I don't know about the UK's views on it, but I'm pretty sure this is a colossal privacy issue that SHOULD run afoul of consumer protection and privacy laws. If this starts to show up here in Canada, you could expect a pretty significant uproar and an appeal to the government to stop this sort of thing before it becomes habit.
Are there no privacy laws in the UK? Is it seriously that bad?
We are glad that you enjoy our products so much as to design wallpapers featuring them. The industrial design teams here at Toyota are proud of the work they've done, and your wallpapers only serve to illustrate how much their hard work has paid off.
Ha ha, just kidding, stop that shit you fucks. No one is allowed to look at our cars without shelling out at LEAST fifteen grand. Oh, and I dare you to see one on the street without closing your eyes until it's gone. What's that, you have? Well, we know where you live, and we're coming for your family.
Sincerely, Foo Barrington VP Arrogant Fucks Dept. Toyota
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't charging enterprise prices for simplified hardware that relies on commodity software solutions, kind of defeat the point?
The difference resolves itself when you pick up the phone, dial a number, and say 'It's broken, come fix it' and you're back up within a few hours and you've saved yourself a few hundred grand in downtime.
The best way around that crap is to stick the disc in your computer, and use various software to rip out the garbage. Optionally, use Handbrake, encode to h.264, and stream it to a set-top-box/game console instead.
But the DRM has gotten so nasty lately that I'm afraid to buy any games for fear it'll bone my PC.
And ironically, the best way around it while still staying legal is to download the cracked version from BT or usenet, and then buy the boxed game and toss it in the closet.
Guess which step most people these days leave out?
Rentacoder.com is widely regarded as drastic fail. It's full of unrealistic contracts for improbable sums that get spammed with lowball bids by individuals with no capacity or intention to complete or even understand the requirements.
People put out requests that make no sense ('I want a Facebook clone, only better and written in AJAX and.NET, but it needs to be done by next weekend and I'll pay $150 for it') which are snapped up by untalented or incapable programmers from India, China, Mexico, and various other countries*, who accept lowball bids, perform 8% of the work allotted, and then expect payment.
* (Which is not to say all programmers from these countries are untalented or incapable, just the ones that bang out crappy work on rentacoder and other sites; the capable ones get real work and keep their dignity)
Honestly, leaving IE and ActiveX in is half the reason NOT to use Windows. Replacing them with a more secure, stable, standards-compliant browser core? Sounds great. Updating the old junk and pretending it's not five years past its prime on release date? Fail.
Honestly, can't we just get rid of anonymous posting? Let logged-in users check the checkbox and post 'anonymously', but keep ramifications for people's actions. It would solve this BS troll problem once and for all, since persistent trollers could eventually end up with such negative karma that they couldn't post for a month.
Why don't we use a shorter term, a portmanteau if you will? I suggest 'twatting'. It's both reminiscent of both original terms, and surprisingly accurate as well.
1. Microsoft is hated for doing what Google did today - but just yesterday they announced that they've implemented OpenID without doing this.
2. It provides a single point of failure, in theory, but also provides a single point of success. There are a lot of websites I can go to now and just use my Live ID (which is my e-mail address), or my Yahoo account, or even an OpenID I set up myself and run on my own server. Sounds pretty good to me.
1) While Twitter was horrible, I know a lot of people that use it all the time and of late, it has rarely, if ever, been down. They said they were going to fix it, and they did. 2) Don't dismiss the message because of the messenger. This is the most basic (and pathetic) form of ad hominem attack. 'You suck therefore you're wrong' is not an argument. 3) He's not wrong.
Look at e-mail spam. Do you like it? Do you not get any? Google sure deals with a lot of it. Tons of places do. Why? Because SMTP is not authenticated by default. Imagine if all e-mail sending AND receiving required a username and password. It wouldn't matter anymore if you were on your ISP's network or not, you could always send mail, AND no one could send mail to you except through their own ISP's servers.
Problem user? The ISP blocks them. Problem ISP? Block their IP address. A database (like SPF) could record what mail servers are allowed to relay mail for what domains, and any other mail is dropped.
Sounds good? Well it won't happen any time soon.
Same with HTTP. There's no concept of a session in HTTP, even though there's the reality of sessions in websites. What ends up happening is that every website (webserver, etc.) creates a session and sends you a cookie, and then you send that cookie back on EVERY REQUEST. Thus, every time you make any HTTP request, the headers must be parsed and the session looked up (unless your app server is not serving your static content). In essence, you are logging in every time you make a request.
