Actually, Toys "R" Us (tm) does vigorously and successfully, yet at the same time sanely, defend their trademark of the 'x R Us' name - a formula which I believe they have a great deal more right to than the 'x for Dummies' formula. TRU, however, only goes after people selling product under names falling under that formula. That is to say - people who are honestly infringing on their trademark. Weird, huh?
Actually, for many years those designs were openly given. The AM386 was the first AMD Intel-compatible chip which was not manufactured as a redundant Intel chip, I believe.
Yeah, I love Toon. That's fine. And maybe the fact that he has relatively limited experience developing for the system's he's writing about doesn't invalidate what he has to say. I should point out that I have nothing but love for the honorable Mr. Costikyan. I was complaining that Salon implied that his other 26 games were ALSO probably computer games. Sure, their statement was technically accurate. I just don't find it all that honest.
Gamers view FMVs as a must have? I guess that explains the resurgence of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, huh? And the unpopularity of games like Interstate '76, Sonic Adventure, NFL2K, and countless others that render most or all of their cutscenes.
I'm still at a loss to understand how 'groundbreaking' can be applied to FMV wrt a game made in the '90s.
But what really confuses me here is - did FF7 make much use of FMV? Everything I remember seeing was rendered in their funky 2+1D graphics. FF8 used a lot of FMV in their ads, although I haven't yet played the game.
Yeah, but only 4 are computer games. Unless you count the thrilling Manhattan Address Locator. http://www.crossover.com/costik/ has the word on who this crazy Costikyan fellow is. Some of you may remember him as involved with Toon, Paranoia, and Star Wars : The Role-Playing game. Or for "Another Day, Another Dungeon." But probably not for Evolution.
If you believe everything Shamrock wrote, he did try to help them by pointing them in the right direction, and only did what he did as a "last resort" to make it completely obvious that it was a complete... uh... sham, as it were.
Not that I necessarily believe everything he wrote. But I do concede that there are times when an article is being composed with so little journalistic integrity that planting obvious misinformation is the only way to make that obvious to the consumer of the article. Unfortunately, I don't think Shamrock succeeded in planting 'obvious misinformation,' if that was indeed his intent.
Microsoft/Gorton claim the DOJ have used illegitimate tactics in their pursuit of their investigation against Microsoft. In an effort to reduce the use of these illegitimate tactics - making no mention of accusations of frivolous over-investigation - they want to cut the budget of this department?
So they're saying "The DOJ does a necessary job badly - we must reduce the amount of money they receive, so they will do a better job." Is that correct?
I just want to point out that, at least the way it was 10 years ago, even if someone was shooting a movie using 4:3 film, the video release would still generally be a pan/scan of the matted version, because what was matted out was generally a fine documentary on boom microphones.
Exactly. He 'bypassed' the firewall, not by doing something which wasn't allowed, but by doing something which was intended.
Let's say I install a security system in my home, but set it up to allow entry through the front door, because I receive a lot of guests. If someone walks in my front door and takes my television, did they "bypass" my security system? When someone says a system is bypassed, I tend to think that someone was able to do something the system was designed to prevent. The firewall was designed to allow public access to the CGI script. The cracker used the firewall to access the CGI script. In my mind, he did not bypass it. He did 'pass it by,' in that there were a number of ways to compromise the system, and one of those ways would have been to attempt to 'bypass' the protection offered by the firewall; to gain access to the system in a fashion which allowed things that the firewall was intended to prevent.
Something someone else said kind of crystallized this for me - it didn't occur to PCWeek, and it wouldn't occur to a Windows Admin, that an OLDER system could be more secure, would it? I mean, if I'm going to put up the most secure Windows machine I can, I'm going to use the latest Windows, because it fixes what was wrong with the older versions of Windows. The idea of fixing an older version while developing a new version is anathema to MS development. This shows through in the fact that many of their patches represent the addition of new features as well as the correction of issues. There is no separation between "Works Better" and "Does More" like there is for the Unix world.
Is it just me, or are they complaining that there are too many distinct patches for software that has only been out a couple of months, making it difficult to find all these patches? If an admin is willing to refresh his software for a.1 version within months after it comes out, I'm going to say that admin should be able to apply patches when he does so. This is still getting under my skin.
I feel I should also point out that "The hacker bypassed the firewall..." is a horribly ambiguous statement. Was his passing by the firewall authorized, or not? I honestly can read that sentence either way. If I bypass the security of a museum to steal the Jewels, that doesn't mean that I chose to steal the Jewels INSTEAD of attacking the security, does it?
