Video games have been available for cars in Japan for years now, unless the short clips on TV mislead me as to its the popularity there. They're sometimes stuck in traffic for hours each day, so it does make some sense I guess.
Anyway. If Nissan are sharing a joint vision with MS now, then I can scratch them from the list of companies I'll buy from.
They probably could do both. The underlying technologies are quite different but different read mechanisms should allow for that, albeit at some more expense.
I think the real problem is that Microsoft would have to put Java (and probably SUN's Java
on Windows again to make BluRay usable there. Even just strategically, they really don't want to do that, and will probably sabotage Java on Windows any way they can. But, they've fought lawsuits over this before, and they may end up paying Sun a Java tax. That would go a long way towards keeping Sun going while Sun finds further ways to fight Microsoft's dominance.
Oh, I know... Microsoft's ASF format can embed links and images and stuff too, but reading each of these formats is pretty tricky... in fact, reading at least Microsoft's is ILLEGAL, due to patents. So, search engines will have a bit of trouble extracting those links.
Having said all that though, I was thinking more along the lines of a well-developed content explanation encoding, which would include subtitles and tags to classify the content, and put the links in context, so search engines could really understand it. Basically, something like a parallel XML stream to the video stream. Things like that might have already developed, if the video people had cooperated, instead of fighting.
Umm, I don't know where this article gets the idea that microsoft may have chosen a side. Blu-Ray uses Java. Let me spell that out for everyone: cross-platform, not.NET, not media tech. owned by MS. Bill himself is reported to have been shouting about that in Sony's offices.
So, while MS may well want to crush PS3, I think we need to remember that consoles are probably just a way of getting MS and their Media ownership sold to the next generation. What bill cares about is owning the tools that run the content, not having successful individual products like X-Boxes or having the best NG-DVD format.
Even in IE, you can set which sites are allowed to do things, and which aren't. With both IE and Outlook, you can set proxies and filter mail so that you only allow stuff from trusted senders etc.
But yes, if you have people above you who control IT policy, there's not much you can do, except make sure they take responsibility for bad decisions rather than you, and that you keep looking out for a better job. Admittedly, that can be hard to find too:(
Certainly, social engineering attacks come down to user education.
BUT, there is NO excuse for not having the technical side locked down. It's all too common for people to claim that you can't protect against someone clicking on a link. The fact is, you CAN. Quite simply, install a secure browser (dump IE, in other words), put it through a filtering proxy like dansguardian, and then close http ports on the firewall, except for the proxy server itself. Disable webmail at the web proxy, and disable downloads anyway at the same proxy. If you need windows update or something like that to work, you can explicitly allow certain sites. But DON'T allow any more than strictly necessary. Don't allow SSL, except to trusted sites where no uploads or downloads or conversations take place.
Likewise, install a secure email client, and have mail filtered through a company mail server, disable HTML mail and encrypted mail.
These are basic security precautions. But already, you've secured your organisation far beyond most of the windows shops out there that get virus and spyware issues every day.
It doesn't take a genius, it just takes you to choose what technology you allow on your systems, and to use it wisely.
Searching will suck. Video standards wars did it.
on
Why Video Blogs Will Suck
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Agreed on content == good. Especially if hot girls are involved;)
But, videos are going to be a problem in terms of search engines. Unless we get tagging properly implemented at the same time, vidcasts will be essentially lost.
And what about linking? Will vidcasts refer to other vidcasts? What happens then? Will search engines be able to find out how many vidcasts talk about the one, very cool vidcast? Probably not.
So, why not, I wonder? Is it because we can't embed links in videos? Nope. But, it would have been a lot easier, if we'd all settled on a useful, extensible, open web video standard years ago, instead of allowing people like Real and MS to fight over who would dominate. As usual, they're greedy, society suffers.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time that a buyout has proved detrimental to a company's practices and reputation. However, I don't think there can be any serious doubt that this article was instigated by Microsoft, considering the background to the story.
Well, they could simply not enter into such deals -- I think they're probably illegal, and certainly they're immoral anyway. Or, if they find one is hurting them and they want out, they could negotiate, or threaten, or form a united front against the company that's using monopoly power against them. Like us all, they have many options, if they have the guts to try, and the integrity to care.
