Well, hey, I'm a Linux people and I dont' have AOL as my ISP. But am I concerned? No.
AOL doesn't need the niche nerd market. It's not where profits are. Nerds basically do their own tech support and only call with such technical complaints that would require staffing your support center with ubernerds paid 6 figures. No, that is not a market that AOL wants. It's proof they have half a brain.
What is more encouraging however is that they're beta deploying Linux to find out how it would play in Peoria, what does it need? It still needs things and that's fine. But it shows that Linux is being evaluated for a business purpose other than because some nerds think it's cool, some zealots think it's the moral thing to do, etc.
I think this is a great move. Shoot, if AOL poured a few million into WINE, they really could distribute AOL 9.0 that upgrades not just the client application, but the underlying OS at the same time. Imagine 40 million bulk mail upgrades like that!
Have they released any of the collected information about what Netscape 6 users are searching for on Google?
I thought that recently Google released a top 10 list of search patterns (5ex, Britney, MP3, etc.) but I was wondering if Netscape 6 users were any different from the net users at large.
Lately I've bemoaned the limitations on the user interface that "universal" Web apps impose. If you compromise a little on the universal part, you can have people use ActiveX, Java.
It's really too bad that W3C standards have not been designed and deployed sooner for, say, XML descriptions of widget behavior. Just little things that make GUI's a little more pleasant, but without the overboard approach of either Java or ActiveX of doing lots of other things, too.
I've been pretty impressed with some of the PHP server applications like sourceforge and IMP and Horde, but have to wonder how much further we'd be if browsers supported just a little bit better GUI functionality.
Of course, now that the browser wars are all but over, nobody will see fit to upgrade to Netscape 7 or IE 7 with the kinds of extensions I'm talking about. Instead, they'll probably either upgrade to AOL 9 with a proprietary set of extensions to HTML or to IE 7, with.NET to lock them into MS view of How to do things on the internet.
Is there any way that GnuPG could be built with a nice GUI for Windows?
That's probably the most critical ingredient, and one which other responders to this post have already addressed.
But has GPG been ported to the Mac? I'd imagine that OS X would be pretty easy, but I know of some friends that run some pretty crusty old versions of MacOS that would still be out of luck.
The Bush administration is almost religiously pro-business
That's not enough to tell what his administration would do on this particular issue, though.
While many here cast the issue as Microsoft (business) vs. The World and figure that the Bush administration would come out in favor of Microsoft, the reality is that "The World" includes not just downtroden consumers, but other businesses.
The movie industry should stop trying to hold back technology just because it's paranoid about its current revenue stream.
They should look to ways of making the theatre goers experience an improvement over what can be delivered to most homes. This should not be hard to do.
Sheesh, I've already paid several times over for the same movie just to get a better experience throught the magic of technology: once at the theatre, sometimes for VHS rental, sometimes for VHS purchase, repeat rent/purchase with DVD.
It's ludicrous how many times I've already paid for the movie, but until now I've been willing to do it for the improved experience and the convenience. But if the movie industry stops improving my experience and starts encumbering my hardware, you can bet my willingness to pay will decrease accordingly.
Business needs intelligence information all the time. I suspect they have many automated tools to help them keep tabs on their market, on their competitors, technologies, etc.
Reminds me somewhat of one metric of the economy:
How many times the word "recession" appeared in newspaper articles during a one month interval.
Um, they are going to Ghana hopefully because* ICANN is meant to serve as a World Body, the International Congress of Nations.
I'm glad you explained it.
Here was me, clueless, wondering if Ghana was going to become the country of choice for "registration of new TLDs" due to cozy licensing and restriction terms.
That is, they're jealous of Liberia getting to register all those supertankers, freighters and cruise ships in the maritime industries and wanted to make sure that they got a cut of the new pie, having missed that old one.
Imagine those newly-registered, lumbering Ghananian-registered Pr0n sites on the high seas of the Internet, running aground and leaking due to lack of stringent registration requirements...
An internet browser and/or HTML renderer is NOT properly part of the OS. It is an application that runs ON TOP OF the OS.
