Considering the success, or lack thereof, of other attempts by Microsoft to enter already established markets, their name will be exactly what will happen to them.
I'm not so sure. They might just scrape up the less-than-tech-savvy market, the people who own computers, use the Web in a cursory fashion, would like some of these features, and recognize Microsoft's branding. I doubt they'll make inroads in the already established market unless they come up with something unique, which is not one of their strong points.
Rapid advances in technology and the rise of industries like software, biotechnology and nanotechnology have resulted in a steep increase in patent applications in recent years. With limited resources, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has been overwhelmed, patent experts say.
And so IBM is taking this bold step and should be commended for its actions. Clearly the USPTO is in over its head thanks to the explosion of technology (brought about in no small part by IBM) and it takes a forward-thinking company to put this stuff out there and risk losing some of their competitive edge. I'm just wondering if this might prove more of a trigger for lawsuits as other comapnies peruse these patent applications looking for infringements on their current patents?
I mean we had cassette players in the 70s and 80s that were portable. We called what was on them "recordings."
And this is a bit offtopic, but the same really goes for "blog." Most blogs are opinion pieces, essays, meditations, etc. Why couldn't they just be called what they are? Did we have to make up a name for them?
I think this is part of a general trend where one generation or group tries to separate itself from the previous generation or other groups via their "lingo." The current tech-trendy generation has to listen to their "podcasts" because to say "I'm listening to a recording" makes them sound like they are sitting at home around the Victrola with little Jimmy winding the hand crank.
Of course, the idea that Apple is going to sue over this is just ludicrous, because they ignored it for so long the term became ubiquitous. No use crying over it now.
Is this really that useful for the public in general...?
Of course -- wives can find out where their cheating husbands are taking the naughty pictures they find on their home computer, anyone can determine where the picture someone posted on an on-line dating service was taken (she says she's in Pocatello, ID, but all her pictures are from Bozeman, MT!), etc. A multitude of uses in the home!
...should be members of the House panel. Perhaps if they were the subjects of the electronic spying they were authorizing, they might think twice. Still, this is the House Judiciary Committee, not the full House or Senate, so there's still time to write your Congressman and tell him/her that if they vote for this, you'll help hand them a one-way ticket to unemployment.
INTERNET upstart YouTube, the bane-du-jour of copyright holders everywhere, won't sell itself for anything less than $1.5 billion, The Post has learned.
But that number far exceeds the price top media execs appear willing to pay for a company many believe lacks a sustainable business model.
Let's see... Internet company... flaky business model... outrageous amounts of money... well, my time machine works -- I must be back in 1998!
Forget ATMs; the way people post personal information about themselves so freely on the Internet, combined with the average user's lack of imagination, means that I can probably go to any social netwroking site, get a user's site id and some basic information about them (birthday, fav color, dog's name, etc.) and with a little luck, find that they use that information as usernames/passwords for on-line banking, Amazon, etc.
When it comes to the security of information, avergae people are stupid.
Who cares? Some professor of Math gets his knickers in a twist because he's been outted as a self-aggrandizing, self-important weasel by his peers, only confirming his peers' extimation of him, and this is important? Somebody get this guy some Xanax and a legal dictionary then send him off to some nice, quiet, restful place where he can contemplate geometry and leave the rest of us alone.
It is kind of pointless and taking things to far. The idea of a smart holster (for this purpose) is completely unnecessary.
Agreed. The technology already exists to secure a Blackberry that's carried in its holster; it was developed for parents years ago. Put an alarm on the Blackberry that when it gets a certain distance from the holster, the alarm goes off. Simple and no "smart" tech required. Mind you, now you'll be wedded to your Blackberry unless you remove the holster, but then most Blackberry users carry the things obsessively anyway.
It sounds like the Blackberry's holster, which is typically worn on a belt and would be very difficult to remove (especially with the paunch present on so many of the executives that carry them), would be equipped with a proximity sensor, or at least would receive a message from the Blackberry, which is measuring its own proximity to the holster. The holster could then vibrate / play a sound / flash to indicate that the Blackberry is missing and, if the user doesn't find the device within a few minutes and type in a cancellation code, poof!!
