So if I can use my visibility to bring attention to the idiocy of the DMCA, or the things the MPAA and RIAA have been pulling the last 2 years, then I will do it, gladly.
might help balance the damage done by Sony Bono, uh, Sonny.
Sigh - it's really a shame ppl lose sight of the real issue - Sure, other companies play vendor lock in games. But very few of them enjoy a virtual 90% monopoly power position to leverage. Some pissant startup tries to lockin customers may just lose it, ala netscape. Other's are handed a monopoly on a silver platter from IBM which they can use that to push their products, regardless of quality, and certainly overriding 'consumer choice'.
Of course it's just a lawyer stating you don't have permission. It is not programmed to block Msft products. I'll bet Billg browses it everyday while thumbing his nose in their general direction.
I kid you not: last saturday I wrapped some Al foil around an old radio vacuum tube, wired it to a Tesla coil and got enough X-Rays to make a few smudges on photo paper. After I get the lead shielding up and a geiger counter to make sure I'm not getting dosed I hope to use more sensitive film and get some real see-thru-stuff pictures,
Like this guy here. Unfortunately, no time travel occured.
There is a high voltage transformer in a microwaver, a couple of kilovolts. Just run that thru a tripler scavanged from an old color tv and get bodacious arcs and sparks. Just try not to kill yourself;))
Hey, this is another chance to plug my Bill Gates - Alfred E. Neuman connection page: http://www.widomaker.com/~cswiger/bgisaen.html from "Exploring Cairo" in an old NT Magazine issue.
Actually I'm dying to ditch WinME/9x but they're going to be out there for a long time yet, untill the ROI is paid off. Sorry, that's the way most industry works. Once a business sinks so much capital into IT infrastructure they just keep using it untill depreciated (5 years I think) or it has paid for itself. Not every company can afford to buy all new systems every two or three years.
out there. I'm sure glad to get rid of that crappy dos legacy stuff all the way up to WinME - but we'll let YOU sell everyone on YAUG (yet another upgrade), especially those who bought into the WinME marketing;)
I'll never forget the chore it was getting people to switch from Win31 to 95 - our head of acctng never could give up fileman.exe.
Does 'they' refer to ATI or HardOCP? At first I though it was ATI that was using a 'quackifier' but couldn't resolve that with 'makes it run 15% slower'. Guess we should never expect geeks to be great communicators, even to us semi compu-literate;))
Re:Even if it is a success, it will...
on
"Lindows" Coming Soon?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
What's the fun of running Windows apps in Linux? Higher stability? a
Maybe a few people will want to make their own damn choices and not necessarily want to be forced to automatically sign on Internet secure sites using Microsoft passport, and browse the Microsoft Network, and put their money in the Microsoft bank, and buy the latest Microsoft choice of music and movies from the Microsoft DVD store, drink "Bill's Choice" softdrink, wear Microsoft cloths, buy a car from the Microsoft New Cars site (after Ford is brought under their control, uh, a strategic partnership formed with Ford) and buy their mortgate from the Microsoft Savings & Loan and ship packages with Microsoft Parcel Service and get their Microsoft friendly news from the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company (MSNBC) over the Microsoft Cable Service, etc.
"If MS Windows had updates this often, you Linux zealot hypocrits would flame them for being unstable."
They do, internally. It's just that OSS developement takes place in full public view, w/o a multi-billion dollar public relations screen to mask the blood & gore.
Where Linux has 2.2.17, Windows has NT4 build 1654, SP6a or whatever it is.
Let me tell you that they were not going to do it for free. How is this any different?
I keep seeing this over and over - the DIFFERENCE is the Msft is a monopoly using dominance in one market to extend their influence in other markets, just as if they were the only cable company in town wanted to go into, say, auto sales and would only air THEIR car commercials on the tv. The problem with monopolies is what sets the price. If there are two auto dealers naturally people are going to shop between the two to get the best bargain which keeps the dealers operating efficient. If there is ONLY ONE CHOICE, in this case to get on the.NET bandwagon, the supplier can regulate their own price for their own profits, screw the consumer. They can offer a low, low introductory price to get many developers signed up, and after they are two years committed on down the primrose path the prices go UP and they make yet another windfall.
