I will use this Firefox post to ask something: I think Firefox has a problem rendering divs.
If you go to www.netvibes.com and then open one of the "frames" it will maximize, with the standard colors the maximized frame will be over all the page hiding everything else (the expected behaviour), but if you change the page colors (Tools/Options/General/Font & Colors) to Text: White and Background: Black and then select the option "always use my colors" and reload the page [netvibes.com] then maximize again any of the frames and the background will be transparent.
I thought it was a design flaw of the netvibes page but after doing the same (changing the text color to white and background color to white) on Internet Explorer (Tools/Internet Options/Colors), the page (netvibes) is still rendered correctly.
If you wonder why did I changed to those (white text on black bg) you should try it for one day (configure your screen so ALL background colors are black or less than 0x33 [of a total 0xFF] in R,G or B).
Why doesn't the company just bite the bullet and bring out various exploitable versions? Here are some suggestions:
Vista - Won't Boot Edition... $29.95
Vista - Preloaded with Viruses and Spyware Edition... $39.95
Vista - Initially Clean but Use at Your Own Risk Edition... $49.95
Vista - Clean with Firewall and Weekly Protection Update Edition... $200
This sounds like a typical slashdot rant from a Slashdot Linux Zealot... how can he be able to write this crap, and be paid for that?
This man is a total Troll... of course this time because he is writing about Microsoft, on slashdot he will get a +10 Insightful moderation...
familiarity (I already know what a cheeseburger and a Cola taste like. Maybe I don't have the time or inclination right now to figure out wth 'escargot provencal avec champignons' or 'canard a l'orange' even mean, or which of them I might even like, and if I want a Chateauneuf Sauvignon or a Valadilene Pinot Gris with either.)
I agree with you on this, and I can put myself as a live example[although I use Subway instead of McDonalds]. See I am from Mexico and I live now in the UK. After arriving here, the first thing one does is look for places to eat. When I was in Mexico I always wondered why Gringos (no deprecative here okey?) always wanted to eat McDonalds when they went to Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, when they where a lot of better restaurants (some of them with seafood).
After I arrived to UK and I started to look for a place to eat the places I went were of course Burger King and Subway, why? because:
1. I was already familiar with the way they "work", I just have to say that I want a package number 1, or a "king with cheese" and soda, so I am familiar with that, but not only that, I am also familiar with the place and the "mood" of that place.
2. It is really true (and a friend in Mexico that worked for the tourism told me once) that a McDonald hamburger will be the same quality in Mexico and in UK, you bet it, it is exactly the same (basically, here it is more expensive). And the same for Subway.
So, how does this translates to Miscorsoft and Windows? well, as somebody stated once on/., with windows you always know how to get into Office, I tend to put me in the shoes of some friends doesnt know a lot about computers and think that when they start using their computers, they will feel the same expirience as when I go to a restaurant in UK, going to Subway [or McDonalds] may not be the best option in food quality (it in fact may be the worst) but it is always the same behaviour in every place (as in point 2) people are already familiar with windows, and if they go to a internet coffee and they see a Linux machine they will not use it (I remember installing Mandrake 9.0 in a computer on a friend's internet coffee, just as an experiment. No one of the clients [hight school boys] wanted to use it).
So, a lot of people could rant that Windows is broken, that it does not works or that linux is better and has better tools or whatever, but the main reason of why it is not mainstream in the desktop is because of the more than 100 different linux distributions.
So in my opinion I think Mr. Gates and company did a great thing, they give computers to computer illiterates, maybe some elitist geeks do not like it, and they might say that people needs to understand how computer works in order to use it, but for me that sounds as stupid as some people telling me that I must learn to drive a standard transmission vehicle. I dont know to drive standard, I do not have a car now but I know that when need to buy a car, it will be automatic. Because I just want it to take me from one place to another, I do not give a dime if the car is not the best one in fuel comsuption or in speed, or if the sparkplulgs are better rounded than squared (whatever ok? as you can see I do not know anything about cars). I only want to turn on the car and (if possible) tell it to take me to the supermarket or my house or whatever.
"Intellectual property" is an obfuscation, please use the specific and correct term "copyright".