Wouldn't it be nice if that were included in the specification so we didn't have to re-invent it every time we wrote a web app, framework, or scripting language, or so that these sessions were cross-platform, so my PHP app could use my Rails app's session information (even if not the raw app-specific data)? Or even better, some way of doing a back-and-forth 'here's what I'll accept and what I support', so the server doesn't have to re-discover on every request that yes, the client still supports gzipped content.
There are all kinds of inefficiencies in the protocols we use these days. It's not all necessarily going to change. It used to, though. HTTP 1.1 improves on a lot of things in HTTP 1.0. SMTP has replaced UUCP for all but the most esoteric edge cases. IMAP4 is widely regarded as better than POP3 (except in terms of cost savings by mass-market ISPs).
Even websites are used these days for things that Gopher, WAIS, Finger and so on used to be used for.
The internet evolved, but has it grown so large that it has become stagnant? It seems these days that every application is built on HTTP, and the protocol wasn't designed for that.
When Todd Bertuzzi (of hockey fame) was admitted to the hospital a while back with some manner of injury, it didn't take long before employees with access to the radiology database looked up his images and the report by the radiologist.
Systems like the one used in Vancouver have access controls and access logs. People were fired. People were demoted. People were reprimanded.
Yes, this stuff happens all the time. Yes, it's bad. Yes, management agrees with you, and while you may not always hear about it, a lot of places take it extremely seriously, just on principle. Even looking up information on coworkers who fall ill was a serious offense, and we were all warned when one did that any unauthorized access to his file would be noticed, but everyone had learned their lesson.
I'm not a huge fan of OpenOffice (which I refuse to call 'OpenOffice.org, because it's an office suite, not a webserver), but I'll say one thing - their main page is exactly right.
Go to www.openoffice.org and take a look. What do you see? A list of things to do, in big text, impossible to miss. I wanted to download. Normally I hunt for a link. Now, it takes me 5 seconds to grab what I want.
No wonder they got so many downloads - they didn't hide them three pages deep.
Why does windows let AIM install itself as a startup program without having the damn UAC complain that this is a protected area?
Because you've already granted it full privs so that it can install itself in the first place.
Why does every HP come with 30 preinstalled programs in the startup?
Because PC makers compete on price, and the only way to lower price is to let companies pay you to include their software on your new machine.
When I started my current job, the only computer available was a new Dell running Vista (I got an iMac two days later). After booting up, Windows had to prepare itself for some reason, then spent 15 minutes benchmarking my system (why? so that it knew it should run Aero?). Then, after logging in (another 5 minutes to set up my profile) I was greeted by literally dozens of pop-up windows, notifications, etc. My AV needed updating. My firewall needed updating. Windows needed updating. My AV wanted registration information (a name and e-mail address and some other stuff), but when I put mine in it said it was wrong.
When I started up this brand new Dell machine, it took about an hour before I was able to use it, and another hour after that to get all the software I needed so I could start getting real work done.
Of course, when I started my iMac, I was ready to go in ten minutes. Oh, and it boots up in about 20 seconds, give or take.
Oh yeah, because you know, I'd rather type one character than two to namespace when I'm using mysql_real_escape_string() and its ilk.
A huge part of the reason I hated PHP coding (and why I've stopped) was because it's just a shit-ton to write. There's just a lot of typing that needs doing. I'm a fan of descriptive function names, but there_comes_a_point_where_its_too_fucking_much().
Compared to languages like Ruby or Python, PHP requires you to type more to do less, worse. I've never met a developer who liked PHP over another language, and the only people I know who like PHP like it because it's all they know, or because they make money off its idiocies (like teaching long, complicated classes on how to write PHP).
This is just another step towards PHP not being taken seriously... more.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about the UK's views on it, but I'm pretty sure this is a colossal privacy issue that SHOULD run afoul of consumer protection and privacy laws. If this starts to show up here in Canada, you could expect a pretty significant uproar and an appeal to the government to stop this sort of thing before it becomes habit.
Are there no privacy laws in the UK? Is it seriously that bad?
The customer is never right. Customers are fickle and don't know what they want, and listening to them is a sure way to drive yourself crazy.
As Ford said, 'If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.'
I'm no fan of DRM, but 'the customer is always right' is nothing but an urban legend.