Sadly, I can't see how stupid I was when I was new to the net - I can't even find my relatively recent teedotbee postings on deja, certainly none of the old as*. I sure do remember how terrified everyone was the day dejanews unveiled itself to the world, though. Which is weird - believing in security through obscurity is one thing, but security in hoping nobody has a camera?
My Linux box at home and my NT box at work are both using the Dvorak keyset on a QWERTY keyboard. So you can't look at the keys, but soon enough you don't need to. (For learning, I brought up a window showing the keyset.)
I love the Dvorak keyset, and it's not true that it's impossible to use both - all the servers at my work use QWERTY, and I switch back and forth with no problem. I'm not as fast at QWERTY as I used to be, but I'm faster with Dvorak, so...
Incidentally, I've read that QWERTY wasn't designed with slowing people down specifically in mind, but instead the designer tried to space out the hammers as much as possible on common letter pairs. Not sure how much truth there is in that.
(The sentence beginning "Not sure..." contains 6 keys not typed from the home row or space bar.)
http://www.info world.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/petrel/980713np.h tm "The National Security Agency (NSA) lists the following configurations as having been evaluated for U.S. C2 certification: Windows NT 3.5 with Service Pack 3 on the Compaq ProLiant 2000 and ProLiant 4000 Pentium systems, and on a DECpc AXP/150. The LSEL diagnostics software was used as part of the configuration. The systems were certified only in a stand-alone configuration (no network). No other version of Windows NT has received C2 certification on any hardware platform (Windows NT 3.51 was C2-certified in October 1996, but only in the United Kingdom)." http://www.zdnet.com.au/zdnn/content/zdnn/0923/2140612.html "To date, Microsoft has not obtained C2 certification for any release of NT beyond version 3.5, the company acknowledges."
"Can you imaging someone, who has Never used a computer before, try using Linux??"
When was the last time you tried to teach someone who has never used a computer before to use Windows? Without assistance, that too is next to impossible. Admittedly, the "I'm doing Windows!" point comes a lot faster - but who says that's a good thing? The fact is, the main advantage Windows has in ease of use is that most people have a relative who knows how to use Windows.
"Regarding 99.9% uptime guarantees - of course people will sell you a 99.9% guarantee on NT. You pay lots of money, and when it doesn't meet the guarantee, you get some money back. I wonder what the terms of those guarantees are? Sure an NT box by itself is pretty stable, but what about when you want it to do actual, useful stuff?"
"99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees" - they only guarantee that the OS will be running 99.9% of the time. Still better than I'd expect out of NT... Let's take a look at the companies they mention.
Unisys:
"Purchase any Unisys High Availability Server Package, and Unisys guarantees you will experience no more than one unplanned system failure per year. If this commitment is not met, Unisys will issue these credits:
$1,000 credit for a 4-processor single server $2,000 credit for an 8-processor single server $5,000 for a 4-processor clustered server $10,000 for an 8-processor clustered server"
"This specifically excludes other causes of failures including, but not limited to, site disasters, operator errors, or failures of applications, operating systems, or networks."
Pretty nice. Of Compaq, Unisys, and IBM, Unisys was the only one I could easily find out about on their website. And of course, that uptime guarantee applies to 30-year-old Operating Systems, as well.
"There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO."
Oh. See, I thought that initial purchase price had an affect on TCO. Silly of me.
"The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model."
Uh. Isn't this a scathing indictment of MS's practice of pay-for-play support when they do not use an open source model? For that matter, wouldn't I be more likely to trust a product from someone who doesn't have an economic incentive to release a product which requires support? The buggier Windows is, the more support calls companies pay for. The buggier Red Hat is, the more likely it is to be outsold by competing products.
Myth: This page does not have broken HTML.
"Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact."
It said they'll apply for a patent - I wonder how much the patent will cover. I really hope they don't manage to get a patent covering the use of temporal information in neural networks as a whole - ordinarily, I'd assume they wouldn't, but given some recent patents, I tend to worry.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Toys "R" Us (tm) does vigorously and successfully, yet at the same time sanely, defend their trademark of the 'x R Us' name - a formula which I believe they have a great deal more right to than the 'x for Dummies' formula. TRU, however, only goes after people selling product under names falling under that formula. That is to say - people who are honestly infringing on their trademark. Weird, huh?
I'm sorry, but "...for Dummies" was in the vernacular before 1991 - that's what made it popular. It's a pre-diluted trademark.
This doesn't make the need for them to defend it less pressing, naturally. It does make their defense of it more reprehensible, in my eyes:
"That phrase you used to use? Stop using it. It's ours, now. Thank you."