Yep. Personally, I drink too fast, even with tea. With alcohol, in a bar, it's worse, because I get bored in bars and don't really get into the conversations others are having. Let's face it: bars aren't exactly the most stimulating environment for guys who like science and technology and sci-fi. OK, theres an oldish fantasy element to some bars, but that fades fast:) Basically, it's about self-control, and social periphery. If you don't want to get drunk, and you drink to fast, then try orange juice.
There's an old buddhist saying: that, the teachings are like fingers pointing at the moon. If you look at the fingers, you'll never see the moon that's being pointed at. Somewhere along the line, you have to take what you see, and add a bit of your own judgement, in order to make the leap from what is said to what should be understood.
They're not trying to influence you. The character is manipulating humans, particularly Baltar, and using their human instincts to do it. You should feel like it's manipulation, because it is. It just doesn't happen to be directed at you.
Nope, you've got that backwards. They're manipulating YOU. Sure, the story is that Baltar is the one being manipulated, but that's just a thin veil over the real thing, much like the storyline and "acting" in a porn movie is a thin veil over its real objective.
In fact, if you understand that, you'll understand a lot of things in our culture, like why Microsoft says Office XML is a "standard", or why "Terrorism" is the big evil we all should fight.
The simple, direct version: Read between the lines.
Agreed. It's whether it's being shipped as the default browser, maybe even with IE disabled, that matters.
I'm actually surprised that the big PC builders haven't done this before. To me, it makes absolutely no sense to sell computers to the public, have them filled with viruses in a day, and then have the users bring them back to be fixed. You can make money off a bit of that, I guess, but when it's happening on virtually every windows PC sold that connects to the net? It'd be a nightmare.
Putting firefox on there is the only sane option, and it's only the first of many fundamental flaw fixes necessary to sell Windows PCs fit for an average user.
Yep. Or, if you look at how debian manages its software (tip: use debian sid on a daily basis, and update it regularly for a while, checking out the new packages and updates available), then you'll easily see that the future of software is in staying right up to date. Even windows is moving towards this, albeit at a snail's pace. Debian shows how it will be though, especially in terms of bandwidth use.
never had to use IE for the mac. It is a horrid wretched peice of software that should die like the rotting beast of Golgamathea that it is.
For those who are unaware, Golgamathea is Bill's pet name, as used by his wife, and a few sycophantic Vista and X-Box users.
Re:Forgotten resource of information not mentioned
on
Linux Troubleshooting
·
· Score: 1
Correct, updated and relevant man pages/documentation is a gold mine for trouble shooting and configuration.
Unfortunately, the linux manpages are neither correct, nor updated. Just go compare a freebsd manpage to a linux one. The difference in quality is staggering. Despite being really busy, I've thought about re-writing them myself a few times, even though I barely know the details necessary. That says something about the quality in and of itself:(
Yep. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the RIAA is deliberately abusing human rights here. They're still fighting to get the insane laws they want enacted in countries where rights are foremost, and so they take their fight to countries where rights are less well established, but economics are more vital. I'm sure they've never taken the time to really consider the morality of it, but I think anyone who does will realise it's blackmail at best, and simply sickening at worst.
On copying music being theft, I think you're quite wrong on that. I agree, that on the face of it, there are strong similarities. However, I don't think you're fully accounting for the society which drives perceptions about these things. For many thousands of years, instruments were invented and shared, music was shared and copied freely, and eventually, it developed into a worldwide distribution system. That system originally had bottlenecks, including the number of people with the ability to compose, and the number of people able to distribute music. And so, we paid people to distribute across those bottlenecks. However, with the advent of the 'net, those bottlenecks no longer exist. We can share music from creator to consumer directly, with no intermediaries, and everyone can create music, with a virtual digital studio in their own computer. If anything, it is theft to hold back this advancement from society, in order to continue making profit from the old, bottlenecked model.
You can point to whatever definitions you want, but the fact is, Microsoft has done everything in its power for many years now to get the entire IT industry by the balls. Sure, the article can talk about how "independant" programmers exist etc., but we all know that they're being forced to fit into the microsoft way of doing things. This is by deliberate monopolising on microsoft's part, and it's still happening. The legal action going on in South Korea and Europe is testament to that. The many small countries trying to turn away from Microsoft of testament to the problems it has caused. Still, Microsoft defies governments and legal decisions, and rather than cleaning up its act, does in one country what it couldn't get away with in another.
The simple fact is, Microsoft continues to be a pain in the IT industry's ass, and holds back innovation everywhere.