Nope, Intellectual property: "Intelectual Property: In law, particularly in common law jurisdictions, intellectual property or IP refers to a legal entitlement which sometimes attaches to the expressed form of an idea, or to some other intangible subject matter.... The most well known forms of intellectual property include copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Patents and trademarks fall into a particular subset of intellectual property known as industrial property."
Copyright, is a set of exclusive rights granted by government for a limited time to regulate the use of a particular form, way or manner in which an idea or information is expressed.
The graphics would be cheaply done, the plot would be nonexistent,
I think that would not be a problem. About the cheap graphics, I think the industry is pushing to made nice graphics available cheap.
Once I made an animation of 2 naked persons "doing it" the first time I installed Poser. As you se you do not need too much. (Just license the program).
As for the "nonexistent plot" I recall a quote that John Carmack [creator of Doom series] said (according to wikiquote): "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."
So personally I think that if you "join" those two generes [games,porno], story won't be too much of a problem.
Compete this thought: I don't like sex games because...
Just a comment on this, I think it would be quite nasty if everyone thought like that. And, on some degree the guys that had blown up their mates in their schools may have thought that "I prefer to blow up things live because I can" such as if now that you go to kung fu you would start making the equivalent of "street fighter" (that is, trying to kick the ass of whoever crosses your way).
The preceding paragraph was a bit stupid I know, but now thing about the sex, if you have the oportunity to show young man (kids in between the 13 and 16) what sex is about and why not, leting them play their "things" safely in their house in fron of their PC or TV instead of going out at night to try to laid a random girl, I think it would be safer.
Of course there is no replacement for the standard practice, and you would say that that will only encourage anti socialism, but maybe, *just maybe* the games could teach boys [and girls] the value of using preservatives and all the like.
When I was younger (at the end of secondary school) I used to have "pornographic" dreams where I did it with some woman. As a 15 year old virgin boy (back then) I found it really awesome and they were the kind of dreams were I didnt want to wake up.
So, it is my humble opinion that [and I am still *eagerly* waiting for it] that the genere that really needs to be exploited is the adult genere. Of course at first it will look terrible for the society (as when the porno movie industry started) but I am SURE there is a real market there waiting to be cashed.
I know a lot of jokes will arise from this, but at least, I enjoyed a lot playing the "larry" games back in the old days, although they were pixel based, but they actually had some "mature" content.
After watching at the "hot coffee" mod videos, I told, WTF, why not do a complete game about that, of course, first it would need to be done by an independent studio but I can bet my ass that it would get a lot of money (if it was commercialized).
Or better yet why not start an OpenSource project for an Adult Game?! (interesting what are going to be the implications of having a sourceforge download link, and how do you make sure kids wont download it =oP).
Anyway, THIS, is the place were "realistic graphics" could have a deffinite effect, and certainly the more realistic the better it would be.
Charging others to use the Service either directly or indirectly.
So what? every Internet Coffee is breaking the TOS when they charge high school kids that use their computers to chat?
Or what about BT (British Telecom) and its public internet kiosks? they are also "indirectly" charging me when I want to chat with others.
Nope, I guess he is violating MS TOS, as all of the above companies but MS does not appear to give a dime. And it allows him to do something that he wont be able to do with current OSS technology because nor him or the people at Mexico have the time and patience to learn to use the 5 programs you have to use in Linux to get the same result (video+text+audio) you get with messenger.
haha, this kind of reminds me of the Anonymous Alcoholic person, in order to be cured he needs to accept that he is sick. In this way, the Linux community (*specifically Linux*) has a hard time accepting that Linux is not very easy to use, so for them there is no problem (my physics proffesor called that "second degree ignorance" as they do not know that they do not know).
So, first there must be a way to show put it in an "IN YOUR FACE" way to the Linux community that no... it is still not as easy as it should be (and for linux zealots no i am NOT comparing to ANY OTHER Operating system) to make it Commong Knowledge among them.
But I can't understand why every Free and Open Source advocate basically snobs IM's. Gaim and Kopete are just not good enough. I mean that their target public (i.e. young people) just won't care to use it
Well, it is my personal opinion from what I have seen here that the "young people" is not the only sector using this programs. As an example my flatmate he is making his PhD and has some buisness going in Mexico. He use to get into MSN Messenger every other night and video conference with some people back there to discuss work.
