People around here still run 800x600 on their 17" monitors, and complain that 1280x1024 is too small.
Remember this was an Apple study - if you've never used a Mac for some time, you won't know it, but scaling is absolutely astonishing on the Mac compared to the PC. While on the PC (both Windos and Linux) you set a pixel resolution for the screen, and then a pixel resolution for your fonts so things work, roughly, somehow, a little bit... well, let's be honest: They don't hurt too much. On the Mac you set a resolution and leave the rest to the OS and OSX scales everything - fonts, windows, icons, really everything - to fit.
It's a fantastic feature. When I move a window in a dual-head setup from the 15.4" MacBook Pro screen over to the 21" cinema display, it retains its visual size, even though its pixel resolution changes. All while moving the window (i.e. the left part is larger than the right actually, but visual size is identical).
The cinema display runs at 1680x1050. I've never had the "font too small to read" problem, which I regularily did have at 1280x1024 on PCs, even on 21" displays.
Frightening. It's been a while since I was actively interested in fighting spam, and my interest has only resurfaced recently, because even though I employ pretty much every tool there is (greylisting, spamassassin and Thunderbird's learning filter), more and more spam is getting through. Two years or so I was ahead of the spammers, now they're catching up.
I stand by my original opinion: Too many people in charge of something, be it ISP, stock exchange or government, don't even begin to see how huge the problem really is. If, somehow, any and all spam filters were to fail for just one week, I'm sure we would have a solution to the problem, because suddenly people who can do something care. Let them all drown in the spam until they finally go and shoot a couple of the criminals.
I think your examples show clearly that this really is the problem: People who could act simply don't care enough to actually do.
Remarkably enough, Volkmar Breitfeld was previously known for creating copy protection circumventing products like InstantCopy or InstantCD/DVD, before he changed fronts to selling copy protection mechanisms.
What's so surprising about that? I figure it worked like this: They got him, and threatened to sue him into oblivion. Then they offered him that instead he could start working for them. Since they don't know shit, he switched sides and has been selling them snake oil for inflated prices ever since.
Addendum: I just found out that the built in DVD Player of OSX will play DVD image files just fine, with full functionality, just like a real DVD. On an image file, I can fix the region to whatever I want it to be.
So MPAA, if you're listening, please give me one reason to give you money. Not that I don't want to, some movies actually are worth it, but with all this hostility and restrictions you shove in my face, give me one reason not to prefer Pirate Bay.
There are side-effects to these content "protection" schemes. Here's one, for your pleasure:
I bought a MacBook Pro recently. It's a great machine except for one thing: The DVD drive isn't region free. What nonsense, my $3000 machine is less functional than any $30 DVD player.
My solution is: I don't buy DVDs anymore. The absolute best movies I'll watch in the cinema, for the rest there's BitTorrent. I'm thinking about putting my DVD collection up on eBay.
So where, I wonder, is the gain for the movie industry? I fail to see any, unless their goal is not getting their movies watched anymore (which I just think might be true, given the crap they produce).
I suggest a different way to catching the spammers. Start at the spam and follow the money. 90% of the spammers are trying to sell something. Usually porn or so. Go to the sellers and take them in. Make spam illegal in such a way that contracting a spammer is a crime, much like contracting a killer is. Then these dudes will have an option: Pay their fines, or turn over contact details for the spammer. If their info leads to the arrest of the spammer, let them go (if it's the first offence). Now you have your spammer. From there, proceed as you outlined, i.e. convict him of what's essentially a class-action crime.
Firefox Nein 2001451 58.5 %
MS Internet Explorer Nein 1059985 31 %
Opera Nein 179838 5.2 %
Mozilla Nein 89402 2.6 %
Safari Nein 31450 0.9 %
This is October data. As you can see from the numbers (we're talking 3.5 mio hits here), this is not a tiny site. As you can see from the site itself, it's not a Linux, Free Software or Firefox site. I've got plenty of AOL users, hotmail users and other "dumb", average, random Internet users as players.
History: Firefox was at 50% in January, 46% in October last year, 34% December 2004 (my oldest data).
Who is or isn't beholden to what parts of a contract (or whatever one party claims as such) is resolved in a court of law in case of doubt.
If you're in the US... well, you guys have gotten thoroughly rid of all the communist ideas, so "equality" and "justice" are all subject the the One and Only Truth(tm) of the $$$.