Except that anyone actually trying to steal a Blackberry isn't likely to try and rip it from the holster. Most Blackberry addicts stumble around holding them in their hand, making them easy targets. Besides, a thief would rather steal an iPod, which no doubt requires less after-the-fact tinkering than a Blacberry.
I don't get it either. This might have been useful for absent minded people who misplace their stuff, but now they're expected to trigger the device before misplacing it?
Didn't you know? Blackberry owners are psychic which is why they are able to walk down the sidewalk while mindlessly looking at the tiny little screens without bumping into people. Oh wait...
Interesting articles but I have a very basic question: Where do we get the social stigma associated with "meeting someone online"?
The Media. Let's face it: for as many positive stories you will find about the power of the Internet, you will find 5 times as many stories about things wrong with the Internet (phishing, privacy issues, child molesters, social repression, odd personal behavior, pornography, data loss, etc.). So "meeting someone online" carries the connotation that anyone you meet through some online medium must be tainted, somehow crazed or weird or just odd. When in fact, the subset of humanity we put in those categories is probably no greater on the Internet than it is in the global population.
Social networking is just an enhancement of your neighborhood, with global reach. And just like their may be "weirdoes" on your block you know nothing of, the same can be said of the Internet.
Why? Because most of the people who have the misfortune of still running Windows 98 do so because they are comfortable with it and have no intention of changing until their hard drive melts. They got their computer eons ago, it does everything they want it to do, they don't need to play World of Warcraft or run complicated programs, and the thought of upgrading to even Windows 2000 makes them break out in cold sweats. Up until 6 months ago, my stepmother was still running her Win98 machine, until it got so undeniably slow that she was forced by necessity to upgrade to WinXP.
At one point in time it was illegal to free slaves in the US. And you'd be hard pressed to find an elected official at this point that would still defend that stance.
Finding out that computer systems can be tampered with and that some large-scale enterprise-class systems can have shoddy security, physical and otherwise, should come as no surprise to us, particularly in this community. On this particular issue, a generic security key is used because of key management issues and the fact that casual access is what's being prevented. Neither of which excuses this or any of the numerous other glaring shortcomings and flaws in this equipment. No one - citizen, politician, or party - benefits from universally shoddy security on electronic voting systems. No one.
But there shouldn't be a key management issue; only one person at a polling place should be carrying the key to the machines at any time. Part of the issue is not just the mechanism, for cheating has been a part of voting since the Greeks were dropping clay markers in urns, but the management of the voting process. I doubt any causal person would ever stumble upon this particular nugget, but the potential is always there and it pays to add whatever extra level of security can be obtained by making the keys unique and more complex.
I've been writing Perl for 6 years now and I've yet to find a more versatile language. I just started working in PHP, and it's Perl-like enough that learning it has been easy. But some things are just not done elegantly, and one has to wonder why that is, given that PHP is in fact pretty good as languages go.
I don't think the judge was necessarily clueless - according to the article, it was a "default judgement." IANAL, but my understanding is that in civil cases, if the defendant doesn't bother showing up to court (as in this case) then they default on the case and the plaintiff wins automatically.
IANAL either, but my understanding is that a civil trial judge also has the right to decide the lawsuit is frivilous or not an issue within the court's purview, and dismiss it summarily. The judge should have looked the spammer's lawyers in the eye, laughed, and declared the case thrown out, if for no other reason than he should have known that US courts hold very little sway overseas.
Linhardt and his company are indeed spammers and remain on the Spamhaus blocklist, the organization said. Posting a note that e360insignt was inaccurately labeled as a spammer would be a lie, Spamhaus said. If Linhardt wants a ruling that counts, he needs to refile his case in the UK, according to Spamhaus.
