DHS is coming across as a desperate guy who proposed to a woman way out of his league. He anxiously tells his friends "She didn't commit to a 'yes', but she committed to thinking about committing".
So what they're saying is that they made a random behavior generator. I go out of my way to avoid my four year old daughter because she's annoying so why would I want to interact with a virtual four year old?
P.S. I'm obviously kidding. I don't have any kids because that would require having sex which is mutually exclusive to posting on slashdot.
If you have problems with my logic, feel free to articulate them. However, simply calling them stupid adds nothing to the discussion.
Regarding your comment about doing something just because Microsoft wants you to, I think you misunderstood me. Microsoft does not necessarily want anyone to use this specification. I believe they have released it because they want OOXML to become an ISO standard and OOXML allows for chunks of legacy Office formats which happen to be binary. By releasing these specifications, they are hoping to take another step towards having OOXML declared an open standard. Whether or not people use the released specs for the Office binary formats is a secondary concern.
Even if that was not the case, your stance seems to be that you should always do the opposite of what Microsoft wants. While that may work out for you most of the time, I think it would be better to focus on the needs of your user base more than on what MS wants. The open source user base would definitely benefit from being able to read Office binary formats with no compatibility issues which is what the release of this specification allows.
There are two major alternatives you should seriously consider: letting Office do the work, or using file formats that are easier to write.
His first workaround is to use Microsoft Office to open the document and then save that document in a non-binary format. Well that assumes that I already have Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, etc. Do you see the problem here?
The second "workaround" is the same as the first, only a little more proactive. Instead of saving my documents as binary files and then converting them to another format, I should save them as a non-binary format from the start! Mission accomplished! Oh wait - how do I get the rest of the world to do the same? That could be a problem.
I fail to see the problem with using the specification Microsoft released to write a program that can read and write this binary format. If Microsoft didn't want it to be used, they would not have released it. Even if Microsoft tried to take action against open source software for using the specs that they opened, how could Microsoft prove that the open source software used those specs as opposed to reverse engineering the binary format on their own? I think this is a non-issue.
This is really something worth looking into. LED's are much more power efficient (which means they also give off less heat) and last much longer (need less replacing) than our current forms of lighting (incandescent, CCFL, etc). Car manufacturers such as Nissan are already starting to replace bulbs in their taillights with LED's. The only downsides I can see people complaining about are the fact that LED's are more directional than other forms of lighting and some may have issues with the shade of color they produce.
Now if our government would start looking into algae to power vehicles it would show that they're really interested in finding alternate and more efficient ways of powering our everyday devices.
Since virtually everybody who uses Windows XP runs as admin, there would be no reason to use this exploit, since if you get code to run on the target machine, it's already running as admin.
Running as admin in a corporate environment is very rare, with the exception of some small companies. Any company that lets their non-sysadmin employees run as the Admin user deserve what they get. So when a company gets attacked through a hole in their workstations' OS that supports DRM in games (something that most companies don't even use), then I would say that it is a very big deal - especially when MS knew about that bug and fixed it in their new OS but not their older OS'es.
Of course any countries outside of Europe that recognize software patents will allow Microsoft to pursue litigation against open source projects that may or may not violate those patents.
The advantage of the open source community is that if Microsoft ever tried to enforce its software patents:
It will have to disclose which patents it claims are being violated
Many supporters of open source will search for prior art and if it is found, Microsoft risks losing its patent
If no prior art is found, big companies such as IBM have promised to step in and wield their giant patent portfolio against Microsoft
The whole software patent issue is akin to the nuclear arms race: everyone has lots of them and they threaten to use them, but they are rarely ever used. They work as a great scare tactic, but they are hardly useful for their intended purpose.
The "10.000 euros" is "10,000 euros" for those of us in the U.S. That's right, open source has to pay about $14,263 to Microsoft in order to be able to interoperate with their software. The article doesn't mention if each open source project has to pay that fee or if the entire open source community can pay the fee once and cover all open source projects.
