Sure, in a megacorporation or school environment I could see that being a useful feature. The inhabitants of those environments have little choice over their tools and are easy to extort through the neverending licensing/upgrade merry-go-round. Just the sort of vict^H^H^H^Hcustomer that Microsoft is looking for.
For me, I prefer a browser that is actually standards compliant (to the extent possible since the standards are a fast moving target), cross-platform and easier for ME, the end-user, to customize to **MY** liking.
Huh? Relocate what people? The article mentions that much of this property is already empty/abandoned. Maintaining infrastructure to support large swaths of city that are relatively empty doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
One would think that people would not be fleeing "desirable" parts of town so I don't see any issue with the city "decommissioning" underutilized parcels of land and reallocating resources to areas where people actually want to live.
Surely, the squeaky clean politicians in that area don't have any plans to clue in their cronies to areas about to be decommissioned so that those folks can snap them up on the cheap and then sell them to the gummint at a profit? Nah...
CCP member and government official "Mister Wang" finds out about a party directive to more directly control internet surfing in one of the "secret" directives often issued by the government to the MII. So he calls his nephew, "Mister Lee," and tells him that if he has a software package that can meet the following requirements (secret list supplied), he will fast track approval for the software and split the revenue (silently, of course...through a foreign bank account). Because after some initial "trial period" the computer companies will be forced to purchase this software. Instant revenue stream. ka-ching (which means "fucking pay me, you laowai clod" in Mandarin)
Unfortunately, Mister Lee has no such software. So he hires some Chinese black hats to grab the code from something resembling the requirements from a foreign company. The foreign company will have zero recourse since Mister Wang is "connected" and the Chinese government tends to wink at this behavior anyway. Since Mister Wang is steamrolling the software through the government's maze of approvals, nobody even bothers to QC the code prior to mandating its use.
With the exception of the surnames, I'm reasonably sure that's EXACTLY how this clusterfuck was perpetrated.
All your code are belong to us. Set us up the firewall....
After spending a number of years living/working in China, I've come to the conclusion that the government just doesn't care if this new "feature" works or not. The goal isn't to really censor here, but to let people know that "the man" is watching. In China, that is enough to keep the vast majority of people in line. There are still tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of people that have vivid memories of the Cultural Revolution. They know all too well what happens to the squeaky wheel and tailor their activities accordingly. Sad, but that's the way it is.
I like the concept of theora, but to be perfectly frank, it just isn't well supported enough to be useful for me. If I use mp4, I can use the same files on my Winders box, my linux box, and my recently purchased DVD player. With theora, it is a bit of a struggle to get anywhere close to that level of interoperability (not aware of any common DVD players that support it at all).
Sure, I might be able to pull it off if I was extremely anal about my purchases, but who has the time for that?
Their real problem is that many people are satisfied with XP. There's no "killer app" or compelling reason to upgrade. If new computer purchases didn't foist Vista (or soon...Windows 7) on consumers, nobody would bat an eye if the machines came with XP instead. As long as XP continues to get security patches, I can't imagine bothering with "upgrading" in the foreseeable future.
I'd be a lot more inclined to use Chrome if I could do so without it installing the GoogleUpdate service and then turning it back on after I've explicitly disabled it. Windows is bloated enough without me being "tricked" into running additional services that I don't want or need.
Honestly, why should any of this matter to me. Hulu is yet another middleman between content and consumer. They're here solely to hustle a buck in exchange for burning my retina with adverts that I honestly don't want to see. They're going to be a flash in the pan. Sooner or later, someone is going to come up with a better model to get me content I WANT to see without forcing me to wade through shit I've made it clear I don't want to be bothered with.
Assume for a moment that in some fantasy land you can convince 5-10% of your customers to give up physical media and switch to downloads. Where is all this bandwidth going to come from? Are people supposed to sit around tapping their foot as these huge (even if you use low bitrate H264) files slowly seep in over the interwebz? I don't know about you, but I'm not NEARLY patient enough for that. But perhaps it's just me.
I dunno...Microsoft isn't the only faction that's suffered from some serious code bloat. Computers have gotten so much faster at such a rapid pace. Linux + Gnome and OSX have gotten rather porky as well....
I'd be happy to forego all the eye candy if it would speed up the work that I actually care about.
Personally, I'd balance those "retraining" costs against the potential cost of having some careless person infect your corporate network and then having to deal with the fallout.
Sure, there are companies that have the need to run specific applications that (today) only work in a Windows environment. But the VAST majority of office drones out there are basically using Microsoft Office, a mail client, and a web browser. Migrating that typical user to Openoffice + some non-Outlook client + Firefox is not THAT herculean of a tast. A pain in the ass for a few days? Sure. Compared to a company wide Conficker (or worse) infection? Not even close.
