But what you and the other posters seem to be missing is the horrible vagueness of the average patent given out by the USPTO. It doesn't matter if the patent originally related to IPX, or TCP/IP, because the USPTO probably gave them a patent for "putting data in a frame and relaying it over a wired or wireless medium" or some other equally vague BS.
Think about it THIS way: Do you REALLY think MSFT would have shelled out all that $$$ for patents that only related to a dead protocol or other useless tech like Netware? Nope, I'm willing to bet my last dollar MSFT's lawyers took a look at those patents, saw how vague they are and went "Cha Ching baby!" which caused MSFT to swoop down like a starving vulture upon a dying buffalo. Are companies like MSFT, Apple, and Oracle run by assholes? Probably, CEO and vicious bastard usually go together, but one thing they aren't is generous with their money. they saw something that made them go all drooly when they saw those Novell patents, and I bet when it comes out it will make Motorola REALLY sorry they stirred up the hornet's nest.
I think the point YOU are missing with your little analogy is this: If the duopolies weren't massively overselling bandwidth while at the same time refusing to spend squat on upgrades? Well the BOTH would run just fine. Want a good example of how fucked the big corps have been treating us? You know how they say every time anyone complains lines similar to "Well the USA is a big country, not like Japan, yada yada yada"? Well explain the fact that bumfuck Romania has better pipes than you can get in NYC or LA, two of the most populous urban centers on the planet.
If they ran their business like a normal business, and not an eternal money printing press, then at the very least our large population centers would have decent pipes, and maybe those of us in the flyover states might actually get a little love occasionally as well. Instead thanks to lack of competition you get like what my area has, where neither the teleco or the cableco have moved an inch in any direction in well over a decade, instead of actually upgrading the lines so they can give the customers what they were promised you instead get caps, in my area the BEST residential plan you get is 36GB!, and instead of long term planning the only thing you can count on is ever climbing prices, which in my area have gotten bad enough ($60 for the cheapest DSL plan) that the poor simply can't even afford to get on at all.
Frankly it is just shameful. While the rest of the world moves into a fiber optic future we here in the USA will be left behind on a badly capped short bus to the information superhighway, while the "corporation yay!" types act like you murdered their kitten if you even dare try to regulate the mess. I say either they give us decent service or we should take the last mile back and open it to competition. Want your monopoly back? We'll be happy to give you a decade for every place you run fiber to, 2 decades if that place currently isn't being served by at least 5MBs broadband. Then if they want a monopoly they'll have to get off their fat asses and start laying lines again. Otherwise they can sit there among a dozen plus different choices like we had during the old dialup days and take their chances.
Oh poor trollie, Afraid to place anything for your magical woobie on the front page? I thought you believed in your HOPES file? Maybe you should just paste your IP address here so we can all "see" what a magical woobie can do! And you STILL haven't figured out the math yet? Tsk tsk, I'm disappointed in you! I mean, surely there is a "statistics for dummies" book you could have perused by now? Well I understand, it is kinda hard for you to count only using your fingers and toes, especially with the tears in your eyes thanks to my cock slapping you in the face. Now pay attention, and learn! I'll even draw it in a nice simple picture format!
Now here is you...( ) with nothing but your magical woobie to protect your gaping hole from the train fucking that awaits it, and here is the bad guys....123498763487364983276492836 91827364981273649128764 981273649812736498127346 91823649812736498127364 18236491827639481263 9123874612938746219 9187236491287364981 9872634981263947 91827346912873469 9182743691827364 9128736491287364 91723469187236 91287364 91287364 91927346 91287364 1928734 691278364 912873 641927346 91287364917823491782 6491287364912634912873649128374619 91276349182 98712349
Now that is NOT to scale of course, otherwise your hole would be MUCH larger, and those cocks lined up to screw you would number...ohh around 230,000 at last count. Now pay attention trollie, here is the hard part! Of those 230,000 roughly 98,000 are what is known as transient avenues of attack, now I know that is a big word and hurts your little head, but what that means is a website could be dangerous right now...and now it is not...and now it is. A site can literally be "clean" and 2PM, be infected by 3PM, be clean by 4PM, and be reinfected by 5PM.
So it is actually simply trollie. For your magical woobie to work you will not only have to have EVERY site you visit that MAY OR MAY NOT be infected at that very moment in your magical HOPES file, but every single site they link to such as ad servers and your list has to be accurate to the minute or it is nothing but a woobie. So even if you subscribed to Securina and every single security site on the planet, and updated your woobie every single minute of every single day the math proves beyond a shadow of a doubt you WILL lose.
But you KNOW this already, don't you trollie? Or else you wouldn't be so desperate to get anyone to listen to your delusions. And the really sad part? You have bet your ENTIRE existence on a 20 year old tech nobody uses anymore! How fucking sad is that! It is like arguing for the superior sound quality of 8 tracks, or for the incredible versatility of the floppy disc. But answer me this trollie: If your HOPES file is so damned good why did everyone abandon them over a decade ago hmmm? The ONLY thing a HOPES file is good for anymore is for blocking ad servers, because their IP addresses never change unlike malware which changes by the minute. But here is your chance trollie, prove the math wrong. That is if you know how to do even the most basic of statistics. You DO know how to do statistics, don't you trollie? Because otherwise you are just praying to the magical woobie to save you, just like in my LOLCat example. Sad and pathetic, but cock slapping you is quite entertaining I must admit. It isn't often one gets to meet such a naive and easy mark. Poor little trollie.
And Correlation != Causation. I can set up an XP Sp2 machine with NO patches, NO AV or antispy, and then change the background to a LOLCat. Then when I use the machine only on the LAN I will have NO viruses, but I don't really think I can claim my magic LOLCat picture done saved me, do you trollie?
Now do try to keep up: For the HOSTS file to provide a truly effective protection he will have to have ALL the websites that he crosses that can infect him, as well as any and all of the sites THOSE link to, all loaded into his magical HOSTS file. Now considering we are talking on average
Explain please. If I have an app with A-d permissions, and a second app with only A, how is giving the attacker a MUCH larger attack vector not punching a hole in your security? I mean if FireFox would have insisted on Root in Linux, would anyone have used it? No, because it would have been stupid and an unnecessary risk. So please explain, how is presenting a larger area of attack to the world with the one piece of software most likely to be exposed to malware not equally dumb? You would have a point if ALL browsers offered an equal sized target, but they don't. Chrome, IE, Dragon, SWIron, Chromium, Safari, ALL of these allow for protected mode browsing. And I'm sure that if asked MSFT would be more than happy to help FF to implement this, just as they added X.264 support, so they can't even claim lack of funds.
As for Comodo? It isn't like this is some new startup here. We are talking about a company with offices in over a half dozen countries and something like 15,000 employees at last count. And why would they charge for it? They are making money hand over fist with their enterprise offerings and the good will they generate with products like Comodo DNS, Comodo Dragon Browser, and Comodo Internet Security being free for home and small business helps to get their name out. And it helps to generate them revenue, as I've personally watched as customers that enjoyed the ease of use and security of the Comodo products at home turned around and sold their bosses on the enterprise solutions. BTW not an employee, just someone who has had nothing but good experiences from their products.
But even if they were to magically go tits up tomorrow it isn't like it would take more than 2 minutes to switch DNS providers. And until then just like protected mode it simply makes good sense. After all, why increase risk and make yourself a larger target to attack if you don't have to? Simply saying "it isn't more dangerous" without any reasoning to back that up is simply opinion. I have given you MY reasons, because protected mode lowers the permissions and helps to isolate the browser from the rest of the system, thus lowering risk. So how is increasing risk "better" in this case?
Sarah Palin could pull it off. No, I'm super serial! She would make the NWO look so bumbling and clumsy it would be about as scary as your goofy Auntie from Omaha. Everyone would go "We're supposed to be scared of that? The lady that writes her notes on her hand because she apparently can't see the cue cards? Riiiiight." She reminds me of some green office worker that knows she isn't on the ball or knows what the hell she is doing, but is so damned plucky she is just gonna plow through it even while fucking up horribly with a "go get'em!" attitude and can do spirit.