In other words: Try enforcing what you said in a court if the other party can send in a platoon of well-paid lawyers.
It's a stock deal, so the actual cost to Google was a couple thousand bucks for paperwork. If it bumps up the Google stock by a few points, they've got it all back right then and there. Oh wait, it did...
Maybe that's exactly what is needed. A flood of spam, drowning everything and especially e-commerce.
So far, the war has been fought by amateurs vs. increasingly aggressive and organized criminals. But the amateurs have been fairly successful, so nobody really noticed. Open the floodgates and let everyone realize that spam really is a problem that needs to be dealt with, once and for all.
If Blizzard does fsck up my machine, I have legal and social recourse.
You should try reading these EULA things you click on. You don't have legal options if software goes bad. You'd have to prove intent, and prove is the keyword there.
This is really a quantum leap in malware design. They apparently have a piece of software that can remotely infect an unknown operating system. It works on Windos, Linux, MacOSX, HP/UX, Symbian, Oracle Raw Iron and your TSR-80. It works on all VoIP-capable phones and equipment. It can penetrate all firewalls, regardless of make or ruleset. Your computer can be infect while it's turned off! The trojan will also adapt to new systems automatically and evolve to counter any security patches that might fix the holes it is exploiting. And it makes coffee.
A few decades ago, people like this were called con-man or snake-oil peddlers.
Nukes are the most useless weapon any country can have, simply because you can't use them.
They aren't for use, they're for having, much like an insurance. Think about them as an anti-being-liberated-by-the-US insurance. If Iraq really had had some nukes, they wouldn't have been invaded.
Yes, taking half an hour to boot (ok, about 5 minutes actually, which is still way too long) is one thing.
I have machines in the office where I can type faster than Word accepts input if there's so much as a browser running in the background. And I don't mean a browser with heavy-duty flash content active. I have no idea what the OS is doing, but I know what it's not doing: Its job.
Now I do type faster than my secretary (20+ years of practice, I guess) but I strongly suspect the real reason is the corporate environment: Some anti-virus crap in the background, network shares that explorer continuously refreshes, that kind of crap.
You don't need a new media. You just need voters that will get off their ass and think.
Thinking doesn't change the power system, which is probably the only reason it's not been outlawed already.
Neither does voting. You think you have a choice, but that's the only place these two streams meet. You see, the choices you get presented have gone through several pre-selections. If you really think any choice that would cause a fundamental change (instead of what essentially amounts to changing the colours of the curtains) survives those pre-selection then I have a couple of bridges on sale, very cheap and only as long as supply lasts...
Lots of companies will ignore something that'll only be a problem 30 days in the future. I know a couple IT managers where I'm not sure if their mental horizon even expands that far.
It will be a "one day I woke up..." experience for a lot of companies, 30 days or not.
He assumes none of us have Vista ready PC-s (512 RAM or more, DirectX9 card optional).
You confuse "Vista ready" (aka: Minimum specs) with "useable". We all know what Win95, XP, etc. are supposed to run on, and I've seen machines considerably beyond those specs that are slower than my old C64 on GEOS used to be.
Don't forget that for corporate use, minimum specs won't cut it. There's additional software that needs to run, networks to be accessed, and besides, the minimum requirements to run Office at an acceptable speed (i.e. it reading characters at the speed I can type them) are way beyond the minimum specs of "Vista ready".
Very similar exploits have been shown to be possible against Diebold machines.
The difference isn't that nobody is doing this in the US. It's that nobody is listening in the US. In order to become a democratic country again, you don't need to elect a new president, you need to elect a new media.
Slashdot Mirror
People around here still run 800x600 on their 17" monitors, and complain that 1280x1024 is too small.
Remember this was an Apple study - if you've never used a Mac for some time, you won't know it, but scaling is absolutely astonishing on the Mac compared to the PC. While on the PC (both Windos and Linux) you set a pixel resolution for the screen, and then a pixel resolution for your fonts so things work, roughly, somehow, a little bit... well, let's be honest: They don't hurt too much.
On the Mac you set a resolution and leave the rest to the OS and OSX scales everything - fonts, windows, icons, really everything - to fit.
