Popup blocking is a standard feature these days. It's hardly something that is worth advertising as a reason to switch to Firefox - I haven't tried any efforts from Microsoft for a while, but I'm sure even they have it by now.
Slashdot takes a lot of articles and stories from a large number of websites, the editors check them for errors and ensure quality. In theory at least.;)
It is a lot easier for Google to index one site than to hand pick articles from all over the web, and do the editing and quality control themselves.
Seeing as I am downloading it directly from portage, this will not be counted by their download counter. I guess that many of the other posters have forgotten this and have probably underestimated the number of unique users by excluding most Linux users.
This might be a good time to remind everyone that the patch has not yet been released to the public. The patch might make the browser unstable - further testing will be required. Depending on how long it takes before the patch makes it into the public version, Safari might not be the first browser to support Acid 2.
From yesterday's summary:
The patched Safari is not yet avaliable for public consumption. It is unknown when the patches will appear in a public version of Safari.
Id rather have it using an open, non-proprietary (either free or paid for) protocol than being free but having to listen to adverts and only working on the platforms that the company chooses to support.
Can the two alternatives co-exist, so that everyone is happy? Or do we have to have yet another monopoly situation?
If you want to send someone some confidential information (credit card numbers, passwords, business info, personal things) it does not matter how much security you have at your end if the receiver is using an old version of Windows and it is filled with spyware. The information is effectively compromised as soon as it leaves your machine.
Most people do not even know when their machine is compromised and continue using it while it is under someone else's control.
From a security perspective, it is not the patches which crash your computer or destroy data that are a problem. They are just annoying. Reinstall, restore your data from a back up, and you are ready to go again.
The problem comes from bugs with exploits in the wild, but no patches yet.
The vast majority of spam is sent by an American, is written in English, and is advertising for an American company. I do not see why suddenly this will change because of this news.
You can't impose a standard upon viruses. What will you do if a virus doesn't follow the standard? Find the author and punish them unless they fix it and release a new version that fully supports the standard?
The only way viruses will ever get standards is if the authors agree that they will get a considerable benefit by working together. I can't see that happening.
You make a good point that the tracker could be a bottleneck, but it is quite a small amount of traffic when you consider the bandwidths we are talking about. It is possible to set up more than one tracker for the same file, to spread the load if it does become a problem.
As for the upload/download speed disparity: you you are assuming that people are not going to share when their download is finished (or that they are downloading 24/7 ?).
BitTorrent does not encourage people to share because when you close the window, it stops sharing. Most people probably do not leave files sharing very long after the download has completed. EMule is probably a better example, since it can minimise to the system tray and continue sharing all your files without getting in the way.
The S-shaped pieces are also easy to pack, apart from the first row. Once you have built a foundation row, the rest of the pieces fit perfectly on top:
% O % O % %%OO%%OO%% X%-OX%-OX% XX--XX--XX _X_-_X_-_X
With peer-to-peer, the more popular a download is, the faster it can be downloaded. The limit is the speed of the internet connections of those trading file pieces. There is no central bottleneck. With a few high speed connections uploading, everyone's downloads will be faster.
Rich? They aren't trying to make money as much money as possible off the individuals. They are trying to choose normal people - people that you can identify with. Then you will think that maybe next time it will be you.
As long as they can make these people miserable and force them to make a public statement about how they will never do it again, it doesn't matter how much money they make from it. The terror tactics will make them far more money as everyone else starts buying instead of pirating.
If your vendor isn't fixing the problems with your operating system, maybe you should complain to your vendor, switch to another, or just live with the problems.
I know one thing: whining on Slashdot certainly is *not* going to help fix the problem:).
Linux was not developed in response to Windows. It would still exist if Windows didn't.
Competition between products is good for improving all of them, but Microsoft have done a good job at making sure there is as little competition as possible.
If Windows didn't exist we would probably have a different monopoly instead. There are laws against abusing monopolies, but for whatever reasons, they are not being enforced.
Yes, email would still work even if Windows did not exist. Why do you think that it would not? There are lots of good email clients around, to suit all tastes and preferences.
Just because actions with evil intent may have unintentionally created a few positive side-effects, it doesn't mean that those actions should go unpunished.
Slashdot Mirror
Just two stories later, 'Your Rights Online: The SCO Trial Through A New Lens'.
l ?tid=123&tid=136&tid=88&tid=155
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/04/29/1950245.shtm
Popup blocking is a standard feature these days. It's hardly something that is worth advertising as a reason to switch to Firefox - I haven't tried any efforts from Microsoft for a while, but I'm sure even they have it by now.
From the (recently updated!) website:
50,053,696
(actual number, does not include ugprades)
Slashdot takes a lot of articles and stories from a large number of websites, the editors check them for errors and ensure quality. In theory at least. ;)
It is a lot easier for Google to index one site than to hand pick articles from all over the web, and do the editing and quality control themselves.
