right now, i think i can say it's probably pretty hard to import a nuclear device to say, the united states. assuming you can get your hands on an ICBM, it changes the game a lot. in 20 years, ICBMs will most likely be easy to get one's hands on. it's not inconceivable that the US would want to at least be researching a defensive against this.
Sun is also looking at offering support for PostgreSQL when it is bundled with Solaris.
hmmm. not bloody likely. sun has been releasing press release after press release lately about how they are doing this and bundling that with oracle. i'd include a link, but there's so much out there, just google for "sun oracle" and take a look at the first ten hits.
i challenge you to find someone that doesn't understand the link between apple computer, itunes, and the ipod. apple's whole scheme is to tightly integrate all of these things so they build off each other.
i'd agree with you if itms was actually a different company, but it's not.
But come on, it's been years since they heyday of Apple Corp. All of my beatle albums have a big "EMI" logo on them. Nobody is going to mistake Apple Computer for Apple Records. This is a cheap attempt for Apple Records to get money from Apple.
your argument essentially says apple computer should be able to walk all over a smaller company because the smaller company is irrelvant and unknown. the law doesn't work like that, thank goodness.
for a thought exercise, replace apple computer with microsoft, or sony, and ask yourself if you feel the same way.
It's going to be a hard sell to explain that Windows XP is no longer good enough and that corporations need to not only upgrade their OS, but also need to upgrade their *HARDWARE* to take advantage of Windows Vista.
it's actually quite simple. MSFT EOL's the software, and support for XP. for a business, that means everything.
as opposed to open source software, where everything is on time because there are no schedules. be realistic. it's a little different for commercial software.
so you think if joe-employee happens to steal from his employer, it's management's fault because they didn't provide a good working environment? jeeze, we're talking about people aged 25-?. their personalities are pretty much set at this point. if they're the type of people that are willing to stick that ipod in their pocket, or hustle some data to an outsider for a chunk of change, no amount of respect, warm fuzzies, or whatever from mgmt is going to change that.
i have two examples where my freedom was reduced in a workplace. one was when i was 16 and working at an electronics store. an asst. mgt got caught with a bag full on nintendo games. from then on, we got searched on the way out at night. the other was at my current workplace. some idiots were talking long distance to china from their office phones. now detailed phone reports are sent to us and our manager every month.
point is, both times, mgmt's reduction in privacy / whatever was a result of an employee indiscretion. i really don't think someone sits around here at my work thinking of hypothetical security problems and instituting policies based on this. i think all of the "invasions of privacy", "mistrust", or whatever you are calling are a result of your fellow employees abusing the trust they were given.
everyone wants to think they are a special individual that should be evaluated differently. hey, i'm not a criminal, why are you treating my like one? well, wake up... you live in a big world. the folks that enforce laws and try to prevent them don't have the resources to research you and apply special cases. get used to it, and don't take it personal.
I'm Muslim, but I'm certainly not an Arab. For some reason Muslims are always associated with Arabs. Most Muslims are NOT Arabs.
well, maybe it's because the muslims that are making news nowadays are arabs. just a guess. i understand that this not desirable for the majority of muslims, but it's understandable.
I myself have been pleasantly surprised the few times I have had items end up going for higher than what the Buy It Now was. And in a few instances, I have been amused to discover that the winning bidder in those instances ended up being the one who initially bid and popped the Buy It Now, paying more in the end than what he would have paid had he just made the purchase with BIN.
this is the problem with ebay and online auctions, from the consumer's point of view. the whole idea of an auction is to build up this "i want it more!" frenzy to get people to pay more than the product is actually worth. and guess what? it works on ebay. never, ever buy an item on ebay that is generally available in some shape or form from retailers. you'll always find it less, and with cheaper (or often free) shipping charges.
windows onecare. interesting. when MSFT released their antispyware suite, at least it was free. that makes sense. a software company should always offer free updates when it comes to security issues. i actually thought they were at least trying to do the right thing.
now, MSFT is trying to charge for security. they should be offering this service for free. i should not have to pay them to keep my PC running.
Why does the thing ship with so many services enabled?
i think the answer is that it does not anymore. if you take a win XP, unpatched first release, it is a mess. if you then let it update itself, it locks it down pretty well. the problem is all of the unpatched or at least out of date versions of XP out there.
