Ethical ways. I subscribe to an Apple rumor site (other than Slashdot!) I can't speak for them all--a huge selection exists--but haven't observed spin in favor of any product or company other than Apple (who doesn't pay them, and has almost certainly sent them a Cease And Desist or two over the years). If the site's subscribers did notice a strong spin on stories or non-advertising plugs for non-Apple products, I suspect we'd leave. As I said, there's a huge selection--no sense in wasting time when an ad-free version is available elsewhere.
Undeniably, it takes a certain amount of time and dedication to dig through all these patents and things hunting for nuggetty rumors and news. There are much easier ways to make a couple of hundred bucks unethically.
The site I subscribe to did post a link to Engadget's iPhone delay story, but did so with the warning that it seemed suspect, and updated to confirm its falsity as soon as that news broke.
You're overlooking the simple elegance of Rubish word blocks. Some moldy old writers just don't see the problem with "sentences" and "paragraphs". The verbosity of these older techniques is what makes managing texts like "Ulysses" and "War And Peace" so difficult and complex. These works would barely be novellas if they had been written in Rubish.
Also, Rubish has excellent automatic garbage collection. PC Magazine was impressed when they saw a draft of The Complete Works Of John Dvorak in Rubish: a single exclamation mark in the middle center of an otherwise blank sheet of paper.
And let's not forget its other features: four levels of variable article, exception handling (one Rubishist summarized this as the "no ifs or buts" rule), advanced punctuation overloading (exclamation marks aren't just for shocks), and something I can't believe English STILL doesn't support: regular expression (say one thing, mean another. The RIAA and MPAA tried introducing this feature to English in an attempt at explaining the advantages of DRM. Not only did they fail, they sued one another for copying the other's idea.)
You're interested in learning more about Rubish, I can tell. I recommend Prattling Rubish, part of the Prattling Penmen series. The book itself is written entirely in Rubish. It's three pages long and takes most people a couple of weeks to decipher.
It's not confusing, it's just irrelevant. Slashdot is an open forum. It doesn't strive toward NPOV or adhere to the standards of journalism. If you think Slashdot is fine but want to take away the soap boxes, you've missed the point of Slashdot.
Slashdot is not a journalistic news source.
Just for clarity: if you made this comment of a WSJ article (outside the Op/Ed pages), I would wholeheartedly agree with you; you may be surprised to learn that I'm sensitive to such mistakes myself. However, Slashdot is not the WSJ--Slashdot is ALL Op/Ed! Just try to enjoy the melee.
It may not smear a competitor, but it fits the spirit of the term: Greenpreace used its position to spread questionable information that discourages decision-makers from choosing the products of certain companies. "Questionable" is the key word in that statement. Greenpeace was alerted to the flaws in its "greenness appraisal" system when Lenovo jumped from last to first place in its rankings after just a few months and without making any changes to its manufacturing processes. Greenpeace ignored this alarm bell and released another report anyway, in which it accused Apple Inc of "showing no signs of improvement" in its "bad" attitude toward the environment. When the rest of the media picked up on the story and berated Apple, Greenpeace did not correct them to say the report was based on incomplete data, and continues to stand by its review.
The Greenpeace Greener Electronics Guide was an editorialized review based on improper research and the assumption that companies are up to no good when no relevant information is within five clicks of their homepage. Whether or not it's FUD (and it is) isn't just relevant, it's the topic at hand.
Seems my rant pushed a few people's buttons, and I'm a bit sorry for that. I won't launch a full counter-argument, but I would like to at least explain the language I used.
I called the Greenpeace Green Electronics Guide presumptive and snide because much of it was presumed without actual information. Big flashy "score cards" ranked Apple and Lenovo as environmentally evil, prompting media outrage, with only fine print to prevent libel lawsuits against Greenpeace. Both Apple and Lenovo have since been revealed to be a lot more green than Greenpeace reported.
Greenpeace assumed the worst of Apple and other companies when no information was offered on a specific topic. The degree to which the resulting score card is flawed and misleading will be further emphasized in the next review, where Apple will jump from "holding firmly in last place" with "low scores on almost all criteria and no progress" to somewhere near the top of the score card without having made any changes to its plans or manufacturing process. (This already happened with Lenovo.)
I don't agree with the moderator who marked your comment Flamebait. I don't think that's how you intended it, anyway.