There's an amusing story behing how the Strowger automatic telephone switch system started - Strowger ran a funeral parlor and got suspicious when the competition down the street started getting all the business. It turned out that the phone operator was in cahoots with the competing parlor and was send all requests for funeral services THEIR way. Strowger got busy and developed an AUTOMATIC telephone switch so customers could look up a number in a phone book and make their own damn choice, w/o some techno-tomfoolery making it for them. see http://www.webuildphonesystems.com/history.htm for a referance to this story.
1.There's no support built into the product. Yes, you can hire people to support it for you, but it's a seperate cost.
Hiring an McSE to run around d/l'ing patches, rebooting, listening to user gripes, exterminating viruses and MAYBE getting someone on tech support who knows what to do is a seperate cost for licensed software as well. The $200/incident support is yet another cost.
2.Similarly, There is no warrantee of any kind. If it breaks, you have no one to complain to: "you get what you pay for."
You may have paid for a licence, but it also comes with NO warranty, express or implied, as to fitness for merchantibility or usability. We had a Wrkstation w/ WinME suddenly start spewing "wuauclt" errors. Who do I complain to? Being a small business with little volumn would it even matter if I did complain? Either way, you pay your money and take what they give you, and if you don't like it, tough. Ever try to get money back from a bundled license or shrink wrap box?
3.The programmers may suddenly decide they have no vested interest in continuing the project, or development may slow to a crawl (eg, mozilla), and there's nothing you can do about it.
Similarly, a business may suddenly decide there is no profit in a licensed software product and your left with an unsupported orphan, and no source code. Time to buy the upgrade!
Now, all the above is aimed at ONE PARTICULAR bad example of closed source - most all other companies software doesn't come anywhere near the problems we have with those guys, esp. considering all the licenses we have purchased.
In general I would agree that commercial sw is better polished by hard working professionals trying to keep their jobs, state of the art, a clean reputation and shield themselves from frivalous lawsuits, but the above arguments don't work for me.
Last time I was in Kathmandu (Summer '98) they wouldn't even turn power on untill the evening, to preserve water in the hydro dam or something, plus they were rationing gasoline. And that's in the capital city, right down the street from the King's palace (Kantipath). Interesting place to visit - for some things it's like getting in the way-back machine set for the 1700's.
Was just thinking Msft might like to have a monopoly like AT&T had on phones - you never did actually 'own' the phone, you had to LEASE it (just like you don't OWN Word etc, just buy licenses to use) and while they were good, rugged, tough handsets that were automatically maintained by the telco, they did make a great cash flow out of those monthy lease payments.
My folks have had the same phone on the wall for about 40 years now, and they've probably paid for it 10 times over by now.
I just got out of a battle of wits with one of our sales guys who couldn't receive mail from a potential client - the guy on the other end kept insisting that it was because *our* isp didn't have "anti spam" software, whereas the email headers clearly indicated that they were being rejected because the OTHER guy was blacklisted, he even admitted to them having a problem with their server being used for spam "a year ago", yet they were still failing relay tests as of early this month. I just told our sales guy there was nothing *I* could do, he'd have to get a hotmail acct or something that will take mail from anybody.
It's like another case of IIS users who get wormed and don't know or care what to do about it - and they/sure/ aren't going to get away with blaming it on me!!
XP looks like it's GUI was designed by fisher-price.
That's/exactly/ what a computer scientist friend once said about Windows 3.11 ! "Big, chunky blocks with bright primary colors". But considering the mass target market, that's what they want, something that looks good, matches the room decor, and those "WUAUCLT has caused an error in unknown / WUAUCLT will now close" boxes that keep popping up are absolutely darling!
just for the heck of it, is interface the voice synthesis output of one computer to the voice recognition interface of another and start a transfer of a large text file just to see how long it takes and how accurate it is. I might get about 10-20 bps thru phone line.