"MS continaully says it is irresponsible for people to publish info on exploits in Winodws before they can patch them, yet they've just gone and published what could be one of the nastiest exploits of any OS to date. If they're doing this, it's for a reason, and experience tells us MS's reasons are good for them and bad for everyone else."
please, be fair. first, it's not like MS released a rootkit. they just did a proof of concept internally. second, it's sound engineering to figure out how a system can be exploited before it actually is. that allows you to prevent the problem before it occurs in a malicous context.
if MS had kept this to themself, then there'd be a story here about how MS is keeping known security flaws private. i've seen that exact same criticism of cisco systems on here before.
hmmm. do you think the chinese people would figure out that they are being censored if they could not access the biggest search engine on the internet? my guess: probably. please don't try to tell me that china can completely hide the existence of the internet's largest and by far most prolific search service even in a censored internet.
google's saying f-u to china? everything google is doing on google.cn is reviewed and approved by china. can you please explain how exactly that is an f-u?
i don't hate google. i use it every day. but you have to be pretty blind to think that google agreeing to censor information has anything to do w/ them trying to help the chinese people or saying f-u to the chinese government. they agreed to censor because if they didn't, they'd be locked out of the fastest growing advertising market and therefore revenue stream.
Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh
on
Gauging Google's Gaffes
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
right. okay. it was about helping the chinese users. it wasn't about keeping their access to an advertising market where they stand to make billions of dollars. nothing like that at all.
if google cared about freedom of speech, they'd have said f-u to china and their censorship. of course, i would not have in any way expected them to do that considering that they are a for-profit corporation with investors that expect them to make money.
Public corporations can have many goals, and profit is usually one of them -- but there is no law requiring this.
people invest in for-profit companies to make money. it's not a law (duh), but that's the whole purpose of a for-profit corporation: to make money. if corporations, as part of their marketing (read: propaganda) make you believe that they have some other interest in mind, well, it worked on you. i have no doubt there are some people on google's board of directors that believe in the free exchange of information, but those people do not control the direction of google. it's survival of the fittest and darwin in action. if those people did control google, google would go out of business. the path of maximum profits and doing the "right thing" may overlap sometimes, but not always.
what really cracks me up is that things like ipods and OSX have become almost a political philosphy to people. folks, it's a PRODUCT. you've been brainwashed into thinking that it defines who you are and what you believe in. well, the end result of your "beliefs" is higher profits for a few people at Apple Corp. i'm using Apple here, but the same thing applies to google. there's nothing wrong with mutual benefit. who cares if google is making a profit it it helps you? i agree, but please let's not pretend that google is some friendly group of people that have our best interests at heart.
Those controlling Google can easily argue that they have a goal to maximise profits, but that their means to achieve this requires reducing short term profits in favour of greater long term profits.
where i work, i have lots of "user" data in a network drive. if i got fired / quit / laid off, and i deleted all of that data, i would at least expect that my employer would be pissed. i think that'd be a fair reaction. what i do at work, the data i produce, is owned by my employer. that's the tradeoff of getting paid. i'm okay with that.
of course, the/. crowd is blowing this up into scenarios like people getting prosecuted for throwing out decades old papers. in this case, it wasn't so simple. they were not just hoping to pick up his projects, contacts, etc. they were trying to find incriminating evidence against him that he violated his contract.
what people don't get is that judges + jurors often have some common sense. there is no freaking way someone would be prosecuted for innocently tossing out some papers or deleting unused computer files. this is different, he was pretty clearly performing a self-interested act to protect himself from the contract violation claim.
Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh
on
Gauging Google's Gaffes
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
My experience is that it's mainly webmasters and advertisers that have any dislike of Google, because they're so relentless at protecting the interests of their users.
like their relentlessly protected the interest of their chinese users?
Re:Google's Philosophy: a love and hate relationsh
on
Gauging Google's Gaffes
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Over the years, the company has proven its worth time and time again with technology advancements cool new features
really, like what? web-based email? instant messaging? web-based maps? a search engine? i hate to tell you this, but all of this was done 5-10 years before google existed. granted, google has (mostly) made advancements in these areas, but please, let's not pretend these ideas are "new".
everything google does is available elsewhere, and in a form such that the quality of our lives would not significantly change if google dried up and died.
if you think google does any other than try to maximize its profits, you are mistaken. public corporations simply do not do anything but exactly that. public corporations are owned and by investors that have one single goal.
i'm really sick of folks thinking that google is some sort of atruistic entity fighting for superior technical solutions. nothing could be further from the truth. i think we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg here.
i am an avid reader and i can say i at least considered the idea of getting an e-book reader. it's a pretty straightforward argument: e-book readers don't offer anything useful over a book, and they add significant burden.
the e-books themselves cost the same. they HAVE TO be cheaper to produce. instead, it appears the publishers have opted for a high profit margin on them instead.
have to purchase the device. they range from $80 to hundreds.