Yes, I believe Jobs is telling the truth about Apple's current manufacturing standards. I'm sure you have read in full the Greenpeace report that stirred this storm in a teacup, and therefore realize that Greenpeace assumed Apple's manufacturing standards weren't up to snuff simply because Apple hadn't explained in brightly colored crayons what friendly, earth-loving folk they are. Greenpeace's "scoring" of Apple and the other electronics companies reviewed was based solely on PR information available from company websites. Greenpeace had no reason to doubt the information published on Lenovo's, Nokia's, or Sony's websites, and neither they nor I have any reason to doubt the information now posted on Apple's.
Sorry if I made Greenpeace sound evil to you. Their actions were executed with trademark thoughtlessness and irrationality, but I'm sure their intentions were honorable. Their review was flawed, but not biased, and I'm sure Apple will be properly represented in the next Greenpeace Electronics Guide.
It would be an undue compliment to call Greenpeace's report even barely researched. It was presumptive, snide, misleading, and obviously flawed. FUD seems a fair description.
This isn't a case of "he says, she says". This is a case of "Greenpeace assumed, without any facts, that Apple doesn't care about the environment, and told everyone that this is the objective truth". Greenpeace went on to waste probably quite a bit of money on a campaign and website to "change" Apple, all based on their flawed report.
Currently the Green My Apple campaign site is posting a headline suggesting that Jobs's explanation of Apple's actually-quite-greenness is some sort of policy change, rather than what it is: the good news Greenpeace had previously assumed was bad.
Dell, HP and Lenovo all scored higher than Apple because of their plans (or "plans for releasing plans" in the case of HP). In reality, Apple is ahead of all of these companies in eliminating toxic chemicals from its products.
Is greater market share the only reason penetration of a system is attempted? No, of course it's not; but a vulnerable system with greater market is more appealing when planning a malicious attack.
Notoriety is pretty low down on a penetration expert's priorities, especially if he's targeting Windows (imagine the headline: "Shock! Horror! Windows MAY be vulnerable!") Even in the case of this competition, I'd be surprised if any of the entrants believed they would gain fame/infamy outside a niche maligned community.
There is no single reason why penetrations take place, but script kiddies and malicious attackers are more likely to attack the easiest to penetrate, most common systems: unprotected windows machines. In other words: market share is the most common reason.
I had a brief stint at a small company producing bespoke accounting solutions for Pegasus Opera, a VFP-based package. Its briefness was due to dwindling demand... Since then, I've moved to the US, and if I ever happen to mention either Fox Pro or Pegasus, I get "Huh? The what-what?"
You've just summed up--in one short comment--everything I hate about PHP. I've been a PHP developer for several years and it was my first introduction to the OSS community, but I still remember that wild discovery: "You mean have to take down the entire service just because it wasn't compiled against this or that library? That's INSANE! What the hell is Linux FOR?"
The example of pedophilia was used, not because of any supposed criminality, but for the very reason that it is a condition and not itself a crime (activity). The point being that pedophile sex offenders are likely to repeat their crime, this because they are pedophiles, not because they are sex offenders. Thus my use of the term.
Your arguments are all anecdotal and cannot be proven.
IANAL, IANAussie, but the age of consent in Australia seems to be 16, higher in some areas. In South Australia a defense can be made (by trial) if both parties were 16 at the time of the offense.
With the obvious exception of murder, victims of all those offenses can be indemnified for their loss. I agree that a public database of murderers should be available. I'm guessing the sex offenders database was more readily approved due to a higher proportion of repeat sex offenders than repeat murderers. I haven't actually heard of a reformed pedophile.
Fair enough, but it'll take more than the availability of DVRs to convince me that the former CSO and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft really cares so little about what his competition is saying of Windows. Gates has definitely seen the commercial, at work if not at home, and in this interview he was miserably failing to keep a pretense of cool.
"Commercial? What commercial? I'm too important to take notice of such things. Perhaps I would have seen this commercial had Apple been competent enough to give it some exposure," etc.
Well spotted, Mark, but I believe he has seen the commercial. Apple has made the whole campaign--Vista surgery commercial especially--extremely visible. In fact, the Vista surgery commercial was shown during the MacWorld keynote address in which the iPhone was introduced. If high-ranking Microsoft employees have stopped paying attention to Apple, where will they get "their" ideas for new features? More worryingly, to have not seen this commercial, Gates must have sat on his couch with his fingers in his ears singing "lalalalala" throughout the break of his favorite TV show, American Idol. That kind of public image could be devastating for him, and for the company with which his name has become synonymous.
Gates also twisted the message of Apple's campaign. Perhaps he simply took it too personally, identifying too well with Hodgman's character. He suggested that the commercial slanders Windows users, even when the first words in every commercial in the campaign are: "Hello, I'm a Mac", "And I'm a PC". That's right, Bill; the dullard isn't your customer, it's your product.
