal Circuit, are cases where companies are trying to get patents that were already rejected by the Examiner and in some cases the rejection was upheld by the internal Board of Patent Appeals.
It is a long chain to get a patent, and you will rarely hear of many that get issued on first tries. Do people make mistakes? Yes, we are after all...only human.
Actually point more toward the court system. With the exception of the Federal Circuit and SCOTUS most courts have a horrible misunderstanding of patent law and the patent process as a whole. And pointing blame at the USPTO? Of course that gets modded Insightful instead of offtopic or trolling, cause after all hating the PTO is cool thing to do on slashdot.
Violent overthrow of the government. Need I say more. We have the right to bear arms, not for our own protection from violence, but for that day when the government as a whole fails and some idiot winds up using influence with the military to turn the good US of A into some sort of military state to prevent those evil terrorists. Remember, it isn't freedom if you are giving up rights to stay safe...
I think the most important reason that Linus got rejected and surprisingly hasn't gotten rejected more places is because he has quite frankly waited to long. When a term becomes generic it is sort of hard to hold a Trademark over anyone and make a big fuss about it. It may vary by different countries but the same term can be trademarked multiple times so long as they are not crossing field, it is also important to rememble that symbols can be trademark if they are shown to be in someway unique.
Seriously, I think that the term Linux has been in use so long that it has become a fairly generic term. While protection of the name may be somewhat important, the fact that it is in use and fairly generic would prevent others from trademarking it, where it isn't trademarked (or should at least).
Oh good sir thank you so much. How I wish I had mod points for you! Seriously people seem to selectively forget that the US have saved a good many of their asses on a few occassions. I think the world likes to use the what have you done for me lately attitude, which seems to be nothing in their eyes. There was an editorial commentary or paper written a few years back post-9/11 that was written by a foreigner...Canadian if I remember, about how much the US has done for the world and despite the crap we take on a daily basis how open the country still is to refugees and political dissidents from other countries, let alone the "political dissidents" within our own country.
/. and some people in this country remember these things. It seems that everyone is too busy protesting (cause they are rich yuppie middle class losers afraid of defending their homes) when they haven't seen a war in years. I would challenge everyone to find a WWII vet on Nov. 11 (or heck before if you have time) and ask them what it was like to defend their homes. I would say ask a Vietnam War vet, but you need to find one that didn't drug his mind away during the war to do that, but I am sure despite a good many dissidents, you will still find people who were honored and proud to serve their country. And to those people who believe in defending their homeland from whatever present threat, I commend them.
If memory serves me right, the conclusion was that the US would taking in as many people as it could to help any group of people in trouble or being persecuted in their homelands, but how many of the countries throughout the world would be willing to take in a single American if, forbid, some great tragedy or inquisition of some sort began in the US. It is important for people in other countries to remember that the big, bad USA is still going to come around and try to help free people stay free. Remember we have help control of more nuclear weapons for a long time, but we have not used them in years. Have we had chances? Yes, their use was discussed during the Korean War, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was even re-discussed recently.
I am glad to see some people around
Repeatable quests can have one purpose and that is the improvement of reputation with certain groups. To some people playing this can be important for getting other races mounts, though I am not sure of what other use reputation has. That as far as I can see is the main/only reason for repeatable quests, or for usable items where repeating the quest can help you get useful items. There are some quests like this in Blasted Lands that aren't too bad and Tanaris as well.
But yes, more new content would be nice and eventually we will see an expansion, we will see new zones (there are map slots available), and we will see the level cap raised (or eventually everyone will be 60 and there will be nothing to do). With the level cap increase you will once again have to create more quests and more rewards (more talent points will get ridiculous) for leveling.
Presently I am enthralled with Arathi Basin battleground, and find it quiet fun between instances and questing. I am yet to any of the raid instances as I can still get good groups capable of completing the ones at or around my level (53 warrior). This most recently includes Maraudon and Sunken Temple.
Yeah the Mac/Windows integration complaint by most sysadmins is total bullshit. They are almost fully integrable now and it really isn't that hard to do. OS X.3 really made this a fairly simple thing to do on a PROPERLY setup ActiveDirectory Domain (if there truly is such a thing). If said company is running a non-AD domain they could keep the headache and save the money buy setting up a domain on a Linux server. But most sysadmins are afraid of what they do not understand which is part of the reason why there are still some places using Novell instead of having switched fully over to Windows based storage servers.
This is sort of the same thing that has happened with large companies sticking with Windows 2k and in some rare cases NT. Sysadmins seem to like to keep things the same and never change, after all if you are MSCE for NT Server why bother getting an updated MCSE for 2003 and upgrade your servers, forget that you'll have a much harder time getting a job without an updated MCSE.
This actually reminds me of a former place of work, and if you are interested on learning more about this former place of work that is part of the public education system, feel free to send me messages, not signing NDAs is such a nice thing. Anyway, are IT manager had a single certification, for of all things Novell. This man does not even know how to reset passwords in an AD domain, and to make things worse takes all the cred from the real employees and of course blames them for what are usually his mistakes.