i have to buy batteries for the device, or i have to remember to charge it (the cheaper devices take AA batteries).
the device is not as durable as a book. it can actually be broken, need repairs, etc.
poor(er) resolution. the devices i looked at were around 200x200 pixels. that is very noticable compared to a printed book.
poor implementation. all of the reviews i read reported very buggy units, poor software, slow loading times, etc.
where's the upside?
ability to store multiple books. okay, but i only read one book at a time. and once i've read it, it'll be years before i might consider re-reading.
people that don't have tivo don't get it (understandably so). i can see the problem. the idea of paying a $13 monthly fee just to receive listings is a little troublesome. especially when we all have a land line, cell, cable, and internet bill already.
however, if you just want a PVR that works, always, tivo is the solution. the user interface is outstanding. it never crashes, and always works. 6 years on two different boxes without a crash. i have zero maintenance or configuration related interaction. tivo is a stellar example of technology that was done right.
on the other hand, if you enjoy coming home from work and mucking with codecs and downloads, then there are other cheaper and more flexible solutions. nothing wrong with that, but folks need to realize that if you fit into this category, you are part of the 0.001% minority.
as for being a sucker... you'd have to consider yourself a fairly worthless person if paying $13 a month is a better solution than spending hours of install / config / upgrade / troubleshoot. even if you make minimum wage, you still come out ahead.
i am a long time tivo user and advocate. the idea that someone would pay $5 / month for the ability to schedule shows from their verizon phone is absurd. i can say, since i've had access to the web-based equivalent (free) service (about 1.5 years), i've used it probably twice, and once was just to see how it works. it's just not the typical tivo use case.
this is like every other service offered on cell phones. cell phone companies are trying to build a proprietary internet for cell phones only and nickel and dime us to death with fees. you pay for bandwidth, and you pay again for the content! well, it's not working. proof is the state of the celluar web today. nothing but toy content that you try once and then can't believe you actually paid for it.
yahoo had "yahoo drive" years, and years ago. really, where's this astounding innovation i keep hearing about? web mail: others were doing this many years before google. a drag n' drop portal? my netscape had this 5 years ago. online maps? two words: mapquest + mapblast. web search? i can honestly say that i would not suffer if i was forced to use some other search engine.
i think google tends to have superb implementation, but heck, hindsight is 20-20. taking someone else's idea and improving on it (slightly in most cases) is a good thing, but let's not call it innovation. analysts, are you listening?
The original test was equivalent to saying "I'll let a thief into my house. Let's see if he can steal anything!" Most houses don't have everything bolted down to the floor.
uhhh. no. that would be true if users were offered a local root account. they weren't. it was a regular user account. if a regular user account can hack a machine, what's the point of having user privs at all? windows 95/98 had it right i suppose.
a better analogy would be: i'll leave a window open to a locked bedroom, and see if the anyone gets into my other locked bedroom. if the thief can do it, it doesn't say much about the locks on the bedroom doors.
Slashdot Mirror
right now, i think i can say it's probably pretty hard to import a nuclear device to say, the united states. assuming you can get your hands on an ICBM, it changes the game a lot. in 20 years, ICBMs will most likely be easy to get one's hands on. it's not inconceivable that the US would want to at least be researching a defensive against this.
Sun is also looking at offering support for PostgreSQL when it is bundled with Solaris.
hmmm. not bloody likely. sun has been releasing press release after press release lately about how they are doing this and bundling that with oracle. i'd include a link, but there's so much out there, just google for "sun oracle" and take a look at the first ten hits.
i'd agree with you if itms was actually a different company, but it's not.
your argument essentially says apple computer should be able to walk all over a smaller company because the smaller company is irrelvant and unknown. the law doesn't work like that, thank goodness.
for a thought exercise, replace apple computer with microsoft, or sony, and ask yourself if you feel the same way.
It's going to be a hard sell to explain that Windows XP is no longer good enough and that corporations need to not only upgrade their OS, but also need to upgrade their *HARDWARE* to take advantage of Windows Vista.
it's actually quite simple. MSFT EOL's the software, and support for XP. for a business, that means everything.
as opposed to open source software, where everything is on time because there are no schedules. be realistic. it's a little different for commercial software.
this is the last naive post like this i can take.
so you think if joe-employee happens to steal from his employer, it's management's fault because they didn't provide a good working environment? jeeze, we're talking about people aged 25-?. their personalities are pretty much set at this point. if they're the type of people that are willing to stick that ipod in their pocket, or hustle some data to an outsider for a chunk of change, no amount of respect, warm fuzzies, or whatever from mgmt is going to change that.