I'm absolutely certain Microsoft had nothing to do with the project. Microsoft is bad at many things: programming, for example; and marketing (see above interview). But MoAB would be the worst marketing stunt ever: not only was the blog team unable to discover any serious flaws in the competition's product, they gave extremely detailed information about the few potential threats they could find—making it easy for Apple to release patches almost immediately.
I'm certain he was referring to MoAB. My OS X setup is unaffected by the majority of MoAB "bugs"; as you said, many rely on third party apps (and therefore aren't really "Apple" bugs at all). That's not the only reason Mr. Gates can rightly be accused of a lie: "every day"? As in "every single day" since a particular date? MoAB had a hard time stretching a full month out of the few security flaws they were able to find in Apple's software, but a full year? And given the restriction of operating system (Tiger) bugs ONLY?
I was opposed to the MoAB project because I thought it irresponsible. I would say the same of YoAB (Year of...) but my hat would come off to anyone who could accomplish
Gates lied about several other things in this interview, even contradicting himself: he claims he hasn't seen the Get A Mac campaign ads (which are broadcast during some of America's most popular prime time television shows) but knows full well what sort of creature Apple paints Microsoft Windows to be.
Apple has done more than they could hope for with their Get A Mac campaign: they've really really pushed Bill's new Aero-skinned captionless Start button.
Perhaps universities could provide this as remedial education, but no one should start higher education without knowing how to do proper research; at that level, students should know how to perform research.
I agree that Wikipedia should not be cited directly, but like the parent poster I find it provides a good overview of the subject and usually pushes me in the right direction for deeper research. After all, every good Wikipedian cites his sources.
It's a great tool and one I have practical use for, but testing it out for work I've stumbled across what I consider to be an important issue. I've only tried SSHFS so far, and I haven't done any digging to see where the fault lies, but a dropped connection (either a dropped internet connection or an SSH session the server drops) really confuses the system. Messing about, I killed my internet connection during a read, and Finder hung until my the connection was restored. Another time, my session was killed for idleness by our server; when I tried to perform a read through Terminal, both Terminal and Finder crashed and took all of OS X with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Ethical ways. I subscribe to an Apple rumor site (other than Slashdot!) I can't speak for them all--a huge selection exists--but haven't observed spin in favor of any product or company other than Apple (who doesn't pay them, and has almost certainly sent them a Cease And Desist or two over the years). If the site's subscribers did notice a strong spin on stories or non-advertising plugs for non-Apple products, I suspect we'd leave. As I said, there's a huge selection--no sense in wasting time when an ad-free version is available elsewhere.
Undeniably, it takes a certain amount of time and dedication to dig through all these patents and things hunting for nuggetty rumors and news. There are much easier ways to make a couple of hundred bucks unethically.
The site I subscribe to did post a link to Engadget's iPhone delay story, but did so with the warning that it seemed suspect, and updated to confirm its falsity as soon as that news broke.
Industry? Seriously? In the formal sense?
Sorry, I just can't see how a rumor site could generate proceeds beyond $100 from Adsense every couple of months!
You're overlooking the simple elegance of Rubish word blocks. Some moldy old writers just don't see the problem with "sentences" and "paragraphs". The verbosity of these older techniques is what makes managing texts like "Ulysses" and "War And Peace" so difficult and complex. These works would barely be novellas if they had been written in Rubish.
Also, Rubish has excellent automatic garbage collection. PC Magazine was impressed when they saw a draft of The Complete Works Of John Dvorak in Rubish: a single exclamation mark in the middle center of an otherwise blank sheet of paper.
And let's not forget its other features: four levels of variable article, exception handling (one Rubishist summarized this as the "no ifs or buts" rule), advanced punctuation overloading (exclamation marks aren't just for shocks), and something I can't believe English STILL doesn't support: regular expression (say one thing, mean another. The RIAA and MPAA tried introducing this feature to English in an attempt at explaining the advantages of DRM. Not only did they fail, they sued one another for copying the other's idea.)
You're interested in learning more about Rubish, I can tell. I recommend Prattling Rubish, part of the Prattling Penmen series. The book itself is written entirely in Rubish. It's three pages long and takes most people a couple of weeks to decipher.
It's not confusing, it's just irrelevant. Slashdot is an open forum. It doesn't strive toward NPOV or adhere to the standards of journalism. If you think Slashdot is fine but want to take away the soap boxes, you've missed the point of Slashdot.
Slashdot is not a journalistic news source.
Just for clarity: if you made this comment of a WSJ article (outside the Op/Ed pages), I would wholeheartedly agree with you; you may be surprised to learn that I'm sensitive to such mistakes myself. However, Slashdot is not the WSJ--Slashdot is ALL Op/Ed! Just try to enjoy the melee.
