Lots != Most. Sure, there are plenty of people who can't reliably enter a url, but they still can do it even if it takes a couple of tries. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority users are perfectly capable of entering urls, which are encountered all the time -- they're on buses, on tv, in magazines. People know how to type, even if they don't do it well. Pretty much anyone can enter a url, even if they can't get it right on the first try.
Yes, you're a super cool computer literate Internet using badass
Where did that come from? I wasn't trying to imply that I'm superior to anybody. I don't believe I said anything that made me deserving of a personal attack.
Probably because Belkin is used to marketing to dim-witted fuckups
I prefer to take a brighter view of the capabilities of others and I also tend to be skeptical of the motives of a corporate marketing department. Marketing is an aggresive business which pretty rarely, if ever, acts selflessly. I don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt when assessing their motives in pushing products. I believe my fellow man deserves credit for being able to type an address into a web browser, something most people do routinely/daily.
The article alludes to some sort of security-checking tool provided by Microsoft on its web site:
He says even though software Microsoft provides on its site certifies that the server is secure, it's not.
The server has the guest account disabled by default. The guest account gets turned on by Code Red infection. This tool still reports the server as secure despite the guest account being enabled. Isn't the problem simply with this tool?
Obviously the admins are responsible as well, but if they're depending on a faulty tool provided by Microsoft then it seems pretty easy to excuse the admins. It also seems wrong to blame Exchange, though it's still Microsoft's problem/fault.
What I love is Belkin's claim that they did this because having somebody visit a page violated their "ease of use" requirement. What a joke! As if people can't type in a URL after reading a leaflet included in the box? Are they aware that people type URLs all the time without trouble? They could even install a desktop shortcut to make it even simpler.
Then their letter goes on to explain how to disable the feature in the router (so you don't have to wait to be randomly redirected to the ad), and the instructions are quite vague: navigate to 192.168.2.1, find the setting which says something like (they don't give exact wording or where to find it, just vague directions), and turn it off. Where's the "ease of use" in that? Are they suggesting that this should only be turned off by advanced users and that naive users should simply sign up for their services?
Why can't they just admit that they wanted to prominently promote their subscription-based service? It's not like it isn't obvious what they're up to or anything.
I really don't mind product placement in theory. If a character in a movie sips a Coke and that boosts my image of Coke slightly, so what? On the other hand if they're constantly setting the Coke down in front of the camera and turning it so that the logo is facing the lens, then I get annoyed.
Years ago I remember watching an episode of Ellen Degeneres' show "Ellen" and she kept munching on some sort of snack and placing the can in plain, readable view (ie, turning the label to face the camera). In another episode she was constantly going on about her Blackberry PDA and its various features. It all became unbearably offensive and I stopped watching. In that case, the show wasn't entertaining enough to overcome the offensiveness of the placements (and vice versa)
CBS's Survivor uses product placement extensively, but I still watch since I find the show entertaining. They're treading a thin line between entertaining and offending me. Watching a bunch of malnourished dehydrated "castaways" guzzle Mountain Dew and Snickers while gushing about how great they are is pretty sickening. It's like watching one of those starving cats gobble down their Friskies for the camera. But watching those characters piss off others with their arrogance or hubris and get booted out is pretty satisfying, so I put up with the Subarus, Mountain Dews and Snicker bars.
I don't think laws are really needed unless the shows start making actual product pitches or claims (nutritional supplements come to mind). At that point regulation is needed, but showing a billboard for Chevy or somebody drinking a Coke or sending a FedEx package just doesn't seem like something that needs regulating.
The nerves at the center of your vision are optimized for seeing detail (resolution), but not motion. The nerves in the periphery are sensitive to motion at the expense of detail (just try to read out of your peripheral vision).
I recall that this had something to do with detecting predators/prey moving in the periphery and then looking towards the motion to get a detailed image. I suppose this helps reduce the amount of information that your brain has to process at any given moment.
Perhaps this is a good use for those self-destructing DVDs that Hollywood seems so interested in deploying. It wouldn't really stop the piracy completely, but it'd make it a lot more difficult since they'd only have a couple of days to attempt the copy after viewing the movie.
