"You do realize that you're going to be remembered as "that guy who quit because he didn't want to use Visual Studio"?"
I hear about this guy who quit using a whole bunch of different Unix programs just because he didn't like the license conditions. He was such a stubborn fool that he ended up writing his own development tools and applications. Now, years later, he and his friends are still not done writing their own OS. Talk about taking the hard road.
On the other hand, this guy is really happy doing what he's doing. And some people seem to think his ideas aren't entirely cracked. In fact, the MacArthur Foundation gave him a few million bucks some years back so he could continue doing his own thing.
"Especially since they're still growing, and incredibly quickly. They picked up about a percentage point a month two months straight. Since it started that at about 4%, they were seeing 25% *monthly* growth. Good god, how long could that have possibly continued?"
Thank you so much for that. I was waiting to see how long it would take for someone to point out something obvious even to a mathematically challenged Arts major like me:
A steady rate of increase will result in lower percentage growth every month.
The story should be, therefore, that after a rocketing rise in popularity, Firefox growth is still going strong, and IE is dropping noticeably.
This is not out of step with other nations, either. In Canada, the law states that anyone finding child pornography is legally obligated to report it. There are heavy penalties for failing to do so.
Finally, something other than ill-informed speculation.
All the time I was reading these comments, I kept waiting for someone to say, 'Uh, why don't we just ask the aboriginals why they ran away? Sheesh, they're not lab rats, they can speak for themselves.'
I'm currently living in the South Pacific, a part of the world that has fairly frequent earthquakes and the occasional tsunami. The people here have a saying that could be translated as 'When the ocean runs dry, run away some place high.'
The last time a tsunami came through this area (in 2001), friends tell me, one man walked out to pick up some of the stranded fish. Everyone else in the village was yelling at him to follow them uphill. When my friends told me this story, it was clear that they thought this guy was stupid or insane - or both.
People in India know not to pet the pretty black snakes. In the Arctic they know when it's safe to walk on the ice. In the South Pacific they know that a dry lagoon does not mean free fish time. Is it beyond comprehension that people in Indonesia might know that, too?
"You're absolutely right. I should have been more clear about that in my comment. Everybody's got an agenda. The problem arises when people try to hide their agenda, or to pretend that they don't have one."
Thank you for this. The discussion improves immensely when we get to focus on facts, and trust other people to draw the appropriate conclusions, even if - surprise! - they don't agree with ours. I agree that right-wing bloggers have made as effective use of community research as the left. Arguably, it's been more effective than the left. I don't have to like this information - and for the record I don't - but I do have a responsibility to accept that the data seems to point to that.
"The bloggers who attacked him, on the other hand, adopted high-minded language about bias and the free press when what they really meant was, 'This guy supports stuff that we dislike, so we're looking for a reason to get him ejected from the game.'"
I will grant that a number of people were partisan and nasty in their characterisation of Gannon/Guckert. They've shown the same knee-jerk, unthinking prejudice that others have shown in different partisan causes. And to be clear, I don't like it any time someone stoops to this.
But your statement above misses an important distinction: While there were some who showed little sympathy and much malice, they were not the ones driving this investigation. If you trace the history of this investigation (especially the diaries of SusanG, who originated the project), you'll see that those who were involved in the actual research work were motivated because they saw what appeared to be a link between Gannon/Guckert and the 'outing' of Valerie Plame.
Blowing a CIA agent's cover is a felony offense, and bears investigating. The appearance of complicity between the White House and Gannon/Guckert make the target attractive for the lefties, no doubt, but if you check the diaries you'll see that they were not interested in speculation that did not arise from, or result in, verifiable proof. They were, in effect, trying to rise above the partisan brawl with something incontrovertible.
So far, they have achieved some, but not all, of this objective.
There are any number of partisan types who have seized upon different aspects of this affair and tried to use them for their own ends. Kos himself seems to think that it's fair game questioning the guy's sexual preference, something which the research team (and I) reject out of hand. Some have tried to use the photo of him posed in his underwear to ridicule him. I think that kind of thing appeals to the lowest instincts, and reject that, too.
BUT, having looked carefully at the evidence brought forward, I agree that it points to Gannon/Guckert being very near the heart of the Valerie Plame scandal, one which is easily as serious as Rather using forged documents. Partisanship notwithstanding, I think anyone who outs an undercover operative should be made to stand trial. What the people conducting this research are trying to establish is who exactly did that.
