Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
People are always going to criticize and parody people in authority, and they should know how to take it. The teachers should learn to rise above it, and the same goes for various world leaders.
"ZDNet UK's coverage leads with the interest the new organization has in developing instant-messaging software." Yeah, because thats really what we need right now, yet ANOTHER IM protocol/app.
XMPP is king, upgrade your clients accordingly.
If Mozilla want to do something useful, they should develop a Evolution server suite, which should be AS EASY TO USE and as powerful as Exchange, and I mean GUI's for the 90% of sysadmins who don't want to spend years reading manpages and breaking config files. Then you'll really see Evolution Client adoption in businesses.
The open source movement could have real potential if there where more collaboration between projects. This I feel will always be a thorn in the side of the OS movement, as collaboration is MUCH easier in person and with money to throw at problems. It'd be great to see some projects forking to try some collaborations. Like a uber-groupware package:p
People ultimately choose Microsoft software because everything comes neatly packaged, and slots together wonderfully easily for a beginner. Exchange working with Active Directory, and Office on the client machines, is very easy to set up and maintain, they work together in harmony, and by and large, it doesn't break. People and monopoly commissions bitch constantly about Microsoft's reluctance to open its protocols, to allow similar interoperability with other systems, but the best way to beat them, is to provide to decent competition.
Compare this to a Linux setup. You'll need to download many different packages, and glue them together with config files to get a comparable setup. Even then, lets face it, working with config files, and with Linux setup in general is nothing like as intuitive as the Microsoft experience. (Don't take from this that I don't like Linux, far from it, it is my OS of choice, but it simply doesn't appeal to non techies)
Why havn't they been charged with fraud and false advertising.
If I sell you a padlock, claiming that its made of steel, when actually its made of a Silly Putty and rubber bands, then I'm going have my day in court. Why Tech vendors seem TOTALLY immune to this kind of prosecution.
Puts me in mind of SecuLock (was that the name?), they were featured here a while back, they make "secure" USB memory sticks, they claimed AES encryption, killswitches and other bells and whistles, but if you were to have a quick look at one of the DLL's exports, you can see a an Unlock routine. You see, the user's password wasn't used as a key, Oh no, they had one global key and a simple IF to check the passwords.
Though this is much, much worse, it beggars the question; how can we berate employees for losing disks and laptops, when the vendors are happy to look us in the eye and lie to us, about standards that I was able to implement when I was about 16.
It's either government interferance (remember, the USA's law forcing vendors to embed backdoors for them), or its just plain lazy, either way, it's got to stop.
"...trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history."
Am I to take it that this means Virgin Media will be injecting Ads into Slashdot (for instance)? Apart from the obvious privacy issues, unless their algorithm is extremely clever, surly this is going to break a lot of pages?
I WILL switch ISPs if this happens, I don't like the privacy implications, and I don't like interference.
I don't like the fact that ISP keep pushing the line further and further. First, its bandwidth monitoring, then its bandwidth throttling, then injected ads, then its censorship, and eventually we have a government approved white list. Then we'll wonder how it happened.
A) Linux, by and large, IS NOT USER FRIENDLY. This is the single biggest problem. You can shout "Ubuntu!" til you're blue in the face, but the fact is it isn't particularly intuitive. To get most things working, you'll need to dig into config files and read man pages, most people don't want to. C) The most popular software/hardware does not run easily on Linux. Sure you can download Open Source replacements, but again, for most people, its more trouble than its worth. B) It is near impossible to find it as OEM software with new machines. If you did, then the whole package would cost LESS than one with Windows.
It's unfortunate, but I still think we have a while to wait before we see a viable new OS for home users, and as things are moving more and more toward remotely hosted applications, we may never get there.
I've rtfm, there is NO science at work here, just some bloke making HUGE unsubstantiated claims. They cite no research, they don't even make any concrete claims apart from "at a human level". I've seen more technical and in depth discussions between piss heads on a parkbench.