I agree completely. He should be and is free to express his opinion, but if it's his opinion and not his employer's then he should just be using his name and title. He pulled his employer into the mess when he put their name on the report. I'd fire him too, for that. As the Ween song says, "Don't shit where you eat, my friend"
I, too, recommend the Epson 2200. I got one about eight months ago and it's pretty excellent.
It uses seven inks, which makes the printed images very smooth (cyan and magenta both have light-colored versions which improve dithering on all the shades of those colors). I've only changed cartridges once so far, so it's been ok on ink usage (though it doesn't seem exceptional).
There's also a hot-swappable black ink cartridge, so you can switch between Photo Black (for glossy papers) and Matte Black (for matte papers). The Matte Black is really impressive -- I printed an underwater photo of a Jellyfish and the blackness of the water is excellent.
Another nice thing is that it prints large formats -- up to 13" x 19".
I think they cost around $600 - $700 (mine was a gift:-)
I think he's referring to the chips in the manufacturers cartridges which have features specifically to prevent refilling. DMCA might have some influence over whether a 3rd party can "hack" the cartridge's chip back to a full state after doing a refill.
No, it wouldn't. Auto-scrolling means that the list just cruises by while you passively watch it. The patent also specifically mentions that this list is displaying previews, so I don't think just a continously scrolling list of titles cuts it either. The patent also specifies that the content is coming from a provider over a network (cable, DSL, whatever). Showing a scrollable list of Favorites doesn't meet any of these criteria. Perhaps if the Favorites were actually being controlled and updated remotely by a content provider, and they showed previews of the pages as they scrolled by, and they scrolled by automatically, then you might have an infringement. It really is a very specific patent (as patents are required to be pretty specific).
Unfortunately, since you seemingly can't read, you may have trouble ordering that cable and buying that TV. The patent is NOT for VOD, it's for showing a continously scrolling, variable speed, list of previews for available content. Just read the stupid patent so you can make up your own mind instead of just responding to a sensationalist Slashdot headline.
I swear people just don't both to read the stupid thing. It's in English, it isn't that difficult.
The patent is specifically about a method of displaying available interactive content (games, PPV, whatever) in a continuously scrolling list. It describes how the list shows previews and allows the user to speed up or slow down how fast the list scrolls.
The description of the "invention" itself goes into implementation specifics, but the patent (unless I'm horribly mistaken) is simply for this auto-scrolling list showing previews of available content.
The parent post quotes the patent application but conveniently leaves out some of the specifics, such as the continous scrolling criteria, in order to bolster his case. That's just reckless.
This is no different than TV Guide's patent on display program grids -- it'a just patent on a way of presenting information. It's not a patent on the information itself, or video on demand, or time-shifted viewing, or even a patent on continously scrolling lists. It's just a patent on using a continuously scrolling list to show previews to allow the user to browse available interactive content.
After Price is Right ends in the morning, I turn off the TV and walk away. I guess Tivo would figure that I really like CBS's soap operas since I seem to watch all of them every day. Hopefully they can figure out that I haven't touched the remote and am therefore not watching TV, but I doubt it. They just think that I watch a lot of "The Hunky and the Stupid" or whatever comes on later in the morning.
But this is John Ashcroft's America and, while I don't think I'm all that paranoid, I am uncomfortable with having my viewing habits exposed. I realize that they promise anonymity, but online shopping sites promise credit card security, and it used to be safe to check out subversive books from the library. We now know that that's not true anymore.
Is there any danger that the government might eventually try to get at individual viewing habits because they're suspected of being up to no good? Could the shows you watch or the parts you replayed or paused on eventually be used against you? Before you answer that it couldn't happen, just remember that many of us used to think that about where we shopped or what books we read.
That effect is absolutely real. Years ago I worked for a startup company writing software for managing doctor's offices. It wasn't especially complicated, but marketing wanted to charge what seemed to us as a really high price of $3000.00 a copy for it. As high as it was, this price was a couple thousand cheaper than our competitors. We actually had trouble selling it because doctors believed that it must be of poorer quality since it cost so much less. It's purely psychological, but the effect is entirely real.
I'm not convinced whether it'll actually work, but I'm willing to give it a chance. The SPAM problem is obviously getting way out of hand. It's sort of like evolution -- if the system works, then it'll become more widespread. If it doesn't work, well that's the nature of evolution isn't it?