"Sigh. Let's at least be men enough to drop the pretense, okay? These people are digging around trying to find dirt with which to damage the Bush administration."
Funny, what you like to call 'dirt' others call FACT.
Re-read my post - I don't give a flying feather what someone's motivation is as long as they don't lie to me. Gannon/Guckert lied and misrepresented and might have committed a felony in the process. SusanG and company didn't. How do I know? I checked the research myself. You could too, if you really wanted to.
"Gannon (or Guckert, if you prefer) resigned over links to inappropriate pornography. These links were uncovered during what basically amounted to a witch hunt."
It's true that some people have crowed about the hypocrisy of an openly right-wing pundit being associated with gay sex sites. It's also true that some people have said that this hypocrisy is the story. BUT it's also true that the people doing the original research have decried this time and again. They've said repeatedly that this is not the story.
Of course, if you'd read the group's press release, you'd already know that there is not one word about the gay sex sites. Some cranks may be crowing about a photo of Gannon/Guckert in tighty-whiteys, but the people who are doing the actual research are deliberately not. They seem to think it's enough that a guy with two days' training, working for a news organisation that was four days old should be able to get a White House press pass using a false name. They also find it strange that on many occasions 'Gannon' wrote articles in which text lifted directly from Republican press briefings appeared unattributed. Most importantly, they worry that he might have been used to leak a story that resulted in an undercover CIA operative being outed. That last one is a felony offense, and is punishable by hard time in a federal prison.
For some small-minded people it's about the gay sex sites. For most, though, it's about the systematic subversion of the Free Press.
"First, they blew it because Mary Mapes was following an agenda, not a story."
Oh, for crying out loud. Can we please stop with this 'agenda' thing? The issue is not and has never been about agendas or bias. Why do we care for a second whether a person is a right- or left-winger? The only thing any of us should be caring about is THE TRUTH.
Were Mapes and Rather lazy when they researched the TANG story? Yes! They had lots of valid evidence but they allowed it to be tainted by an obviously forged document. This document completely discredited the rest of the work they did.
Is it unusual that a man with two weeks of training from a political 'think-tank', belonging to a news organisation that had only been publishing for a few weeks at the time, gets accredited to the White House under a false name? You bet is.
Does it seem even stranger that this neophyte is one of the first Washington journalists to find out who Valerie Plame is? Yep.
Can we say more than that? NO!. Nothing is proven yet. We have evidence of problems, and SusanG and company at DKos are looking into it because the mainstream media won't. That is at one and the same time a good and a bad thing. It's good because it's empowering to us that we can do it; it's bad because the mainstream media should have made a story of this two years ago.
We're only doing this investigation because the the media don't seem to care about the truth any more. This is a terrible thing, and we have the tools to fix it. I suggest, therefore that we stow allegations and innuendo, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.
"... a pair of students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology registered "microsoft.com" with Verisign, using the Russian Cyrillic letters "c" and "o". Even though it is a completely different domain, the two display identically (the article uses the term "homograph"). "
Tarnation, lookit what the Intarweb is becoming to these days. People using furrin languages to make homographic websites! An innocent child's soul will be turned from the path of good just by looking at that there homographic material. Somebody oughta make a law or sump'n, outlaw those homographers and send 'em back to Satan where they came from!
"Don't forget a section on avoiding Trojans. Although they sometimes help with L.U.B.E., they can often get in the way of a successful test."
Actually, you only need to worry about defective trojans. They can spawn unwanted child processes, draining your resources until the whole system crashes.
"I've often wondered if a lot of the vitriol comes not from genuine hatred of him and his products but out of envy that he and his company are one of the most successful and richest companies in the world."
Ummm, I don't know about the rest of the people here, but I'd say it's the third-rate software and criminal behaviour that bother me the most.
I do find it amusing, though, to imagine a convicted felon who isn't even good at what he does looking at the booing, hissing crowds and saying, 'Oh, they're just jealous.'
I once became peripherally involved in a child porn case after finding some photos on a computer hard drive - in a folder named 'Family photos' no less.
I looked at them long enough to determine that they were real, then took the entire disk to the cops. To this day, I'm haunted by the images. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for the technicians who 'cleaned' these images to work on them for the hours required. I imagine they didn't get much sleep at night.