Finally at the bottom, they namedrop a google founder to try and make this sound more believable.
Shame on the BBC covering nothing, and shame on Slashdot for posting filler.
You have to find a middle ground here, we can't allow companies to bankrupt people in revenge for sharing a few songs. On the flip side, we can't have a property-is-theft free for all.
Your constant patent trolling HAS NOT paid off. Now die the death reserved for legal predators like yourself.
You've contributed sod all in the past 5 years, why? Because you couldn't be bothered to innovate.
I don't want to hear the name SCO mentioned again, they're a bunch of jumped up layabout lawyers, who are quite happy to take with the left and sue with the right. Fuck them, they won't be missed.
First of all, I don't want to use Vista. I now run a half crippled XP because HP refuse point blank to supply XP drivers for this model.
Vista is a failure. Even though people complained non stop when XP came out, the adoption rate was MASSIVE when compared to Vista.
Microsoft: From the moment the very first Longhorn alpha were leaked to P2P networks, and people got a taste of the new MS vision, Vista was doomed to fail. Even though there was a complete rewrite, it was all downhill from this point.
I suggest you put this one down to experiance Microsoft and realize that your user base is becoming more and more knowledgeable and discerning. Your old tactics will not work for much longer.
Let see if you can come up with something REALLY good with the new MinWin (Windows 7). From what I've heard about the kernel development, it takes a lot from the modular approach used in many Unices, and if MS can build a (fairly) open, and moreover loosly coupled modular system, then I think they'll be onto a winner.
This is true, it takes us a while to come up with all the mental material for a "Flash" innovation, but I think the "Flash" is when you suddenly work out HOW all the mental material involved fits together to make an understandable innovation.
Take the original "Eureka!" moment. Before Archimedes got into his bath, he had already formed many ideas about the nature of physics, he wasn't going into the experiance totally blind, however the "Flash" innovation moment came when he made a CONNECTION between the things he already knew.
The human thought process is a very difficult thing to quantify, and I think this article is misleading in the way that it lends to the idea that Archimedes in the space of 30 seconds came up with the concept of density through displacement, when actually, the the water displacment was simply the final peice in a subconscious puzzle.
An extremely well though out rebuttal. You've absolutly nailed the problem. I had no idea it was so bad in the US, yet when you put it like that, and I consider all I've read, you're spot on. It's a very worrying situation, I do hope the next president can regain the trust of the nation.
Dell has show efforts to be more and more open with their systems (Bundling Ubuntu), and though the cost is nearly the same, there's a good chance of the Windows tax being dropped/mitigated in Europe. Their prices have always been very reasonable, and their ability to custom build the box online is legendary, not to mention rebust build quality. While many people don't like them as much as myself, I don't think they could be considered even remotely evil.
Despite Google's obvious affection for your personal data, who can deny that they provide innovative, open services. The Android SDK is a great looking bit of kit, which shows a lot of promise, and of course gives developers the power they want on a device.
And then we have the Steve Jobbs, a man who hates his customers, who deliberately shafted early adopters by almost cutting the iPhone price in half two months after the release. The iPhone is STILL a mindblowingly expensive device, and doesn't even support 3G, locked to the most anti-competitive and greedy network there is, it's been carried by hype advertising from day one. From a development point of view its locked down tighter than Sing Sing, and I've not doubt the SDK will be a gimmick with little power given to developers. It's a mystery to me why people bother spending time and energy to jailbreak the device when Apple are constantly releasing new firmware to turn them into expensive doorstops.
Google, Dell, your timing is right, make its pretty, functional, affordable and most of all open and we shall flock to buy them.
Get it done fast though, Nokia have got some seriously cool new gear in the pipeline;)
A few intelligent people will tell you in no uncertain terms that you MUST NOT LET THIS ACT PASS. They will explain that it'll smash your privicy into tiny peices, they'll say its up to YOU to speak to your representitive to get it thrown out. And you know what? You'll all do fuck all.