There are many out there that have had bad experiences with Spamhaus, but in this case, this guy is a known spammer. I'm surprised the court even gave credence to the lawsuit, but apparently the judge is not up on the Internet and spam. They are correct -- if he wants a judgement, he needs to file in UK court, where, given their recent history of prosecuting spammers, he stands little chance of succeeding.
I've been using the new system for a few months and have seen the iterations come and go and have the following suggestions:
Remove parent quotes - as has been noted by others, those of us who quote from a parent article run the risk of having that be seen first, which can cause confusion, especially if you're meta-moderating. Maybe change it to look for the [blockquote] or [p][i] tags and remove them, or create a [quote] tag that does what those do but the reader ignores when displaying the initial lines of the post.
Nail down the Threshhold Box - the thing hops around, pops up when it isn't need (after you submit a post), and covers up stuff. Give me an option to fix it in place.
Change the Tree - I personally would liek to see it where the parent posts are displayed en toto (subject to threshhold ranking), with a link beneath saying "Follow Thread" or some such that would allow me to click on the discussions I want to follow without cluttering up the screen with a lot of other irrelevant things.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure. They might just scrape up the less-than-tech-savvy market, the people who own computers, use the Web in a cursory fashion, would like some of these features, and recognize Microsoft's branding. I doubt they'll make inroads in the already established market unless they come up with something unique, which is not one of their strong points.
Have you been Walloped(TM)!?!?!
And so IBM is taking this bold step and should be commended for its actions. Clearly the USPTO is in over its head thanks to the explosion of technology (brought about in no small part by IBM) and it takes a forward-thinking company to put this stuff out there and risk losing some of their competitive edge. I'm just wondering if this might prove more of a trigger for lawsuits as other comapnies peruse these patent applications looking for infringements on their current patents?
I mean we had cassette players in the 70s and 80s that were portable. We called what was on them "recordings."
And this is a bit offtopic, but the same really goes for "blog." Most blogs are opinion pieces, essays, meditations, etc. Why couldn't they just be called what they are? Did we have to make up a name for them?
I think this is part of a general trend where one generation or group tries to separate itself from the previous generation or other groups via their "lingo." The current tech-trendy generation has to listen to their "podcasts" because to say "I'm listening to a recording" makes them sound like they are sitting at home around the Victrola with little Jimmy winding the hand crank.
Of course, the idea that Apple is going to sue over this is just ludicrous, because they ignored it for so long the term became ubiquitous. No use crying over it now.
Is this really that useful for the public in general...?
Of course -- wives can find out where their cheating husbands are taking the naughty pictures they find on their home computer, anyone can determine where the picture someone posted on an on-line dating service was taken (she says she's in Pocatello, ID, but all her pictures are from Bozeman, MT!), etc. A multitude of uses in the home!
...remains unaffec... FOJSF{09fiE*EU90av['vlwIOA934MAwadpskf[aepfkfa[-09 u9a
...should be members of the House panel. Perhaps if they were the subjects of the electronic spying they were authorizing, they might think twice. Still, this is the House Judiciary Committee, not the full House or Senate, so there's still time to write your Congressman and tell him/her that if they vote for this, you'll help hand them a one-way ticket to unemployment.
The majority of exploits could be stopped if Windows users switched to Firefox.
This would also have the added effect of reducing the number of Slashdot posts villifying IE.
Let's see... Internet company... flaky business model... outrageous amounts of money... well, my time machine works -- I must be back in 1998!
All Hail President Skroob!
Forget ATMs; the way people post personal information about themselves so freely on the Internet, combined with the average user's lack of imagination, means that I can probably go to any social netwroking site, get a user's site id and some basic information about them (birthday, fav color, dog's name, etc.) and with a little luck, find that they use that information as usernames/passwords for on-line banking, Amazon, etc.
When it comes to the security of information, avergae people are stupid.
Who cares? Some professor of Math gets his knickers in a twist because he's been outted as a self-aggrandizing, self-important weasel by his peers, only confirming his peers' extimation of him, and this is important? Somebody get this guy some Xanax and a legal dictionary then send him off to some nice, quiet, restful place where he can contemplate geometry and leave the rest of us alone.