There's a good reason to make the images obviously imperfect, too - it ensures that noone mistakes these for complete fabrications. I only hope that at some time in the future one or two overzealous officers don't hire a Worth1000/Fark-level photoshopper to add things in to an image just because they have an axe to grind.
"Microsoft is probably guilty of deliberate neglect in the past few years with IE, but don't be so quick to attribute to malice what can be explained otherwise."
Honestly, this assertion defies logic and history. Either poster is terribly uninformed (and gullible) or this is one of those hip, irony-laden posts that does exactly what it says others should not.
Anyway, allow me to provide one tiny counter-example: At the 1999 World Wide Web Conference in Toronto, I attended one of the first formal presentations of 'Embrace and Extend', Microsoft's new policy of making nice with standards bodies by crushing them underfoot with incompatibilities.
I attended one round table discussion there in which some of the leading lights of the Web stood up one after another and explained to Microsoft why this policy was dangerous and wrong. Every time the MS reps made a point it was patiently and clearly explained that embracing standards is good, but extending them is not friendly to others.
I saw them lie. I looked in their faces and I saw that they knew they were lying - but they still kept on with their cracked logic, hoping that one person in the room might bite.
And now you try to tell me that 'Embrace and Extend' was a misunderstanding, an accident, an oversight? It's an accident all right - the kind of accident a debtor has when his loanshark pays him a visit.
"No Canadians would refer to themselves as Americans...."
That's for the same reason you might be quick to distinguish yourself from someone else carrying your name: "Heh, uh, no not THAT Trump. NO relation. In fact, I mostly use my mother's name Gnizprtzky. It's just easier."
Somewhat related: The following appeared in a 1970s edition of National Lampoon entitled 'Canada - The Retarded Giant on our Doorstep':
"i am no fan of microsoft, but i still find this rather harsh. if the article were meant to be journalistic, this would SO not qualify for an objective perspective!"
I think you mean the author isn't being neutral. In human experience, objectivity does not require that you have no opinion; it only requires that you base that opinion on fact, and that you be ready to revise that opinion when faced with new information.
Let's consider the facts that lead the author to write what he does:
Kneecap-busting: "DOS doesn't ship until Lotus doesn't run."
Air-supply-cutting: MS used exactly that phrase in describing their strategy to release IE free as a counter to Netscape's threat.
Baby-knifing: The number of emerging software companies that got killed by MS' decision to roll new functionality into the OS is very large.
Make no mistake, MS doesn't want any other large software companies on its block, and is perfectly happy to resort to whatever techniques are required to achieve this. This extends to criminal behaviour. The language the author uses is strong, but it is effective because it echoes in hyperbolic fashion the exact tactics that MS uses to maintain its monopoly.
"But I think google will not even have ads on thier VoIP, they are thinking bigger:"
Or, they're thinking simpler. What do you do when you're talking on your home phone? You idle the time away, gazing abstractedly around you.
I worked for a VOIP company who shall remain nameless. In that time, our business unit beta-tested a VOIP handset that had a fairly functional web interface built into it. The early versions had monochrome display, but the newer ones had colour. They were fed by standard CGI scripts.
It's fairly easy these days to do text to speech, and with a display on the handset, you could be served up text ads as you talk. They would be about as unobtrusive as their current set of web ads are, and people would be getting their phone calls - anywhere in the world - for free.
If that's not a viable business model, I don't know what is.
"I get so irritated every time I hear this conversation. There's no chance of convincing John Q. Public that a hacker is a guy who takes things apart to find out how they work. [...] Just let the argument die, we lost a LONG time ago!"
The reduction of the word to have only a negative connotation casts a pall over all unorthodox computer activity. I believe that letting that attitude prevail will ultimately cause more trouble than it already has.
I don't know about you, but I quite like the effect I have when I tell people I'm hacking on something. It's probably the same look that an uptight suburbian gets when one black person calls another 'nigger', or when a gay man calls another 'fag'.
There's value in forcing people to remember that nothing in life can be safely labelled and put away, no matter how much they want it to be that way.
"I hope that this won't negatively impact my future, maybe I'll get lucky and the admissions officers at the schools I'm applying to won't read the news today."
No problem, just show up for your interview in a t-shirt with 'CAUTION - MAY CONTAIN THEORY' written across the front. They'll love you.
"The freedom of speech is not a freedom to be a shithead."