i have two examples where my freedom was reduced in a workplace. one was when i was 16 and working at an electronics store. an asst. mgt got caught with a bag full on nintendo games. from then on, we got searched on the way out at night. the other was at my current workplace. some idiots were talking long distance to china from their office phones. now detailed phone reports are sent to us and our manager every month.
point is, both times, mgmt's reduction in privacy / whatever was a result of an employee indiscretion. i really don't think someone sits around here at my work thinking of hypothetical security problems and instituting policies based on this. i think all of the "invasions of privacy", "mistrust", or whatever you are calling are a result of your fellow employees abusing the trust they were given.
everyone wants to think they are a special individual that should be evaluated differently. hey, i'm not a criminal, why are you treating my like one? well, wake up ... you live in a big world. the folks that enforce laws and try to prevent them don't have the resources to research you and apply special cases. get used to it, and don't take it personal.
I'm Muslim, but I'm certainly not an Arab. For some reason Muslims are always associated with Arabs. Most Muslims are NOT Arabs.
well, maybe it's because the muslims that are making news nowadays are arabs. just a guess. i understand that this not desirable for the majority of muslims, but it's understandable.
I myself have been pleasantly surprised the few times I have had items end up going for higher than what the Buy It Now was. And in a few instances, I have been amused to discover that the winning bidder in those instances ended up being the one who initially bid and popped the Buy It Now, paying more in the end than what he would have paid had he just made the purchase with BIN.
this is the problem with ebay and online auctions, from the consumer's point of view. the whole idea of an auction is to build up this "i want it more!" frenzy to get people to pay more than the product is actually worth. and guess what? it works on ebay. never, ever buy an item on ebay that is generally available in some shape or form from retailers. you'll always find it less, and with cheaper (or often free) shipping charges.
windows onecare. interesting. when MSFT released their antispyware suite, at least it was free. that makes sense. a software company should always offer free updates when it comes to security issues. i actually thought they were at least trying to do the right thing.
now, MSFT is trying to charge for security. they should be offering this service for free. i should not have to pay them to keep my PC running.
Why does the thing ship with so many services enabled?
i think the answer is that it does not anymore. if you take a win XP, unpatched first release, it is a mess. if you then let it update itself, it locks it down pretty well. the problem is all of the unpatched or at least out of date versions of XP out there.
"MS continaully says it is irresponsible for people to publish info on exploits in Winodws before they can patch them, yet they've just gone and published what could be one of the nastiest exploits of any OS to date. If they're doing this, it's for a reason, and experience tells us MS's reasons are good for them and bad for everyone else."
please, be fair. first, it's not like MS released a rootkit. they just did a proof of concept internally. second, it's sound engineering to figure out how a system can be exploited before it actually is. that allows you to prevent the problem before it occurs in a malicous context.
if MS had kept this to themself, then there'd be a story here about how MS is keeping known security flaws private. i've seen that exact same criticism of cisco systems on here before.
hmmm. do you think the chinese people would figure out that they are being censored if they could not access the biggest search engine on the internet? my guess: probably. please don't try to tell me that china can completely hide the existence of the internet's largest and by far most prolific search service even in a censored internet.
google's saying f-u to china? everything google is doing on google.cn is reviewed and approved by china. can you please explain how exactly that is an f-u?
i don't hate google. i use it every day. but you have to be pretty blind to think that google agreeing to censor information has anything to do w/ them trying to help the chinese people or saying f-u to the chinese government. they agreed to censor because if they didn't, they'd be locked out of the fastest growing advertising market and therefore revenue stream.
if google cared about freedom of speech, they'd have said f-u to china and their censorship. of course, i would not have in any way expected them to do that considering that they are a for-profit corporation with investors that expect them to make money.
so, you feel it necessary to use profanity because because someone typed a word incorrectly. yep, you made your point alright.
Public corporations can have many goals, and profit is usually one of them -- but there is no law requiring this.
people invest in for-profit companies to make money. it's not a law (duh), but that's the whole purpose of a for-profit corporation: to make money. if corporations, as part of their marketing (read: propaganda) make you believe that they have some other interest in mind, well, it worked on you. i have no doubt there are some people on google's board of directors that believe in the free exchange of information, but those people do not control the direction of google. it's survival of the fittest and darwin in action. if those people did control google, google would go out of business. the path of maximum profits and doing the "right thing" may overlap sometimes, but not always.
what really cracks me up is that things like ipods and OSX have become almost a political philosphy to people. folks, it's a PRODUCT. you've been brainwashed into thinking that it defines who you are and what you believe in. well, the end result of your "beliefs" is higher profits for a few people at Apple Corp. i'm using Apple here, but the same thing applies to google. there's nothing wrong with mutual benefit. who cares if google is making a profit it it helps you? i agree, but please let's not pretend that google is some friendly group of people that have our best interests at heart.