Then four months down the line thousands and thousands of you will be back here, whinging about "yet another affront to our privicy" through a act they "sneaked through".
You vote a Paranoid Texan Oil Baron into office, TWICE, so what the hell do you expect? The man's a joke the world over, so if I was you I'd try and stop him passing any laws (that will be very hard to revoke when you finally get a President with two braincells to rub together).
Yet all you seem to do is COMPLAIN. Fucking do something about it.
Oh yeah, and to the torrent of "Bush cheated his way in! Recounts were fixed" comments coming up, I say "What? Twice motherfucker? And if the country is REALLY that against him, why did it all come down to Florida."
Your president is terrible, the American public are worse.
Slighty off topic, but, MinWin, finally an idea I like from MS!
I love debian Linux, becuase you download a 74mb business card cd, and within 12 minutes you have a working bare-bones linux system, it wont do/run ANYTHING unless its told to. IF, and thats only IF I want a uber-clever super-pretty UI, i'll install KDE and Compiz using apt, nothing is easier.
Vista on the other hand is draped in layer upon layer of horrible, slow, UI. With a kernel so bloated, the OS feels like the Eclipse IDE used to. You have little or no choice in what you install, and if you're like me, who wants everything as small as possible to maximize space to develop in, its just not an option.
I want an OS which is lightweight, and that can be added to if needed, and MinWin sounds like its going to meet those criteria.
Slashdot Mirror
Serves them right for investing in SCO. Muppets.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
People are always going to criticize and parody people in authority, and they should know how to take it. The teachers should learn to rise above it, and the same goes for various world leaders.
Get 'em while they're young...
"ZDNet UK's coverage leads with the interest the new organization has in developing instant-messaging software."
:p
Yeah, because thats really what we need right now, yet ANOTHER IM protocol/app.
XMPP is king, upgrade your clients accordingly.
If Mozilla want to do something useful, they should develop a Evolution server suite, which should be AS EASY TO USE and as powerful as Exchange, and I mean GUI's for the 90% of sysadmins who don't want to spend years reading manpages and breaking config files. Then you'll really see Evolution Client adoption in businesses.
The open source movement could have real potential if there where more collaboration between projects. This I feel will always be a thorn in the side of the OS movement, as collaboration is MUCH easier in person and with money to throw at problems. It'd be great to see some projects forking to try some collaborations. Like a uber-groupware package
People ultimately choose Microsoft software because everything comes neatly packaged, and slots together wonderfully easily for a beginner. Exchange working with Active Directory, and Office on the client machines, is very easy to set up and maintain, they work together in harmony, and by and large, it doesn't break. People and monopoly commissions bitch constantly about Microsoft's reluctance to open its protocols, to allow similar interoperability with other systems, but the best way to beat them, is to provide to decent competition.
Compare this to a Linux setup. You'll need to download many different packages, and glue them together with config files to get a comparable setup. Even then, lets face it, working with config files, and with Linux setup in general is nothing like as intuitive as the Microsoft experience. (Don't take from this that I don't like Linux, far from it, it is my OS of choice, but it simply doesn't appeal to non techies)
That is all.
I am aware of that.
I was trying to be slightly satirical, I will never attempt it again.
Why havn't they been charged with fraud and false advertising.
If I sell you a padlock, claiming that its made of steel, when actually its made of a Silly Putty and rubber bands, then I'm going have my day in court. Why Tech vendors seem TOTALLY immune to this kind of prosecution.
Puts me in mind of SecuLock (was that the name?), they were featured here a while back, they make "secure" USB memory sticks, they claimed AES encryption, killswitches and other bells and whistles, but if you were to have a quick look at one of the DLL's exports, you can see a an Unlock routine. You see, the user's password wasn't used as a key, Oh no, they had one global key and a simple IF to check the passwords.
Though this is much, much worse, it beggars the question; how can we berate employees for losing disks and laptops, when the vendors are happy to look us in the eye and lie to us, about standards that I was able to implement when I was about 16.