Freedom of expression is absolutely the freedom to be a shithead. It's also the freedom to tell someone else he's acting like a shithead. In fact, it also consists of accepting that people can present their uninformed and unenlightened opinions as gospel truth - and we should be thankful for that, because without it, slashdot couldn't exist. 8^)
The only limitation on freedom of expression is on the actions that arise from it. I can lie to you all I want, but if I use those lies to get you to write me a cheque for $10,000, I might find myself subject to felony charges.
While certain US laws allow for prosecution of those who disturb the peace, I for one am ashamed that some construe them to include a couple of old fogeys telling jokes on the courthouse steps.
I was about to take the slashdot editors to task for their ambiguous use of 'Malicious' in the title. I suspected that it was a not-so-clever bash at Microsoft.
Then I realised: that's the name Microsoft gave to it. Man, we knew couldn't write good software, but now they seem intent on proving they can't write proper English either.
Quick, someone, explain the concept of the adjective to the MS Marketing dept.
I'm pretty sure he's trolling, too. Because the guerrilla group membership, grenades, land mines, ammonium nitrate stockpiles, pirate radio spouting insurrection and various other nasty things are at least somewhat mitigated by the fact that he helped liberate millions of people from over a century of racist oppression.
"Actually, companies usually don't take any different stance when they're notified of their bugs before public disclosure. But at least that gives them the chance. So when published, the disclosure leaves them no recourse to this diseased retaliation; they are more pressured to fix it instead of making matters worse by killing the messenger. In this case, the messenger (apparently) made matters worse, by disclosing publicly (including bad guys) before giving the company a chance to fix the problem. That is a crucial distinction between his somewhat reckless actions and those of other whistleblowers."
That's a really decent analysis. Thank you for that. The distinction between acting responsibly and acting foolishly is often a little difficult to discern, especially at first glance.
The thing that upsets me, though, is that apparently foolhardiness by the whistle blower carries a penalty of over USD 1 million and potential jail time, whereas the (arguably criminal) negligence of software makers seems to carry no cost at all.
Slashdot Mirror
"You do realize that you're going to be remembered as "that guy who quit because he didn't want to use Visual Studio"?"
I hear about this guy who quit using a whole bunch of different Unix programs just because he didn't like the license conditions. He was such a stubborn fool that he ended up writing his own development tools and applications. Now, years later, he and his friends are still not done writing their own OS. Talk about taking the hard road.
On the other hand, this guy is really happy doing what he's doing. And some people seem to think his ideas aren't entirely cracked. In fact, the MacArthur Foundation gave him a few million bucks some years back so he could continue doing his own thing.
His name, of course, is Richard Stallman.
"Especially since they're still growing, and incredibly quickly. They picked up about a percentage point a month two months straight. Since it started that at about 4%, they were seeing 25% *monthly* growth. Good god, how long could that have possibly continued?"
Thank you so much for that. I was waiting to see how long it would take for someone to point out something obvious even to a mathematically challenged Arts major like me:
A steady rate of increase will result in lower percentage growth every month.
The story should be, therefore, that after a rocketing rise in popularity, Firefox growth is still going strong, and IE is dropping noticeably.
This is not out of step with other nations, either. In Canada, the law states that anyone finding child pornography is legally obligated to report it. There are heavy penalties for failing to do so.
Finally, something other than ill-informed speculation.
All the time I was reading these comments, I kept waiting for someone to say, 'Uh, why don't we just ask the aboriginals why they ran away? Sheesh, they're not lab rats, they can speak for themselves.'
I'm currently living in the South Pacific, a part of the world that has fairly frequent earthquakes and the occasional tsunami. The people here have a saying that could be translated as 'When the ocean runs dry, run away some place high.'
The last time a tsunami came through this area (in 2001), friends tell me, one man walked out to pick up some of the stranded fish. Everyone else in the village was yelling at him to follow them uphill. When my friends told me this story, it was clear that they thought this guy was stupid or insane - or both.
People in India know not to pet the pretty black snakes. In the Arctic they know when it's safe to walk on the ice. In the South Pacific they know that a dry lagoon does not mean free fish time. Is it beyond comprehension that people in Indonesia might know that, too?
"You're absolutely right. I should have been more clear about that in my comment. Everybody's got an agenda. The problem arises when people try to hide their agenda, or to pretend that they don't have one."
Thank you for this. The discussion improves immensely when we get to focus on facts, and trust other people to draw the appropriate conclusions, even if - surprise! - they don't agree with ours. I agree that right-wing bloggers have made as effective use of community research as the left. Arguably, it's been more effective than the left. I don't have to like this information - and for the record I don't - but I do have a responsibility to accept that the data seems to point to that.