Some experts see problems with the technology and doubt that consumers will warm to a process that adds another step to e-mail delivery
I don't really agree with the article's assumption here. It's true that it's another step, but it's one-time-only, which makes it much more palatable in my opinion.
Strangely, none of the posts so far have mentioned the author(s) of Slammer as being one of those responsible for this mess. They're certainly harder to find (ok, they'll probably never be found), but shouldn't the culpability be shared with those who exploited the problem? It's not as though the server didn't perform its primary function correctly (storage and retrieval of database records), it's that it had a security vulnerability.
To borrow the Ford Pinto analogy from previous posts, it seems somewhat like somebody cutting your brake lines and then you suing Ford for making the lines so easily accessible. I think the person who cut the lines is truely responsible.
Re:Computer religion sucks
on
SCO DOS'ed
·
· Score: 1
I lived right here on Earth with the rest of them. Perhaps I was being too hyperbolous in saying that "everybody" thought all computers were cool. Obviously these seeds of hatred and malice were sown somewhere and I don't doubt that they existed long before I started pecking at a keyboard. I do feel, however, that I knew a lot more people then who just loved computers and their potential and who didn't invest their very souls into their own choice of machine. Now, it feels rare to find people like that, and this mentality, which is starting to feel more like religion and less like opinions, is even beginning to pervade the non-geek community. It's certainly nothing new. People are the same way about sports for instance -- fans of the "other" team are to be hated. Mostly it's in good fun, but it's pretty creepy just how often it isn't taken that way.
Re:YOU, Sir, are an ASSHAT
on
SCO DOS'ed
·
· Score: 1
When I started out writing software back around 1980, computers were just cool. Nobody really cared which OS you ran and we were as excited by the Amiga as we were by Atari, Apple, or whatever else computer. It never seemed to matter that much what OS they were running. Now it seems as bad as any religion. People seem to think that theirs is the only true way and everybody else is going to hell. So many seem to think that they have to convert everybody else to their OS religion or else destroy them. I'm so sickened by what the computer geek world has become.
I'm reading through these comments and I see so many who believe that snuffing somebody off the net via DDoS is good and justified. More disturbingly, I see so many other posts by people who say they don't agree with this tactic, but that SCO "deserves" it. Deserves it for what? For believing that they have intellectual property that's been stolen and wanting to protect it? For not agreeing with the Church of Open Source and asserting that they have a right to keep intellectual property to themselves?
People don't know what or how much SCO claims is stolen, but since their claim threatens the First United Assembly of Linux, they're considered evil and they must be destroyed by any means possible. It's not about right or wrong, it's about us vs. them, and that is so very wrong.
This "us vs. them" mentality seems strangely similar to the attitudes of terrorists who want to cleanse the world of infidels. Sure, the users aren't killing actual people (so far), but obviously some are willing to cut off the lifeline of an offending business. Isn't this just another, softer, form of terrorism?
Some of the posts on this thread even propose that SCO or IBM or Microsoft are behind this whole thing. Doesn't that seem at least glancingly similar to the supporters of religious terrorism proposing that the countries which are the target of attacks are perpetrating the attacks themselves? Is the community so desperate to believe that it's right that it will blind itself to the reality that perhaps some of its own members are taking things too far?
Are there any reasonable voices left? Is anyone willing to wait and see what and how much SCO claims was stolen before convicting them of some perceived crime against their Linux God? Or is this really how the world operates now? Do we just read the headlines, draw conclusions using vague information, then either join the mobs or stand by while the mobs torch them and say "well, they deserve it"? If they're vindicated in the end, will we just excuse ourselves by saying that they deserved it anyhow for all their other crimes against Linux?
This thing looks like just what I've been looking for. I run a home server which serves up my personal web site, email and MP3s. I want to replace my current server because my home office runs off of solar power, but at 90 Watts while idle, my current server draws too much power to allow me to run the solar during the winter months (the filter for my garden pond also runs off of the system 24 hours a day). Reducing the server to 10 watts when idle would be great. The idea of leaving the solar on all year is really exciting to me (it's hard to explain why this would be such a thrill, it's just one of those geeky things:-)
Are there any other very-low-power boxes I should consider as well?