If they start standardizing on a vowel command system and people overcome the embarassment of using it, how long before SharperImage starts selling little boxes that make the same sounds at the push of a button, to, you know, make life even better?
Only thing that bothers me about taking energy from sunlight is that the existing energy is a part of the natural environment. Recall that energy is neither created or destroyed, just transformed from one kind & place to another (usually with losses and inefficiencies) - so if you take 1GW of power from the desert and sent it to high concentrations of metropolitan areas, that will contribut to 'desert cooling' and more urban 'heat island'.
If there's one thing we learn from the history of technology, no matter WHAT you do, the luddites with dreams of happy, pastoral family farm livin' will be agin' it. I have magazines from the 20's where some blatering idiot is blaming the then rainy season on all dem newfangled, high powered radio transmitters, sending kilowatts of power out into the aether.
OutGuess 0.2 can not be detected using these techniques.
A little cornfusing, but it sounds like they couldn't really find any hidden info IN THE WILD, so ABC creates this image for a stego program and challenges these genie-asses to decode it? Bloody difficult key there, ABC.
Excuse me but this sounds like a police dept. with a bloodhound who couldn't find squat, takes a prisoner, ties a t-bone steak around his neck, puts him in the dog house and says, "Find the criminal, boy! Good dog! Good Doggie!! See what progress we are making in the fight against terrorism?!" while the media are rolling film.
Or they want to justify continued funding for their research on images in alt.binaries.pictures.you.know.what.
Looks like it's time for the Japanese to come rescue the U.S., again. Just wait 'till the Pokemon generation takes over the telcos! As it is their mgmt probably still pines for the days of leasing handsets forever, while being governed by senators old enough to have been personally acquainted with Thomas Edison.
Slashdot Mirror
it still has 'edlin' -- whoohoo!
So if I can use my visibility to bring attention to the idiocy of the DMCA, or the things the MPAA and RIAA have been pulling the last 2 years, then I will do it, gladly.
might help balance the damage done by Sony Bono, uh, Sonny.
Sigh - it's really a shame ppl lose sight of the real issue - Sure, other companies play vendor lock in games. But very few of them enjoy a virtual 90% monopoly power position to leverage. Some pissant startup tries to lockin customers may just lose it, ala netscape. Other's are handed a monopoly on a silver platter from IBM which they can use that to push their products, regardless of quality, and certainly overriding 'consumer choice'.
LANGUAGE, n.
The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another's treasure.
Perfectly in character for Msft.
You do not have permission to access this site with any Microsoft technology. None.
Of course it's just a lawyer stating you don't have permission. It is not programmed to block Msft products. I'll bet Billg browses it everyday while thumbing his nose in their general direction.
What? You don't want to experience the "Top 10 leaf-watching spots from Vermont to Oregon"?? Tsk Tsk.
Last week I hacked up a microwave
;))
I kid you not: last saturday I wrapped some Al foil around an old radio vacuum tube, wired it to a Tesla coil and got enough X-Rays to make a few smudges on photo paper. After I get the lead shielding up and a geiger counter to make sure I'm not getting dosed I hope to use more sensitive film and get some real see-thru-stuff pictures,
Like this guy here. Unfortunately, no time travel occured.
There is a high voltage transformer in a microwaver, a couple of kilovolts. Just run that thru a tripler scavanged from an old color tv and get bodacious arcs and sparks. Just try not to kill yourself
Cairo
Hey, this is another chance to plug my Bill Gates - Alfred E. Neuman connection page: http://www.widomaker.com/~cswiger/bgisaen.html from "Exploring Cairo" in an old NT Magazine issue.
Absolutely mahvalous!!
Actually I'm dying to ditch WinME/9x but they're going to be out there for a long time yet, untill the ROI is paid off. Sorry, that's the way most industry works. Once a business sinks so much capital into IT infrastructure they just keep using it untill depreciated (5 years I think) or it has paid for itself. Not every company can afford to buy all new systems every two or three years.
out there. I'm sure glad to get rid of that crappy dos legacy stuff all the way up to WinME - but we'll let YOU sell everyone on YAUG (yet another upgrade), especially those who bought into the WinME marketing ;)
I'll never forget the chore it was getting people to switch from Win31 to 95 - our head of acctng never could give up fileman.exe.