As for TFA, THIS, this is what the CIA is doing with taxpayer dollars? We've got two wars going on, NK acting like they just can't wait to push the button, and all they can come up with is a snarky acronym and an investigation of a whistleblower site where everybody and their fricking dog knows the score? (Hint: His name is Assange, and he likes to be on camera). If that is the best use they can come up with for taxpayer money, well then maybe it is time to start cutting their budget. Maybe with the purse strings tightened they'd get their shit together and be more interested in putting boots on the ground in the right places, like gathering Intel on the Pakistani border.
THANK YOU! Your explanation is much better than mine, but from what I was told by someone working on the setup that is EXACTLY what the plan is. All local traffic is "free" to the end user, gobble it ALL you want. But the second you leave the local network you have to start counting the GB, which as I said with a lousy 36GB for $106! and $1.50! per GB if you go over? It really won't take much effort at all to "steer" the customer into staying in their AOL style walled garden. After all, it'll have Youtube and Netflix, it'll have THEIR VoIP and PPV, what more can you want?
And the sad part is this screwjob by the FCC must have already been planned for quite some time, as they began their "test marketing" over a year ago in my area. I find it hard to believe they would just so happen to come up with a plan that perfectly fits the loopholes as nicely as it does without some prior heads up. And if you realize by locking everyone into their walled garden their expenses will fall like a stone, thanks to no longer needing to really buy any significant backbone by keeping most traffic local, well the $$$ these guys are gonna be rolling in while simultaneously sticking us on the short bus of the information superhighway is gonna be just unreal. Then they will start talking about "bandwidth hogs" and making it sound like anybody that uses over the cap is just a filthy pirate!. The setup is as you say just too obvious.
Yeah not to mention thanks to MSFT forming a patent bloc with Apple AND Oracle, plus those 882 patents from Novell MSFT will in all likelihood run over Motorola like a Mac truck. Sure Motorola has been in the game for quite awhile, But Novell wrote the book when it comes to networking and what device that Motorola manufacturers today DOESN'T use networking?
So if Motorola is smart they'll be looking to settle this, and quick. MSFT can afford to drag things on for years, the patents owned by the bloc with Apple and Oracle probably cover a good 90% of the products Motorola makes, which means if it goes bad for Motorola it'll go REAL bad. While I hate all the patent warchests, patent trolls, venue shopping, and other crap that goes along with it, a company whose products rely on networking stirring up the shit around MSFT after they just bought pretty much the entire patent portfolio of one of the founders of modern networking seems like a seriously bad idea. Better to settle before it gets too nasty.
Oh poor trollie, you STILL haven't figured out the math yet? Tsk tsk, I'm disappointed in you! I mean, surely there is a "statistics for dummies" book you could have perused by now? Well I understand, it is kinda hard for you to count only using your fingers and toes, especially with the tears in your eyes thanks to my cock slapping you in the face. Now pay attention, and learn! I'll even draw it in a nice simple picture format!
Now here is you...() with nothing but your magical woobie to protect your gaping hole from the train fucking that awaits it, and here is the bad guys....123498763487364983276492836 91827364981273649128764 981273649812736498127346 91823649812736498127364 18236491827639481263 9123874612938746219 9187236491287364981 9872634981263947 91827346912873469 9182743691827364 9128736491287364 91723469187236 91287364 91287364 91927346 91287364 1928734 691278364 912873 641927346 91287364917823491782 6491287364912634912873649128374619 91276349182 98712349
Now that is NOT to scale of course, otherwise your hole would be MUCH larger, and those cocks lined up to screw you would number...ohh around 230,000 at last count. Now pay attention trollie, here is the hard part! Of those 230,000 roughly 98,000 are what is known as transient avenues of attack, now I know that is a big word and hurts your little head, but what that means is a website could be dangerous right now...and now it is not...and now it is. A site can literally be "clean" and 2PM, be infected by 3PM, be clean by 4PM, and be reinfected by 5PM.
So it is actually simply trollie. For your magical woobie to work you will not only have to have EVERY site you visit that MAY OR MAY NOT be infected at that very moment in your magical HOPES file, but every single site they link to such as ad servers and your list has to be accurate to the minute or it is nothing but a woobie. So even if you subscribed to Securina and every single security site on the planet, and updated your woobie every single minute of every single day the math proves beyond a shadow of a doubt you WILL lose.
But you KNOW this already, don't you trollie? Or else you wouldn't be so desperate to get anyone to listen to your delusions. And the really sad part? You have bet your ENTIRE existence on a 20 year old tech nobody uses anymore! How fucking sad is that! It is like arguing for the superior sound quality of 8 tracks, or for the incredible versatility of the floppy disc. But answer me this trollie: If your HOPES file is so damned good why did everyone abandon them over a decade ago hmmm? The ONLY thing a HOPES file is good for anymore is for blocking ad servers, because their IP addresses never change unlike malware which changes by the minute. But here is your chance trollie, prove the math wrong. That is if you know how to do even the most basic of statistics. You DO know how to do statistics, don't you trollie? Because otherwise you are just praying to the magical woobie to save you, just like in my LOLCat example. Sad and pathetic, but cock slapping you is quite entertaining I must admit. It isn't often one gets to meet such a naive and easy mark. Poor little trollie.
Ahhhh...but I think I ALREADY see how they are gonna loophole their way out of this! You see they are gonna argue that they are NOT "giving favor to a third party" but mearly allowing them to pay for their own servers on the local network and thus keep from incurring bandwidth charges.
You see, they will argue all of the "local" traffic is free, since they don't have to pay for any peering on anything that stays local, and any other company is welcome to buy space in their server room or set up their own local servers wherever they like. And of course the customer is free to go anywhere on the Internet he or she likes, as long as they stay under 36GB, after that they have to charge the bandwidth hogs to keep prices fair, don't you see?
All I can tell you is talking to a guy that works there my above post is how it works, and is planned for a nationwide rollout. Everything that stays local is free, which means THEIR services, THEIR VoIP, since most people don't do much calling out of their local area, Netflix and Youtube are gonna pull an Akamai and put up local servers with the popular stuff, and as I said Windows updates are free thanks to the WSUS server setup. Anything else will hit against your craptastic 36GB cap. And considering the choices here are the cableco with their caps or AT&T DSL which tops out here at around 300Kb, which from what I've been told is due to the lines being nearly 60 years old and which they have NO intentions to replace, or enjoy that dialup.
So personally I hope the FCC puts the brakes on their ass, but considering how we haven't seen any pro consumer laws in over 30 years I won't hold my breath.
But are they FINALLY gonna support protected mode in Windows Vista and 7? The tech has been out there since 07 for the love of Pete, and it kinda kills the entire point of having all the extra security of Windows Vista and Win 7 if FF is gonna punch a giant hole right through the security and do a little monkey dance.
So while I hope that Mozilla supports protected mode so I can keep recommending it, until then for myself and my customers I've been testing the Comodo Dragon browser which like all Chromium browsers DOES support protected mode, and adds some extra security features and turns off the Google phoning home like in Chrome. It is taking a little to get used to but so far I have found most of my extensions, and the secure DNS and other security features are nice and it is still fast as hell.
I would really hate to give up on FF, but with the browser being the #1 source of malware getting into a system not supporting protected mode is just too risky. I mean what is the point of all the extra security features if Mozilla doesn't use them? It isn't like FF runs as root in Linux, so why should it run at a higher user level in Windows when it doesn't have to?
While I read your Anandtech article, it still really doesn't answer what I'm getting at. Here let me give an example that will better explain. I often have to help customers with setting up their cams and camcorders to interface with their PCs. So far I have seen H.264 in MKV files, in AVI files, in WMV files, in MOV files and even one funky cam that put out H.263 in RMV.
Now the video decoders from ATI and Nvidia from what I've seen are pretty good about working on just about any file, no matter the wrapper, as long as the code within roughly matched the spec. Now I will be upfront that I have steered clear on Intel IGPs since the mess that was the 9xx chips, which were a headache and a half, but the last I messed with Intel IGPs if you wanted to accelerate MPG 2 video it damned well better be in a MPG 2 wrapper and completely conform to spec or it would dump on the CPU.
So THIS is what I meant by "Intel Speak" in that while the other solutions would allow some leeway as long as the underlying video was roughly in spec, the Intel chips were picky as hell. Now I'm sure you know as well as I that nobody has really settled down on video formats for HD, so you are libel to H.26X video in any number of wrappers, same with MP4. If the new Intel chips are as picky as the old ones then they really aren't very useful since one doesn't have control of the webmasters or what codecs and containers they use. That is why I prefer ATI for my customers, as by using shaders and their ATI AVIO they are pretty flexible when it comes to formats.