Even more interesting than that, though, is the fact that the article mentions Microsoft can not use its large software patent portfolio against open source projects. I'm not sure that it was ever an issue since most European countries don't recognize software patents, but that strikes down all of the FUD Microsoft have been spreading (at least for the Europeans) regarding their trusted Linux "partners".
Bezos was reported to be so mad about this ruling that he began throwing chairs and now he's getting legal threats from some CEO in Redmond who claims to have a patent on chair launching.
What annoys me is how most organizations focus on the inclusion of Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer in Windows despite the bigger antitrust violations that Microsoft has been commiting for years. Probably the worst antitrust offense Microsoft is commiting lies in its OEM license terms for Windows. Companies large and small rely on the huge discount that comes from selling OEM versions of Windows on their hardware, but the license terms prevent those vendors from selling PC's with no operating systems installed on them as well as PC's set up to dual boot Windows along with any other operating system. Yes, I know that FreeDOS has been used to work around the former of those problems, but regardless of the effectiveness of these tactics is the fact that Microsoft attempts to use such anti-competitive practices and the fact that they are always overlooked.
And on a slightly different note, could the fact that Windows is the only operating system that doesn't have a boot loader with the capability to load other operating systems be considered anti-competitive? Linux has had this feature for many years and even OS X supports dual-booting Windows, but Windows simply overwrites the MBR and renders all other installed operating systems to be unbootable until a recovery disk is used to repair the boot loader.
And finally, my biggest complaint about the EU and the US DOJ is that they fined Microsoft for including WMP and IE in Windows, but they have made little to no effort to "vote with their wallets" and use other operating systems. If they really found Microsoft's tactics to be anti-competitive, they could back up their statements by at least considering the use one of the many viable alternatives to Windows. Instead, they issue a fine while continuing to use Windows (hypocrites?) and make themselves look like a bunch of greedy grab-asses out to get a piece of the Microsoft pie. EU and US DOJ: actions speak louder than cheap (relative to Microsoft) fines.
Wow, slashdot mods never cease to amaze me. I know the parent post wasn't exactly cerebral, but how do you justify modding that post "redundant" when it is the FIRST POST?!
You are correct that UK taxpayers don't HAVE to let people in other countries watch their shows. However, the DRM doesn't prevent that from happening. Instead, it prevents a video from being played after a certain amount of time (a DRM "time bomb"). So what exactly is the BBC gaining from this DRM that it warrants imposing this restriction on its own citizens? If they were really worried about preventing people in other countries from viewing this content, they could redirect requests from IP addresses outside of the UK to an error page explaining that they have to be UK citizens to view the content. I know that proxies could be used to get around this, but the point is that it would be more effective than DRM time-bombs that affect viewership of taxpaying citizens.
A few years ago, the BBC seemed to be keen on the idea of releasing content in Ogg/Theora. Then they wanted to help develop and use the Dirac codec. And now they want to use a DRM-encumbered Microsoft codec.
This is an interesting situation because of the BBC's role as a "state-owned but independent corporation". I skimmed the Wikipedia article and it appears that the BBC is a for-profit corporation, but the fact that it's state-owned leads me to believe that its funded by taxpayers. If that is the case, why should taxpayers have to pay for DRM-infested media that was sponsored by their tax money?
Mac OS X apps aren't just Mac OS X apps. They are Carbon. They are Cocoa. They are universal binaries. They are PPC code with Altivec. Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?
I think you answered your own question. Mac apps are very complex due to all of the mechanisms they use to maintain backward compatibility. Reimplementing all of those libraries is a huge task. Wine exists as a reimplementation of Win32 and DirectX strictly out of necessity, but there is little need to run Mac apps in Linux. Most people who want to run Mac apps prefer to run them on Apple hardware. Seeing that you already own an iMac, I think the bigger question is why are you so insistent on running Linux on your Mac?
It's things like this that force me to disable Password Manager altogether. If only one security hole exists in Password Manager, someone would be able to grab passwords to my bank account, credit card, e-mail, and more. It's a lot harder for the hackers to get the passwords when the only place they are stored is in my head.