It is kind of pointless and taking things to far. The idea of a smart holster (for this purpose) is completely unnecessary.
Agreed. The technology already exists to secure a Blackberry that's carried in its holster; it was developed for parents years ago. Put an alarm on the Blackberry that when it gets a certain distance from the holster, the alarm goes off. Simple and no "smart" tech required. Mind you, now you'll be wedded to your Blackberry unless you remove the holster, but then most Blackberry users carry the things obsessively anyway.
Except that anyone actually trying to steal a Blackberry isn't likely to try and rip it from the holster. Most Blackberry addicts stumble around holding them in their hand, making them easy targets. Besides, a thief would rather steal an iPod, which no doubt requires less after-the-fact tinkering than a Blacberry.
I don't get it either. This might have been useful for absent minded people who misplace their stuff, but now they're expected to trigger the device before misplacing it?
Didn't you know? Blackberry owners are psychic which is why they are able to walk down the sidewalk while mindlessly looking at the tiny little screens without bumping into people. Oh wait...
The Media. Let's face it: for as many positive stories you will find about the power of the Internet, you will find 5 times as many stories about things wrong with the Internet (phishing, privacy issues, child molesters, social repression, odd personal behavior, pornography, data loss, etc.). So "meeting someone online" carries the connotation that anyone you meet through some online medium must be tainted, somehow crazed or weird or just odd. When in fact, the subset of humanity we put in those categories is probably no greater on the Internet than it is in the global population.
Social networking is just an enhancement of your neighborhood, with global reach. And just like their may be "weirdoes" on your block you know nothing of, the same can be said of the Internet.
No.
Why? Because most of the people who have the misfortune of still running Windows 98 do so because they are comfortable with it and have no intention of changing until their hard drive melts. They got their computer eons ago, it does everything they want it to do, they don't need to play World of Warcraft or run complicated programs, and the thought of upgrading to even Windows 2000 makes them break out in cold sweats. Up until 6 months ago, my stepmother was still running her Win98 machine, until it got so undeniably slow that she was forced by necessity to upgrade to WinXP.
Except for perhaps Jesse Helms...
But there shouldn't be a key management issue; only one person at a polling place should be carrying the key to the machines at any time. Part of the issue is not just the mechanism, for cheating has been a part of voting since the Greeks were dropping clay markers in urns, but the management of the voting process. I doubt any causal person would ever stumble upon this particular nugget, but the potential is always there and it pays to add whatever extra level of security can be obtained by making the keys unique and more complex.
"HP will be changing it's slogan from 'HP: Invent' to 'HP: Indict'"
I've been writing Perl for 6 years now and I've yet to find a more versatile language. I just started working in PHP, and it's Perl-like enough that learning it has been easy. But some things are just not done elegantly, and one has to wonder why that is, given that PHP is in fact pretty good as languages go.
I don't think the judge was necessarily clueless - according to the article, it was a "default judgement." IANAL, but my understanding is that in civil cases, if the defendant doesn't bother showing up to court (as in this case) then they default on the case and the plaintiff wins automatically.
IANAL either, but my understanding is that a civil trial judge also has the right to decide the lawsuit is frivilous or not an issue within the court's purview, and dismiss it summarily. The judge should have looked the spammer's lawyers in the eye, laughed, and declared the case thrown out, if for no other reason than he should have known that US courts hold very little sway overseas.
There are many out there that have had bad experiences with Spamhaus, but in this case, this guy is a known spammer. I'm surprised the court even gave credence to the lawsuit, but apparently the judge is not up on the Internet and spam. They are correct -- if he wants a judgement, he needs to file in UK court, where, given their recent history of prosecuting spammers, he stands little chance of succeeding.
I've been using the new system for a few months and have seen the iterations come and go and have the following suggestions:
Other than those things, I'm quite pleased.
If they announced finding a new large prime number, and then later realized the number was even, and they hadn't noticed that.
Even funnier -- they name it "Optimus."