It may not smear a competitor, but it fits the spirit of the term: Greenpreace used its position to spread questionable information that discourages decision-makers from choosing the products of certain companies. "Questionable" is the key word in that statement. Greenpeace was alerted to the flaws in its "greenness appraisal" system when Lenovo jumped from last to first place in its rankings after just a few months and without making any changes to its manufacturing processes. Greenpeace ignored this alarm bell and released another report anyway, in which it accused Apple Inc of "showing no signs of improvement" in its "bad" attitude toward the environment. When the rest of the media picked up on the story and berated Apple, Greenpeace did not correct them to say the report was based on incomplete data, and continues to stand by its review.
The Greenpeace Greener Electronics Guide was an editorialized review based on improper research and the assumption that companies are up to no good when no relevant information is within five clicks of their homepage. Whether or not it's FUD (and it is) isn't just relevant, it's the topic at hand.
Seems my rant pushed a few people's buttons, and I'm a bit sorry for that. I won't launch a full counter-argument, but I would like to at least explain the language I used.
I called the Greenpeace Green Electronics Guide presumptive and snide because much of it was presumed without actual information. Big flashy "score cards" ranked Apple and Lenovo as environmentally evil, prompting media outrage, with only fine print to prevent libel lawsuits against Greenpeace. Both Apple and Lenovo have since been revealed to be a lot more green than Greenpeace reported.
Greenpeace assumed the worst of Apple and other companies when no information was offered on a specific topic. The degree to which the resulting score card is flawed and misleading will be further emphasized in the next review, where Apple will jump from "holding firmly in last place" with "low scores on almost all criteria and no progress" to somewhere near the top of the score card without having made any changes to its plans or manufacturing process. (This already happened with Lenovo.)
I don't agree with the moderator who marked your comment Flamebait. I don't think that's how you intended it, anyway.
Yes, I believe Jobs is telling the truth about Apple's current manufacturing standards. I'm sure you have read in full the Greenpeace report that stirred this storm in a teacup, and therefore realize that Greenpeace assumed Apple's manufacturing standards weren't up to snuff simply because Apple hadn't explained in brightly colored crayons what friendly, earth-loving folk they are. Greenpeace's "scoring" of Apple and the other electronics companies reviewed was based solely on PR information available from company websites. Greenpeace had no reason to doubt the information published on Lenovo's, Nokia's, or Sony's websites, and neither they nor I have any reason to doubt the information now posted on Apple's.
Sorry if I made Greenpeace sound evil to you. Their actions were executed with trademark thoughtlessness and irrationality, but I'm sure their intentions were honorable. Their review was flawed, but not biased, and I'm sure Apple will be properly represented in the next Greenpeace Electronics Guide.
It would be an undue compliment to call Greenpeace's report even barely researched. It was presumptive, snide, misleading, and obviously flawed. FUD seems a fair description.
This isn't a case of "he says, she says". This is a case of "Greenpeace assumed, without any facts, that Apple doesn't care about the environment, and told everyone that this is the objective truth". Greenpeace went on to waste probably quite a bit of money on a campaign and website to "change" Apple, all based on their flawed report.
Currently the Green My Apple campaign site is posting a headline suggesting that Jobs's explanation of Apple's actually-quite-greenness is some sort of policy change, rather than what it is: the good news Greenpeace had previously assumed was bad.
RTA. Throughout, Jobs makes comparisons to other companies in the Greenpeace Electronics Guide. He then writes:
Is greater market share the only reason penetration of a system is attempted? No, of course it's not; but a vulnerable system with greater market is more appealing when planning a malicious attack.
Notoriety is pretty low down on a penetration expert's priorities, especially if he's targeting Windows (imagine the headline: "Shock! Horror! Windows MAY be vulnerable!") Even in the case of this competition, I'd be surprised if any of the entrants believed they would gain fame/infamy outside a niche maligned community.
There is no single reason why penetrations take place, but script kiddies and malicious attackers are more likely to attack the easiest to penetrate, most common systems: unprotected windows machines. In other words: market share is the most common reason.
I agree with the "Spotlight Already Does That" posts. Keeping that in mind:
http://beagle-project.org/Main_Page
I had a brief stint at a small company producing bespoke accounting solutions for Pegasus Opera, a VFP-based package. Its briefness was due to dwindling demand... Since then, I've moved to the US, and if I ever happen to mention either Fox Pro or Pegasus, I get "Huh? The what-what?"