With that said, I must admit that I am having more trouble remembering all of my passwords since I acquire more accounts and each account has different password requirements. I wish there would be an official standard for secure passwords so that I could reliably use one password for most of my accounts. Of course, that would also be a security risk because if someone got that password, they would have access to most of my accounts, but that's a separate issue.
It's a shame it costs $19 million. I've had nights after a few too many bean burritos where a toilet with leg restraints that kept me from flying off would have been very useful.
Good point. In addition to that, deals like this go further to fragment the growing Linux community. Let's not forget that with contributions such as Xgl, Mono, Beagle, and AppArmor, Novell is no slacker when it comes to Linux development. If the Novell-Microsoft agreement makes Novell unable to release their code under the GPL3 like some people have speculated, that would not only punish Novell but all of the Linux users who could benefit from Novell's projects.
Slashdot Mirror
DHS is coming across as a desperate guy who proposed to a woman way out of his league. He anxiously tells his friends "She didn't commit to a 'yes', but she committed to thinking about committing".
So what they're saying is that they made a random behavior generator. I go out of my way to avoid my four year old daughter because she's annoying so why would I want to interact with a virtual four year old?
P.S. I'm obviously kidding. I don't have any kids because that would require having sex which is mutually exclusive to posting on slashdot.
If you have problems with my logic, feel free to articulate them. However, simply calling them stupid adds nothing to the discussion.
Regarding your comment about doing something just because Microsoft wants you to, I think you misunderstood me. Microsoft does not necessarily want anyone to use this specification. I believe they have released it because they want OOXML to become an ISO standard and OOXML allows for chunks of legacy Office formats which happen to be binary. By releasing these specifications, they are hoping to take another step towards having OOXML declared an open standard. Whether or not people use the released specs for the Office binary formats is a secondary concern.
Even if that was not the case, your stance seems to be that you should always do the opposite of what Microsoft wants. While that may work out for you most of the time, I think it would be better to focus on the needs of your user base more than on what MS wants. The open source user base would definitely benefit from being able to read Office binary formats with no compatibility issues which is what the release of this specification allows.
The second "workaround" is the same as the first, only a little more proactive. Instead of saving my documents as binary files and then converting them to another format, I should save them as a non-binary format from the start! Mission accomplished! Oh wait - how do I get the rest of the world to do the same? That could be a problem.
I fail to see the problem with using the specification Microsoft released to write a program that can read and write this binary format. If Microsoft didn't want it to be used, they would not have released it. Even if Microsoft tried to take action against open source software for using the specs that they opened, how could Microsoft prove that the open source software used those specs as opposed to reverse engineering the binary format on their own? I think this is a non-issue.
This is really something worth looking into. LED's are much more power efficient (which means they also give off less heat) and last much longer (need less replacing) than our current forms of lighting (incandescent, CCFL, etc). Car manufacturers such as Nissan are already starting to replace bulbs in their taillights with LED's. The only downsides I can see people complaining about are the fact that LED's are more directional than other forms of lighting and some may have issues with the shade of color they produce.
Now if our government would start looking into algae to power vehicles it would show that they're really interested in finding alternate and more efficient ways of powering our everyday devices.
I'll stick with blunts.
The advantage of the open source community is that if Microsoft ever tried to enforce its software patents:
The whole software patent issue is akin to the nuclear arms race: everyone has lots of them and they threaten to use them, but they are rarely ever used. They work as a great scare tactic, but they are hardly useful for their intended purpose.
The "10.000 euros" is "10,000 euros" for those of us in the U.S. That's right, open source has to pay about $14,263 to Microsoft in order to be able to interoperate with their software. The article doesn't mention if each open source project has to pay that fee or if the entire open source community can pay the fee once and cover all open source projects.
Even more interesting than that, though, is the fact that the article mentions Microsoft can not use its large software patent portfolio against open source projects. I'm not sure that it was ever an issue since most European countries don't recognize software patents, but that strikes down all of the FUD Microsoft have been spreading (at least for the Europeans) regarding their trusted Linux "partners".
Bezos was reported to be so mad about this ruling that he began throwing chairs and now he's getting legal threats from some CEO in Redmond who claims to have a patent on chair launching.