I can only assume this article was deliberately created so MS can produce it in court as a supposedly "independant" article on why Microsoft should not be fined any more. I say fine them until they learn some responsibility, and dismantle the company if they continue to harm IT as they do now.
Sure, that might be a good way if you chose to lie about it, but my point was that someone could very well be innocent, even if evidence really is found on their computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Nor do some of us take jobs at one of the most notorious IT companies and expect to be treated well.
Don't be a dumbass please. I contribute plenty. And I'm not going to justify having a few minutes to post while keeping up with the community.
Video games have been available for cars in Japan for years now, unless the short clips on TV mislead me as to its the popularity there. They're sometimes stuck in traffic for hours each day, so it does make some sense I guess.
Anyway. If Nissan are sharing a joint vision with MS now, then I can scratch them from the list of companies I'll buy from.
They probably could do both. The underlying technologies are quite different but different read mechanisms should allow for that, albeit at some more expense.
I think the real problem is that Microsoft would have to put Java (and probably SUN's Java
on Windows again to make BluRay usable there. Even just strategically, they really don't want to do that, and will probably sabotage Java on Windows any way they can. But, they've fought lawsuits over this before, and they may end up paying Sun a Java tax. That would go a long way towards keeping Sun going while Sun finds further ways to fight Microsoft's dominance.You seem to be imagining a whitelist, where only listed sites are allowed. That's not necessary at all.
Oh, I know... Microsoft's ASF format can embed links and images and stuff too, but reading each of these formats is pretty tricky... in fact, reading at least Microsoft's is ILLEGAL, due to patents. So, search engines will have a bit of trouble extracting those links.
Having said all that though, I was thinking more along the lines of a well-developed content explanation encoding, which would include subtitles and tags to classify the content, and put the links in context, so search engines could really understand it. Basically, something like a parallel XML stream to the video stream. Things like that might have already developed, if the video people had cooperated, instead of fighting.
Umm, I don't know where this article gets the idea that microsoft may have chosen a side. Blu-Ray uses Java. Let me spell that out for everyone: cross-platform, not .NET, not media tech. owned by MS. Bill himself is reported to have been shouting about that in Sony's offices.
So, while MS may well want to crush PS3, I think we need to remember that consoles are probably just a way of getting MS and their Media ownership sold to the next generation. What bill cares about is owning the tools that run the content, not having successful individual products like X-Boxes or having the best NG-DVD format.
Even in IE, you can set which sites are allowed to do things, and which aren't. With both IE and Outlook, you can set proxies and filter mail so that you only allow stuff from trusted senders etc.
But yes, if you have people above you who control IT policy, there's not much you can do, except make sure they take responsibility for bad decisions rather than you, and that you keep looking out for a better job. Admittedly, that can be hard to find too :(
Certainly, social engineering attacks come down to user education.
BUT, there is NO excuse for not having the technical side locked down. It's all too common for people to claim that you can't protect against someone clicking on a link. The fact is, you CAN. Quite simply, install a secure browser (dump IE, in other words), put it through a filtering proxy like dansguardian, and then close http ports on the firewall, except for the proxy server itself. Disable webmail at the web proxy, and disable downloads anyway at the same proxy. If you need windows update or something like that to work, you can explicitly allow certain sites. But DON'T allow any more than strictly necessary. Don't allow SSL, except to trusted sites where no uploads or downloads or conversations take place.
Likewise, install a secure email client, and have mail filtered through a company mail server, disable HTML mail and encrypted mail.
These are basic security precautions. But already, you've secured your organisation far beyond most of the windows shops out there that get virus and spyware issues every day.
It doesn't take a genius, it just takes you to choose what technology you allow on your systems, and to use it wisely.
Agreed on content == good. Especially if hot girls are involved ;)
But, videos are going to be a problem in terms of search engines. Unless we get tagging properly implemented at the same time, vidcasts will be essentially lost.
And what about linking? Will vidcasts refer to other vidcasts? What happens then? Will search engines be able to find out how many vidcasts talk about the one, very cool vidcast? Probably not.
So, why not, I wonder? Is it because we can't embed links in videos? Nope. But, it would have been a lot easier, if we'd all settled on a useful, extensible, open web video standard years ago, instead of allowing people like Real and MS to fight over who would dominate. As usual, they're greedy, society suffers.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time that a buyout has proved detrimental to a company's practices and reputation. However, I don't think there can be any serious doubt that this article was instigated by Microsoft, considering the background to the story.