I'm sorry they modded you down, because I would say you are right on the money. My local Walgreen's just sold out of "Android tablets" which at $100 went like hotcakes even though they were so anemic even browsing on them was frankly an exercise in pain. And of course the box was literally covered with little green droids, so anybody that buys this is gonna think "this droid thing sucks!" and as you pointed out apps that are supposed to "be for droid" won't actually work.
So my question is this: Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to set a basic requirement for an Android device? You mention PC but with PCs you can be pretty sure of some basic specs...CPU of 1.5GHz (mobile) or 2GHz (desktop) or better, RAM of 512MB minimum (if you support older machines) or 1GB (newer) and a GPU of 945 IGP or better. And of course you can always set minimum specs easily in Windows.
But with Android frankly I'm seeing devices that run the gambit from so shitty they ought to be ashamed to sell it to total hotness and the ONLY thing they have in common is the green droid logo. I'm also seeing brand new devices being sold with Android 1.5 (like the Walgreen's tablet) all the way to 2.2 in my local stores. And as you pointed out the features are frankly all over the place. Now someone can correct me if I'm wrong but WinPhone 7 DOES have basic system specs one has to have to sell a device with WinPhone 7, so my question is "why the hell hasn't Google set minimum specs"? Are they so desperate to win share they don't care if droid ends up equaling shit in the minds of the public? Do they just not care?
So I can see why a handset manufacturer or developer might want to avoid the droid. With droid there is plenty of CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that is gonna ruin the brand name in the eyes of the public when Auntie Sue gets "one of those nice droid thingies" and finds it frankly unusable, while from a developer standpoint both the iPhone and WinPhone 7 have basic specs one can shoot for and know it'll work. Which version is a developer supposed to develop for? 1.5? 1.6? Is 2.0 the minimum one should shoot for? I honestly don't see how anyone can say fragmentation isn't an issue when walking into Walmart the other day I counted no less than FOUR different versions of Android all for sale at the same time, all with wildly different specs. That is just a mess people!
Actually I'd say it is worse than lame, as lame can sometimes be enjoyable like a good cheesy movie. What we have here is completely uninspired copypasta with a sauce made from bland quotes that can't even bother to be smarmy or smartass. I've seen lame lists rise above copypasta by putting some serious ragging on the recipients, this one couldn't even bother that.
For those that haven't TFA don't bother, as it makes the phone book look like an interesting read.
Why trollie, so you can hide away from the front page? Scared to let others see your magical woobie?...Get Some! Now if your magical woobie works all you have to do is MATHEMATICALLY PROVE that your HOSTS file "solution" can scale to protect you against 100,000 to 200,000 targets that are constantly changing. You DO know how to use math? Or statistics? Here is your chance to prove the world you magical woobie works with out ANY doubt, lets see the math trollie!
Oh but you are missing the sneakier way they are gonna get you...caps. I'm in one of the test markets for the new caps, which BTW are 36GB for residential, and 76GB for business. Now that is $106! for the bundle with basic cable and phone, or $180! for the "business" which is the same just with a higher cap. Now here is how they get you:
Vonage? Counts against the cap. Their VoIP? Don't. Linux and Mac updates? Count. Windows? Don't because they got "donated" a WSUS server. Anyone other than Netflix and Youtube? Counts. Their PPV along with Youtube and Netflix? Don't, and the only reason you are allowed Youtube and Netflix is they paid to put a local server. Starting to see a trend?
At $1.50 a GB and a low cap it really doesn't take much to "steer" your customer wherever you want them to go. Remember the days of the AOL walled garden? Well its about to be back boys and girls. Sure you can go where they don't want you to, but it will cost you out the ass. Stay in this nice little garden and we won't bend you over the barrel.
For all those that were "corporation yay!" you are about to get a taste of what uncontrolled greed is like, and you ain't gonna like it! We in the USA will be shuttled onto the short bus of the information superhighway while the rest of the world gets 100MBs+ lines and looks at us as the backwater that we are. I mean when the backwaters of fricking Romania have higher speeds than NYC and LA? Well something is VERY wrong here.
I don't think he "had to" cave to anyone, he is the fricking POTUS! I think the real problem is Obama is so wishy washy he makes Carter look like he has a spine. Almost from the minute he has taken office all he has done is flip flop and make concessions.
Well if he thinks he is making friends this way he is wrong, as NOBODY likes a spineless leader. I predict the Rs could run Bozo the fricking clown and win by a landslide. Right now the only hope for Obama is if the Rs get taken over by the tea party and they run Palin, but sadly with as spineless as Obama is acting it would probably be a close race...shudder.
Because when local municipalities dare to try to run their OWN lines they get told "Unfair advantage!" and then get to spend a decade before the courts. So the telecos basically have figured out how to have their cake and eat it too, by refusing to upgrade their shitty infrastructure but when some place decides to get their own better infrastructure, oh no! That wouldn't be fair. And to me this is why we will just have to have the fed either run lines like with electricity in the 30s, or just take the existing lines away from the telecos, because as it is now they have so much money small towns and the free market simply can't operate. True story:
A friend of mine operated a little shop just outside town. Even though this is a heavy populated area, neither the cableco or teleco would serve them, it was strictly 33k dialup. So he talked his boss into going in half with him to have a T-1 line ran from town. We are talking nearly 25k to have it run, and then they sat up their own little ISP to serve the neighborhood. Capitalism in action, right? Well when the teleco noticed what was happening and their shitty $80 a month dialup started losing customers they jacked the rates on the T-1 by 4000%. Apparently they had also made a few calls so that nobody else would sell to them either. They were told by the teleco "Don't like it? Just try to sue us!" and their lawyer told them "Oh yeah you'll win, but it'll take a decade and about a million five in court fees". So they filed bankruptcy and just moved away. The people there are STILL stuck on 33k dialup, and the T-1 lies rotting in a field.
The moral of the story? There is NO way for the free market to function when the ones that serve an area also own the rights to the backbone. And we will NEVER have nationwide broadband without the government forcing the teleco/cableco monopoly to compete. Otherwise you get what you have now in my area, where the cableco and teleco have not moved a single inch in nearly 30 years! My mom was a block and a half from the cable and now the DSL junction when she built her house 27 years ago, guess how far away it is now? If you guessed a block and a half you'd be correct sir!
Well I would agree with you if we weren't talking about these same people having a living shitfit over the death tax, you know? The one that affects millionaires? Or these same folks having a royal fit about benefits...which they currently enjoy. I mean can you even imagine living in a shack when it is 20 fricking degrees outside and railing for cuts in the very services that keep your family from starving? And these same people come out to scream over STATE benefits, even the ones they paid into? I mean seriously, anything other than war or tax breaks have these people foaming at the mouth!
But to me the worst part was being there for awhile in 08 and listen to the damned near "string up that nigger!" talk when it came to Obama. I was told he is secretly a Muslim Kenyan who was gonna bring socialism! Socialism I tell ya! And would tear down the churches for mosques. Of course the irony was if I asked them "Well what is socialism, and why is it bad?" they honestly couldn't tell me. I'd get everything from "its about taxes!" to something about making us into Russia (that was communism) or even a plot to take away our guns!
So while I'm all for standing by your principles, and have done it myself quite a few times even when it would cost me money (like the fact that many shops use hot software, but I refused and lost some good jobs because of it) but when you hear people spouting off big words like socialism with NO clue as to what it means, or when their entire arguments could be taken word for word from Rush and Beck? Well then I would say that had nothing to do with principles, and everything to do with propaganda.
Well the whole thing just seems like an ever climbing level of stupid. First Google collects data that while not illegal certainly wouldn't look good for the company: Dumb. Then they announce it to the world: Extra Dumb The governments demand to see the data...why? Just to see if there are any juicy bits?:Really Dumb, and now Google refuses to hand any of it over rather than just redact the names and let them have the boring bits: Extra Super dumb.
If there is any lesson here it is that Google should have kept its big mouth shut and just file 13'd the data. They didn't need it, hell they have enough data on everyone with search and email to make Hoover blush, so why keep it and blab about it to the world? The whole thing just makes no bloody sense.