Now, as I am a LInux enthusiast, I would NEVER tell him to try linux because the ability to interact with people at the other side of the planet with the press of the mouse button is something that makes his work possible.
As a side note, he told me about certain software to do Mind Maps on windows, it is available for free to use in our university, I tried to look for an open source replacement and only found Free Mind... which is kind of 1/4 of what the other program [Mind Genius] is.
Kind of shows you how when talking about Open Source software... there are only (what?) 15 "Mature" applications.
... this really comes to make stronger my previous post on Novell's linux usuability tests.
This about the point 3 (How can some computer-noob user Engage in a multimedia chat with some friend (micrphone+webcam+text). There is really no application in the open source windows that has all the functionality that MSN Messenger has this is, to be able to talk, chat and see video when having a conference with other people.
Some of the answers I got from my previous post stated a set of programs that you could use to get a (more or less useful) similar result. But, the end user will not want that. For them, MSN messenger allows them to do all that with some clicks, while on Linux it would require some RPMing and running 3 applications.
The other more important thing (and I know... it is not the OSS fault) is the compatibility. See, ALL my contacts use MSN Messenger (all in Mexico), none of them use AOL or ICQ or whatever OSS, so I have to use a MSN compatible client.
Now, everything could be nice with GAIM, except that it does not support video and audio, and I while I am in UK I love staying in contact with people over there, and why not spending a sunday night chating with friends and having a video conference with my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend, no, not *those* kind of video conference;) ).
But, all in all, someone posted on the Y!MSN merging that there are like 3 propietary messenger programs, I dont know if AOL msnger supports audio and video or the others, but I do know it is something that my vanilla Linux distro is lacking of. [now go ahead and blame Microsoft for not releasing a version of MSN Messenger for Linux... (I already do it!!!)]
That proposal sounds fine, but then we should hold government leaders personally responsible for wrongdoings of government.
Just to put something valuable to your offtopic rant (FTFArticle):
Schmidt also referred to a recent survey from Microsoft which found that 64 percent of software developers were not confident they could write secure applications. For him, better training is the way forward.
I think one of the key issues of non secure software are the tools that are available to develop them. By that I mean languages & compilers
1. You see, people that make programs in C/C++ know that if they are not used well there is a HUGE chance to produce buggy code. Now, it is also known (as another slashdoter stated before) the incentive to put a lot of effort in making bugfree software (i.e. the time spent for QA in C/C++ apps.) is not really good, after looking the average developer per hour payment.
Because of this, companiles like Microsoft,SUN,Metroworkers etc, should make better compilers, maybe compilers that whine about all kind of errors (i.e. pedantic flag?).
The other way is (what has been done and I think has been quite useful) to create new languages which less prone to errors (i.e. Java, C#, VB.NET [i expect more than one comment on this last one]).
2. Another thing closely related to the first point is TOOLS, these tools should be a VERY robust set of tools that allow programers to develop applications. Something like the Java API, for example if I want to make a simple chat program, this toolset would allow me to do it very easly.
And, as a personal opinion, all those toolset should have a "secure by default" approach. I am sure a lot of people will tell me "there are enough tools, but people do not use them", as for example, a RSA communication module in Java, or what not. The matter is that it should be the OHTER way arround, the common (just an example... I do not know by heart the java api... hell, ANY API) net.java.network.tcp.HTTPObject should have an OpenConnection funtion which is SECURE by default, not an OpenSecureConnection() or even worse to have this connection on a net.java.network.securetcp.SecureHTTPObject because, that way, the general prorammer wont use it.
Of course training is important but one of the reasons of why there has been an *explotion* of software nowadays [yes, a lot of it crap, closed and open source alike] is that more tools have become available. But these tools should be perfect.
As for the "developer liability" I think that is reasonable when you buy your software but when talking about open source or any other kind of free software I think it is the most stupid thing. It is like when the kid blew up his fingers trying to make a bomb using the Anarchyst Cookbook, so what, is the author liable?? and worse, if you are just giving away something what the heck could someone claim?