Does 'they' refer to ATI or HardOCP? At first I though it was ATI that was using a 'quackifier' but couldn't resolve that with 'makes it run 15% slower'. Guess we should never expect geeks to be great communicators, even to us semi compu-literate ;))
What's the fun of running Windows apps in Linux? Higher stability? a
Maybe a few people will want to make their own damn choices and not necessarily want to be forced to automatically sign on Internet secure sites using Microsoft passport, and browse the Microsoft Network, and put their money in the Microsoft bank, and buy the latest Microsoft choice of music and movies from the Microsoft DVD store, drink "Bill's Choice" softdrink, wear Microsoft cloths, buy a car from the Microsoft New Cars site (after Ford is brought under their control, uh, a strategic partnership formed with Ford) and buy their mortgate from the Microsoft Savings & Loan and ship packages with Microsoft Parcel Service and get their Microsoft friendly news from the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company (MSNBC) over the Microsoft Cable Service, etc.
"If MS Windows had updates this often, you Linux zealot hypocrits would flame them for being unstable."
They do, internally. It's just that OSS developement takes place in full public view, w/o a multi-billion dollar public relations screen to mask the blood & gore.
Where Linux has 2.2.17, Windows has NT4 build 1654, SP6a or whatever it is.
Let me tell you that they were not going to do it for free. How is this any different?
.NET bandwagon, the supplier can regulate their own price for their own profits, screw the consumer. They can offer a low, low introductory price to get many developers signed up, and after they are two years committed on down the primrose path the prices go UP and they make yet another windfall.
I keep seeing this over and over - the DIFFERENCE is the Msft is a monopoly using dominance in one market to extend their influence in other markets, just as if they were the only cable company in town wanted to go into, say, auto sales and would only air THEIR car commercials on the tv. The problem with monopolies is what sets the price. If there are two auto dealers naturally people are going to shop between the two to get the best bargain which keeps the dealers operating efficient. If there is ONLY ONE CHOICE, in this case to get on the
There's an amusing story behing how the Strowger automatic telephone switch system started - Strowger ran a funeral parlor and got suspicious when the competition down the street started getting all the business. It turned out that the phone operator was in cahoots with the competing parlor and was send all requests for funeral services THEIR way. Strowger got busy and developed an AUTOMATIC telephone switch so customers could look up a number in a phone book and make their own damn choice, w/o some techno-tomfoolery making it for them. see http://www.webuildphonesystems.com/history.htm for a referance to this story.
when /. and Msft are both against it!!
This isn't what he's asking for, but:
1.There's no support built into the product. Yes, you can hire people to support it for you, but it's a seperate cost.
Hiring an McSE to run around d/l'ing patches, rebooting, listening to user gripes, exterminating viruses and MAYBE getting someone on tech support who knows what to do is a seperate cost for licensed software as well. The $200/incident support is yet another cost.
2.Similarly, There is no warrantee of any kind. If it breaks, you have no one to complain to: "you get what you pay for."
You may have paid for a licence, but it also comes with NO warranty, express or implied, as to fitness for merchantibility or usability. We had a Wrkstation w/ WinME suddenly start spewing "wuauclt" errors. Who do I complain to? Being a small business with little volumn would it even matter if I did complain? Either way, you pay your money and take what they give you, and if you don't like it, tough. Ever try to get money back from a bundled license or shrink wrap box?
3.The programmers may suddenly decide they have no vested interest in continuing the project, or development may slow to a crawl (eg, mozilla), and there's nothing you can do about it.
Similarly, a business may suddenly decide there is no profit in a licensed software product and your left with an unsupported orphan, and no source code. Time to buy the upgrade!
Now, all the above is aimed at ONE PARTICULAR bad example of closed source - most all other companies software doesn't come anywhere near the problems we have with those guys, esp. considering all the licenses we have purchased.