"The bloggers who attacked him, on the other hand, adopted high-minded language about bias and the free press when what they really meant was, 'This guy supports stuff that we dislike, so we're looking for a reason to get him ejected from the game.'"
I will grant that a number of people were partisan and nasty in their characterisation of Gannon/Guckert. They've shown the same knee-jerk, unthinking prejudice that others have shown in different partisan causes. And to be clear, I don't like it any time someone stoops to this.
But your statement above misses an important distinction: While there were some who showed little sympathy and much malice, they were not the ones driving this investigation. If you trace the history of this investigation (especially the diaries of SusanG, who originated the project), you'll see that those who were involved in the actual research work were motivated because they saw what appeared to be a link between Gannon/Guckert and the 'outing' of Valerie Plame.
Blowing a CIA agent's cover is a felony offense, and bears investigating. The appearance of complicity between the White House and Gannon/Guckert make the target attractive for the lefties, no doubt, but if you check the diaries you'll see that they were not interested in speculation that did not arise from, or result in, verifiable proof. They were, in effect, trying to rise above the partisan brawl with something incontrovertible.
So far, they have achieved some, but not all, of this objective.
There are any number of partisan types who have seized upon different aspects of this affair and tried to use them for their own ends. Kos himself seems to think that it's fair game questioning the guy's sexual preference, something which the research team (and I) reject out of hand. Some have tried to use the photo of him posed in his underwear to ridicule him. I think that kind of thing appeals to the lowest instincts, and reject that, too.
BUT, having looked carefully at the evidence brought forward, I agree that it points to Gannon/Guckert being very near the heart of the Valerie Plame scandal, one which is easily as serious as Rather using forged documents. Partisanship notwithstanding, I think anyone who outs an undercover operative should be made to stand trial. What the people conducting this research are trying to establish is who exactly did that.
"Sigh. Let's at least be men enough to drop the pretense, okay? These people are digging around trying to find dirt with which to damage the Bush administration."
Funny, what you like to call 'dirt' others call FACT.
Re-read my post - I don't give a flying feather what someone's motivation is as long as they don't lie to me. Gannon/Guckert lied and misrepresented and might have committed a felony in the process. SusanG and company didn't. How do I know? I checked the research myself. You could too, if you really wanted to.
"Gannon (or Guckert, if you prefer) resigned over links to inappropriate pornography. These links were uncovered during what basically amounted to a witch hunt."
It's true that some people have crowed about the hypocrisy of an openly right-wing pundit being associated with gay sex sites. It's also true that some people have said that this hypocrisy is the story. BUT it's also true that the people doing the original research have decried this time and again. They've said repeatedly that this is not the story.
Of course, if you'd read the group's press release, you'd already know that there is not one word about the gay sex sites. Some cranks may be crowing about a photo of Gannon/Guckert in tighty-whiteys, but the people who are doing the actual research are deliberately not. They seem to think it's enough that a guy with two days' training, working for a news organisation that was four days old should be able to get a White House press pass using a false name. They also find it strange that on many occasions 'Gannon' wrote articles in which text lifted directly from Republican press briefings appeared unattributed. Most importantly, they worry that he might have been used to leak a story that resulted in an undercover CIA operative being outed. That last one is a felony offense, and is punishable by hard time in a federal prison.
For some small-minded people it's about the gay sex sites. For most, though, it's about the systematic subversion of the Free Press.
"First, they blew it because Mary Mapes was following an agenda, not a story."
Oh, for crying out loud. Can we please stop with this 'agenda' thing? The issue is not and has never been about agendas or bias. Why do we care for a second whether a person is a right- or left-winger? The only thing any of us should be caring about is THE TRUTH.
Were Mapes and Rather lazy when they researched the TANG story? Yes! They had lots of valid evidence but they allowed it to be tainted by an obviously forged document. This document completely discredited the rest of the work they did.
Is it unusual that a man with two weeks of training from a political 'think-tank', belonging to a news organisation that had only been publishing for a few weeks at the time, gets accredited to the White House under a false name? You bet is.
Does it seem even stranger that this neophyte is one of the first Washington journalists to find out who Valerie Plame is? Yep.