The words you are looking for is "main stream media" which is what gets dirt poor people in tar paper shacks to vote for less taxes for the rich and to cut off any assistance they may be getting. As I said I bet if you did a public poll right now when you asked about Wikileaks the answer you would get from the public is "terrorist hangout for rapists" without a single word about government bribes, payoffs, or any of the other nasty bits Wikileaks actually released.
And THAT, that right there, is what you are up against. Now personally I think the whole system is so corrupted starting over would be a GREAT idea, I really think so. But you are talking about going against those with billions invested in the status quo, and just saying "give peace a chance" has about as much chance as ice cream in hades.
The only real difference of opinion we have is that you think it can scale organically, I'm saying that isn't possible. Try it in just ONE state, pick any one. Hell pick North Dakota, it is a little one. What will happen is when it looks like you may have a snowball's chance in hell of changing things you WILL awaken the sleeping giant, and the next thing you know every talking head will be talking about what a dirty no good terrorist rapist you are. Your leaders will have EVERY bit of dirty laundry ever thrown at them, your entire org will be drug through the muck, in the end you will be made to look about 1000 times as loonie as the worse from the tea party. Then the people, getting all this "information" thrown at them 24x7 by the MSM, will vote in huge numbers with the status quo.
Believe me friend, I wish it wasn't so, but I can drive 30 minutes south of here and be surrounded by tar paper shacks with McCain/Palin planted next to their dead cars and plastic sheeted windows. I have watched people without ANY healthcare at all come out to DENOUNCE any treatment for themselves, watch them practically break out the pitchforks for actually offering to help them in any way. This is the power of propaganda, the same as those that still love "dear leader" even though he is a giant douche. if you really want a shot you're gonna have to figure an end run around newspapers, TV, and radio, all with the almost non existent budget I'm sure you guys have. Can't use the Internet because most of the poor and middle class don't get their "news" from it but from the TV.
So all I'm saying is basically your the HS football team and you're going against the Broncos, and just to make sure there are no worries they've paid off the refs. You better have something a hell of a lot more than just a good idea to counter that friend, because if Wikileaks taught us anything it is good ideas don't mean shit. I next predict that Assange WILL be deported to the USA, where he will be tried and spend many years behind bars. Because thanks to the power of propaganda any jurist will have heard "wikileaks = terrorist rapist" about a bazillion times before we get to deliberations.
You want to know the sad part? This HOSTS file troll has been wasting a week of his life so far posting on every thread I do just to hurl insults because I have mathematically proven that his magical HOSTS file won't save him. I have showed him links, showed him the math, showed him multiple sites that say HOSTS FILES DON'T WORK with bright neon letters and pretty colors, but still he hangs onto his "magical thinking" like it is a woobie. And you'd think he'd at least use a modern woobie, like IDS or behavioral analysis to bet his ass on, but no, a tech from 1989 that was abandoned by anybody with a brain before even WinME came out.
It just goes top show you that Anonymous + Magical Thinking = Batshit loonie. It isn't even an interesting loonie one can enjoy, like the flat earthers or the ones that think we rode on dinosaurs, no just loonie about an ancient tech nobody uses anymore. It would be like saying Windows 3.11 was the height of security or something. Kinda sad really.
Correlation != Causation. I can set up an XP Sp2 machine with NO patches, NO AV or antispy, and then change the background to a LOLCat. Then when I use the machine only on the LAN I will have NO viruses, but I don't really think I can claim my magic LOLCat picture done saved me, do you trollie?
Hereissome more to rub your little nose in, but if you were actually capable of logic you could see why the entire HOSTS file concept is a fallacy.
Now do try to keep up: For the HOSTS file to provide a truly effective protection he will have to have ALL the websites that he crosses that can infect him, as well as any and all of the sites THOSE link to, all loaded into his magical HOSTS file. Now considering we are talking on average 100,000 to 200,000 websites PER day in a list that will literally change by the minute, with a site that was safe 20 minutes ago being dangerous now and vice versa, even if Trollie had four hand with 20 fingers on each and typed 36 hours a day he will STILL LOSE. It is simple mathematics and I really shouldn't have to give a fifth grade statistics lesson on why the odds simply aren't in his favor.
But as I said to you before Trollie, PLEASE, believe in your magical woobie. Toss ALL your AV and antispy, hell you don't even need a firewall thanks to your magical woobie. Please do so as both the repairmen and malware writers just looooove stupid people. It makes us lots of $$$. I only hope you don't end up part of a botnet running illegal activity, because those conversation with the men with crewcuts and guns really isn't pleasant from what I've been told.
Hey everybody, meet my personal fuckpet, also known as the HOSTS troll. Try not to mind the drool. You see the HOSTS troll believes in "magical thinking" and the really sad part? It believes in the magical power of a HOSTS file! You remember those, that thing everyone recommended back in 1997 for about 6 months until ALL the malware writers figured out how trivial it was to teabag a system by hacking it? Yeah those! Funny huh? So now the HOSTS troll, or trollie as I like to call it, is following me around after having its delusion shattered when I pointed out that HOSTS file hijacking isn't exactly rocket science, hell even script kiddies don't even brag about HOSTS file hijacks anymore.
So please ignore the stench, I'm sure trollie will tire of being my bitch and go back to whacking off to his Master Chief fan fics soon enough. If some of you could help poor old trollie by explaining in small words how HOSTS file aren't a magic buff, like the underoos he sticks on his head, maybe we can all do something nice for Xmas and teach it something besides piddling on the carpet. Sadly the two dozen or so links I rubbed under its nose used big words like "hijacking" and "incredibly easy" which was too much for its Halo addled brain, so it just sat there with a really stupid look (admittedly it is hard to tell with trollie) and proceeded to wet itself again.
Yeah I have to give the pirates credit, as yet again I'm more impressed by their "product" than I am the original. I had a friend that was one of those "just knows enough to be dangerous" types hand me a couple of DVDs with a "yo, check this out". Now I remember when pirates actually had to deal with cracks, reg entries, all sorts of BS, but these things were just amazing on how stupid one could be and still work it.
The first was a copy of Office 2K7 that had every single version, from Student o Ultimate, and every single program, all wrapped with a nice GUI that popped up a txt file that said "Here paste this" for the key when you picked which one you wanted and even told you what key combo for copy and paste. Damn my grandma could work that! The second was a Windows 7 that had ALL the versions, from Basic through Ultimate, both X86 and X64, again dumbed down completely. This one didn't even need a key, just pick which version you wanted. It even had pre-activated WGA. I'll admit if I didn't already have all my software fair and square the levels of easy on this thing was just mind blowing.
So it really doesn't surprise me that MSFT gave up on OGA. Home users sure as hell ain't gonna shell out $90-$150 for software they just don't use that much, and by making Office a PITA to pirate all they were doing was giving OO.o or whatever the hell they are calling it this week a shot. MSFT hasn't been making their bread and butter off home users in ages, so better to keep them in the MSFT fold than to risk them getting skilled at Open Source office software.
And all the FOSS advocates had a living shitfit about piracy, but you know what? It was a brilliant move. What do you need in an office? You need workers skilled in the tools you use. MSFT never made squat off of home users of office products so it was better to "wink wink" look the other way and let them gain familiarity and skill in their office products which corps will then buy to keep from worrying about a BSAA visit.
And I'm sorry I can't find the link, but I once saw a great podcast with Ballmer where he explained his thoughts on piracy. He said "I'm not really worried about some kid at a dorm somewhere that passes a copy of WinXP to his friend. What I AM worried about is some boat coming from Malaysia loaded down with counterfeit copies of XP that even I can't tell apart from the legitimate product. THAT is what we are going after with WGA, because if someone buys a machine from an unscrupulous vendor there frankly isn't any way just by looking at a disc or box to tell."
MSFT knows piracy works to their advantage. Those that pirated as kids end up being customers as adults. They will have experience with MSFT products, know all the shortcuts, and will frankly be an easy sale. That is why I still think Ballmer was nuts to kill the $50 Home Permium program. You'd be surprised how many XP pirates I know are now legit Windows 7 users thanks to the $50 upgrade, and now MSFT has an audience for selling other products, such as the way WMC plugs in nicely into the x360, and for the "anytime upgrade" to Pro or Ultimate. You catch them with pirated free, lure them into the fold with cheap legit copies, and then you have a captive audience to sell to. It is just good business.