[You're obviously a bought and paid-for apologist of the envious competitors of Microsoft (Sun, Oracle, IBM, etc.)]
You technical people think you know so much! Let the knowledgeable and capable innovators from Microsoft, one of the true American success stories in business, saving jobs for working families, paying taxes^H^H^H^H^Hlobbyists^H^H^H^Hgrass roots procompetition advocacy organizations, reducing America's trade deficit, enlighten you about the wonderful things you can expect from your PC that come from Microsoft.
I, for one, like the convenience of automatically signing up for MSN, even if I forget for a few minutes, Windows reminds me of the necessity of doing this important thing. You have to admit that is an invaluable service to the Consumer®.
Also, as part of a patriotic effort to stop piracy, curb terrorists and the preying pedophiles dead in their tracks, Windows also is on a crusade to sign up Americans® to Passport! I look forward to the day when all Americans have to present their MS Passport at airport ticket counters to reduce terrorism. Remember 9/11!
Finally, I'm looking forward to new services from a single convenient and innovative supplier that knows what customers want - Microsoft®®.
I've purchased all of my latest consumer electronics to insure that it Works Best With® genuine Microsoft Windows, a brand name that I have come to know and to trust.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that ability necessarily translates into ethical behavior.
IMHO, society as a whole would be pleasantly surprised if they were to give more trust, power and responsibility to students, regardless of their scores on exams.
After all, these students will one day actually possess such power and responsibility in government and industry and health care organizations. If we can't trust `em now, when can we trust `em?
Don't use yourself or your nerd buddies to stand for real-world percentages.
But this is actually what MS is actually more afraid of.
It is the fact that Linux use is high among the group of technically adept computer users.
Those nerd users are valuable because they are something of trend setters. Mind share among those people is important to your long term health in the IT community. A lesser sized company than MS would have been history by now with the deck stacked against them this way.
Where I work, the only real enthusiasm left in IT is for open source software. The MS products are obviously just sold to us to further our being locked into their whole game.
A strong majority of nerds use Linux and some of the most competent of the MCSE's find that there's room to grow in open source that isn't defined by walls that MS puts up around its products.
I've always suspected that my librarian was in reality one of those Pirates®, swilling rum, plundering booty with raised cutlasses while they make innocent civilians, like those depicted in Disney cartoons, walk the plank over shark infested waters!
Soon, they'll probably be running Rogue, Outlaw, Unamerican Apple Macintosh computers!
I think the reason businesses purchase M$ products is not the proven technology so much as the inertia you mentioned earlier.
The "proven technology" part is pretty much an illusion, one that is easy to prop up by making your products "work best with".... your other products instead of your competitors products.
Little software vendors can't get away with this kinf of a snowjob with so much impunity as M$ does.
But they've been doing this so long that they are really vulnerable to the open source concepts of providing working, open standards and interaction between components, regardless of where they come from and without trying to insert tollbooths at every turn.
The more perceptive IT people in business have already seen this in the server room. It won't be long before they see open source solutions making sense in other arenas, such as embedded devices, etc..
In either case of MS or the local telco, there is a similarity in their monopoly positions.
They can decide to not care or to fry you like toast, but because there's no competition, there's no market force to strongly condone either behavior.
My brother used to work in tech support, for some 3rd party contractor to a Fruit related company.
Have pity on those guys. Some of their working conditions make one long for the good old days of compassionate employers, like the boss' of Oliver Twist.
I switched from Netscape 4.7x on Solaris to Mozilla 0.9.[i>6] on Linux a while back.
I love the superior rendering speed, the nice interface, and the fact that it doesn't crash.
But the RPITA is all the web servers on the corporate internal network that have JavaScript that uses less than latest W3C DOM specification.
I'm hoping that there will be more convergence and less divergence between browsers as time moves forward, that if the many IE6 browsers work, then Mozilla will also work for that web site.
You know you're not supposed to speed, but you don't see car manufacturers having limiters that refuse to go over 65mph, do you?
Quite so.
As a matter of fact, most car commercials show vehicles traveling at illegal velocities, with drivers exhibiting an attitude of exhuberance, lack of constraint, and being anything but paragons of insurable, safe driving techniques. Go figure.