Let us say that this former place of work was switching to an all AD domain, ridding themselves completely of Novell (including Groupwise), and finally getting Exchange. The problem I have heard is that this change, which was suppose to be done by Feb. or March of this year has halted and is almost moving in reverse. This is by and large because of the lack of knowledge and poor management of not only my individual organization's manager but other managers as well.
So fear of change, this is what keeps them from changing. Back to the topic at hand, can this exploit do anything serious to Linux users who are smart and don't run as root?
Seriously, Microsoft is primarily concerned with Google because I think deep down they fear that Google will decide to hop into their much more lucrative fields (i.e. Operating Systems and Office Suites). Microsoft is fighting a losing battle online. They got a late jump on the internet. Everything they have tried online, from webmail, to messenging to internet service started too late and could not compete with AOL (as much as I hate saying that) and now losing to broadband.
Look at sights used for web searches and of the major ones, MSN has to be one of the least used. I am sure some people do not mind the clunky and overloaded website design, but most people I know prefer the cleaner google, or heck even Yahoo is typically cleaner in appearance then MSN.
MSN Messenger is quite seriously a joke. Here is a service that few people really use. AOL IM stills has the majority share here as well since they were one of the original IM services. They also bought up another "original", ICQ. Yahoo, I believe is probably 2nd in the IM race and has a strong support base from its e-mail service and people who use Yahoo as a primary search tool.
I think Microsoft needs to stop worrying about trying to make too much money off of their web-based applications and continue to focus on their bread-winners, Microsoft Windows (TM) and the Office series. Quite simply these bring in more money, and there is no real foreseeable end to the need for Operating Systems and Office suites. But in typical fashion, they will try to buy their way into a market and be the anti-thesis to innovators.
Don't forget: Mario Brothers, Street Fighter, Double Dragon, the considerably worse Mortal Kombat sequel, and god knows how many others I missed.
Also remember, that Mortal Kombat was probably the best of the fighting games (that I remember) to be made into a movie. I mean it did have Christopher Lambert in it!
Seriously I see one reason to use Office 2003 over older versions of Office...Outlook. By far the program that got the largest overhaul by in 2003. Using Office 2000 at work I nearly want to through my computer through a wall some days using an old outdated and quite frankly poor Outlook 2000.
I am sort of thinking though that since we have programs that specifically function as add-ons for Office, we might be on the verge of going open-source. I believe this solely because the add-on is actually of simple functionality and it would be infinitely cheaper to make a similar program for OOo and not have to pay the outrageous M$ licenses. But it probably just a dream...
Ugly in linux? I will have to pay more attention when I get home but last I remember it looks practically the same on Linux (FC3) running laptop as it does on my Windows XP running desktop.
This goes back to arguments in a forum the other day. I do not want to have to turn off features. The idea in a consumer driven world is choice where you ADD not SUBTRACT. Its like saying, our model X comes with feature Y standard that has a service fee Z. Of course you can opt out of the Y and not pay service fee Z. I see these two in the same light because I like my freedom of choice to be me saying YES not having to constantly say NO...
Remind me how your little theory works? Under current systems most books that are readily available can easily be grabbed at a B&N, Borders, your library, or anywhere else you might find books...you can scan it easily enough and pick up from a few quick points whether it is crap or not. There is also a HUGE resource of book critics and book reviews, if you can weed out the crap over at Amazon.
The unknown and small authors really cannot complain. Their books already aren't selling, and this service makes them more searchable since title and keyword searches are often useless without actual book text. Also it puts words into context of the usage in the book making it much more useful. So for them it shouldn't be a huge concern.
Finally, to answer most peoples concerns about copyright usage, I think Google is going to take the Fair Use stance on this. By arguing they are simply making it easier for users to find out what books they want they are helping book sellers and publishers. In reality we are slowly heading towards a more self-publishing method in books because most small authors reach such niche markets in science and tech fields that no one wants to pay to publish them.
I think if Google has spent near as much on lawyers as they have on top quality R&D employees they may be able to fight this thing to an angle of possibly even changing the horrible copyright laws in the US that mostly benefit large companies with the "neverending" copyright.
I have seen these wonderful "telecine" and even the best are still noticeably camera captures. IT isn't flicker that points them out. It is horrid color bleed and particularly white outs where the brights over range the camera and blotch the whole screen out. Of course the occassional bobbing head or person walking completely in front of the camera is also fully entertaining. Finally, the sound is still fairly attrocious on most cam caps, and even if they are using tripods they really need to learn how to sit the damn this so it doesn't shake...or they are just dumb...Actually where are your numbers for digital equipment coming from? I think it is slightly more prolific then you might realize. Though I am not sure about the movies released on the format...
This boils down to just a few simple matters...
1. Video codecs are ever changing and there is no real standard for encoded video. Anyone who has downloaded videos knows that the different groups use different encodings, often, and that sometimes these encoding do weird things. This goes more so for older downloads of the show that is several years old, because most the encoding schemes that groups use have changed in that span. I am sure a good many people remember when VCD and the whole MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 were still big.