Slashdot Mirror
But what you and the other posters seem to be missing is the horrible vagueness of the average patent given out by the USPTO. It doesn't matter if the patent originally related to IPX, or TCP/IP, because the USPTO probably gave them a patent for "putting data in a frame and relaying it over a wired or wireless medium" or some other equally vague BS.
Think about it THIS way: Do you REALLY think MSFT would have shelled out all that $$$ for patents that only related to a dead protocol or other useless tech like Netware? Nope, I'm willing to bet my last dollar MSFT's lawyers took a look at those patents, saw how vague they are and went "Cha Ching baby!" which caused MSFT to swoop down like a starving vulture upon a dying buffalo. Are companies like MSFT, Apple, and Oracle run by assholes? Probably, CEO and vicious bastard usually go together, but one thing they aren't is generous with their money. they saw something that made them go all drooly when they saw those Novell patents, and I bet when it comes out it will make Motorola REALLY sorry they stirred up the hornet's nest.
I think the point YOU are missing with your little analogy is this: If the duopolies weren't massively overselling bandwidth while at the same time refusing to spend squat on upgrades? Well the BOTH would run just fine. Want a good example of how fucked the big corps have been treating us? You know how they say every time anyone complains lines similar to "Well the USA is a big country, not like Japan, yada yada yada"? Well explain the fact that bumfuck Romania has better pipes than you can get in NYC or LA, two of the most populous urban centers on the planet.
If they ran their business like a normal business, and not an eternal money printing press, then at the very least our large population centers would have decent pipes, and maybe those of us in the flyover states might actually get a little love occasionally as well. Instead thanks to lack of competition you get like what my area has, where neither the teleco or the cableco have moved an inch in any direction in well over a decade, instead of actually upgrading the lines so they can give the customers what they were promised you instead get caps, in my area the BEST residential plan you get is 36GB!, and instead of long term planning the only thing you can count on is ever climbing prices, which in my area have gotten bad enough ($60 for the cheapest DSL plan) that the poor simply can't even afford to get on at all.
Frankly it is just shameful. While the rest of the world moves into a fiber optic future we here in the USA will be left behind on a badly capped short bus to the information superhighway, while the "corporation yay!" types act like you murdered their kitten if you even dare try to regulate the mess. I say either they give us decent service or we should take the last mile back and open it to competition. Want your monopoly back? We'll be happy to give you a decade for every place you run fiber to, 2 decades if that place currently isn't being served by at least 5MBs broadband. Then if they want a monopoly they'll have to get off their fat asses and start laying lines again. Otherwise they can sit there among a dozen plus different choices like we had during the old dialup days and take their chances.
Oh poor trollie, Afraid to place anything for your magical woobie on the front page? I thought you believed in your HOPES file? Maybe you should just paste your IP address here so we can all "see" what a magical woobie can do! And you STILL haven't figured out the math yet? Tsk tsk, I'm disappointed in you! I mean, surely there is a "statistics for dummies" book you could have perused by now? Well I understand, it is kinda hard for you to count only using your fingers and toes, especially with the tears in your eyes thanks to my cock slapping you in the face. Now pay attention, and learn! I'll even draw it in a nice simple picture format!
Now here is you...( ) with nothing but your magical woobie to protect your gaping hole from the train fucking that awaits it, and here is the bad guys....123498763487364983276492836 91827364981273649128764 981273649812736498127346 91823649812736498127364 18236491827639481263 9123874612938746219 9187236491287364981 9872634981263947 91827346912873469 9182743691827364 9128736491287364 91723469187236 91287364 91287364 91927346 91287364 1928734 691278364 912873 641927346 91287364917823491782 6491287364912634912873649128374619 91276349182 98712349
Now that is NOT to scale of course, otherwise your hole would be MUCH larger, and those cocks lined up to screw you would number...ohh around 230,000 at last count. Now pay attention trollie, here is the hard part! Of those 230,000 roughly 98,000 are what is known as transient avenues of attack, now I know that is a big word and hurts your little head, but what that means is a website could be dangerous right now...and now it is not...and now it is. A site can literally be "clean" and 2PM, be infected by 3PM, be clean by 4PM, and be reinfected by 5PM.
So it is actually simply trollie. For your magical woobie to work you will not only have to have EVERY site you visit that MAY OR MAY NOT be infected at that very moment in your magical HOPES file, but every single site they link to such as ad servers and your list has to be accurate to the minute or it is nothing but a woobie. So even if you subscribed to Securina and every single security site on the planet, and updated your woobie every single minute of every single day the math proves beyond a shadow of a doubt you WILL lose.
But you KNOW this already, don't you trollie? Or else you wouldn't be so desperate to get anyone to listen to your delusions. And the really sad part? You have bet your ENTIRE existence on a 20 year old tech nobody uses anymore! How fucking sad is that! It is like arguing for the superior sound quality of 8 tracks, or for the incredible versatility of the floppy disc. But answer me this trollie: If your HOPES file is so damned good why did everyone abandon them over a decade ago hmmm? The ONLY thing a HOPES file is good for anymore is for blocking ad servers, because their IP addresses never change unlike malware which changes by the minute. But here is your chance trollie, prove the math wrong. That is if you know how to do even the most basic of statistics. You DO know how to do statistics, don't you trollie? Because otherwise you are just praying to the magical woobie to save you, just like in my LOLCat example. Sad and pathetic, but cock slapping you is quite entertaining I must admit. It isn't often one gets to meet such a naive and easy mark. Poor little trollie.
And Correlation != Causation. I can set up an XP Sp2 machine with NO patches, NO AV or antispy, and then change the background to a LOLCat. Then when I use the machine only on the LAN I will have NO viruses, but I don't really think I can claim my magic LOLCat picture done saved me, do you trollie?
Now do try to keep up: For the HOSTS file to provide a truly effective protection he will have to have ALL the websites that he crosses that can infect him, as well as any and all of the sites THOSE link to, all loaded into his magical HOSTS file. Now considering we are talking on average
Explain please. If I have an app with A-d permissions, and a second app with only A, how is giving the attacker a MUCH larger attack vector not punching a hole in your security? I mean if FireFox would have insisted on Root in Linux, would anyone have used it? No, because it would have been stupid and an unnecessary risk. So please explain, how is presenting a larger area of attack to the world with the one piece of software most likely to be exposed to malware not equally dumb? You would have a point if ALL browsers offered an equal sized target, but they don't. Chrome, IE, Dragon, SWIron, Chromium, Safari, ALL of these allow for protected mode browsing. And I'm sure that if asked MSFT would be more than happy to help FF to implement this, just as they added X.264 support, so they can't even claim lack of funds.
As for Comodo? It isn't like this is some new startup here. We are talking about a company with offices in over a half dozen countries and something like 15,000 employees at last count. And why would they charge for it? They are making money hand over fist with their enterprise offerings and the good will they generate with products like Comodo DNS, Comodo Dragon Browser, and Comodo Internet Security being free for home and small business helps to get their name out. And it helps to generate them revenue, as I've personally watched as customers that enjoyed the ease of use and security of the Comodo products at home turned around and sold their bosses on the enterprise solutions. BTW not an employee, just someone who has had nothing but good experiences from their products.
But even if they were to magically go tits up tomorrow it isn't like it would take more than 2 minutes to switch DNS providers. And until then just like protected mode it simply makes good sense. After all, why increase risk and make yourself a larger target to attack if you don't have to? Simply saying "it isn't more dangerous" without any reasoning to back that up is simply opinion. I have given you MY reasons, because protected mode lowers the permissions and helps to isolate the browser from the rest of the system, thus lowering risk. So how is increasing risk "better" in this case?
Sarah Palin could pull it off. No, I'm super serial! She would make the NWO look so bumbling and clumsy it would be about as scary as your goofy Auntie from Omaha. Everyone would go "We're supposed to be scared of that? The lady that writes her notes on her hand because she apparently can't see the cue cards? Riiiiight." She reminds me of some green office worker that knows she isn't on the ball or knows what the hell she is doing, but is so damned plucky she is just gonna plow through it even while fucking up horribly with a "go get'em!" attitude and can do spirit.
