Consider the number of people getting Lindows boxes who have never "tasted" Microsoft products to get "hooked" on them. Believe me, I think it's a vanishingly small figure.
Why not? Choices make the world a better place. Lindows isn't Debian. Lindows isn't Red Hat. Lindows is Lindows. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not a good product for some people.
If somebody forks over some cash for a Microsoft-free product, it still sends a message to Microsoft. If somebody's happy with Lindows, great! If somebody's unhappy with Lindows after trying it, they can decide to go back to Microsoft or they can try something else, but they know they have a choice.
Of all the Microsoft bashing that goes on here, please remember that Microsoft has been a pretty good Patent Citizen.
They hold an extensive portfolio, but use them defensively: if someone else had gotten that patent, even with Microsoft's prior arts, you can be sure they'd take Microsoft to court about it.
The number of situations where Microsoft was the bully in patent litigation is very small... can you list any examples?
I've described the copyright battles over cross-stitching, player piano rolls, Happy Birthday and guitar sheet music as being good analogies for what "kids" are doing today with MP3s, Kazaa and keygen cracks.
The thing is: will you respect the current legal rights of the publisher, or will you create a new paradigm?
Who said, "The reasonable man adapts to his environment. The unreasonable man tries to adapt the environment to himself. Thus, all progress has been made by unreasonable men"?
Fame, as she walked at evening in a city, saw the painted face of Notoriety flaunting beneath a gas-lamp, and many kneeled unto her in the dirt of the road.
"Who are you?" Fame said to her.
"I am Fame," said Notoriety.
Then Fame stole softly away so that noone knew she had gone.
And Notoriety presently went forth and all her worshippers rose and followed after, and she led them, as was most meet, to her native Pit.
--Lord Dunsany, in "The Food of Death; fifty-one tales."
Every time I see a new MMORPG, I am saddened to see that the designers don't learn the well-publicized lessons of their predecessors and competition.
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Isolate the backend servers from the Internet.
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Patch management isn't as trivial as one would think.
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Lag isn't under your control so design around it.
Don't rely on a client hiding anything from the user.
Lag isn't under your control so design around it.
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Don't include "God" tools in every client, nor accept God logins from untrusted addresses.
And most of all, never trust anything a client gives the server.
The server must be the adjudicator of everything, the data master, the sole arbiter of discrepancies. Assume the client is fully hacked or written from scratch to do anything the user wants. Assume the client sees no walls, sees all invisible objects, sees every spawn point, and can filter on anything your server tells your client.
Are there any other manufacturers of MemoryStick(R)(TM)(SM)(C)(Pat.) or compatible products? I don't understand why a consumer would want Sony to lock out the competition and lock the customer into more of their proprietary products.
I don't know why Sony has so far tolerated an open market of third-party memory cards for games, but there are many such products in every game store. Maybe it expands the "PSwhatever" wall space in game stores. Maybe they spin it as a quality issue without tipping their hand too far: spend $8 on a crappy memory card or $20 on a Sony(R).
If Sony wanted open market, they'd go with a commodity card like CompactFlash. If they close the market, they'll go with a proprietary MemoryStick. It's Sony's choice as to how they'll sell their PSX or PS3, but I don't understand why the parent post supports their shift to an even less competition-friendly product line.
This, of course, causes its normal downhill motion under gravity to occur retrotemporally, giving the fluid the appearance of syntemporal uphill motion.
I think I wioll haven be sick, like the time I will have read Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's book at Milliway's.
Where did the nmap folks get all these screenshots of a movie that's ostensibly fresh-in-theaters? And why oh why did they name their sources? I'm imagining Agent Smith from the MPAA will be giving out a few cease and desist visits soon.
This argument was one of many which I foresaw and noted in my anti-SSSCA letter of a few years ago. The language of that proposal was "copyrighted or protected works", which essentially killed the whole concept of lapsing copyright.
Some time ago I saw a TV news blurb about some experiments in adding a "required" sensor in the tail of new cars, which would respond quickly and safely to a police car's "stop now" gun.
I'm not sure which is scarier-- the fact that they thought it was a good idea, or the fact that nobody else seems to think it's a bad idea. Principally, (1) potential for abuse of authority (2) stolen or concocted "stop now" guns used for mischief.