Burn Karma!... Sure... I have seen the page and the different case studies, they seem ok but I think there were 2 or 3 cases that are a lot more common:
1. Scan a picture, create a new document and write something about the picture. 2. Move the pictures of your camera to the place where you save your pictures in the computer. 3. Engage in a multimedia chat with some friend (micrphone+webcam+text)
Of course every linux user knows [although some of they deny it] those are non trivial tasks in a linux distribution;)
[I can hear the shout of a thousand Linux zealot moderators:) btw I am getting linux instead of Windows in my department computer this week, so nope I am not a n anti-linux freak]
Dunno but their Start page is quite cool, something like Netvibes but (IMHO) better. Who knows... maybe someday they will offer that service instead of the terrible MSN home page.
BTW, where are all the ads? One of the (many) reasons for me to stop using Hotmail was the animated ads and banners. I would expect those from a porn site but not from my email account. I am sure those will be there when the service goes open.
Oh! and on a sligthly OT note, I guess I wont move to Hotmail again... as in my University (somewhere in UK) the IT people blocked the hotmail URL because it was very dangerous hahahaah nice and lovely.
Slashdot Mirror
I will use this Firefox post to ask something: I think Firefox has a problem rendering divs.
7 22), And guess what, it was opened on 2004-08-07 14:20 PDT!
If you go to www.netvibes.com and then open one of the "frames" it will maximize, with the standard colors the maximized frame will be over all the page hiding everything else (the expected behaviour), but if you change the page colors (Tools/Options/General/Font & Colors) to Text: White and Background: Black and then select the option "always use my colors" and reload the page [netvibes.com] then maximize again any of the frames and the background will be transparent.
I thought it was a design flaw of the netvibes page but after doing the same (changing the text color to white and background color to white) on Internet Explorer (Tools/Internet Options/Colors), the page (netvibes) is still rendered correctly.
If you wonder why did I changed to those (white text on black bg) you should try it for one day (configure your screen so ALL background colors are black or less than 0x33 [of a total 0xFF] in R,G or B).
Way off topic but anyway there it is.
Oh and BTW, allow me to rant about a Firefox bug that has not been fixed (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=254
Who said OpenSource software was fixed faster than closed source uh?
ok, enough for a rant
Why doesn't the company just bite the bullet and bring out various exploitable versions? Here are some suggestions:
...
Vista - Won't Boot Edition... $29.95
Vista - Preloaded with Viruses and Spyware Edition... $39.95
Vista - Initially Clean but Use at Your Own Risk Edition... $49.95
Vista - Clean with Firewall and Weekly Protection Update Edition... $200
This sounds like a typical slashdot rant from a Slashdot Linux Zealot... how can he be able to write this crap, and be paid for that?
This man is a total Troll... of course this time because he is writing about Microsoft, on slashdot he will get a +10 Insightful moderation
familiarity (I already know what a cheeseburger and a Cola taste like. Maybe I don't have the time or inclination right now to figure out wth 'escargot provencal avec champignons' or 'canard a l'orange' even mean, or which of them I might even like, and if I want a Chateauneuf Sauvignon or a Valadilene Pinot Gris with either.)
/., with windows you always know how to get into Office, I tend to put me in the shoes of some friends doesnt know a lot about computers and think that when they start using their computers, they will feel the same expirience as when I go to a restaurant in UK, going to Subway [or McDonalds] may not be the best option in food quality (it in fact may be the worst) but it is always the same behaviour in every place (as in point 2) people are already familiar with windows, and if they go to a internet coffee and they see a Linux machine they will not use it (I remember installing Mandrake 9.0 in a computer on a friend's internet coffee, just as an experiment. No one of the clients [hight school boys] wanted to use it).
I agree with you on this, and I can put myself as a live example[although I use Subway instead of McDonalds]. See I am from Mexico and I live now in the UK. After arriving here, the first thing one does is look for places to eat. When I was in Mexico I always wondered why Gringos (no deprecative here okey?) always wanted to eat McDonalds when they went to Cancun or Puerto Vallarta, when they where a lot of better restaurants (some of them with seafood).
After I arrived to UK and I started to look for a place to eat the places I went were of course Burger King and Subway, why? because:
1. I was already familiar with the way they "work", I just have to say that I want a package number 1, or a "king with cheese" and soda, so I am familiar with that, but not only that, I am also familiar with the place and the "mood" of that place.