In general I would agree that commercial sw is better polished by hard working professionals trying to keep their jobs, state of the art, a clean reputation and shield themselves from frivalous lawsuits, but the above arguments don't work for me.
Last time I was in Kathmandu (Summer '98) they wouldn't even turn power on untill the evening, to preserve water in the hydro dam or something, plus they were rationing gasoline. And that's in the capital city, right down the street from the King's palace (Kantipath). Interesting place to visit - for some things it's like getting in the way-back machine set for the 1700's.
Was just thinking Msft might like to have a monopoly like AT&T had on phones - you never did actually 'own' the phone, you had to LEASE it (just like you don't OWN Word etc, just buy licenses to use) and while they were good, rugged, tough handsets that were automatically maintained by the telco, they did make a great cash flow out of those monthy lease payments.
My folks have had the same phone on the wall for about 40 years now, and they've probably paid for it 10 times over by now.
I just got out of a battle of wits with one of our sales guys who couldn't receive mail from a potential client - the guy on the other end kept insisting that it was because *our* isp didn't have "anti spam" software, whereas the email headers clearly indicated that they were being rejected because the OTHER guy was blacklisted, he even admitted to them having a problem with their server being used for spam "a year ago", yet they were still failing relay tests as of early this month. I just told our sales guy there was nothing *I* could do, he'd have to get a hotmail acct or something that will take mail from anybody.
/sure/ aren't going to get away with blaming it on me!!
It's like another case of IIS users who get wormed and don't know or care what to do about it - and they
XP looks like it's GUI was designed by fisher-price.
/exactly/ what a computer scientist friend once said about Windows 3.11 ! "Big, chunky blocks with bright primary colors". But considering the mass target market, that's what they want, something that looks good, matches the room decor, and those "WUAUCLT has caused an error in unknown / WUAUCLT will now close" boxes that keep popping up are absolutely darling!
That's
just for the heck of it, is interface the voice synthesis output of one computer to the voice recognition interface of another and start a transfer of a large text file just to see how long it takes and how accurate it is. I might get about 10-20 bps thru phone line.
If they start standardizing on a vowel command system and people overcome the embarassment of using it, how long before SharperImage starts selling little boxes that make the same sounds at the push of a button, to, you know, make life even better?
Only thing that bothers me about taking energy from sunlight is that the existing energy is a part of the natural environment. Recall that energy is neither created or destroyed, just transformed from one kind & place to another (usually with losses and inefficiencies) - so if you take 1GW of power from the desert and sent it to high concentrations of metropolitan areas, that will contribut to 'desert cooling' and more urban 'heat island'.
If there's one thing we learn from the history of technology, no matter WHAT you do, the luddites with dreams of happy, pastoral family farm livin' will be agin' it. I have magazines from the 20's where some blatering idiot is blaming the then rainy season on all dem newfangled, high powered radio transmitters, sending kilowatts of power out into the aether.
OutGuess 0.2 can not be detected using these techniques.
A little cornfusing, but it sounds like they couldn't really find any hidden info IN THE WILD, so ABC creates this image for a stego program and challenges these genie-asses to decode it? Bloody difficult key there, ABC.
Excuse me but this sounds like a police dept. with a bloodhound who couldn't find squat, takes a prisoner, ties a t-bone steak around his neck, puts him in the dog house and says, "Find the criminal, boy! Good dog! Good Doggie!! See what progress we are making in the fight against terrorism?!" while the media are rolling film.
Or they want to justify continued funding for their research on images in alt.binaries.pictures.you.know.what.
Looks like it's time for the Japanese to come rescue the U.S., again. Just wait 'till the Pokemon generation takes over the telcos! As it is their mgmt probably still pines for the days of leasing handsets forever, while being governed by senators old enough to have been personally acquainted with Thomas Edison.
A smart watch has been a technological dream since the days when Dick Tracy battled Pruneface in the Great Depression
Great. Now we have something to battle Ballmer with during the tech slump.
[NOT]