So far, though, haven't heard more from Detroit or Congress about this sort of tool. The optimist in me hopes others saw issues with the idea as well.
The malformed zlib attack comes to mind. There's several slightly different static copies in the kernel, nevermind the many static copies in an endless variety of programs. Red Hat Network was shitting errata for a week.
As the guy who created LEAVES.BMP (and a few others from Win3.1), I'm still amazed at how popular that image was. There's no explaining what people will like or dislike the most. It appeared on almost every other computer magazine ad for a couple years.
My understanding is that piles don't replace folders - they are strictly an organizational metaphor, nothing to do with how files are actaully stashed away.
My understanding is that subdirectories don't replace folders - they are strictly an organizational metaphor, nothing to do with how files are actually stuffed away.
Now, start over. What end-user-accessible object type on the computer isn't just some crappy, stretched-thin, incongruous, overloaded, approximate, inconsistent metaphor for some real-world thing that these users ostensibly would understand?
If you're passing large amounts of data around that would attract the attention of people who could get a lawful intercept warrant, then I would assume you are smart enough to...
If you read "Fahrenheit 451" and "This Perfect Day" at the library in the same month, you get your Subversive++ mark in some Fed profile, but you can't find out about it. That's used as justification to a rubber-stamp Justice-R-Us clerk to get a crypto wiretap.
You order a copy of "Linux Exposed!" from Amazon. Hacker++.
You have to fly to an ailing grandmother who had a stroke. You don't know how long you'll be there, so you make it one way. Terrorist++.
You browse a MILF site and there's an image of someone who ain't a MILF. Paedo++.
You get your regular results back from the community clinic. They note some kidney anomalies. AIDS++.
Now, none of these conclusions are justified from the evidence, but they are just "mining." Sure, they'll do proper analysis later. Sure, you'll look like a normal rightful citizen when they trot out all this data in court (or worse, a secret grand jury).
If you don't know what they're seeing about you, how can you possibly guess what conclusions to which they're jumping?
Gates has always said that (paraphrased) Microsoft makes mistakes all the time, and that just one particularly bad misstep could doom Microsoft's prospects. The key to survival is to outlive the mistakes, to make fewer mistakes than the competition, and to keep tons of money in the bank instead paying them out in dividends, but these things can't always be done. This is why his company has tried to lowbal investor expectations every quarter, and exceed those expectations every quarter.
They send you a check in return for the marketing information that you provide them. If they don't send a check, complain until they do. How is this a scandal, again?
Seattle has a very progressive art budget: by law, some percentage (I think it's 1%) of the city's budget must go to fund public artworks. Seattle is literally covered with excellent public artworks in a wide range of styles, media, and installation sizes. From "Waiting for the Interurban" to the Fremont Bridge Troll, it's a part of Seattle's tradition.
The legal notion of 'anonymity' is actually comprised of two components: can you publish or do something without directly indicating your identity, and can you avoid being held accountable for your actions or statements. The blanket term of 'anonymity' just blurs the issues.
The courts have consistently decided that you can operate "unsigned," in that it would abridge or chill your freedoms of speech and silence to make your identifying signatures compulsory.
The courts have NOT supported the notion that you could operate in a way that you are "unaccounted;" if an illegal and unsigned statement or speech or action can eventually be tracked to you, then you must face the consequences.
What matters here is whether NAT or DNS or Caller-ID blocks or DoD/RSA mechanisms are going to be seen as attempts to be unsigned, or unaccountable. The legislatures have rarely put much careful attention to this distinction; this may have to be handled by the more contemplative (and usually better-informed) judiciary.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider the number of people getting Lindows boxes who have never "tasted" Microsoft products to get "hooked" on them. Believe me, I think it's a vanishingly small figure.
Why not? Choices make the world a better place. Lindows isn't Debian. Lindows isn't Red Hat. Lindows is Lindows. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not a good product for some people.
If somebody forks over some cash for a Microsoft-free product, it still sends a message to Microsoft. If somebody's happy with Lindows, great! If somebody's unhappy with Lindows after trying it, they can decide to go back to Microsoft or they can try something else, but they know they have a choice.