2. Space becomes an issue with video. You are no longer getting thousands of programs, typically, with 20 GB drives. In most good encodings today your average 30 min show is 175 MB and your average hour show is 350 MB. Movies range all over the place, but since they want to keep things CD friendly you will usually see 700 MB or 1400 MB movies. Of course the 1400 MB are usually split to two 700 MB.
3. There is also the issue of the CPU power necessary to rip and encode movies. Most home users can rip their CDs to MP3s without too much hassel, and without too much time. Movies take longer though, and people are often not willing to let their computers work (assuming they would even know how to do it) for that long of a time.
4. The lack of legitimate downloads available. This is key. Since broadband isn't reaching everyone as quickly as some would hope, the download time for legit videos would be enormous for many home users. Those with broadband could possibly benefit, but setting price points becomes an issue unto itself. Also you deal almost exclusively with studios here, since not many movies or TV shows have a single star who could/would sign over rights where the studio would not.
5. Finally, easy integration with easy technology is of course a must. The problem is there is not a wide variety of consumer grade media players available. Most media players are playing to a mostly niche market who openly look for the devices and have TONS of media to stream over a network. Without many big electronics makers building these units, there is not a lot of support for individual consumers who want to buy their products from the "trusted" Sony's and Toshiba's.
These reasons outline some of the biggest points preventing the small portable video players. I should probably also point out small screen size for some users is an issue. Personally at the $500 or so some of the current devices go for, I would much rather spend the extra $300-$500 to get a laptop and have extra functionality with the much larger screen size.
I think there is a long way to go before the portable video player becomes a truly wanted item that is actually marketable outside a niche market.,
Interesting enough, some people in the industries are upset at theaters, of course a theater insider then said stop making crap, for the low numbers and talked about dual releasing dvds and movies at the same time. Will it happen? Probably not, but the lower turn-around time is happening, even if it is slowly.
Seriously, how many pirated copies of TOP movies actually make their way into the world via cameras? I mean, most the cam caps I have seen are horrible, poor audio and poor video, nothing I want to watch, especially on an HDTV. The GOOD copies come from screener versions of the movies. Heck some even have the, if you are watching this call...
Also with new digital equipment at theaters I am starting to wonder if some people working these booths haven't found some new way to offload the movies and possibly make copies that way. It just seems that there are too many HIGH quality rips coming out to possibly be the result of geeks with cameras.
Finally, while ticket prices are arguably high, I do not believe the real problem is ticket prices so much as nothing people are wanting to see. Actually I am more annoyed with the theater to dvd turn around time. I would honestly prefer this get as short as 3 months even on GOOD movies. Once again the digital formats available make this transition a lot more feasible, and most the extras are filmed during production or shortly post-prod anyway. So the three months release time should be enough to clean them up and release great DVDs....
If only the intelligent and tech-saavy people were running these industries nowadays and not the old fossils who developed the industry into what it is...
I actually assert that mouse gestures are unimportant because they are still used by a minority. Seeing as IE is still the majority, and that by default (and possibly not at all, unless some "add-on" is available) does not support them, well a majority of people will never even see them.
Ummm, why is my integrated IRC client not persuasive? You forget that both bittorrent and IRC are used by a minority of online individuals. I know a great many people who are "saavy" in the computers and aren't overly aware of IRC. Is my point I prefer FF, yeah to some degree. Nobody gives a shit? Well you cared enough to read it...And then what makes the Parent to my post any better? Because he apparently likes Opera? I thought Forums were suppose to be about equal discuss and not about zealotry. Will I give Opera a try now that it is free? Probably, and we will see if I actually like it. But most the "features" spoken of by the PARENT to my post are not something I am looking for. And honestly I was just countering his points, you will find the majority of users don't need/want the Opera integrations because the majority of users are well...still using IE. And unless Opera can catch FF in usage, well then I guess that would show that even the majority-minority don't want/need them either...
God damn zealots...
Seriously, are we going to have some grand organization like the Book Publishing Association of America (BPAA) or the like now? Like the outdated methods the music industry uses, the trouble is even larger in the book industry. Thousands of books and authors are never read by millions of people because they are rare and obscure. There are research papers and knowledge to be grabbed that people cannot find because they are collecting dust in those dark libraries that are getting fewer and fewer visitors.
Simple fact is, that it is more convenient and more cost effective to distribute written matter online, and making it searchable is key to making it easy to find. Good ol' Dewey's system is beginning to show its age and things are not always easy to fine. Even the ISBN does not always work since a great many books never receive a number. Honestly, this should turn into a great thing for books and knowledge. If they truly secure it like they say they can, then we can expect sales of the obscure books to increase as people begin to discover informative works and educational pieces that have collected dust. More known works will also grab peoples attention now as they will be more easily accessible for searching as well...
Boy ain't technology a swell invention, if only people would embrace it like they said they would for years...