As a former Microsoft employee of five years, I was never much into asking brain teasers and always asked more straightforward algorithmic questions when interviewing candidates. Regardless of the type of question however, the questions really serve one main purpose -- to see how the candidate thinks under pressure.
I favored algorithmic questions because, like brain teasers, you got to test the candidates ability to reason but you also got some information about their ability to write algorithms and/or actual code. You'd be suprised how many candidates professed knowledge of an alphabet soup of industry technologies and languages, but had a difficult time correctly forming a "for" statement in C. Programming questions were also nice because once they were answered they lent themselves to further exploration such as optimizations.
I was never particularly concerned about anybody getting the answer "right" or "wrong". Interviews are tremendously stressful for most people and it's often difficult to think very clearly under such stress. What was much more valuable was observing how they handled that stress and the thought process that they used in trying to solve the problem -- what questions did they ask? What mistakes were made and were they found? Did the candidate declare the solution to be complete even when it was terribly flawed?
I think the most valuable person is one who isn't afraid to admit that he/she isn't sure and is willing to ask for clarifications. The scariest candidates were the ones who just plowed right in when they didn't really understand the question. I always assumed that I hadn't formed the question clearly (I wasn't deliberately vague, though that could be interesting too), but I expected the candidate to recognize that the problem was unclear and seek to understand it better.
Following up with questions about optimization was really nice since it really lent some insight into whether they really knew how computers and compilers make use of their code. Of course, being able to optimize wasn't critical to getting an approval from me, but you can bet that somebody who demonstrated knowledge of how to write tighter code got a stronger recommendation than somebody who didn't.
I'd always thought that the boasts about 3G's speed seemed overblown. I bought a Toshiba 2032 3G cellphone/pda last December and it just never seemed to be all that fast at fetching my email or pulling up a map in Yahoo. I never knew that Sprint's (Qualcomm's?) implementation only barely meets 3G speed requirements. I feel sort of ripped off, but as the author of the article points out, $10 a month for unlimited data service is really hard to complain about, even if it is only around 128 kbps. I think I should try to stop buying into this "wonderful" cutting edge technology so early and start assuming that claims are exaggerated.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of people can't do that.
Lots != Most. Sure, there are plenty of people who can't reliably enter a url, but they still can do it even if it takes a couple of tries. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority users are perfectly capable of entering urls, which are encountered all the time -- they're on buses, on tv, in magazines. People know how to type, even if they don't do it well. Pretty much anyone can enter a url, even if they can't get it right on the first try.
Yes, you're a super cool computer literate Internet using badass
Where did that come from? I wasn't trying to imply that I'm superior to anybody. I don't believe I said anything that made me deserving of a personal attack.
Probably because Belkin is used to marketing to dim-witted fuckups
I prefer to take a brighter view of the capabilities of others and I also tend to be skeptical of the motives of a corporate marketing department. Marketing is an aggresive business which pretty rarely, if ever, acts selflessly. I don't think they deserve the benefit of the doubt when assessing their motives in pushing products. I believe my fellow man deserves credit for being able to type an address into a web browser, something most people do routinely/daily.
The article alludes to some sort of security-checking tool provided by Microsoft on its web site:
The server has the guest account disabled by default. The guest account gets turned on by Code Red infection. This tool still reports the server as secure despite the guest account being enabled. Isn't the problem simply with this tool?
Obviously the admins are responsible as well, but if they're depending on a faulty tool provided by Microsoft then it seems pretty easy to excuse the admins. It also seems wrong to blame Exchange, though it's still Microsoft's problem/fault.
What I love is Belkin's claim that they did this because having somebody visit a page violated their "ease of use" requirement. What a joke! As if people can't type in a URL after reading a leaflet included in the box? Are they aware that people type URLs all the time without trouble? They could even install a desktop shortcut to make it even simpler.
Then their letter goes on to explain how to disable the feature in the router (so you don't have to wait to be randomly redirected to the ad), and the instructions are quite vague: navigate to 192.168.2.1, find the setting which says something like (they don't give exact wording or where to find it, just vague directions), and turn it off. Where's the "ease of use" in that? Are they suggesting that this should only be turned off by advanced users and that naive users should simply sign up for their services?
Why can't they just admit that they wanted to prominently promote their subscription-based service? It's not like it isn't obvious what they're up to or anything.