This is the DMCA we're talking about. Turning civil complaints by private sector into criminal accusations by government fiat.
Of all the Microsoft bashing that goes on here, please remember that Microsoft has been a pretty good Patent Citizen.
They hold an extensive portfolio, but use them defensively: if someone else had gotten that patent, even with Microsoft's prior arts, you can be sure they'd take Microsoft to court about it.
The number of situations where Microsoft was the bully in patent litigation is very small... can you list any examples?
I've described the copyright battles over cross-stitching, player piano rolls, Happy Birthday and guitar sheet music as being good analogies for what "kids" are doing today with MP3s, Kazaa and keygen cracks.
The thing is: will you respect the current legal rights of the publisher, or will you create a new paradigm?
Who said, "The reasonable man adapts to his environment. The unreasonable man tries to adapt the environment to himself. Thus, all progress has been made by unreasonable men"?
A Mistaken Identity
Fame, as she walked at evening in a city, saw the painted face of Notoriety flaunting beneath a gas-lamp, and many kneeled unto her in the dirt of the road.
"Who are you?" Fame said to her.
"I am Fame," said Notoriety.
Then Fame stole softly away so that noone knew she had gone.
And Notoriety presently went forth and all her worshippers rose and followed after, and she led them, as was most meet, to her native Pit.
--Lord Dunsany, in "The Food of Death; fifty-one tales."
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Isolate the backend servers from the Internet.
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Patch management isn't as trivial as one would think.
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Lag isn't under your control so design around it.
Don't rely on a client hiding anything from the user.
Lag isn't under your control so design around it.
Never trust anything a client gives the server.
Don't include "God" tools in every client, nor accept God logins from untrusted addresses.
And most of all, never trust anything a client gives the server.
The server must be the adjudicator of everything, the data master, the sole arbiter of discrepancies. Assume the client is fully hacked or written from scratch to do anything the user wants. Assume the client sees no walls, sees all invisible objects, sees every spawn point, and can filter on anything your server tells your client.
Are there any other manufacturers of MemoryStick(R)(TM)(SM)(C)(Pat.) or compatible products? I don't understand why a consumer would want Sony to lock out the competition and lock the customer into more of their proprietary products.
I don't know why Sony has so far tolerated an open market of third-party memory cards for games, but there are many such products in every game store. Maybe it expands the "PSwhatever" wall space in game stores. Maybe they spin it as a quality issue without tipping their hand too far: spend $8 on a crappy memory card or $20 on a Sony(R).
If Sony wanted open market, they'd go with a commodity card like CompactFlash. If they close the market, they'll go with a proprietary MemoryStick. It's Sony's choice as to how they'll sell their PSX or PS3, but I don't understand why the parent post supports their shift to an even less competition-friendly product line.
This, of course, causes its normal downhill motion under gravity to occur retrotemporally, giving the fluid the appearance of syntemporal uphill motion.
I think I wioll haven be sick, like the time I will have read Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's book at Milliway's.
Where did the nmap folks get all these screenshots of a movie that's ostensibly fresh-in-theaters? And why oh why did they name their sources? I'm imagining Agent Smith from the MPAA will be giving out a few cease and desist visits soon.
When the Infocom newsletter, the "New Zork Times" was C&D'd for stretching the trademark, one response strategy was to fight fire with fire.
The Gnu Zork Times: motto: all the gnus' wee feet leave prints
This argument was one of many which I foresaw and noted in my anti-SSSCA letter of a few years ago. The language of that proposal was "copyrighted or protected works", which essentially killed the whole concept of lapsing copyright.
The Destruction of Property, The Defiance of Authority, and The Removal of Clothing
Wasn't this formula the one that they discussed in the movie, "Sweet Liberty"?
Some time ago I saw a TV news blurb about some experiments in adding a "required" sensor in the tail of new cars, which would respond quickly and safely to a police car's "stop now" gun.
I'm not sure which is scarier-- the fact that they thought it was a good idea, or the fact that nobody else seems to think it's a bad idea. Principally, (1) potential for abuse of authority (2) stolen or concocted "stop now" guns used for mischief.
So far, though, haven't heard more from Detroit or Congress about this sort of tool. The optimist in me hopes others saw issues with the idea as well.