It's a fantastic feature. When I move a window in a dual-head setup from the 15.4" MacBook Pro screen over to the 21" cinema display, it retains its visual size, even though its pixel resolution changes. All while moving the window (i.e. the left part is larger than the right actually, but visual size is identical).
The cinema display runs at 1680x1050. I've never had the "font too small to read" problem, which I regularily did have at 1280x1024 on PCs, even on 21" displays.
Frightening. It's been a while since I was actively interested in fighting spam, and my interest has only resurfaced recently, because even though I employ pretty much every tool there is (greylisting, spamassassin and Thunderbird's learning filter), more and more spam is getting through. Two years or so I was ahead of the spammers, now they're catching up.
I stand by my original opinion: Too many people in charge of something, be it ISP, stock exchange or government, don't even begin to see how huge the problem really is. If, somehow, any and all spam filters were to fail for just one week, I'm sure we would have a solution to the problem, because suddenly people who can do something care. Let them all drown in the spam until they finally go and shoot a couple of the criminals.
I think your examples show clearly that this really is the problem: People who could act simply don't care enough to actually do.
Remarkably enough, Volkmar Breitfeld was previously known for creating copy protection circumventing products like InstantCopy or InstantCD/DVD, before he changed fronts to selling copy protection mechanisms.
:-)
What's so surprising about that? I figure it worked like this:
They got him, and threatened to sue him into oblivion. Then they offered him that instead he could start working for them. Since they don't know shit, he switched sides and has been selling them snake oil for inflated prices ever since.
I know I'd be tempted in his stead.
Addendum: I just found out that the built in DVD Player of OSX will play DVD image files just fine, with full functionality, just like a real DVD. On an image file, I can fix the region to whatever I want it to be.
So MPAA, if you're listening, please give me one reason to give you money. Not that I don't want to, some movies actually are worth it, but with all this hostility and restrictions you shove in my face, give me one reason not to prefer Pirate Bay.
There are side-effects to these content "protection" schemes. Here's one, for your pleasure:
I bought a MacBook Pro recently. It's a great machine except for one thing: The DVD drive isn't region free. What nonsense, my $3000 machine is less functional than any $30 DVD player.
My solution is: I don't buy DVDs anymore. The absolute best movies I'll watch in the cinema, for the rest there's BitTorrent. I'm thinking about putting my DVD collection up on eBay.
So where, I wonder, is the gain for the movie industry? I fail to see any, unless their goal is not getting their movies watched anymore (which I just think might be true, given the crap they produce).
Very interesting approach.
I suggest a different way to catching the spammers. Start at the spam and follow the money. 90% of the spammers are trying to sell something. Usually porn or so. Go to the sellers and take them in. Make spam illegal in such a way that contracting a spammer is a crime, much like contracting a killer is. Then these dudes will have an option: Pay their fines, or turn over contact details for the spammer. If their info leads to the arrest of the spammer, let them go (if it's the first offence). Now you have your spammer. From there, proceed as you outlined, i.e. convict him of what's essentially a class-action crime.
should've posted this:
:-)
Windows 3196755 93.5 %
Linux 81396 2.3 %
Macintosh 68457 2 %
Just to illustrate that this truly isn't a "geek site". 93% dumbs.
Since you asked for it:
Firefox Nein 2001451 58.5 %
MS Internet Explorer Nein 1059985 31 %
Opera Nein 179838 5.2 %
Mozilla Nein 89402 2.6 %
Safari Nein 31450 0.9 %
This is October data. As you can see from the numbers (we're talking 3.5 mio hits here), this is not a tiny site. As you can see from the site itself, it's not a Linux, Free Software or Firefox site. I've got plenty of AOL users, hotmail users and other "dumb", average, random Internet users as players.
History: Firefox was at 50% in January, 46% in October last year, 34% December 2004 (my oldest data).
Who is or isn't beholden to what parts of a contract (or whatever one party claims as such) is resolved in a court of law in case of doubt.
If you're in the US... well, you guys have gotten thoroughly rid of all the communist ideas, so "equality" and "justice" are all subject the the One and Only Truth(tm) of the $$$.
In other words: Try enforcing what you said in a court if the other party can send in a platoon of well-paid lawyers.
It's a stock deal, so the actual cost to Google was a couple thousand bucks for paperwork. If it bumps up the Google stock by a few points, they've got it all back right then and there. Oh wait, it did...