Can we say more than that? NO!. Nothing is proven yet. We have evidence of problems, and SusanG and company at DKos are looking into it because the mainstream media won't. That is at one and the same time a good and a bad thing. It's good because it's empowering to us that we can do it; it's bad because the mainstream media should have made a story of this two years ago.
We're only doing this investigation because the the media don't seem to care about the truth any more. This is a terrible thing, and we have the tools to fix it. I suggest, therefore that we stow allegations and innuendo, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.
"... a pair of students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology registered "microsoft.com" with Verisign, using the Russian Cyrillic letters "c" and "o". Even though it is a completely different domain, the two display identically (the article uses the term "homograph"). "
Tarnation, lookit what the Intarweb is becoming to these days. People using furrin languages to make homographic websites! An innocent child's soul will be turned from the path of good just by looking at that there homographic material. Somebody oughta make a law or sump'n, outlaw those homographers and send 'em back to Satan where they came from!
"Don't forget a section on avoiding Trojans. Although they sometimes help with L.U.B.E., they can often get in the way of a successful test."
Actually, you only need to worry about defective trojans. They can spawn unwanted child processes, draining your resources until the whole system crashes.
"I've often wondered if a lot of the vitriol comes not from genuine hatred of him and his products but out of envy that he and his company are one of the most successful and richest companies in the world."
Ummm, I don't know about the rest of the people here, but I'd say it's the third-rate software and criminal behaviour that bother me the most.
I do find it amusing, though, to imagine a convicted felon who isn't even good at what he does looking at the booing, hissing crowds and saying, 'Oh, they're just jealous.'
I once became peripherally involved in a child porn case after finding some photos on a computer hard drive - in a folder named 'Family photos' no less.
I looked at them long enough to determine that they were real, then took the entire disk to the cops. To this day, I'm haunted by the images. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for the technicians who 'cleaned' these images to work on them for the hours required. I imagine they didn't get much sleep at night.
There's a good reason to make the images obviously imperfect, too - it ensures that noone mistakes these for complete fabrications. I only hope that at some time in the future one or two overzealous officers don't hire a Worth1000/Fark-level photoshopper to add things in to an image just because they have an axe to grind.
"Microsoft is probably guilty of deliberate neglect in the past few years with IE, but don't be so quick to attribute to malice what can be explained otherwise."
Honestly, this assertion defies logic and history. Either poster is terribly uninformed (and gullible) or this is one of those hip, irony-laden posts that does exactly what it says others should not.
Anyway, allow me to provide one tiny counter-example: At the 1999 World Wide Web Conference in Toronto, I attended one of the first formal presentations of 'Embrace and Extend', Microsoft's new policy of making nice with standards bodies by crushing them underfoot with incompatibilities.
I attended one round table discussion there in which some of the leading lights of the Web stood up one after another and explained to Microsoft why this policy was dangerous and wrong. Every time the MS reps made a point it was patiently and clearly explained that embracing standards is good, but extending them is not friendly to others.
I saw them lie. I looked in their faces and I saw that they knew they were lying - but they still kept on with their cracked logic, hoping that one person in the room might bite.
And now you try to tell me that 'Embrace and Extend' was a misunderstanding, an accident, an oversight? It's an accident all right - the kind of accident a debtor has when his loanshark pays him a visit.
" I've got a similar story that's similar "
"I love those similar stories that are similar. :)"
Why oh why did I splurge all my mod points on sensible things? Parent and grandparent are just screaming for a -1: Redundant.
Feel free to mod me up funny though....
"No Canadians would refer to themselves as Americans...."
That's for the same reason you might be quick to distinguish yourself from someone else carrying your name: "Heh, uh, no not THAT Trump. NO relation. In fact, I mostly use my mother's name Gnizprtzky. It's just easier."
Somewhat related: The following appeared in a 1970s edition of National Lampoon entitled 'Canada - The Retarded Giant on our Doorstep':
Q: Why is Canada always pink on the map?
A: From embarrassment
"i am no fan of microsoft, but i still find this rather harsh. if the article were meant to be journalistic, this would SO not qualify for an objective perspective!"
I think you mean the author isn't being neutral. In human experience, objectivity does not require that you have no opinion; it only requires that you base that opinion on fact, and that you be ready to revise that opinion when faced with new information.
Let's consider the facts that lead the author to write what he does:
Kneecap-busting: "DOS doesn't ship until Lotus doesn't run."