What I've found interesting is that, despite the existence of technology for it, automated speed traps are not more widely deployed. That is, radar guns with cameras, red lights with cameras, etc. that automatically mail you a ticket seconds after your moving violation.
I have come to conclude that society as a whole doesn't really want to have existing speed limits enforced strictly. If you drive on most nominally 55 mph freeways, I'd say greater than 85% of the cars are exceeding the legal limit. Which I think is stupid, because it tends to promote lack of respect for the law. I'd much rather see them set the limits higher and enforce it more stringently.
Likewise with this whole SSSCA scam.
Dump the SSSCA, repeal the DMCA, and simply enforce the existing copyright laws.
If an individual or corporation violates the copyright owners right to sell copies by making an copy and selling it to some one else, then by all means prosecute that individual. Id on't care if your lawyers are too expensive to go after such "pirates".
But this nonsense of encumbering the technological means for accomplishing copies is way out of line, whether my senators know it or not (they will).
Slashdot Mirror
I think a precedent of such a gap between the population and practitioners of a learned art has already been set.
If you think for minute, the medical establishment has been an example of this that has existed for over a century now.
'Linux people'?
Well, hey, I'm a Linux people and I dont' have AOL as my ISP. But am I concerned? No.
AOL doesn't need the niche nerd market. It's not where profits are. Nerds basically do their own tech support and only call with such technical complaints that would require staffing your support center with ubernerds paid 6 figures. No, that is not a market that AOL wants. It's proof they have half a brain.
What is more encouraging however is that they're beta deploying Linux to find out how it would play in Peoria, what does it need? It still needs things and that's fine. But it shows that Linux is being evaluated for a business purpose other than because some nerds think it's cool, some zealots think it's the moral thing to do, etc.
I think this is a great move. Shoot, if AOL poured a few million into WINE, they really could distribute AOL 9.0 that upgrades not just the client application, but the underlying OS at the same time. Imagine 40 million bulk mail upgrades like that!
Have they released any of the collected information about what Netscape 6 users are searching for on Google?
I thought that recently Google released a top 10 list of search patterns (5ex, Britney, MP3, etc.) but I was wondering if Netscape 6 users were any different from the net users at large.
So I have to wonder whether carbon nanotubes might better be used as capacitors than as an electrode in a conventional battery?
You have a couple of really good points.
Lately I've bemoaned the limitations on the user interface that "universal" Web apps impose. If you compromise a little on the universal part, you can have people use ActiveX, Java.
It's really too bad that W3C standards have not been designed and deployed sooner for, say, XML descriptions of widget behavior. Just little things that make GUI's a little more pleasant, but without the overboard approach of either Java or ActiveX of doing lots of other things, too.
I've been pretty impressed with some of the PHP server applications like sourceforge and IMP and Horde, but have to wonder how much further we'd be if browsers supported just a little bit better GUI functionality.
Of course, now that the browser wars are all but over, nobody will see fit to upgrade to Netscape 7 or IE 7 with the kinds of extensions I'm talking about. Instead, they'll probably either upgrade to AOL 9 with a proprietary set of extensions to HTML or to IE 7, with .NET to lock them into MS view of How to do things on the internet.
Is there any way that GnuPG could be built with a nice GUI for Windows?
That's probably the most critical ingredient, and one which other responders to this post have already addressed.
But has GPG been ported to the Mac? I'd imagine that OS X would be pretty easy, but I know of some friends that run some pretty crusty old versions of MacOS that would still be out of luck.
The Bush administration is almost religiously pro-business
That's not enough to tell what his administration would do on this particular issue, though.
While many here cast the issue as Microsoft (business) vs. The World and figure that the Bush administration would come out in favor of Microsoft, the reality is that "The World" includes not just downtroden consumers, but other businesses .
Thus, it is (business) vs. (business).
Not as clear cut.
The movie industry should stop trying to hold back technology just because it's paranoid about its current revenue stream.
They should look to ways of making the theatre goers experience an improvement over what can be delivered to most homes. This should not be hard to do.