I give them 3 weeks before their crippling scheme is broken. Anyone wanna bet?
there's no business model for YouTube that would justify $1.6 billion.
or, translated to normal english:
"We have no idea how they plan to make money on this, so it must be impossible."
The sounds of a man who can't accept that there might be people smarter than him on the planet.
Companies will ignore their own EULA's
Only when it suits them, and they won't grant you the same freedom.
Maybe that's exactly what is needed. A flood of spam, drowning everything and especially e-commerce.
So far, the war has been fought by amateurs vs. increasingly aggressive and organized criminals. But the amateurs have been fairly successful, so nobody really noticed. Open the floodgates and let everyone realize that spam really is a problem that needs to be dealt with, once and for all.
If Blizzard does fsck up my machine, I have legal and social recourse.
You should try reading these EULA things you click on. You don't have legal options if software goes bad. You'd have to prove intent, and prove is the keyword there.
This is really a quantum leap in malware design. They apparently have a piece of software that can remotely infect an unknown operating system. It works on Windos, Linux, MacOSX, HP/UX, Symbian, Oracle Raw Iron and your TSR-80. It works on all VoIP-capable phones and equipment. It can penetrate all firewalls, regardless of make or ruleset. Your computer can be infect while it's turned off! The trojan will also adapt to new systems automatically and evolve to counter any security patches that might fix the holes it is exploiting. And it makes coffee.
A few decades ago, people like this were called con-man or snake-oil peddlers.
Nukes are the most useless weapon any country can have, simply because you can't use them.
They aren't for use, they're for having, much like an insurance. Think about them as an anti-being-liberated-by-the-US insurance. If Iraq really had had some nukes, they wouldn't have been invaded.
Yes, taking half an hour to boot (ok, about 5 minutes actually, which is still way too long) is one thing.
I have machines in the office where I can type faster than Word accepts input if there's so much as a browser running in the background. And I don't mean a browser with heavy-duty flash content active. I have no idea what the OS is doing, but I know what it's not doing: Its job.
Now I do type faster than my secretary (20+ years of practice, I guess) but I strongly suspect the real reason is the corporate environment: Some anti-virus crap in the background, network shares that explorer continuously refreshes, that kind of crap.
You don't need a new media. You just need voters that will get off their ass and think.
Thinking doesn't change the power system, which is probably the only reason it's not been outlawed already.
Neither does voting. You think you have a choice, but that's the only place these two streams meet. You see, the choices you get presented have gone through several pre-selections. If you really think any choice that would cause a fundamental change (instead of what essentially amounts to changing the colours of the curtains) survives those pre-selection then I have a couple of bridges on sale, very cheap and only as long as supply lasts...
Lots of companies will ignore something that'll only be a problem 30 days in the future. I know a couple IT managers where I'm not sure if their mental horizon even expands that far.
It will be a "one day I woke up..." experience for a lot of companies, 30 days or not.
Remember how long it took to get rid of NT4/98?
Excuse me? We still have people in this very company using NT4.
And you know what? They realized long ago that there is absolutely no additional value in 2k or XP over NT4 for the average office worker.
He assumes none of us have Vista ready PC-s (512 RAM or more, DirectX9 card optional).
You confuse "Vista ready" (aka: Minimum specs) with "useable". We all know what Win95, XP, etc. are supposed to run on, and I've seen machines considerably beyond those specs that are slower than my old C64 on GEOS used to be.
Don't forget that for corporate use, minimum specs won't cut it. There's additional software that needs to run, networks to be accessed, and besides, the minimum requirements to run Office at an acceptable speed (i.e. it reading characters at the speed I can type them) are way beyond the minimum specs of "Vista ready".
I wish people would concentrate on why it is - at least here in California - close to 70% of the people eligible to vote simply don't.
Oh, I'm sure with these new voting machines, the number of non-voters will decrease. After all, it's easier to add votes than to switch them.
Jon's from Norway, not Holland.
Here's a map. The blob to the left is the UK. Holland is right to it ("east" for nerds) while Norway is in the top-middle of the screen.
Very similar exploits have been shown to be possible against Diebold machines.
The difference isn't that nobody is doing this in the US. It's that nobody is listening in the US. In order to become a democratic country again, you don't need to elect a new president, you need to elect a new media.