I really don't mind product placement in theory. If a character in a movie sips a Coke and that boosts my image of Coke slightly, so what? On the other hand if they're constantly setting the Coke down in front of the camera and turning it so that the logo is facing the lens, then I get annoyed.
Years ago I remember watching an episode of Ellen Degeneres' show "Ellen" and she kept munching on some sort of snack and placing the can in plain, readable view (ie, turning the label to face the camera). In another episode she was constantly going on about her Blackberry PDA and its various features. It all became unbearably offensive and I stopped watching. In that case, the show wasn't entertaining enough to overcome the offensiveness of the placements (and vice versa)
CBS's Survivor uses product placement extensively, but I still watch since I find the show entertaining. They're treading a thin line between entertaining and offending me. Watching a bunch of malnourished dehydrated "castaways" guzzle Mountain Dew and Snickers while gushing about how great they are is pretty sickening. It's like watching one of those starving cats gobble down their Friskies for the camera. But watching those characters piss off others with their arrogance or hubris and get booted out is pretty satisfying, so I put up with the Subarus, Mountain Dews and Snicker bars.
I don't think laws are really needed unless the shows start making actual product pitches or claims (nutritional supplements come to mind). At that point regulation is needed, but showing a billboard for Chevy or somebody drinking a Coke or sending a FedEx package just doesn't seem like something that needs regulating.
The nerves at the center of your vision are optimized for seeing detail (resolution), but not motion. The nerves in the periphery are sensitive to motion at the expense of detail (just try to read out of your peripheral vision).
I recall that this had something to do with detecting predators/prey moving in the periphery and then looking towards the motion to get a detailed image. I suppose this helps reduce the amount of information that your brain has to process at any given moment.
Perhaps this is a good use for those self-destructing DVDs that Hollywood seems so interested in deploying. It wouldn't really stop the piracy completely, but it'd make it a lot more difficult since they'd only have a couple of days to attempt the copy after viewing the movie.
I agree completely. He should be and is free to express his opinion, but if it's his opinion and not his employer's then he should just be using his name and title. He pulled his employer into the mess when he put their name on the report. I'd fire him too, for that. As the Ween song says, "Don't shit where you eat, my friend"
As a moderately interesting and way-off-topic sidenote, those weird cross things are called "daggers" in typography circles.
:-)
This Roman Meal Bakery thought you'd like to know
I, too, recommend the Epson 2200. I got one about eight months ago and it's pretty excellent.
It uses seven inks, which makes the printed images very smooth (cyan and magenta both have light-colored versions which improve dithering on all the shades of those colors). I've only changed cartridges once so far, so it's been ok on ink usage (though it doesn't seem exceptional).
There's also a hot-swappable black ink cartridge, so you can switch between Photo Black (for glossy papers) and Matte Black (for matte papers). The Matte Black is really impressive -- I printed an underwater photo of a Jellyfish and the blackness of the water is excellent.
Another nice thing is that it prints large formats -- up to 13" x 19".
I think they cost around $600 - $700 (mine was a gift :-)
I think he's referring to the chips in the manufacturers cartridges which have features specifically to prevent refilling. DMCA might have some influence over whether a 3rd party can "hack" the cartridge's chip back to a full state after doing a refill.
No, it wouldn't. Auto-scrolling means that the list just cruises by while you passively watch it. The patent also specifically mentions that this list is displaying previews, so I don't think just a continously scrolling list of titles cuts it either. The patent also specifies that the content is coming from a provider over a network (cable, DSL, whatever). Showing a scrollable list of Favorites doesn't meet any of these criteria. Perhaps if the Favorites were actually being controlled and updated remotely by a content provider, and they showed previews of the pages as they scrolled by, and they scrolled by automatically, then you might have an infringement. It really is a very specific patent (as patents are required to be pretty specific).
Unfortunately, since you seemingly can't read, you may have trouble ordering that cable and buying that TV. The patent is NOT for VOD, it's for showing a continously scrolling, variable speed, list of previews for available content. Just read the stupid patent so you can make up your own mind instead of just responding to a sensationalist Slashdot headline.
I swear people just don't both to read the stupid thing. It's in English, it isn't that difficult.