Actually, for many years those designs were openly given. The AM386 was the first AMD Intel-compatible chip which was not manufactured as a redundant Intel chip, I believe.
Yeah, I love Toon. That's fine. And maybe the fact that he has relatively limited experience developing for the system's he's writing about doesn't invalidate what he has to say. I should point out that I have nothing but love for the honorable Mr. Costikyan. I was complaining that Salon implied that his other 26 games were ALSO probably computer games. Sure, their statement was technically accurate. I just don't find it all that honest.
Gamers view FMVs as a must have? I guess that explains the resurgence of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, huh? And the unpopularity of games like Interstate '76, Sonic Adventure, NFL2K, and countless others that render most or all of their cutscenes.
I'm still at a loss to understand how 'groundbreaking' can be applied to FMV wrt a game made in the '90s.
But what really confuses me here is - did FF7 make much use of FMV? Everything I remember seeing was rendered in their funky 2+1D graphics. FF8 used a lot of FMV in their ads, although I haven't yet played the game.
Yeah, but only 4 are computer games. Unless you count the thrilling Manhattan Address Locator.
http://www.crossover.com/costik/ has the word on who this crazy Costikyan fellow is. Some of you may remember him as involved with Toon, Paranoia, and Star Wars : The Role-Playing game. Or for "Another Day, Another Dungeon." But probably not for Evolution.
If you believe everything Shamrock wrote, he did try to help them by pointing them in the right direction, and only did what he did as a "last resort" to make it completely obvious that it was a complete... uh... sham, as it were.
Not that I necessarily believe everything he wrote. But I do concede that there are times when an article is being composed with so little journalistic integrity that planting obvious misinformation is the only way to make that obvious to the consumer of the article. Unfortunately, I don't think Shamrock succeeded in planting 'obvious misinformation,' if that was indeed his intent.
His random spelling of any polysyllabic word must have assured them he had street cred.
Do we have any reason to believe this retraction?
Microsoft/Gorton claim the DOJ have used illegitimate tactics in their pursuit of their investigation against Microsoft. In an effort to reduce the use of these illegitimate tactics - making no mention of accusations of frivolous over-investigation - they want to cut the budget of this department?
So they're saying "The DOJ does a necessary job badly - we must reduce the amount of money they receive, so they will do a better job." Is that correct?
I just want to point out that, at least the way it was 10 years ago, even if someone was shooting a movie using 4:3 film, the video release would still generally be a pan/scan of the matted version, because what was matted out was generally a fine documentary on boom microphones.
About the same time MTV starts showing them again, I'd imagine.
"They can cut, paste and quote the article's numourous misreprensentations of Linux."
:)
No, they can't. At least, I can't, without viewing the source.
Exactly. He 'bypassed' the firewall, not by doing something which wasn't allowed, but by doing something which was intended.
Let's say I install a security system in my home, but set it up to allow entry through the front door, because I receive a lot of guests. If someone walks in my front door and takes my television, did they "bypass" my security system? When someone says a system is bypassed, I tend to think that someone was able to do something the system was designed to prevent. The firewall was designed to allow public access to the CGI script. The cracker used the firewall to access the CGI script. In my mind, he did not bypass it. He did 'pass it by,' in that there were a number of ways to compromise the system, and one of those ways would have been to attempt to 'bypass' the protection offered by the firewall; to gain access to the system in a fashion which allowed things that the firewall was intended to prevent.
Something someone else said kind of crystallized this for me - it didn't occur to PCWeek, and it wouldn't occur to a Windows Admin, that an OLDER system could be more secure, would it? I mean, if I'm going to put up the most secure Windows machine I can, I'm going to use the latest Windows, because it fixes what was wrong with the older versions of Windows. The idea of fixing an older version while developing a new version is anathema to MS development. This shows through in the fact that many of their patches represent the addition of new features as well as the correction of issues. There is no separation between "Works Better" and "Does More" like there is for the Unix world.
Is it just me, or are they complaining that there are too many distinct patches for software that has only been out a couple of months, making it difficult to find all these patches? If an admin is willing to refresh his software for a .1 version within months after it comes out, I'm going to say that admin should be able to apply patches when he does so. This is still getting under my skin.
I feel I should also point out that "The hacker bypassed the firewall..." is a horribly ambiguous statement. Was his passing by the firewall authorized, or not? I honestly can read that sentence either way. If I bypass the security of a museum to steal the Jewels, that doesn't mean that I chose to steal the Jewels INSTEAD of attacking the security, does it?