Well, they could simply not enter into such deals -- I think they're probably illegal, and certainly they're immoral anyway. Or, if they find one is hurting them and they want out, they could negotiate, or threaten, or form a united front against the company that's using monopoly power against them. Like us all, they have many options, if they have the guts to try, and the integrity to care.
Yep. Personally, I drink too fast, even with tea. With alcohol, in a bar, it's worse, because I get bored in bars and don't really get into the conversations others are having. Let's face it: bars aren't exactly the most stimulating environment for guys who like science and technology and sci-fi. OK, theres an oldish fantasy element to some bars, but that fades fast :) Basically, it's about self-control, and social periphery. If you don't want to get drunk, and you drink to fast, then try orange juice.
There's an old buddhist saying: that, the teachings are like fingers pointing at the moon. If you look at the fingers, you'll never see the moon that's being pointed at. Somewhere along the line, you have to take what you see, and add a bit of your own judgement, in order to make the leap from what is said to what should be understood.
Nope, you've got that backwards. They're manipulating YOU. Sure, the story is that Baltar is the one being manipulated, but that's just a thin veil over the real thing, much like the storyline and "acting" in a porn movie is a thin veil over its real objective.
In fact, if you understand that, you'll understand a lot of things in our culture, like why Microsoft says Office XML is a "standard", or why "Terrorism" is the big evil we all should fight.
The simple, direct version: Read between the lines.
Agreed. It's whether it's being shipped as the default browser, maybe even with IE disabled, that matters.
I'm actually surprised that the big PC builders haven't done this before. To me, it makes absolutely no sense to sell computers to the public, have them filled with viruses in a day, and then have the users bring them back to be fixed. You can make money off a bit of that, I guess, but when it's happening on virtually every windows PC sold that connects to the net? It'd be a nightmare.
Putting firefox on there is the only sane option, and it's only the first of many fundamental flaw fixes necessary to sell Windows PCs fit for an average user.
Hmm... very interesting points. You brought together some different things I've thought about myself from time to time. Thanks for the discussion :)
Yep. Or, if you look at how debian manages its software (tip: use debian sid on a daily basis, and update it regularly for a while, checking out the new packages and updates available), then you'll easily see that the future of software is in staying right up to date. Even windows is moving towards this, albeit at a snail's pace. Debian shows how it will be though, especially in terms of bandwidth use.
Yep. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the RIAA is deliberately abusing human rights here. They're still fighting to get the insane laws they want enacted in countries where rights are foremost, and so they take their fight to countries where rights are less well established, but economics are more vital. I'm sure they've never taken the time to really consider the morality of it, but I think anyone who does will realise it's blackmail at best, and simply sickening at worst.
On copying music being theft, I think you're quite wrong on that. I agree, that on the face of it, there are strong similarities. However, I don't think you're fully accounting for the society which drives perceptions about these things. For many thousands of years, instruments were invented and shared, music was shared and copied freely, and eventually, it developed into a worldwide distribution system. That system originally had bottlenecks, including the number of people with the ability to compose, and the number of people able to distribute music. And so, we paid people to distribute across those bottlenecks. However, with the advent of the 'net, those bottlenecks no longer exist. We can share music from creator to consumer directly, with no intermediaries, and everyone can create music, with a virtual digital studio in their own computer. If anything, it is theft to hold back this advancement from society, in order to continue making profit from the old, bottlenecked model.
You can point to whatever definitions you want, but the fact is, Microsoft has done everything in its power for many years now to get the entire IT industry by the balls. Sure, the article can talk about how "independant" programmers exist etc., but we all know that they're being forced to fit into the microsoft way of doing things. This is by deliberate monopolising on microsoft's part, and it's still happening. The legal action going on in South Korea and Europe is testament to that. The many small countries trying to turn away from Microsoft of testament to the problems it has caused. Still, Microsoft defies governments and legal decisions, and rather than cleaning up its act, does in one country what it couldn't get away with in another.
The simple fact is, Microsoft continues to be a pain in the IT industry's ass, and holds back innovation everywhere.
I can only assume this article was deliberately created so MS can produce it in court as a supposedly "independant" article on why Microsoft should not be fined any more. I say fine them until they learn some responsibility, and dismantle the company if they continue to harm IT as they do now.
Sure, that might be a good way if you chose to lie about it, but my point was that someone could very well be innocent, even if evidence really is found on their computer.
Who said anything about that?