<AOL>Me too.</AOL>
The malformed zlib attack comes to mind. There's several slightly different static copies in the kernel, nevermind the many static copies in an endless variety of programs. Red Hat Network was shitting errata for a week.
As the guy who created LEAVES.BMP (and a few others from Win3.1), I'm still amazed at how popular that image was. There's no explaining what people will like or dislike the most. It appeared on almost every other computer magazine ad for a couple years.
It was such a hack little graphic, too.
It(TM)©® only(TM)©® takes(TM)©® one(TM)©® click(TM)©®(TM)!(TM) is© a(TM) registered® trademark(TM) used(TM) with Jeff©'s(TM) permission©. Unauthourized© reproduction(TM) is© expressly® prohibited(TM).
--
OpenBeos & Software
For a second there, I read your .sig as "OpenBezos & Software"...
My understanding is that piles don't replace folders - they are strictly an organizational metaphor, nothing to do with how files are actaully stashed away.
My understanding is that subdirectories don't replace folders - they are strictly an organizational metaphor, nothing to do with how files are actually stuffed away.
Now, start over. What end-user-accessible object type on the computer isn't just some crappy, stretched-thin, incongruous, overloaded, approximate, inconsistent metaphor for some real-world thing that these users ostensibly would understand?
If you're passing large amounts of data around that would attract the attention of people who could get a lawful intercept warrant, then I would assume you are smart enough to ...
If you read "Fahrenheit 451" and "This Perfect Day" at the library in the same month, you get your Subversive++ mark in some Fed profile, but you can't find out about it. That's used as justification to a rubber-stamp Justice-R-Us clerk to get a crypto wiretap.
You order a copy of "Linux Exposed!" from Amazon. Hacker++.
You have to fly to an ailing grandmother who had a stroke. You don't know how long you'll be there, so you make it one way. Terrorist++.
You browse a MILF site and there's an image of someone who ain't a MILF. Paedo++.
You get your regular results back from the community clinic. They note some kidney anomalies. AIDS++.
Now, none of these conclusions are justified from the evidence, but they are just "mining." Sure, they'll do proper analysis later. Sure, you'll look like a normal rightful citizen when they trot out all this data in court (or worse, a secret grand jury).
If you don't know what they're seeing about you, how can you possibly guess what conclusions to which they're jumping?
Gates has always said that (paraphrased) Microsoft makes mistakes all the time, and that just one particularly bad misstep could doom Microsoft's prospects. The key to survival is to outlive the mistakes, to make fewer mistakes than the competition, and to keep tons of money in the bank instead paying them out in dividends, but these things can't always be done. This is why his company has tried to lowbal investor expectations every quarter, and exceed those expectations every quarter.
I also wish that TiVo would allow me to
Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select-[lower right of your pause key].
That sounds like a fighting game maneuver. I dub that secret kung-fu move the "Noh Pah Ti Break."
They send you a check in return for the marketing information that you provide them. If they don't send a check, complain until they do. How is this a scandal, again?
Seattle has a very progressive art budget: by law, some percentage (I think it's 1%) of the city's budget must go to fund public artworks. Seattle is literally covered with excellent public artworks in a wide range of styles, media, and installation sizes. From "Waiting for the Interurban" to the Fremont Bridge Troll, it's a part of Seattle's tradition.
The legal notion of 'anonymity' is actually comprised of two components: can you publish or do something without directly indicating your identity, and can you avoid being held accountable for your actions or statements. The blanket term of 'anonymity' just blurs the issues.
The courts have consistently decided that you can operate "unsigned," in that it would abridge or chill your freedoms of speech and silence to make your identifying signatures compulsory.
The courts have NOT supported the notion that you could operate in a way that you are "unaccounted;" if an illegal and unsigned statement or speech or action can eventually be tracked to you, then you must face the consequences.
What matters here is whether NAT or DNS or Caller-ID blocks or DoD/RSA mechanisms are going to be seen as attempts to be unsigned, or unaccountable. The legislatures have rarely put much careful attention to this distinction; this may have to be handled by the more contemplative (and usually better-informed) judiciary.
If it's being sold on machines in Wal*Mart, it's not a beta.