Sheesh, I've already paid several times over for the same movie just to get a better experience throught the magic of technology: once at the theatre, sometimes for VHS rental, sometimes for VHS purchase, repeat rent/purchase with DVD.
It's ludicrous how many times I've already paid for the movie, but until now I've been willing to do it for the improved experience and the convenience. But if the movie industry stops improving my experience and starts encumbering my hardware, you can bet my willingness to pay will decrease accordingly.
Ahh, a lost or stolen watch! Always thinking ahead!
But technology leaps ahead constantly. Look for other innovations!
Step 2. The watch cannot be taken off because it is like a shackle.
Step 3. Thieves start stealing not just the watch, but the whole person or, in some cases, just the arm that was chopped off with a machete!
Business needs intelligence information all the time. I suspect they have many automated tools to help them keep tabs on their market, on their competitors, technologies, etc.
Reminds me somewhat of one metric of the economy:
Um, they are going to Ghana hopefully because* ICANN is meant to serve as a World Body, the International Congress of Nations.
I'm glad you explained it.
Here was me, clueless, wondering if Ghana was going to become the country of choice for "registration of new TLDs" due to cozy licensing and restriction terms.
That is, they're jealous of Liberia getting to register all those supertankers, freighters and cruise ships in the maritime industries and wanted to make sure that they got a cut of the new pie, having missed that old one.
Imagine those newly-registered, lumbering Ghananian-registered Pr0n sites on the high seas of the Internet, running aground and leaking due to lack of stringent registration requirements...
An internet browser and/or HTML renderer is NOT properly part of the OS. It is an application that runs ON TOP OF the OS.
[You're obviously a bought and paid-for apologist of the envious competitors of Microsoft (Sun, Oracle, IBM, etc.)]
You technical people think you know so much! Let the knowledgeable and capable innovators from Microsoft, one of the true American success stories in business, saving jobs for working families, paying taxes^H^H^H^H^Hlobbyists^H^H^H^Hgrass roots procompetition advocacy organizations, reducing America's trade deficit, enlighten you about the wonderful things you can expect from your PC that come from Microsoft.
Not only is an HTML renderer one important innovation to an operating system, but there are many important MS Innovations© in the operating system of a computer.
I, for one, like the convenience of automatically signing up for MSN, even if I forget for a few minutes, Windows reminds me of the necessity of doing this important thing. You have to admit that is an invaluable service to the Consumer®.
Also, as part of a patriotic effort to stop piracy, curb terrorists and the preying pedophiles dead in their tracks, Windows also is on a crusade to sign up Americans® to Passport! I look forward to the day when all Americans have to present their MS Passport at airport ticket counters to reduce terrorism. Remember 9/11!
Finally, I'm looking forward to new services from a single convenient and innovative supplier that knows what customers want - Microsoft®®.
I've purchased all of my latest consumer electronics to insure that it Works Best With® genuine Microsoft Windows, a brand name that I have come to know and to trust.
But excuse me. I have to run MS Talk© to tell my MS Spouse® that the MS House© needs to be rebooted.
Oops, I forgot the reference on Piracy©® that you can find here. .
You'll note, however, that illicit copying of copyrighted material is not included in Disney's own definition of a life of piracy.
Inconsistency lurks here!
I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that ability necessarily translates into ethical behavior.
IMHO, society as a whole would be pleasantly surprised if they were to give more trust, power and responsibility to students, regardless of their scores on exams.
After all, these students will one day actually possess such power and responsibility in government and industry and health care organizations. If we can't trust `em now, when can we trust `em?
Don't use yourself or your nerd buddies to stand for real-world percentages.
But this is actually what MS is actually more afraid of.
It is the fact that Linux use is high among the group of technically adept computer users.
Those nerd users are valuable because they are something of trend setters. Mind share among those people is important to your long term health in the IT community. A lesser sized company than MS would have been history by now with the deck stacked against them this way.
Where I work, the only real enthusiasm left in IT is for open source software. The MS products are obviously just sold to us to further our being locked into their whole game.
A strong majority of nerds use Linux and some of the most competent of the MCSE's find that there's room to grow in open source that isn't defined by walls that MS puts up around its products.
As always, its the "Music industry has head stuck up ass. People will be mad. News at 11."