2. It is really true (and a friend in Mexico that worked for the tourism told me once) that a McDonald hamburger will be the same quality in Mexico and in UK, you bet it, it is exactly the same (basically, here it is more expensive). And the same for Subway.
So, how does this translates to Miscorsoft and Windows? well, as somebody stated once on
So, a lot of people could rant that Windows is broken, that it does not works or that linux is better and has better tools or whatever, but the main reason of why it is not mainstream in the desktop is because of the more than 100 different linux distributions.
So in my opinion I think Mr. Gates and company did a great thing, they give computers to computer illiterates, maybe some elitist geeks do not like it, and they might say that people needs to understand how computer works in order to use it, but for me that sounds as stupid as some people telling me that I must learn to drive a standard transmission vehicle. I dont know to drive standard, I do not have a car now but I know that when need to buy a car, it will be automatic. Because I just want it to take me from one place to another, I do not give a dime if the car is not the best one in fuel comsuption or in speed, or if the sparkplulgs are better rounded than squared (whatever ok? as you can see I do not know anything about cars). I only want to turn on the car and (if possible) tell it to take me to the supermarket or my house or whatever.
"Intellectual property" is an obfuscation, please use the specific and correct term "copyright".
...
Nope,
Intellectual property:
"Intelectual Property: In law, particularly in common law jurisdictions, intellectual property or IP refers to a legal entitlement which sometimes attaches to the expressed form of an idea, or to some other intangible subject matter.
The most well known forms of intellectual property include copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Patents and trademarks fall into a particular subset of intellectual property known as industrial property."
Copyright, is a set of exclusive rights granted by government for a limited time to regulate the use of a particular form, way or manner in which an idea or information is expressed.
The graphics would be cheaply done, the plot would be nonexistent,
I think that would not be a problem. About the cheap graphics, I think the industry is pushing to made nice graphics available cheap.
Once I made an animation of 2 naked persons "doing it" the first time I installed Poser. As you se you do not need too much. (Just license the program).
As for the "nonexistent plot" I recall a quote that John Carmack [creator of Doom series] said (according to wikiquote): "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."
So personally I think that if you "join" those two generes [games,porno], story won't be too much of a problem.
Compete this thought: I don't like sex games because...
Just a comment on this, I think it would be quite nasty if everyone thought like that. And, on some degree the guys that had blown up their mates in their schools may have thought that "I prefer to blow up things live because I can" such as if now that you go to kung fu you would start making the equivalent of "street fighter" (that is, trying to kick the ass of whoever crosses your way).
The preceding paragraph was a bit stupid I know, but now thing about the sex, if you have the oportunity to show young man (kids in between the 13 and 16) what sex is about and why not, leting them play their "things" safely in their house in fron of their PC or TV instead of going out at night to try to laid a random girl, I think it would be safer.
Of course there is no replacement for the standard practice, and you would say that that will only encourage anti socialism, but maybe, *just maybe* the games could teach boys [and girls] the value of using preservatives and all the like.
Yeeah... those Japanese and their hundred-tentacle-penises monsters.
Make me think "things" about the church of the spaggethi monster
Just to complete my "adult gaming" post a bit, (and because I forgot to mention it on the previous post).
Has anybody played the Adult tetris clone?
The first time I played it I found it hilarious, and it is certainly entertaining.
That means, there can be fun games based in adult material, AND I do not find that tetris game shocking, do you?
Hahaha mods, what are you smoking?? my comment was meant to be FUN. Insightful?
I think the Metamoderation should allow to mod moderations as FUN lol
When I was younger (at the end of secondary school) I used to have "pornographic" dreams where I did it with some woman. As a 15 year old virgin boy (back then) I found it really awesome and they were the kind of dreams were I didnt want to wake up.
So, it is my humble opinion that [and I am still *eagerly* waiting for it] that the genere that really needs to be exploited is the adult genere. Of course at first it will look terrible for the society (as when the porno movie industry started) but I am SURE there is a real market there waiting to be cashed.
I know a lot of jokes will arise from this, but at least, I enjoyed a lot playing the "larry" games back in the old days, although they were pixel based, but they actually had some "mature" content.