OK, I checked and you are right. From the ebuild:
/ fi refox/releases/${MY_PV}/source/firefox-${MY_PV}-so urce.tar.bz2"
SRC_URI="http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org
Sorry! But I bet some distros host their own copies?
Seeing as I am downloading it directly from portage, this will not be counted by their download counter. I guess that many of the other posters have forgotten this and have probably underestimated the number of unique users by excluding most Linux users.
This might be a good time to remind everyone that the patch has not yet been released to the public. The patch might make the browser unstable - further testing will be required. Depending on how long it takes before the patch makes it into the public version, Safari might not be the first browser to support Acid 2.
From yesterday's summary:
The patched Safari is not yet avaliable for public consumption. It is unknown when the patches will appear in a public version of Safari.
Id rather have it using an open, non-proprietary (either free or paid for) protocol than being free but having to listen to adverts and only working on the platforms that the company chooses to support.
Can the two alternatives co-exist, so that everyone is happy? Or do we have to have yet another monopoly situation?
Have you checked out Mute? It implements an anonymous P2P network, as you describe.
http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
If you want to send someone some confidential information (credit card numbers, passwords, business info, personal things) it does not matter how much security you have at your end if the receiver is using an old version of Windows and it is filled with spyware. The information is effectively compromised as soon as it leaves your machine.
Most people do not even know when their machine is compromised and continue using it while it is under someone else's control.
From a security perspective, it is not the patches which crash your computer or destroy data that are a problem. They are just annoying. Reinstall, restore your data from a back up, and you are ready to go again.
The problem comes from bugs with exploits in the wild, but no patches yet.
Unpatched IE vulnerabilities
Unpatched Windows XP Vulnerabilities
$ python -c "import random; print random.randrange(10**13,10**14) - random.randrange(10**5, 10**6)"
The difference is: 87446809985504.
The vast majority of spam is sent by an American, is written in English, and is advertising for an American company. I do not see why suddenly this will change because of this news.
I am guessing that it's part of a Google Bomb. But it doesn't work yet.
You can't impose a standard upon viruses. What will you do if a virus doesn't follow the standard? Find the author and punish them unless they fix it and release a new version that fully supports the standard?
The only way viruses will ever get standards is if the authors agree that they will get a considerable benefit by working together. I can't see that happening.
You make a good point that the tracker could be a bottleneck, but it is quite a small amount of traffic when you consider the bandwidths we are talking about. It is possible to set up more than one tracker for the same file, to spread the load if it does become a problem.
As for the upload/download speed disparity: you you are assuming that people are not going to share when their download is finished (or that they are downloading 24/7 ?).
BitTorrent does not encourage people to share because when you close the window, it stops sharing. Most people probably do not leave files sharing very long after the download has completed. EMule is probably a better example, since it can minimise to the system tray and continue sharing all your files without getting in the way.
The S-shaped pieces are also easy to pack, apart from the first row. Once you have built a foundation row, the rest of the pieces fit perfectly on top:
% O % O %
%%OO%%OO%%
X%-OX%-OX%
XX--XX--XX
_X_-_X_-_X
From portage:
[ I] games-puzzle/bastet (0.41): a simple, evil, ncurses-based Tetris(R) clone
Seems like someone get 19 lines playing this game : http://happypenguin.org/show?bastet.
Can anyone beat that?
With peer-to-peer, the more popular a download is, the faster it can be downloaded. The limit is the speed of the internet connections of those trading file pieces. There is no central bottleneck. With a few high speed connections uploading, everyone's downloads will be faster.
I hope these works are not going to be reprinted without fully compensating the original authors, and their descendants.
Rich? They aren't trying to make money as much money as possible off the individuals. They are trying to choose normal people - people that you can identify with. Then you will think that maybe next time it will be you.
As long as they can make these people miserable and force them to make a public statement about how they will never do it again, it doesn't matter how much money they make from it. The terror tactics will make them far more money as everyone else starts buying instead of pirating.
Lord knows, MS ain't gonna do it.
:).
If your vendor isn't fixing the problems with your operating system, maybe you should complain to your vendor, switch to another, or just live with the problems.
I know one thing: whining on Slashdot certainly is *not* going to help fix the problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightbulb
without [Microsoft] where would Linux be?
Linux was not developed in response to Windows. It would still exist if Windows didn't.
Competition between products is good for improving all of them, but Microsoft have done a good job at making sure there is as little competition as possible.
If Windows didn't exist we would probably have a different monopoly instead. There are laws against abusing monopolies, but for whatever reasons, they are not being enforced.
Yes, email would still work even if Windows did not exist. Why do you think that it would not? There are lots of good email clients around, to suit all tastes and preferences.
Just because actions with evil intent may have unintentionally created a few positive side-effects, it doesn't mean that those actions should go unpunished.