It's either government interferance (remember, the USA's law forcing vendors to embed backdoors for them), or its just plain lazy, either way, it's got to stop.
"...trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history."
Am I to take it that this means Virgin Media will be injecting Ads into Slashdot (for instance)? Apart from the obvious privacy issues, unless their algorithm is extremely clever, surly this is going to break a lot of pages?
I WILL switch ISPs if this happens, I don't like the privacy implications, and I don't like interference.
I don't like the fact that ISP keep pushing the line further and further. First, its bandwidth monitoring, then its bandwidth throttling, then injected ads, then its censorship, and eventually we have a government approved white list. Then we'll wonder how it happened.
Total bollocks.
Linux isn't popular for three reasons.
A) Linux, by and large, IS NOT USER FRIENDLY. This is the single biggest problem. You can shout "Ubuntu!" til you're blue in the face, but the fact is it isn't particularly intuitive. To get most things working, you'll need to dig into config files and read man pages, most people don't want to.
C) The most popular software/hardware does not run easily on Linux. Sure you can download Open Source replacements, but again, for most people, its more trouble than its worth.
B) It is near impossible to find it as OEM software with new machines. If you did, then the whole package would cost LESS than one with Windows.
It's unfortunate, but I still think we have a while to wait before we see a viable new OS for home users, and as things are moving more and more toward remotely hosted applications, we may never get there.
AND BY 2029, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO DOWNLOAD RICE.
I've rtfm, there is NO science at work here, just some bloke making HUGE unsubstantiated claims. They cite no research, they don't even make any concrete claims apart from "at a human level". I've seen more technical and in depth discussions between piss heads on a parkbench.
Finally at the bottom, they namedrop a google founder to try and make this sound more believable.
Shame on the BBC covering nothing, and shame on Slashdot for posting filler.
There is no way you could convince me to buy one of those gothic nightmareish designs.
Christ, its like a 7 year old designed it...
And the patent trolling continues!!
Finally! A sensible approach!
You have to find a middle ground here, we can't allow companies to bankrupt people in revenge for sharing a few songs. On the flip side, we can't have a property-is-theft free for all.
This sounds like a very reasonable option.
Your constant patent trolling HAS NOT paid off. Now die the death reserved for legal predators like yourself.
You've contributed sod all in the past 5 years, why? Because you couldn't be bothered to innovate.
I don't want to hear the name SCO mentioned again, they're a bunch of jumped up layabout lawyers, who are quite happy to take with the left and sue with the right. Fuck them, they won't be missed.
First of all, I don't want to use Vista. I now run a half crippled XP because HP refuse point blank to supply XP drivers for this model.
Vista is a failure. Even though people complained non stop when XP came out, the adoption rate was MASSIVE when compared to Vista.
Microsoft: From the moment the very first Longhorn alpha were leaked to P2P networks, and people got a taste of the new MS vision, Vista was doomed to fail. Even though there was a complete rewrite, it was all downhill from this point.
I suggest you put this one down to experiance Microsoft and realize that your user base is becoming more and more knowledgeable and discerning. Your old tactics will not work for much longer.
Let see if you can come up with something REALLY good with the new MinWin (Windows 7). From what I've heard about the kernel development, it takes a lot from the modular approach used in many Unices, and if MS can build a (fairly) open, and moreover loosly coupled modular system, then I think they'll be onto a winner.
It's the ISPs slicing competitor cables, if the providers can be the only backbone out of the country, then they can make a killing on bandwith.
:p
It's probably just a bunch of pissed fishermen, but you never know
This is true, it takes us a while to come up with all the mental material for a "Flash" innovation, but I think the "Flash" is when you suddenly work out HOW all the mental material involved fits together to make an understandable innovation.
Take the original "Eureka!" moment. Before Archimedes got into his bath, he had already formed many ideas about the nature of physics, he wasn't going into the experiance totally blind, however the "Flash" innovation moment came when he made a CONNECTION between the things he already knew.
