This is one thing which comes to my mind when I think of a great (in this case, hardware) hack. Compaq used the annals of law and engineers to reverse engineer the IBM PC's BIOS and general hardware interactions. It was clever, they worked around the clock, and it was a marvel they got it working right.
I use RH 6 and MacOS 8.1 for my personal use. It should be noted that autorun is an extremely bad and often annoying feature on PCs and Macs alike--I turn it off on my Mac because the few virii/worms that have surfaced on the Mac have taken advantage of this "nice feature". RPM is nice, but there should be a "lite" version of it--the simplifying purpose defeats itself when you have 35 different options in the "rpm --help" command that you cannot fit on the screen. Yes, rpm -- help | more will do the trick, but nonetheless it is relatively complex for the purpose of being an easy installer.
I disagree with others however, in the area of standardized installers. The mere fact that something can use a standard installer, like Windows Installer(tm), VISE, Install Shield, or Alladin's products does not mean that bad things will happen.
Standardization is something the computer industry thrives on. The products of companies who do not adhere to standards end up in the junk pile in storage rooms of computer companies. The more proprietary we are, the more chance we have that we will fail down the road.
I recently got what appeared to be a legitimate email offer--figured they got my name from ZDnet lists or something. Turns out it was commonplace spam--addr.com evidently was their web host, and instead of just disabling the domain, they stated why (spam/abuse of account). The downside? There was a story recently where a Latin American site hosted in Chicago was cut off from service and redirected to a porn site. The reason? Unpaid bills the ISP claims, not so the client claims. It's going to be tricky to prove things either way unless more than one account of abuse from independent sources are found.
The problem with any patent in the extremely volitile tech workplace is the amount of lawsuits relating to technologies that have been copied/developed at another company/imitated. By the time you get the lawsuit out the door, someone else's patent is out the door. When was this doubleclick one filed? It's more than half way through 1999! I remeber avoiding banner ads way before this!;)
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This is one thing which comes to my mind when I think of a great (in this case, hardware) hack. Compaq used the annals of law and engineers to reverse engineer the IBM PC's BIOS and general hardware interactions. It was clever, they worked around the clock, and it was a marvel they got it working right.
I use RH 6 and MacOS 8.1 for my personal use. It should be noted that autorun is an extremely bad and often annoying feature on PCs and Macs alike--I turn it off on my Mac because the few virii/worms that have surfaced on the Mac have taken advantage of this "nice feature". RPM is nice, but there should be a "lite" version of it--the simplifying purpose defeats itself when you have 35 different options in the "rpm --help" command that you cannot fit on the screen. Yes, rpm -- help | more will do the trick, but nonetheless it is relatively complex for the purpose of being an easy installer.
I disagree with others however, in the area of standardized installers. The mere fact that something can use a standard installer, like Windows Installer(tm), VISE, Install Shield, or Alladin's products does not mean that bad things will happen.
Standardization is something the computer industry thrives on. The products of companies who do not adhere to standards end up in the junk pile in storage rooms of computer companies. The more proprietary we are, the more chance we have that we will fail down the road.
I recently got what appeared to be a legitimate email offer--figured they got my name from ZDnet lists or something. Turns out it was commonplace spam--addr.com evidently was their web host, and instead of just disabling the domain, they stated why (spam/abuse of account). The downside? There was a story recently where a Latin American site hosted in Chicago was cut off from service and redirected to a porn site. The reason? Unpaid bills the ISP claims, not so the client claims. It's going to be tricky to prove things either way unless more than one account of abuse from independent sources are found.
The problem with any patent in the extremely volitile tech workplace is the amount of lawsuits relating to technologies that have been copied/developed at another company/imitated. By the time you get the lawsuit out the door, someone else's patent is out the door. When was this doubleclick one filed? It's more than half way through 1999! I remeber avoiding banner ads way before this! ;)