Not very affordable at all for most folks. 65tb is a LOT of data. That's about 44 Seagate 1.5TB hard disks @ US$140/each plus a bunch of RAID controllers, plus a couple of enclosures, plus all the other server cruft, etc. Then you'd need a fairly fat link to the net so that you could both acquire new content and share/sell existing content.
That's if the server was built today. Chances are, it's been there for a while and used more disks and cost more to build. Seems pretty obvious that they weren't doing this "for fun."
This is Intel saying they MIGHT outsource some manufacturing to TSMC for the Atom SOC applications. Intel has their own pretty substantial fab facilities. However, they're out on this netbook limb now. If it takes off, they're going to need extra manufacturing to meet demand. If it doesn't take off, they don't want to have a lot of capital tied up in extra fab facilities.
I'm not a big Intel fan, but this is a fairly astute move on their part and buys them some flexibility in the medium-term depending on where netbook sales go.
What's really needed are some laws that prevent the mafiaa from filing frivolous lawsuits in general. Officers and directors of a specific class of companies don't need special protection.
Once that's accomplished, then it's up to the legislative bodies to determine what a pirate really is. And *then* various judicial bodies to hear test cases and rule on whether or not those laws make any sense. A long and drawn out process, but at least its somewhat transparent and allows all the various stakeholders to get their day in court if they're unhappy with the results.
What's all the hubub about? It's simply a paraglider that has been made large enough to carry a payload larger than a man (a car in this case). That's like saying someone who connects a blimp to a camper has invented a flying home. *shrug*
The fools in Washington are led around by their nose (and their peckers) by lobbying dollars. Open source in the government is never going to happen...especially with "quality" vendors like Diebold and SAIC jumping in to "fix things."
Linux has gotten "good enough" on PC hardware that I just don't see any reason to even play the game anymore with Microsoft. Time to get off the ride. All of the "windows only" apps that I use seem to work under wine. The rest all have some open equivalent (firefox/thunderbird/openoffice/etc).
Slashdot Mirror
A method to autonomously direct the expansion and contraction of lungs for the purpose of oxygen extraction.
Sure, in a megacorporation or school environment I could see that being a useful feature. The inhabitants of those environments have little choice over their tools and are easy to extort through the neverending licensing/upgrade merry-go-round. Just the sort of vict^H^H^H^Hcustomer that Microsoft is looking for.
For me, I prefer a browser that is actually standards compliant (to the extent possible since the standards are a fast moving target), cross-platform and easier for ME, the end-user, to customize to **MY** liking.
Best,
Huh? Relocate what people? The article mentions that much of this property is already empty/abandoned. Maintaining infrastructure to support large swaths of city that are relatively empty doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
One would think that people would not be fleeing "desirable" parts of town so I don't see any issue with the city "decommissioning" underutilized parcels of land and reallocating resources to areas where people actually want to live.
Surely, the squeaky clean politicians in that area don't have any plans to clue in their cronies to areas about to be decommissioned so that those folks can snap them up on the cheap and then sell them to the gummint at a profit? Nah...
Best,
CCP member and government official "Mister Wang" finds out about a party directive to more directly control internet surfing in one of the "secret" directives often issued by the government to the MII. So he calls his nephew, "Mister Lee," and tells him that if he has a software package that can meet the following requirements (secret list supplied), he will fast track approval for the software and split the revenue (silently, of course...through a foreign bank account). Because after some initial "trial period" the computer companies will be forced to purchase this software. Instant revenue stream. ka-ching (which means "fucking pay me, you laowai clod" in Mandarin)
Unfortunately, Mister Lee has no such software. So he hires some Chinese black hats to grab the code from something resembling the requirements from a foreign company. The foreign company will have zero recourse since Mister Wang is "connected" and the Chinese government tends to wink at this behavior anyway. Since Mister Wang is steamrolling the software through the government's maze of approvals, nobody even bothers to QC the code prior to mandating its use.
With the exception of the surnames, I'm reasonably sure that's EXACTLY how this clusterfuck was perpetrated.
All your code are belong to us. Set us up the firewall....
Who's to say they didn't? ;)
After spending a number of years living/working in China, I've come to the conclusion that the government just doesn't care if this new "feature" works or not. The goal isn't to really censor here, but to let people know that "the man" is watching. In China, that is enough to keep the vast majority of people in line. There are still tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of people that have vivid memories of the Cultural Revolution. They know all too well what happens to the squeaky wheel and tailor their activities accordingly. Sad, but that's the way it is.