Sounds pretty monumental to me:
"Stephen Hawking Says Universe Created"
You've just summed up--in one short comment--everything I hate about PHP. I've been a PHP developer for several years and it was my first introduction to the OSS community, but I still remember that wild discovery: "You mean have to take down the entire service just because it wasn't compiled against this or that library? That's INSANE! What the hell is Linux FOR?"
The example of pedophilia was used, not because of any supposed criminality, but for the very reason that it is a condition and not itself a crime (activity). The point being that pedophile sex offenders are likely to repeat their crime, this because they are pedophiles, not because they are sex offenders. Thus my use of the term.
Your arguments are all anecdotal and cannot be proven.
IANAL, IANAussie, but the age of consent in Australia seems to be 16, higher in some areas. In South Australia a defense can be made (by trial) if both parties were 16 at the time of the offense.
u stralia_and_Oceania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_A
Where did you get 10 from?
With the obvious exception of murder, victims of all those offenses can be indemnified for their loss. I agree that a public database of murderers should be available. I'm guessing the sex offenders database was more readily approved due to a higher proportion of repeat sex offenders than repeat murderers. I haven't actually heard of a reformed pedophile.
Fair enough, but it'll take more than the availability of DVRs to convince me that the former CSO and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft really cares so little about what his competition is saying of Windows. Gates has definitely seen the commercial, at work if not at home, and in this interview he was miserably failing to keep a pretense of cool.
"Commercial? What commercial? I'm too important to take notice of such things. Perhaps I would have seen this commercial had Apple been competent enough to give it some exposure," etc.
Well spotted, Mark, but I believe he has seen the commercial. Apple has made the whole campaign--Vista surgery commercial especially--extremely visible. In fact, the Vista surgery commercial was shown during the MacWorld keynote address in which the iPhone was introduced. If high-ranking Microsoft employees have stopped paying attention to Apple, where will they get "their" ideas for new features? More worryingly, to have not seen this commercial, Gates must have sat on his couch with his fingers in his ears singing "lalalalala" throughout the break of his favorite TV show, American Idol. That kind of public image could be devastating for him, and for the company with which his name has become synonymous.
Gates also twisted the message of Apple's campaign. Perhaps he simply took it too personally, identifying too well with Hodgman's character. He suggested that the commercial slanders Windows users, even when the first words in every commercial in the campaign are: "Hello, I'm a Mac", "And I'm a PC". That's right, Bill; the dullard isn't your customer, it's your product.
I'm absolutely certain Microsoft had nothing to do with the project. Microsoft is bad at many things: programming, for example; and marketing (see above interview). But MoAB would be the worst marketing stunt ever: not only was the blog team unable to discover any serious flaws in the competition's product, they gave extremely detailed information about the few potential threats they could find—making it easy for Apple to release patches almost immediately.
You're entitled to your opinion, insane though you may be.
Speaking of your opinion, any cartoons you do like?
I'm certain he was referring to MoAB. My OS X setup is unaffected by the majority of MoAB "bugs"; as you said, many rely on third party apps (and therefore aren't really "Apple" bugs at all). That's not the only reason Mr. Gates can rightly be accused of a lie: "every day"? As in "every single day" since a particular date? MoAB had a hard time stretching a full month out of the few security flaws they were able to find in Apple's software, but a full year? And given the restriction of operating system (Tiger) bugs ONLY?
I was opposed to the MoAB project because I thought it irresponsible. I would say the same of YoAB (Year of...) but my hat would come off to anyone who could accomplish
Gates lied about several other things in this interview, even contradicting himself: he claims he hasn't seen the Get A Mac campaign ads (which are broadcast during some of America's most popular prime time television shows) but knows full well what sort of creature Apple paints Microsoft Windows to be.
Apple has done more than they could hope for with their Get A Mac campaign: they've really really pushed Bill's new Aero-skinned captionless Start button.
Perhaps universities could provide this as remedial education, but no one should start higher education without knowing how to do proper research; at that level, students should know how to perform research.
I agree that Wikipedia should not be cited directly, but like the parent poster I find it provides a good overview of the subject and usually pushes me in the right direction for deeper research. After all, every good Wikipedian cites his sources.
It's a great tool and one I have practical use for, but testing it out for work I've stumbled across what I consider to be an important issue. I've only tried SSHFS so far, and I haven't done any digging to see where the fault lies, but a dropped connection (either a dropped internet connection or an SSH session the server drops) really confuses the system. Messing about, I killed my internet connection during a read, and Finder hung until my the connection was restored. Another time, my session was killed for idleness by our server; when I tried to perform a read through Terminal, both Terminal and Finder crashed and took all of OS X with them.