After watching at the "hot coffee" mod videos, I told, WTF, why not do a complete game about that, of course, first it would need to be done by an independent studio but I can bet my ass that it would get a lot of money (if it was commercialized).
Or better yet why not start an OpenSource project for an Adult Game?! (interesting what are going to be the implications of having a sourceforge download link, and how do you make sure kids wont download it =oP).
Anyway, THIS, is the place were "realistic graphics" could have a deffinite effect, and certainly the more realistic the better it would be.
Yea sure... those TOS are broken anyway:
Charging others to use the Service either directly or indirectly.
So what? every Internet Coffee is breaking the TOS when they charge high school kids that use their computers to chat?
Or what about BT (British Telecom) and its public internet kiosks? they are also "indirectly" charging me when I want to chat with others.
Nope, I guess he is violating MS TOS, as all of the above companies but MS does not appear to give a dime. And it allows him to do something that he wont be able to do with current OSS technology because nor him or the people at Mexico have the time and patience to learn to use the 5 programs you have to use in Linux to get the same result (video+text+audio) you get with messenger.
Nothing really special about it when compared to Debian
Uhhhh, is this true for Debian?
And ?
Hehe, I loved the Mandriva (former Mandrake ) one
Or what about Red Hat?
Or for Linuxp-anti-SCO zealots: Caldera
You can see others at nanocrew
t's simple: Chairman Bill pulls the chain and y'all bark.
Did you have enough Microsofot bashing little troll?
Except that MS leak was anounced on 09 Oct 2005 (RTFA would you?) and ubuntu release was just today.
haha... believe me you dont I am just a PhD student with a scholarship =o)
Oh, and your parents'll get sued.
;)!
That is exactly what we need!, that is the only way the parents will learn to educate their own children. Sue their *aces*
haha, this kind of reminds me of the Anonymous Alcoholic person, in order to be cured he needs to accept that he is sick. In this way, the Linux community (*specifically Linux*) has a hard time accepting that Linux is not very easy to use, so for them there is no problem (my physics proffesor called that "second degree ignorance" as they do not know that they do not know).
So, first there must be a way to show put it in an "IN YOUR FACE" way to the Linux community that no... it is still not as easy as it should be (and for linux zealots no i am NOT comparing to ANY OTHER Operating system) to make it Commong Knowledge among them.
But I can't understand why every Free and Open Source advocate basically snobs IM's. Gaim and Kopete are just not good enough. I mean that their target public (i.e. young people) just won't care to use it
Well, it is my personal opinion from what I have seen here that the "young people" is not the only sector using this programs. As an example my flatmate he is making his PhD and has some buisness going in Mexico. He use to get into MSN Messenger every other night and video conference with some people back there to discuss work.
Now, as I am a LInux enthusiast, I would NEVER tell him to try linux because the ability to interact with people at the other side of the planet with the press of the mouse button is something that makes his work possible.
As a side note, he told me about certain software to do Mind Maps on windows, it is available for free to use in our university, I tried to look for an open source replacement and only found Free Mind... which is kind of 1/4 of what the other program [Mind Genius] is.
Kind of shows you how when talking about Open Source software... there are only (what?) 15 "Mature" applications.
... this really comes to make stronger my previous post on Novell's linux usuability tests.
;) ).
This about the point 3 (How can some computer-noob user Engage in a multimedia chat with some friend (micrphone+webcam+text). There is really no application in the open source windows that has all the functionality that MSN Messenger has this is, to be able to talk, chat and see video when having a conference with other people.
Some of the answers I got from my previous post stated a set of programs that you could use to get a (more or less useful) similar result. But, the end user will not want that. For them, MSN messenger allows them to do all that with some clicks, while on Linux it would require some RPMing and running 3 applications.
The other more important thing (and I know... it is not the OSS fault) is the compatibility. See, ALL my contacts use MSN Messenger (all in Mexico), none of them use AOL or ICQ or whatever OSS, so I have to use a MSN compatible client.