The human thought process is a very difficult thing to quantify, and I think this article is misleading in the way that it lends to the idea that Archimedes in the space of 30 seconds came up with the concept of density through displacement, when actually, the the water displacment was simply the final peice in a subconscious puzzle.
I wouldn't say obsolete, just a lot cheaper.
"Could the LAN actually be nearing the end of its lifecycle?"
No. The security implications of every single device being connected to one big WAN are obvious.
How is this news? We put a bloke on the moon 30 odd years back, we can get 12TB+ of data onto a 1" cube. This isn't even slightly revolutionary.
Its glorified lego.
An extremely well though out rebuttal. You've absolutly nailed the problem. I had no idea it was so bad in the US, yet when you put it like that, and I consider all I've read, you're spot on. It's a very worrying situation, I do hope the next president can regain the trust of the nation.
+5 Interesting please!
Dell has show efforts to be more and more open with their systems (Bundling Ubuntu), and though the cost is nearly the same, there's a good chance of the Windows tax being dropped/mitigated in Europe. Their prices have always been very reasonable, and their ability to custom build the box online is legendary, not to mention rebust build quality. While many people don't like them as much as myself, I don't think they could be considered even remotely evil.
;)
Despite Google's obvious affection for your personal data, who can deny that they provide innovative, open services. The Android SDK is a great looking bit of kit, which shows a lot of promise, and of course gives developers the power they want on a device.
And then we have the Steve Jobbs, a man who hates his customers, who deliberately shafted early adopters by almost cutting the iPhone price in half two months after the release. The iPhone is STILL a mindblowingly expensive device, and doesn't even support 3G, locked to the most anti-competitive and greedy network there is, it's been carried by hype advertising from day one. From a development point of view its locked down tighter than Sing Sing, and I've not doubt the SDK will be a gimmick with little power given to developers. It's a mystery to me why people bother spending time and energy to jailbreak the device when Apple are constantly releasing new firmware to turn them into expensive doorstops.
Google, Dell, your timing is right, make its pretty, functional, affordable and most of all open and we shall flock to buy them.
Get it done fast though, Nokia have got some seriously cool new gear in the pipeline
You Americans.
A few intelligent people will tell you in no uncertain terms that you MUST NOT LET THIS ACT PASS. They will explain that it'll smash your privicy into tiny peices, they'll say its up to YOU to speak to your representitive to get it thrown out. And you know what? You'll all do fuck all.
Then four months down the line thousands and thousands of you will be back here, whinging about "yet another affront to our privicy" through a act they "sneaked through".
You vote a Paranoid Texan Oil Baron into office, TWICE, so what the hell do you expect? The man's a joke the world over, so if I was you I'd try and stop him passing any laws (that will be very hard to revoke when you finally get a President with two braincells to rub together).
Yet all you seem to do is COMPLAIN. Fucking do something about it.
Oh yeah, and to the torrent of "Bush cheated his way in! Recounts were fixed" comments coming up, I say "What? Twice motherfucker? And if the country is REALLY that against him, why did it all come down to Florida."
Your president is terrible, the American public are worse.
The lawyers are the vultures that take a bad situation and profit from it, these bastards thrive on conflict, let take the buggers down a peg or two.
With absolutly no hesitation, the SNES, there is NO contest.
Slighty off topic, but, MinWin, finally an idea I like from MS!
I love debian Linux, becuase you download a 74mb business card cd, and within 12 minutes you have a working bare-bones linux system, it wont do/run ANYTHING unless its told to. IF, and thats only IF I want a uber-clever super-pretty UI, i'll install KDE and Compiz using apt, nothing is easier.
Vista on the other hand is draped in layer upon layer of horrible, slow, UI. With a kernel so bloated, the OS feels like the Eclipse IDE used to. You have little or no choice in what you install, and if you're like me, who wants everything as small as possible to maximize space to develop in, its just not an option.
I want an OS which is lightweight, and that can be added to if needed, and MinWin sounds like its going to meet those criteria.