Sadly, I can't see how stupid I was when I was new to the net - I can't even find my relatively recent teedotbee postings on deja, certainly none of the old as*. I sure do remember how terrified everyone was the day dejanews unveiled itself to the world, though. Which is weird - believing in security through obscurity is one thing, but security in hoping nobody has a camera?
My Linux box at home and my NT box at work are both using the Dvorak keyset on a QWERTY keyboard. So you can't look at the keys, but soon enough you don't need to. (For learning, I brought up a window showing the keyset.)
I love the Dvorak keyset, and it's not true that it's impossible to use both - all the servers at my work use QWERTY, and I switch back and forth with no problem. I'm not as fast at QWERTY as I used to be, but I'm faster with Dvorak, so...
Incidentally, I've read that QWERTY wasn't designed with slowing people down specifically in mind, but instead the designer tried to space out the hammers as much as possible on common letter pairs. Not sure how much truth there is in that.
(The sentence beginning "Not sure..." contains 6 keys not typed from the home row or space bar.)
http://www.info world.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/petrel/980713np.h tm /zdnn/content/zdnn/0923/2140612.html
"The National Security Agency (NSA) lists the following configurations as having been evaluated for U.S. C2 certification: Windows NT 3.5 with Service Pack 3 on the Compaq ProLiant 2000 and ProLiant 4000 Pentium systems, and on a DECpc AXP/150. The LSEL diagnostics software was used as part of the configuration. The systems were certified only in a stand-alone configuration (no network). No other version of Windows NT has received C2 certification on any hardware platform (Windows NT 3.51 was C2-certified in October 1996, but only in the United Kingdom)."
http://www.zdnet.com.au
"To date, Microsoft has not obtained C2 certification for any release of NT beyond version 3.5, the company acknowledges."
"Can you imaging someone, who has Never used a computer before, try using Linux??"
When was the last time you tried to teach someone who has never used a computer before to use Windows? Without assistance, that too is next to impossible. Admittedly, the "I'm doing Windows!" point comes a lot faster - but who says that's a good thing? The fact is, the main advantage Windows has in ease of use is that most people have a relative who knows how to use Windows.
"Regarding 99.9% uptime guarantees - of course people will sell you a 99.9% guarantee on NT. You pay lots of money, and when it doesn't meet the guarantee, you get some money back. I wonder what the terms of those guarantees are? Sure an NT box by itself is pretty stable, but what about when you want it to do actual, useful stuff?"
"99.9 percent system-level uptime guarantees" - they only guarantee that the OS will be running 99.9% of the time. Still better than I'd expect out of NT... Let's take a look at the companies they mention.
Unisys:
"Purchase any Unisys High Availability Server Package, and Unisys guarantees you will experience no more than one unplanned system failure per year. If this commitment is not met, Unisys will issue these credits:
$1,000 credit for a 4-processor single server
$2,000 credit for an 8-processor single server
$5,000 for a 4-processor clustered server
$10,000 for an 8-processor clustered server"
"This specifically excludes other causes of
failures including, but not limited to, site disasters, operator errors, or failures of applications, operating systems, or networks."
Pretty nice. Of Compaq, Unisys, and IBM, Unisys was the only one I could easily find out about on their website. And of course, that uptime guarantee applies to 30-year-old Operating Systems, as well.
"There is no reason to believe that Linux is significantly different than other versions of UNIX when it comes to TCO."
Oh. See, I thought that initial purchase price had an affect on TCO. Silly of me.
"The very definition of Linux as an Open Software effort means that commercial companies like Red Hat will make money by charging for services. Therefore, commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model."
Uh. Isn't this a scathing indictment of MS's practice of pay-for-play support when they do not use an open source model? For that matter, wouldn't I be more likely to trust a product from someone who doesn't have an economic incentive to release a product which requires support? The buggier Windows is, the more support calls companies pay for. The buggier Red Hat is, the more likely it is to be outsold by competing products.
Myth: This page does not have broken HTML.
"Configuring Linux security requires an administrator to be an expert in the intricacies of the operating system and how components interact."
This is a plus, in my book.
That's pretty cool for iMac - seems a weird decision for HK, though.
And 30 years later...
National Techies Day was born.
Kind of fitting, if you ask me. Although you probably won't.
The CDROM for Thief is a 5GB CDROM if you believe its file table.
It said they'll apply for a patent - I wonder how much the patent will cover. I really hope they don't manage to get a patent covering the use of temporal information in neural networks as a whole - ordinarily, I'd assume they wouldn't, but given some recent patents, I tend to worry.