Dear Toyota fans,
We are glad that you enjoy our products so much as to design wallpapers featuring them. The industrial design teams here at Toyota are proud of the work they've done, and your wallpapers only serve to illustrate how much their hard work has paid off.
Ha ha, just kidding, stop that shit you fucks. No one is allowed to look at our cars without shelling out at LEAST fifteen grand. Oh, and I dare you to see one on the street without closing your eyes until it's gone. What's that, you have? Well, we know where you live, and we're coming for your family.
Sincerely,
Foo Barrington
VP Arrogant Fucks Dept.
Toyota
You have to open the trojan to see the pics! Duh!
Maybe when he realized that you could see his ego from space he decided that his work was complete?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't charging enterprise prices for simplified hardware that relies on commodity software solutions, kind of defeat the point?
The difference resolves itself when you pick up the phone, dial a number, and say 'It's broken, come fix it' and you're back up within a few hours and you've saved yourself a few hundred grand in downtime.
The best way around that crap is to stick the disc in your computer, and use various software to rip out the garbage. Optionally, use Handbrake, encode to h.264, and stream it to a set-top-box/game console instead.
But the DRM has gotten so nasty lately that I'm afraid to buy any games for fear it'll bone my PC.
And ironically, the best way around it while still staying legal is to download the cracked version from BT or usenet, and then buy the boxed game and toss it in the closet.
Guess which step most people these days leave out?
Call of Duty 1812? Sign me up! I hope the last level you get to torch the White House!
Well if we include 'history' as 'before right now' I'd argue that it's accurate. Maybe it won't be in a few years, but right now it is.
Your post would be more apropos in a '(Useful) Stupid Slashdot Tricks' thread.
Rentacoder.com is widely regarded as drastic fail. It's full of unrealistic contracts for improbable sums that get spammed with lowball bids by individuals with no capacity or intention to complete or even understand the requirements.
People put out requests that make no sense ('I want a Facebook clone, only better and written in AJAX and .NET, but it needs to be done by next weekend and I'll pay $150 for it') which are snapped up by untalented or incapable programmers from India, China, Mexico, and various other countries*, who accept lowball bids, perform 8% of the work allotted, and then expect payment.
* (Which is not to say all programmers from these countries are untalented or incapable, just the ones that bang out crappy work on rentacoder and other sites; the capable ones get real work and keep their dignity)
Honestly, leaving IE and ActiveX in is half the reason NOT to use Windows. Replacing them with a more secure, stable, standards-compliant browser core? Sounds great. Updating the old junk and pretending it's not five years past its prime on release date? Fail.
Your honor, you see, we can't possibly have knowingly broken the law, we have a company policy of delibrate ignorance."
That seems to sum up pretty much the entirety of their strategies in all of their markets, so yeah, I'd believe that.
It's not a replacement unless I can use it to buy music, TV shows, movies, and iPhone apps and sync them to my iPhone.
Honestly, can't we just get rid of anonymous posting? Let logged-in users check the checkbox and post 'anonymously', but keep ramifications for people's actions. It would solve this BS troll problem once and for all, since persistent trollers could eventually end up with such negative karma that they couldn't post for a month.
Everyone wins.
That's only if he wanted a liberal bias. If he wanted the God's-honest-bias you need to send him to Conservapedia.
Why don't we use a shorter term, a portmanteau if you will? I suggest 'twatting'. It's both reminiscent of both original terms, and surprisingly accurate as well.
1. Microsoft is hated for doing what Google did today - but just yesterday they announced that they've implemented OpenID without doing this.
2. It provides a single point of failure, in theory, but also provides a single point of success. There are a lot of websites I can go to now and just use my Live ID (which is my e-mail address), or my Yahoo account, or even an OpenID I set up myself and run on my own server. Sounds pretty good to me.
And include all the other things that should have been included since 1995?
Well...
1) While Twitter was horrible, I know a lot of people that use it all the time and of late, it has rarely, if ever, been down. They said they were going to fix it, and they did.
2) Don't dismiss the message because of the messenger. This is the most basic (and pathetic) form of ad hominem attack. 'You suck therefore you're wrong' is not an argument.
3) He's not wrong.
Look at e-mail spam. Do you like it? Do you not get any? Google sure deals with a lot of it. Tons of places do. Why? Because SMTP is not authenticated by default. Imagine if all e-mail sending AND receiving required a username and password. It wouldn't matter anymore if you were on your ISP's network or not, you could always send mail, AND no one could send mail to you except through their own ISP's servers.