I like the concept of theora, but to be perfectly frank, it just isn't well supported enough to be useful for me. If I use mp4, I can use the same files on my Winders box, my linux box, and my recently purchased DVD player. With theora, it is a bit of a struggle to get anywhere close to that level of interoperability (not aware of any common DVD players that support it at all).
Sure, I might be able to pull it off if I was extremely anal about my purchases, but who has the time for that?
Best,
So the StalkDaily fellow admitted to creating the worm. Now what?
Their real problem is that many people are satisfied with XP. There's no "killer app" or compelling reason to upgrade. If new computer purchases didn't foist Vista (or soon...Windows 7) on consumers, nobody would bat an eye if the machines came with XP instead. As long as XP continues to get security patches, I can't imagine bothering with "upgrading" in the foreseeable future.
Don't use AT&T as your provider.
I'd be a lot more inclined to use Chrome if I could do so without it installing the GoogleUpdate service and then turning it back on after I've explicitly disabled it. Windows is bloated enough without me being "tricked" into running additional services that I don't want or need.
Honestly, why should any of this matter to me. Hulu is yet another middleman between content and consumer. They're here solely to hustle a buck in exchange for burning my retina with adverts that I honestly don't want to see. They're going to be a flash in the pan. Sooner or later, someone is going to come up with a better model to get me content I WANT to see without forcing me to wade through shit I've made it clear I don't want to be bothered with.
Assume for a moment that in some fantasy land you can convince 5-10% of your customers to give up physical media and switch to downloads. Where is all this bandwidth going to come from? Are people supposed to sit around tapping their foot as these huge (even if you use low bitrate H264) files slowly seep in over the interwebz? I don't know about you, but I'm not NEARLY patient enough for that. But perhaps it's just me.
I dunno...Microsoft isn't the only faction that's suffered from some serious code bloat. Computers have gotten so much faster at such a rapid pace. Linux + Gnome and OSX have gotten rather porky as well....
I'd be happy to forego all the eye candy if it would speed up the work that I actually care about.
Best,
Personally, I'd balance those "retraining" costs against the potential cost of having some careless person infect your corporate network and then having to deal with the fallout.
Sure, there are companies that have the need to run specific applications that (today) only work in a Windows environment. But the VAST majority of office drones out there are basically using Microsoft Office, a mail client, and a web browser. Migrating that typical user to Openoffice + some non-Outlook client + Firefox is not THAT herculean of a tast. A pain in the ass for a few days? Sure. Compared to a company wide Conficker (or worse) infection? Not even close.
Best,
Not very affordable at all for most folks. 65tb is a LOT of data. That's about 44 Seagate 1.5TB hard disks @ US$140/each plus a bunch of RAID controllers, plus a couple of enclosures, plus all the other server cruft, etc. Then you'd need a fairly fat link to the net so that you could both acquire new content and share/sell existing content.
That's if the server was built today. Chances are, it's been there for a while and used more disks and cost more to build. Seems pretty obvious that they weren't doing this "for fun."
Best,
Exactly. Who the fuck cares? This a complete non-event. Hulu is boring, therefore their strife with some other unknown company is boring too.
*shrug*
Set us up the patent.
Harumph!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)
8-)
This is Intel saying they MIGHT outsource some manufacturing to TSMC for the Atom SOC applications. Intel has their own pretty substantial fab facilities. However, they're out on this netbook limb now. If it takes off, they're going to need extra manufacturing to meet demand. If it doesn't take off, they don't want to have a lot of capital tied up in extra fab facilities.
I'm not a big Intel fan, but this is a fairly astute move on their part and buys them some flexibility in the medium-term depending on where netbook sales go.
Best,
What's really needed are some laws that prevent the mafiaa from filing frivolous lawsuits in general. Officers and directors of a specific class of companies don't need special protection.
Once that's accomplished, then it's up to the legislative bodies to determine what a pirate really is. And *then* various judicial bodies to hear test cases and rule on whether or not those laws make any sense. A long and drawn out process, but at least its somewhat transparent and allows all the various stakeholders to get their day in court if they're unhappy with the results.
Cheers,
Why go out and hunt for a chick when you can just roll your own? LOL
What's all the hubub about? It's simply a paraglider that has been made large enough to carry a payload larger than a man (a car in this case). That's like saying someone who connects a blimp to a camper has invented a flying home. *shrug*
The fools in Washington are led around by their nose (and their peckers) by lobbying dollars. Open source in the government is never going to happen...especially with "quality" vendors like Diebold and SAIC jumping in to "fix things."
Linux has gotten "good enough" on PC hardware that I just don't see any reason to even play the game anymore with Microsoft. Time to get off the ride. All of the "windows only" apps that I use seem to work under wine. The rest all have some open equivalent (firefox/thunderbird/openoffice/etc).
*shrug*