Duh.
Well, not precisely.
Until this article (that evidently will show in Newsweek), there was no news at 11.
The whole scheme transpired with only pipsqueaks of dissent in the press of niche sites like Slashdot.
Go into the shopping mall sometime and ask yourself just how many of those people even know what the DMCA even is.
So I'd revise it to
We're only to number 2.I loved that particular aspect of life as a Caltech undergrad.
Things got a lot more depressingly Orwellian when I went somewhere else for grad school.
I think giving students power and responsibility is one of the best lessons you can give.
The service is good, but here's one way to make it better:
It has small increments you can use to start early or record late for various programs.
That logic, though, gets fscked when recording programs back-to-back on the same channel. It shouldn't.
Yes but there's always a library!
Aha!
I've always suspected that my librarian was in reality one of those Pirates®, swilling rum, plundering booty with raised cutlasses while they make innocent civilians, like those depicted in Disney cartoons, walk the plank over shark infested waters!
Soon, they'll probably be running Rogue, Outlaw, Unamerican Apple Macintosh computers!
is not so much that Mundie is saying such self-serving things, FUD that everyone reading /. recognizes for what it is.
The Real News is that somehow he is able to say these things to legislators, while other opinions are not given the same kind of venue.
They are a proven technology.
I think the reason businesses purchase M$ products is not the proven technology so much as the inertia you mentioned earlier.
The "proven technology" part is pretty much an illusion, one that is easy to prop up by making your products "work best with" .... your other products instead of your competitors products.
Little software vendors can't get away with this kinf of a snowjob with so much impunity as M$ does.
But they've been doing this so long that they are really vulnerable to the open source concepts of providing working, open standards and interaction between components, regardless of where they come from and without trying to insert tollbooths at every turn.
The more perceptive IT people in business have already seen this in the server room. It won't be long before they see open source solutions making sense in other arenas, such as embedded devices, etc..
In either case of MS or the local telco, there is a similarity in their monopoly positions.
They can decide to not care or to fry you like toast, but because there's no competition, there's no market force to strongly condone either behavior.
My brother used to work in tech support, for some 3rd party contractor to a Fruit related company.
Have pity on those guys. Some of their working conditions make one long for the good old days of compassionate employers, like the boss' of Oliver Twist.
I'll second and third that motion.
I switched from Netscape 4.7x on Solaris to Mozilla 0.9.[i>6] on Linux a while back.
I love the superior rendering speed, the nice interface, and the fact that it doesn't crash .
But the RPITA is all the web servers on the corporate internal network that have JavaScript that uses less than latest W3C DOM specification.
I'm hoping that there will be more convergence and less divergence between browsers as time moves forward, that if the many IE6 browsers work, then Mozilla will also work for that web site.
You know you're not supposed to speed, but you don't see car manufacturers having limiters that refuse to go over 65mph, do you?
Quite so.
As a matter of fact, most car commercials show vehicles traveling at illegal velocities, with drivers exhibiting an attitude of exhuberance, lack of constraint, and being anything but paragons of insurable, safe driving techniques. Go figure.
What I've found interesting is that, despite the existence of technology for it, automated speed traps are not more widely deployed. That is, radar guns with cameras, red lights with cameras, etc. that automatically mail you a ticket seconds after your moving violation.
I have come to conclude that society as a whole doesn't really want to have existing speed limits enforced strictly. If you drive on most nominally 55 mph freeways, I'd say greater than 85% of the cars are exceeding the legal limit. Which I think is stupid, because it tends to promote lack of respect for the law. I'd much rather see them set the limits higher and enforce it more stringently.
Likewise with this whole SSSCA scam.
Dump the SSSCA, repeal the DMCA, and simply enforce the existing copyright laws.
If an individual or corporation violates the copyright owners right to sell copies by making an copy and selling it to some one else, then by all means prosecute that individual. Id on't care if your lawyers are too expensive to go after such "pirates".
But this nonsense of encumbering the technological means for accomplishing copies is way out of line, whether my senators know it or not (they will).
Ah. "The Soup Nazi of IT".
I can see where this could be quite entertaining.