Air-supply-cutting: MS used exactly that phrase in describing their strategy to release IE free as a counter to Netscape's threat.
Baby-knifing: The number of emerging software companies that got killed by MS' decision to roll new functionality into the OS is very large.
Make no mistake, MS doesn't want any other large software companies on its block, and is perfectly happy to resort to whatever techniques are required to achieve this. This extends to criminal behaviour. The language the author uses is strong, but it is effective because it echoes in hyperbolic fashion the exact tactics that MS uses to maintain its monopoly.
"But I think google will not even have ads on thier VoIP, they are thinking bigger:"
Or, they're thinking simpler. What do you do when you're talking on your home phone? You idle the time away, gazing abstractedly around you.
I worked for a VOIP company who shall remain nameless. In that time, our business unit beta-tested a VOIP handset that had a fairly functional web interface built into it. The early versions had monochrome display, but the newer ones had colour. They were fed by standard CGI scripts.
It's fairly easy these days to do text to speech, and with a display on the handset, you could be served up text ads as you talk. They would be about as unobtrusive as their current set of web ads are, and people would be getting their phone calls - anywhere in the world - for free.
If that's not a viable business model, I don't know what is.
"I get so irritated every time I hear this conversation. There's no chance of convincing John Q. Public that a hacker is a guy who takes things apart to find out how they work. [...] Just let the argument die, we lost a LONG time ago!"
The reduction of the word to have only a negative connotation casts a pall over all unorthodox computer activity. I believe that letting that attitude prevail will ultimately cause more trouble than it already has.
I don't know about you, but I quite like the effect I have when I tell people I'm hacking on something. It's probably the same look that an uptight suburbian gets when one black person calls another 'nigger', or when a gay man calls another 'fag'.
There's value in forcing people to remember that nothing in life can be safely labelled and put away, no matter how much they want it to be that way.
"I hope that this won't negatively impact my future, maybe I'll get lucky and the admissions officers at the schools I'm applying to won't read the news today."
No problem, just show up for your interview in a t-shirt with 'CAUTION - MAY CONTAIN THEORY' written across the front. They'll love you.
"The freedom of speech is not a freedom to be a shithead."
Freedom of expression is absolutely the freedom to be a shithead. It's also the freedom to tell someone else he's acting like a shithead. In fact, it also consists of accepting that people can present their uninformed and unenlightened opinions as gospel truth - and we should be thankful for that, because without it, slashdot couldn't exist. 8^)
The only limitation on freedom of expression is on the actions that arise from it. I can lie to you all I want, but if I use those lies to get you to write me a cheque for $10,000, I might find myself subject to felony charges.
While certain US laws allow for prosecution of those who disturb the peace, I for one am ashamed that some construe them to include a couple of old fogeys telling jokes on the courthouse steps.
And someone else explain 'irony' to those slashdot readers who don't get the joke. 8^)
I was about to take the slashdot editors to task for their ambiguous use of 'Malicious' in the title. I suspected that it was a not-so-clever bash at Microsoft.
Then I realised: that's the name Microsoft gave to it. Man, we knew couldn't write good software, but now they seem intent on proving they can't write proper English either.
Quick, someone, explain the concept of the adjective to the MS Marketing dept.
He's referring to Nelson Mandela.
I'm pretty sure he's trolling, too. Because the guerrilla group membership, grenades, land mines, ammonium nitrate stockpiles, pirate radio spouting insurrection and various other nasty things are at least somewhat mitigated by the fact that he helped liberate millions of people from over a century of racist oppression.
"Actually, companies usually don't take any different stance when they're notified of their bugs before public disclosure. But at least that gives them the chance. So when published, the disclosure leaves them no recourse to this diseased retaliation; they are more pressured to fix it instead of making matters worse by killing the messenger. In this case, the messenger (apparently) made matters worse, by disclosing publicly (including bad guys) before giving the company a chance to fix the problem. That is a crucial distinction between his somewhat reckless actions and those of other whistleblowers."
That's a really decent analysis. Thank you for that. The distinction between acting responsibly and acting foolishly is often a little difficult to discern, especially at first glance.
The thing that upsets me, though, is that apparently foolhardiness by the whistle blower carries a penalty of over USD 1 million and potential jail time, whereas the (arguably criminal) negligence of software makers seems to carry no cost at all.
Stories like this are just the Slashdot editors' way of warning us to shut up already about the Firefox rendering errors on this site. 8^)