As for TFA, THIS, this is what the CIA is doing with taxpayer dollars? We've got two wars going on, NK acting like they just can't wait to push the button, and all they can come up with is a snarky acronym and an investigation of a whistleblower site where everybody and their fricking dog knows the score? (Hint: His name is Assange, and he likes to be on camera). If that is the best use they can come up with for taxpayer money, well then maybe it is time to start cutting their budget. Maybe with the purse strings tightened they'd get their shit together and be more interested in putting boots on the ground in the right places, like gathering Intel on the Pakistani border.
THANK YOU! Your explanation is much better than mine, but from what I was told by someone working on the setup that is EXACTLY what the plan is. All local traffic is "free" to the end user, gobble it ALL you want. But the second you leave the local network you have to start counting the GB, which as I said with a lousy 36GB for $106! and $1.50! per GB if you go over? It really won't take much effort at all to "steer" the customer into staying in their AOL style walled garden. After all, it'll have Youtube and Netflix, it'll have THEIR VoIP and PPV, what more can you want?
And the sad part is this screwjob by the FCC must have already been planned for quite some time, as they began their "test marketing" over a year ago in my area. I find it hard to believe they would just so happen to come up with a plan that perfectly fits the loopholes as nicely as it does without some prior heads up. And if you realize by locking everyone into their walled garden their expenses will fall like a stone, thanks to no longer needing to really buy any significant backbone by keeping most traffic local, well the $$$ these guys are gonna be rolling in while simultaneously sticking us on the short bus of the information superhighway is gonna be just unreal. Then they will start talking about "bandwidth hogs" and making it sound like anybody that uses over the cap is just a filthy pirate!. The setup is as you say just too obvious.
Yeah not to mention thanks to MSFT forming a patent bloc with Apple AND Oracle, plus those 882 patents from Novell MSFT will in all likelihood run over Motorola like a Mac truck. Sure Motorola has been in the game for quite awhile, But Novell wrote the book when it comes to networking and what device that Motorola manufacturers today DOESN'T use networking?
So if Motorola is smart they'll be looking to settle this, and quick. MSFT can afford to drag things on for years, the patents owned by the bloc with Apple and Oracle probably cover a good 90% of the products Motorola makes, which means if it goes bad for Motorola it'll go REAL bad. While I hate all the patent warchests, patent trolls, venue shopping, and other crap that goes along with it, a company whose products rely on networking stirring up the shit around MSFT after they just bought pretty much the entire patent portfolio of one of the founders of modern networking seems like a seriously bad idea. Better to settle before it gets too nasty.
Oh poor trollie, you STILL haven't figured out the math yet? Tsk tsk, I'm disappointed in you! I mean, surely there is a "statistics for dummies" book you could have perused by now? Well I understand, it is kinda hard for you to count only using your fingers and toes, especially with the tears in your eyes thanks to my cock slapping you in the face. Now pay attention, and learn! I'll even draw it in a nice simple picture format!
Now here is you...() with nothing but your magical woobie to protect your gaping hole from the train fucking that awaits it, and here is the bad guys....123498763487364983276492836 91827364981273649128764 981273649812736498127346 91823649812736498127364 18236491827639481263 9123874612938746219 9187236491287364981 9872634981263947 91827346912873469 9182743691827364 9128736491287364 91723469187236 91287364 91287364 91927346 91287364 1928734 691278364 912873 641927346 91287364917823491782 6491287364912634912873649128374619 91276349182 98712349
Now that is NOT to scale of course, otherwise your hole would be MUCH larger, and those cocks lined up to screw you would number...ohh around 230,000 at last count. Now pay attention trollie, here is the hard part! Of those 230,000 roughly 98,000 are what is known as transient avenues of attack, now I know that is a big word and hurts your little head, but what that means is a website could be dangerous right now...and now it is not...and now it is. A site can literally be "clean" and 2PM, be infected by 3PM, be clean by 4PM, and be reinfected by 5PM.
So it is actually simply trollie. For your magical woobie to work you will not only have to have EVERY site you visit that MAY OR MAY NOT be infected at that very moment in your magical HOPES file, but every single site they link to such as ad servers and your list has to be accurate to the minute or it is nothing but a woobie. So even if you subscribed to Securina and every single security site on the planet, and updated your woobie every single minute of every single day the math proves beyond a shadow of a doubt you WILL lose.
But you KNOW this already, don't you trollie? Or else you wouldn't be so desperate to get anyone to listen to your delusions. And the really sad part? You have bet your ENTIRE existence on a 20 year old tech nobody uses anymore! How fucking sad is that! It is like arguing for the superior sound quality of 8 tracks, or for the incredible versatility of the floppy disc. But answer me this trollie: If your HOPES file is so damned good why did everyone abandon them over a decade ago hmmm? The ONLY thing a HOPES file is good for anymore is for blocking ad servers, because their IP addresses never change unlike malware which changes by the minute. But here is your chance trollie, prove the math wrong. That is if you know how to do even the most basic of statistics. You DO know how to do statistics, don't you trollie? Because otherwise you are just praying to the magical woobie to save you, just like in my LOLCat example. Sad and pathetic, but cock slapping you is quite entertaining I must admit. It isn't often one gets to meet such a naive and easy mark. Poor little trollie.
Ahhhh...but I think I ALREADY see how they are gonna loophole their way out of this! You see they are gonna argue that they are NOT "giving favor to a third party" but mearly allowing them to pay for their own servers on the local network and thus keep from incurring bandwidth charges.
You see, they will argue all of the "local" traffic is free, since they don't have to pay for any peering on anything that stays local, and any other company is welcome to buy space in their server room or set up their own local servers wherever they like. And of course the customer is free to go anywhere on the Internet he or she likes, as long as they stay under 36GB, after that they have to charge the bandwidth hogs to keep prices fair, don't you see?
All I can tell you is talking to a guy that works there my above post is how it works, and is planned for a nationwide rollout. Everything that stays local is free, which means THEIR services, THEIR VoIP, since most people don't do much calling out of their local area, Netflix and Youtube are gonna pull an Akamai and put up local servers with the popular stuff, and as I said Windows updates are free thanks to the WSUS server setup. Anything else will hit against your craptastic 36GB cap. And considering the choices here are the cableco with their caps or AT&T DSL which tops out here at around 300Kb, which from what I've been told is due to the lines being nearly 60 years old and which they have NO intentions to replace, or enjoy that dialup.
So personally I hope the FCC puts the brakes on their ass, but considering how we haven't seen any pro consumer laws in over 30 years I won't hold my breath.
But are they FINALLY gonna support protected mode in Windows Vista and 7? The tech has been out there since 07 for the love of Pete, and it kinda kills the entire point of having all the extra security of Windows Vista and Win 7 if FF is gonna punch a giant hole right through the security and do a little monkey dance.
So while I hope that Mozilla supports protected mode so I can keep recommending it, until then for myself and my customers I've been testing the Comodo Dragon browser which like all Chromium browsers DOES support protected mode, and adds some extra security features and turns off the Google phoning home like in Chrome. It is taking a little to get used to but so far I have found most of my extensions, and the secure DNS and other security features are nice and it is still fast as hell.
I would really hate to give up on FF, but with the browser being the #1 source of malware getting into a system not supporting protected mode is just too risky. I mean what is the point of all the extra security features if Mozilla doesn't use them? It isn't like FF runs as root in Linux, so why should it run at a higher user level in Windows when it doesn't have to?
While I read your Anandtech article, it still really doesn't answer what I'm getting at. Here let me give an example that will better explain. I often have to help customers with setting up their cams and camcorders to interface with their PCs. So far I have seen H.264 in MKV files, in AVI files, in WMV files, in MOV files and even one funky cam that put out H.263 in RMV.
Now the video decoders from ATI and Nvidia from what I've seen are pretty good about working on just about any file, no matter the wrapper, as long as the code within roughly matched the spec. Now I will be upfront that I have steered clear on Intel IGPs since the mess that was the 9xx chips, which were a headache and a half, but the last I messed with Intel IGPs if you wanted to accelerate MPG 2 video it damned well better be in a MPG 2 wrapper and completely conform to spec or it would dump on the CPU.
So THIS is what I meant by "Intel Speak" in that while the other solutions would allow some leeway as long as the underlying video was roughly in spec, the Intel chips were picky as hell. Now I'm sure you know as well as I that nobody has really settled down on video formats for HD, so you are libel to H.26X video in any number of wrappers, same with MP4. If the new Intel chips are as picky as the old ones then they really aren't very useful since one doesn't have control of the webmasters or what codecs and containers they use. That is why I prefer ATI for my customers, as by using shaders and their ATI AVIO they are pretty flexible when it comes to formats.