Now, everything could be nice with GAIM, except that it does not support video and audio, and I while I am in UK I love staying in contact with people over there, and why not spending a sunday night chating with friends and having a video conference with my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend, no, not *those* kind of video conference
But, all in all, someone posted on the Y!MSN merging that there are like 3 propietary messenger programs, I dont know if AOL msnger supports audio and video or the others, but I do know it is something that my vanilla Linux distro is lacking of. [now go ahead and blame Microsoft for not releasing a version of MSN Messenger for Linux... (I already do it!!!)]
There is an Outside. BELIEVE in the Outside.
Somehow... you almost made me cry (or I am making a PhD you Insensitive clod)
Obligatory simpons quote:
Lionel Hutz
"Can you imagine a world without lawyers? (Then he imagines everybody holding hands, dancing together, and shudders)"
That proposal sounds fine, but then we should hold government leaders personally responsible for wrongdoings of government.
.NET [i expect more than one comment on this last one]).
Just to put something valuable to your offtopic rant (FTFArticle):
Schmidt also referred to a recent survey from Microsoft which found that 64 percent of software developers were not confident they could write secure applications. For him, better training is the way forward.
I think one of the key issues of non secure software are the tools that are available to develop them. By that I mean
languages & compilers
1. You see, people that make programs in C/C++ know that if they are not used well there is a HUGE chance to produce buggy code. Now, it is also known (as another slashdoter stated before) the incentive to put a lot of effort in making bugfree software (i.e. the time spent for QA in C/C++ apps.) is not really good, after looking the average developer per hour payment.
Because of this, companiles like Microsoft,SUN,Metroworkers etc, should make better compilers, maybe compilers that whine about all kind of errors (i.e. pedantic flag?).
The other way is (what has been done and I think has been quite useful) to create new languages which less prone to errors (i.e. Java, C#, VB
2. Another thing closely related to the first point is TOOLS, these tools should be a VERY robust set of tools that allow programers to develop applications. Something like the Java API, for example if I want to make a simple chat program, this toolset would allow me to do it very easly.
And, as a personal opinion, all those toolset should have a "secure by default" approach. I am sure a lot of people will tell me "there are enough tools, but people do not use them", as for example, a RSA communication module in Java, or what not. The matter is that it should be the OHTER way arround, the common (just an example... I do not know by heart the java api... hell, ANY API) net.java.network.tcp.HTTPObject should have an OpenConnection funtion which is SECURE by default, not an OpenSecureConnection() or even worse to have this connection on a net.java.network.securetcp.SecureHTTPObject because, that way, the general prorammer wont use it.
Of course training is important but one of the reasons of why there has been an *explotion* of software nowadays [yes, a lot of it crap, closed and open source alike] is that more tools have become available. But these tools should be perfect.
As for the "developer liability" I think that is reasonable when you buy your software but when talking about open source or any other kind of free software I think it is the most stupid thing. It is like when the kid blew up his fingers trying to make a bomb using the Anarchyst Cookbook, so what, is the author liable?? and worse, if you are just giving away something what the heck could someone claim?
Burn Karma!...
;)
:) btw I am getting linux instead of Windows in my department computer this week, so nope I am not a n anti-linux freak]
Sure...
I have seen the page and the different case studies, they seem ok but I think there were 2 or 3 cases that are a lot more common:
1. Scan a picture, create a new document and write something about the picture.
2. Move the pictures of your camera to the place where you save your pictures in the computer.
3. Engage in a multimedia chat with some friend (micrphone+webcam+text)
Of course every linux user knows [although some of they deny it] those are non trivial tasks in a linux distribution
[I can hear the shout of a thousand Linux zealot moderators
Dunno but their Start page is quite cool, something like Netvibes but (IMHO) better. Who knows... maybe someday they will offer that service instead of the terrible MSN home page.
BTW, where are all the ads? One of the (many) reasons for me to stop using Hotmail was the animated ads and banners. I would expect those from a porn site but not from my email account. I am sure those will be there when the service goes open.
Oh! and on a sligthly OT note, I guess I wont move to Hotmail again... as in my University (somewhere in UK) the IT people blocked the hotmail URL because it was very dangerous hahahaah nice and lovely.
SSSHhhhhh!!!
Do not talk about books! Imagine what would happen to them if people started to read them!
Or at least get a sponsorship from my department to go to a Cancun conference =o)