Those controlling Google can easily argue that they have a goal to maximise profits, but that their means to achieve this requires reducing short term profits in favour of greater long term profits.
yes, so?
of course, the /. crowd is blowing this up into scenarios like people getting prosecuted for throwing out decades old papers. in this case, it wasn't so simple. they were not just hoping to pick up his projects, contacts, etc. they were trying to find incriminating evidence against him that he violated his contract.
what people don't get is that judges + jurors often have some common sense. there is no freaking way someone would be prosecuted for innocently tossing out some papers or deleting unused computer files. this is different, he was pretty clearly performing a self-interested act to protect himself from the contract violation claim.
My experience is that it's mainly webmasters and advertisers that have any dislike of Google, because they're so relentless at protecting the interests of their users.
like their relentlessly protected the interest of their chinese users?
Over the years, the company has proven its worth time and time again with technology advancements cool new features
really, like what? web-based email? instant messaging? web-based maps? a search engine? i hate to tell you this, but all of this was done 5-10 years before google existed. granted, google has (mostly) made advancements in these areas, but please, let's not pretend these ideas are "new".
everything google does is available elsewhere, and in a form such that the quality of our lives would not significantly change if google dried up and died.
i'm really sick of folks thinking that google is some sort of atruistic entity fighting for superior technical solutions. nothing could be further from the truth. i think we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg here.
i am an avid reader and i can say i at least considered the idea of getting an e-book reader. it's a pretty straightforward argument: e-book readers don't offer anything useful over a book, and they add significant burden.
where's the upside?
- ability to store multiple books. okay, but i only read one book at a time. and once i've read it, it'll be years before i might consider re-reading.
- backlit display (which seriously reduces battery life)
- gadget factor for geeks.
- MP3 player - but it doesn't have enough memory to be useful (8-16MB)
- many PDA-like features that i already have on my cell phone
- ?
pretty obvious decision for me.people that don't have tivo don't get it (understandably so). i can see the problem. the idea of paying a $13 monthly fee just to receive listings is a little troublesome. especially when we all have a land line, cell, cable, and internet bill already.
however, if you just want a PVR that works, always, tivo is the solution. the user interface is outstanding. it never crashes, and always works. 6 years on two different boxes without a crash. i have zero maintenance or configuration related interaction. tivo is a stellar example of technology that was done right.
on the other hand, if you enjoy coming home from work and mucking with codecs and downloads, then there are other cheaper and more flexible solutions. nothing wrong with that, but folks need to realize that if you fit into this category, you are part of the 0.001% minority.
as for being a sucker ... you'd have to consider yourself a fairly worthless person if paying $13 a month is a better solution than spending hours of install / config / upgrade / troubleshoot. even if you make minimum wage, you still come out ahead.
no, i don't work for or own stock in tivo.
i am a long time tivo user and advocate. the idea that someone would pay $5 / month for the ability to schedule shows from their verizon phone is absurd. i can say, since i've had access to the web-based equivalent (free) service (about 1.5 years), i've used it probably twice, and once was just to see how it works. it's just not the typical tivo use case.
this is like every other service offered on cell phones. cell phone companies are trying to build a proprietary internet for cell phones only and nickel and dime us to death with fees. you pay for bandwidth, and you pay again for the content! well, it's not working. proof is the state of the celluar web today. nothing but toy content that you try once and then can't believe you actually paid for it.
yahoo had "yahoo drive" years, and years ago. really, where's this astounding innovation i keep hearing about? web mail: others were doing this many years before google. a drag n' drop portal? my netscape had this 5 years ago. online maps? two words: mapquest + mapblast. web search? i can honestly say that i would not suffer if i was forced to use some other search engine.
i think google tends to have superb implementation, but heck, hindsight is 20-20. taking someone else's idea and improving on it (slightly in most cases) is a good thing, but let's not call it innovation. analysts, are you listening?
The original test was equivalent to saying "I'll let a thief into my house. Let's see if he can steal anything!" Most houses don't have everything bolted down to the floor.
uhhh. no. that would be true if users were offered a local root account. they weren't. it was a regular user account. if a regular user account can hack a machine, what's the point of having user privs at all? windows 95/98 had it right i suppose.
a better analogy would be: i'll leave a window open to a locked bedroom, and see if the anyone gets into my other locked bedroom. if the thief can do it, it doesn't say much about the locks on the bedroom doors.