I'm sorry they modded you down, because I would say you are right on the money. My local Walgreen's just sold out of "Android tablets" which at $100 went like hotcakes even though they were so anemic even browsing on them was frankly an exercise in pain. And of course the box was literally covered with little green droids, so anybody that buys this is gonna think "this droid thing sucks!" and as you pointed out apps that are supposed to "be for droid" won't actually work.
So my question is this: Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to set a basic requirement for an Android device? You mention PC but with PCs you can be pretty sure of some basic specs...CPU of 1.5GHz (mobile) or 2GHz (desktop) or better, RAM of 512MB minimum (if you support older machines) or 1GB (newer) and a GPU of 945 IGP or better. And of course you can always set minimum specs easily in Windows.
But with Android frankly I'm seeing devices that run the gambit from so shitty they ought to be ashamed to sell it to total hotness and the ONLY thing they have in common is the green droid logo. I'm also seeing brand new devices being sold with Android 1.5 (like the Walgreen's tablet) all the way to 2.2 in my local stores. And as you pointed out the features are frankly all over the place. Now someone can correct me if I'm wrong but WinPhone 7 DOES have basic system specs one has to have to sell a device with WinPhone 7, so my question is "why the hell hasn't Google set minimum specs"? Are they so desperate to win share they don't care if droid ends up equaling shit in the minds of the public? Do they just not care?
So I can see why a handset manufacturer or developer might want to avoid the droid. With droid there is plenty of CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that is gonna ruin the brand name in the eyes of the public when Auntie Sue gets "one of those nice droid thingies" and finds it frankly unusable, while from a developer standpoint both the iPhone and WinPhone 7 have basic specs one can shoot for and know it'll work. Which version is a developer supposed to develop for? 1.5? 1.6? Is 2.0 the minimum one should shoot for? I honestly don't see how anyone can say fragmentation isn't an issue when walking into Walmart the other day I counted no less than FOUR different versions of Android all for sale at the same time, all with wildly different specs. That is just a mess people!
Actually I'd say it is worse than lame, as lame can sometimes be enjoyable like a good cheesy movie. What we have here is completely uninspired copypasta with a sauce made from bland quotes that can't even bother to be smarmy or smartass. I've seen lame lists rise above copypasta by putting some serious ragging on the recipients, this one couldn't even bother that.
For those that haven't TFA don't bother, as it makes the phone book look like an interesting read.
Why trollie, so you can hide away from the front page? Scared to let others see your magical woobie?...Get Some! Now if your magical woobie works all you have to do is MATHEMATICALLY PROVE that your HOSTS file "solution" can scale to protect you against 100,000 to 200,000 targets that are constantly changing. You DO know how to use math? Or statistics? Here is your chance to prove the world you magical woobie works with out ANY doubt, lets see the math trollie!
Oh but you are missing the sneakier way they are gonna get you...caps. I'm in one of the test markets for the new caps, which BTW are 36GB for residential, and 76GB for business. Now that is $106! for the bundle with basic cable and phone, or $180! for the "business" which is the same just with a higher cap. Now here is how they get you:
Vonage? Counts against the cap. Their VoIP? Don't. Linux and Mac updates? Count. Windows? Don't because they got "donated" a WSUS server. Anyone other than Netflix and Youtube? Counts. Their PPV along with Youtube and Netflix? Don't, and the only reason you are allowed Youtube and Netflix is they paid to put a local server. Starting to see a trend?
At $1.50 a GB and a low cap it really doesn't take much to "steer" your customer wherever you want them to go. Remember the days of the AOL walled garden? Well its about to be back boys and girls. Sure you can go where they don't want you to, but it will cost you out the ass. Stay in this nice little garden and we won't bend you over the barrel.
For all those that were "corporation yay!" you are about to get a taste of what uncontrolled greed is like, and you ain't gonna like it! We in the USA will be shuttled onto the short bus of the information superhighway while the rest of the world gets 100MBs+ lines and looks at us as the backwater that we are. I mean when the backwaters of fricking Romania have higher speeds than NYC and LA? Well something is VERY wrong here.
I don't think he "had to" cave to anyone, he is the fricking POTUS! I think the real problem is Obama is so wishy washy he makes Carter look like he has a spine. Almost from the minute he has taken office all he has done is flip flop and make concessions.
Well if he thinks he is making friends this way he is wrong, as NOBODY likes a spineless leader. I predict the Rs could run Bozo the fricking clown and win by a landslide. Right now the only hope for Obama is if the Rs get taken over by the tea party and they run Palin, but sadly with as spineless as Obama is acting it would probably be a close race...shudder.
Because when local municipalities dare to try to run their OWN lines they get told "Unfair advantage!" and then get to spend a decade before the courts. So the telecos basically have figured out how to have their cake and eat it too, by refusing to upgrade their shitty infrastructure but when some place decides to get their own better infrastructure, oh no! That wouldn't be fair. And to me this is why we will just have to have the fed either run lines like with electricity in the 30s, or just take the existing lines away from the telecos, because as it is now they have so much money small towns and the free market simply can't operate. True story:
A friend of mine operated a little shop just outside town. Even though this is a heavy populated area, neither the cableco or teleco would serve them, it was strictly 33k dialup. So he talked his boss into going in half with him to have a T-1 line ran from town. We are talking nearly 25k to have it run, and then they sat up their own little ISP to serve the neighborhood. Capitalism in action, right? Well when the teleco noticed what was happening and their shitty $80 a month dialup started losing customers they jacked the rates on the T-1 by 4000%. Apparently they had also made a few calls so that nobody else would sell to them either. They were told by the teleco "Don't like it? Just try to sue us!" and their lawyer told them "Oh yeah you'll win, but it'll take a decade and about a million five in court fees". So they filed bankruptcy and just moved away. The people there are STILL stuck on 33k dialup, and the T-1 lies rotting in a field.
The moral of the story? There is NO way for the free market to function when the ones that serve an area also own the rights to the backbone. And we will NEVER have nationwide broadband without the government forcing the teleco/cableco monopoly to compete. Otherwise you get what you have now in my area, where the cableco and teleco have not moved a single inch in nearly 30 years! My mom was a block and a half from the cable and now the DSL junction when she built her house 27 years ago, guess how far away it is now? If you guessed a block and a half you'd be correct sir!
Well I would agree with you if we weren't talking about these same people having a living shitfit over the death tax, you know? The one that affects millionaires? Or these same folks having a royal fit about benefits...which they currently enjoy. I mean can you even imagine living in a shack when it is 20 fricking degrees outside and railing for cuts in the very services that keep your family from starving? And these same people come out to scream over STATE benefits, even the ones they paid into? I mean seriously, anything other than war or tax breaks have these people foaming at the mouth!
But to me the worst part was being there for awhile in 08 and listen to the damned near "string up that nigger!" talk when it came to Obama. I was told he is secretly a Muslim Kenyan who was gonna bring socialism! Socialism I tell ya! And would tear down the churches for mosques. Of course the irony was if I asked them "Well what is socialism, and why is it bad?" they honestly couldn't tell me. I'd get everything from "its about taxes!" to something about making us into Russia (that was communism) or even a plot to take away our guns!
So while I'm all for standing by your principles, and have done it myself quite a few times even when it would cost me money (like the fact that many shops use hot software, but I refused and lost some good jobs because of it) but when you hear people spouting off big words like socialism with NO clue as to what it means, or when their entire arguments could be taken word for word from Rush and Beck? Well then I would say that had nothing to do with principles, and everything to do with propaganda.
Well the whole thing just seems like an ever climbing level of stupid. First Google collects data that while not illegal certainly wouldn't look good for the company: Dumb. Then they announce it to the world: Extra Dumb The governments demand to see the data...why? Just to see if there are any juicy bits? :Really Dumb, and now Google refuses to hand any of it over rather than just redact the names and let them have the boring bits: Extra Super dumb.
If there is any lesson here it is that Google should have kept its big mouth shut and just file 13'd the data. They didn't need it, hell they have enough data on everyone with search and email to make Hoover blush, so why keep it and blab about it to the world? The whole thing just makes no bloody sense.