Problem user? The ISP blocks them. Problem ISP? Block their IP address. A database (like SPF) could record what mail servers are allowed to relay mail for what domains, and any other mail is dropped.
Sounds good? Well it won't happen any time soon.
Same with HTTP. There's no concept of a session in HTTP, even though there's the reality of sessions in websites. What ends up happening is that every website (webserver, etc.) creates a session and sends you a cookie, and then you send that cookie back on EVERY REQUEST. Thus, every time you make any HTTP request, the headers must be parsed and the session looked up (unless your app server is not serving your static content). In essence, you are logging in every time you make a request.
Wouldn't it be nice if that were included in the specification so we didn't have to re-invent it every time we wrote a web app, framework, or scripting language, or so that these sessions were cross-platform, so my PHP app could use my Rails app's session information (even if not the raw app-specific data)? Or even better, some way of doing a back-and-forth 'here's what I'll accept and what I support', so the server doesn't have to re-discover on every request that yes, the client still supports gzipped content.
There are all kinds of inefficiencies in the protocols we use these days. It's not all necessarily going to change. It used to, though. HTTP 1.1 improves on a lot of things in HTTP 1.0. SMTP has replaced UUCP for all but the most esoteric edge cases. IMAP4 is widely regarded as better than POP3 (except in terms of cost savings by mass-market ISPs).
Even websites are used these days for things that Gopher, WAIS, Finger and so on used to be used for.
The internet evolved, but has it grown so large that it has become stagnant? It seems these days that every application is built on HTTP, and the protocol wasn't designed for that.
When Todd Bertuzzi (of hockey fame) was admitted to the hospital a while back with some manner of injury, it didn't take long before employees with access to the radiology database looked up his images and the report by the radiologist.
Systems like the one used in Vancouver have access controls and access logs. People were fired. People were demoted. People were reprimanded.
Yes, this stuff happens all the time. Yes, it's bad. Yes, management agrees with you, and while you may not always hear about it, a lot of places take it extremely seriously, just on principle. Even looking up information on coworkers who fall ill was a serious offense, and we were all warned when one did that any unauthorized access to his file would be noticed, but everyone had learned their lesson.
I'm not a huge fan of OpenOffice (which I refuse to call 'OpenOffice.org, because it's an office suite, not a webserver), but I'll say one thing - their main page is exactly right.
Go to www.openoffice.org and take a look. What do you see? A list of things to do, in big text, impossible to miss. I wanted to download. Normally I hunt for a link. Now, it takes me 5 seconds to grab what I want.
No wonder they got so many downloads - they didn't hide them three pages deep.
Why does windows let AIM install itself as a startup program without having the damn UAC complain that this is a protected area?
Because you've already granted it full privs so that it can install itself in the first place.
Why does every HP come with 30 preinstalled programs in the startup?
Because PC makers compete on price, and the only way to lower price is to let companies pay you to include their software on your new machine.
When I started my current job, the only computer available was a new Dell running Vista (I got an iMac two days later). After booting up, Windows had to prepare itself for some reason, then spent 15 minutes benchmarking my system (why? so that it knew it should run Aero?). Then, after logging in (another 5 minutes to set up my profile) I was greeted by literally dozens of pop-up windows, notifications, etc. My AV needed updating. My firewall needed updating. Windows needed updating. My AV wanted registration information (a name and e-mail address and some other stuff), but when I put mine in it said it was wrong.
When I started up this brand new Dell machine, it took about an hour before I was able to use it, and another hour after that to get all the software I needed so I could start getting real work done.
Of course, when I started my iMac, I was ready to go in ten minutes. Oh, and it boots up in about 20 seconds, give or take.
Oh yeah, because you know, I'd rather type one character than two to namespace when I'm using mysql_real_escape_string() and its ilk.
A huge part of the reason I hated PHP coding (and why I've stopped) was because it's just a shit-ton to write. There's just a lot of typing that needs doing. I'm a fan of descriptive function names, but there_comes_a_point_where_its_too_fucking_much().
Compared to languages like Ruby or Python, PHP requires you to type more to do less, worse. I've never met a developer who liked PHP over another language, and the only people I know who like PHP like it because it's all they know, or because they make money off its idiocies (like teaching long, complicated classes on how to write PHP).
This is just another step towards PHP not being taken seriously... more.