What annoys me is how most organizations focus on the inclusion of Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer in Windows despite the bigger antitrust violations that Microsoft has been commiting for years. Probably the worst antitrust offense Microsoft is commiting lies in its OEM license terms for Windows. Companies large and small rely on the huge discount that comes from selling OEM versions of Windows on their hardware, but the license terms prevent those vendors from selling PC's with no operating systems installed on them as well as PC's set up to dual boot Windows along with any other operating system. Yes, I know that FreeDOS has been used to work around the former of those problems, but regardless of the effectiveness of these tactics is the fact that Microsoft attempts to use such anti-competitive practices and the fact that they are always overlooked.
And on a slightly different note, could the fact that Windows is the only operating system that doesn't have a boot loader with the capability to load other operating systems be considered anti-competitive? Linux has had this feature for many years and even OS X supports dual-booting Windows, but Windows simply overwrites the MBR and renders all other installed operating systems to be unbootable until a recovery disk is used to repair the boot loader.
And finally, my biggest complaint about the EU and the US DOJ is that they fined Microsoft for including WMP and IE in Windows, but they have made little to no effort to "vote with their wallets" and use other operating systems. If they really found Microsoft's tactics to be anti-competitive, they could back up their statements by at least considering the use one of the many viable alternatives to Windows. Instead, they issue a fine while continuing to use Windows (hypocrites?) and make themselves look like a bunch of greedy grab-asses out to get a piece of the Microsoft pie. EU and US DOJ: actions speak louder than cheap (relative to Microsoft) fines.
Wow, slashdot mods never cease to amaze me. I know the parent post wasn't exactly cerebral, but how do you justify modding that post "redundant" when it is the FIRST POST?!
You are correct that UK taxpayers don't HAVE to let people in other countries watch their shows. However, the DRM doesn't prevent that from happening. Instead, it prevents a video from being played after a certain amount of time (a DRM "time bomb"). So what exactly is the BBC gaining from this DRM that it warrants imposing this restriction on its own citizens? If they were really worried about preventing people in other countries from viewing this content, they could redirect requests from IP addresses outside of the UK to an error page explaining that they have to be UK citizens to view the content. I know that proxies could be used to get around this, but the point is that it would be more effective than DRM time-bombs that affect viewership of taxpaying citizens.
A few years ago, the BBC seemed to be keen on the idea of releasing content in Ogg/Theora. Then they wanted to help develop and use the Dirac codec. And now they want to use a DRM-encumbered Microsoft codec.
This is an interesting situation because of the BBC's role as a "state-owned but independent corporation". I skimmed the Wikipedia article and it appears that the BBC is a for-profit corporation, but the fact that it's state-owned leads me to believe that its funded by taxpayers. If that is the case, why should taxpayers have to pay for DRM-infested media that was sponsored by their tax money?
After a certain incident in a park, I'm much less likely to "drink from a firehose" again.
It's things like this that force me to disable Password Manager altogether. If only one security hole exists in Password Manager, someone would be able to grab passwords to my bank account, credit card, e-mail, and more. It's a lot harder for the hackers to get the passwords when the only place they are stored is in my head.
With that said, I must admit that I am having more trouble remembering all of my passwords since I acquire more accounts and each account has different password requirements. I wish there would be an official standard for secure passwords so that I could reliably use one password for most of my accounts. Of course, that would also be a security risk because if someone got that password, they would have access to most of my accounts, but that's a separate issue.
It's a shame it costs $19 million. I've had nights after a few too many bean burritos where a toilet with leg restraints that kept me from flying off would have been very useful.
Good point. In addition to that, deals like this go further to fragment the growing Linux community. Let's not forget that with contributions such as Xgl, Mono, Beagle, and AppArmor, Novell is no slacker when it comes to Linux development. If the Novell-Microsoft agreement makes Novell unable to release their code under the GPL3 like some people have speculated, that would not only punish Novell but all of the Linux users who could benefit from Novell's projects.
The developers of the Secustick are looking into the problem and they think that the issue is with their algorithm that encrypts the data into ASCII.
There's a mental image I never needed - thanks for squirting that video into my head!