The words you are looking for is "main stream media" which is what gets dirt poor people in tar paper shacks to vote for less taxes for the rich and to cut off any assistance they may be getting. As I said I bet if you did a public poll right now when you asked about Wikileaks the answer you would get from the public is "terrorist hangout for rapists" without a single word about government bribes, payoffs, or any of the other nasty bits Wikileaks actually released.
And THAT, that right there, is what you are up against. Now personally I think the whole system is so corrupted starting over would be a GREAT idea, I really think so. But you are talking about going against those with billions invested in the status quo, and just saying "give peace a chance" has about as much chance as ice cream in hades.
The only real difference of opinion we have is that you think it can scale organically, I'm saying that isn't possible. Try it in just ONE state, pick any one. Hell pick North Dakota, it is a little one. What will happen is when it looks like you may have a snowball's chance in hell of changing things you WILL awaken the sleeping giant, and the next thing you know every talking head will be talking about what a dirty no good terrorist rapist you are. Your leaders will have EVERY bit of dirty laundry ever thrown at them, your entire org will be drug through the muck, in the end you will be made to look about 1000 times as loonie as the worse from the tea party. Then the people, getting all this "information" thrown at them 24x7 by the MSM, will vote in huge numbers with the status quo.
Believe me friend, I wish it wasn't so, but I can drive 30 minutes south of here and be surrounded by tar paper shacks with McCain/Palin planted next to their dead cars and plastic sheeted windows. I have watched people without ANY healthcare at all come out to DENOUNCE any treatment for themselves, watch them practically break out the pitchforks for actually offering to help them in any way. This is the power of propaganda, the same as those that still love "dear leader" even though he is a giant douche. if you really want a shot you're gonna have to figure an end run around newspapers, TV, and radio, all with the almost non existent budget I'm sure you guys have. Can't use the Internet because most of the poor and middle class don't get their "news" from it but from the TV.
So all I'm saying is basically your the HS football team and you're going against the Broncos, and just to make sure there are no worries they've paid off the refs. You better have something a hell of a lot more than just a good idea to counter that friend, because if Wikileaks taught us anything it is good ideas don't mean shit. I next predict that Assange WILL be deported to the USA, where he will be tried and spend many years behind bars. Because thanks to the power of propaganda any jurist will have heard "wikileaks = terrorist rapist" about a bazillion times before we get to deliberations.
You want to know the sad part? This HOSTS file troll has been wasting a week of his life so far posting on every thread I do just to hurl insults because I have mathematically proven that his magical HOSTS file won't save him. I have showed him links, showed him the math, showed him multiple sites that say HOSTS FILES DON'T WORK with bright neon letters and pretty colors, but still he hangs onto his "magical thinking" like it is a woobie. And you'd think he'd at least use a modern woobie, like IDS or behavioral analysis to bet his ass on, but no, a tech from 1989 that was abandoned by anybody with a brain before even WinME came out.
It just goes top show you that Anonymous + Magical Thinking = Batshit loonie. It isn't even an interesting loonie one can enjoy, like the flat earthers or the ones that think we rode on dinosaurs, no just loonie about an ancient tech nobody uses anymore. It would be like saying Windows 3.11 was the height of security or something. Kinda sad really.
Correlation != Causation. I can set up an XP Sp2 machine with NO patches, NO AV or antispy, and then change the background to a LOLCat. Then when I use the machine only on the LAN I will have NO viruses, but I don't really think I can claim my magic LOLCat picture done saved me, do you trollie?
Here is some more to rub your little nose in, but if you were actually capable of logic you could see why the entire HOSTS file concept is a fallacy.
Now do try to keep up: For the HOSTS file to provide a truly effective protection he will have to have ALL the websites that he crosses that can infect him, as well as any and all of the sites THOSE link to, all loaded into his magical HOSTS file. Now considering we are talking on average 100,000 to 200,000 websites PER day in a list that will literally change by the minute, with a site that was safe 20 minutes ago being dangerous now and vice versa, even if Trollie had four hand with 20 fingers on each and typed 36 hours a day he will STILL LOSE. It is simple mathematics and I really shouldn't have to give a fifth grade statistics lesson on why the odds simply aren't in his favor.
But as I said to you before Trollie, PLEASE, believe in your magical woobie. Toss ALL your AV and antispy, hell you don't even need a firewall thanks to your magical woobie. Please do so as both the repairmen and malware writers just looooove stupid people. It makes us lots of $$$. I only hope you don't end up part of a botnet running illegal activity, because those conversation with the men with crewcuts and guns really isn't pleasant from what I've been told.
Hey everybody, meet my personal fuckpet, also known as the HOSTS troll. Try not to mind the drool. You see the HOSTS troll believes in "magical thinking" and the really sad part? It believes in the magical power of a HOSTS file! You remember those, that thing everyone recommended back in 1997 for about 6 months until ALL the malware writers figured out how trivial it was to teabag a system by hacking it? Yeah those! Funny huh? So now the HOSTS troll, or trollie as I like to call it, is following me around after having its delusion shattered when I pointed out that HOSTS file hijacking isn't exactly rocket science, hell even script kiddies don't even brag about HOSTS file hijacks anymore.
So please ignore the stench, I'm sure trollie will tire of being my bitch and go back to whacking off to his Master Chief fan fics soon enough. If some of you could help poor old trollie by explaining in small words how HOSTS file aren't a magic buff, like the underoos he sticks on his head, maybe we can all do something nice for Xmas and teach it something besides piddling on the carpet. Sadly the two dozen or so links I rubbed under its nose used big words like "hijacking" and "incredibly easy" which was too much for its Halo addled brain, so it just sat there with a really stupid look (admittedly it is hard to tell with trollie) and proceeded to wet itself again.
Yeah I have to give the pirates credit, as yet again I'm more impressed by their "product" than I am the original. I had a friend that was one of those "just knows enough to be dangerous" types hand me a couple of DVDs with a "yo, check this out". Now I remember when pirates actually had to deal with cracks, reg entries, all sorts of BS, but these things were just amazing on how stupid one could be and still work it.
The first was a copy of Office 2K7 that had every single version, from Student o Ultimate, and every single program, all wrapped with a nice GUI that popped up a txt file that said "Here paste this" for the key when you picked which one you wanted and even told you what key combo for copy and paste. Damn my grandma could work that! The second was a Windows 7 that had ALL the versions, from Basic through Ultimate, both X86 and X64, again dumbed down completely. This one didn't even need a key, just pick which version you wanted. It even had pre-activated WGA. I'll admit if I didn't already have all my software fair and square the levels of easy on this thing was just mind blowing.
So it really doesn't surprise me that MSFT gave up on OGA. Home users sure as hell ain't gonna shell out $90-$150 for software they just don't use that much, and by making Office a PITA to pirate all they were doing was giving OO.o or whatever the hell they are calling it this week a shot. MSFT hasn't been making their bread and butter off home users in ages, so better to keep them in the MSFT fold than to risk them getting skilled at Open Source office software.
And all the FOSS advocates had a living shitfit about piracy, but you know what? It was a brilliant move. What do you need in an office? You need workers skilled in the tools you use. MSFT never made squat off of home users of office products so it was better to "wink wink" look the other way and let them gain familiarity and skill in their office products which corps will then buy to keep from worrying about a BSAA visit.
And I'm sorry I can't find the link, but I once saw a great podcast with Ballmer where he explained his thoughts on piracy. He said "I'm not really worried about some kid at a dorm somewhere that passes a copy of WinXP to his friend. What I AM worried about is some boat coming from Malaysia loaded down with counterfeit copies of XP that even I can't tell apart from the legitimate product. THAT is what we are going after with WGA, because if someone buys a machine from an unscrupulous vendor there frankly isn't any way just by looking at a disc or box to tell."
MSFT knows piracy works to their advantage. Those that pirated as kids end up being customers as adults. They will have experience with MSFT products, know all the shortcuts, and will frankly be an easy sale. That is why I still think Ballmer was nuts to kill the $50 Home Permium program. You'd be surprised how many XP pirates I know are now legit Windows 7 users thanks to the $50 upgrade, and now MSFT has an audience for selling other products, such as the way WMC plugs in nicely into the x360, and for the "anytime upgrade" to Pro or Ultimate. You catch them with pirated free, lure them into the fold with cheap legit copies, and then you have a captive audience to sell to. It is just good business.