The patent is specifically about a method of displaying available interactive content (games, PPV, whatever) in a continuously scrolling list. It describes how the list shows previews and allows the user to speed up or slow down how fast the list scrolls.
The description of the "invention" itself goes into implementation specifics, but the patent (unless I'm horribly mistaken) is simply for this auto-scrolling list showing previews of available content.
The parent post quotes the patent application but conveniently leaves out some of the specifics, such as the continous scrolling criteria, in order to bolster his case. That's just reckless.
This is no different than TV Guide's patent on display program grids -- it'a just patent on a way of presenting information. It's not a patent on the information itself, or video on demand, or time-shifted viewing, or even a patent on continously scrolling lists. It's just a patent on using a continuously scrolling list to show previews to allow the user to browse available interactive content.
After Price is Right ends in the morning, I turn off the TV and walk away. I guess Tivo would figure that I really like CBS's soap operas since I seem to watch all of them every day. Hopefully they can figure out that I haven't touched the remote and am therefore not watching TV, but I doubt it. They just think that I watch a lot of "The Hunky and the Stupid" or whatever comes on later in the morning.
But this is John Ashcroft's America and, while I don't think I'm all that paranoid, I am uncomfortable with having my viewing habits exposed. I realize that they promise anonymity, but online shopping sites promise credit card security, and it used to be safe to check out subversive books from the library. We now know that that's not true anymore.
Is there any danger that the government might eventually try to get at individual viewing habits because they're suspected of being up to no good? Could the shows you watch or the parts you replayed or paused on eventually be used against you? Before you answer that it couldn't happen, just remember that many of us used to think that about where we shopped or what books we read.
That effect is absolutely real. Years ago I worked for a startup company writing software for managing doctor's offices. It wasn't especially complicated, but marketing wanted to charge what seemed to us as a really high price of $3000.00 a copy for it. As high as it was, this price was a couple thousand cheaper than our competitors. We actually had trouble selling it because doctors believed that it must be of poorer quality since it cost so much less. It's purely psychological, but the effect is entirely real.
I'm not convinced whether it'll actually work, but I'm willing to give it a chance. The SPAM problem is obviously getting way out of hand. It's sort of like evolution -- if the system works, then it'll become more widespread. If it doesn't work, well that's the nature of evolution isn't it?
Some experts see problems with the technology and doubt that consumers will warm to a process that adds another step to e-mail delivery
I don't really agree with the article's assumption here. It's true that it's another step, but it's one-time-only, which makes it much more palatable in my opinion.
Strangely, none of the posts so far have mentioned the author(s) of Slammer as being one of those responsible for this mess. They're certainly harder to find (ok, they'll probably never be found), but shouldn't the culpability be shared with those who exploited the problem? It's not as though the server didn't perform its primary function correctly (storage and retrieval of database records), it's that it had a security vulnerability.
To borrow the Ford Pinto analogy from previous posts, it seems somewhat like somebody cutting your brake lines and then you suing Ford for making the lines so easily accessible. I think the person who cut the lines is truely responsible.
I lived right here on Earth with the rest of them. Perhaps I was being too hyperbolous in saying that "everybody" thought all computers were cool. Obviously these seeds of hatred and malice were sown somewhere and I don't doubt that they existed long before I started pecking at a keyboard. I do feel, however, that I knew a lot more people then who just loved computers and their potential and who didn't invest their very souls into their own choice of machine. Now, it feels rare to find people like that, and this mentality, which is starting to feel more like religion and less like opinions, is even beginning to pervade the non-geek community. It's certainly nothing new. People are the same way about sports for instance -- fans of the "other" team are to be hated. Mostly it's in good fun, but it's pretty creepy just how often it isn't taken that way.
And that pretty much answers all of my questions.
When I started out writing software back around 1980, computers were just cool. Nobody really cared which OS you ran and we were as excited by the Amiga as we were by Atari, Apple, or whatever else computer. It never seemed to matter that much what OS they were running. Now it seems as bad as any religion. People seem to think that theirs is the only true way and everybody else is going to hell. So many seem to think that they have to convert everybody else to their OS religion or else destroy them. I'm so sickened by what the computer geek world has become.
I'm reading through these comments and I see so many who believe that snuffing somebody off the net via DDoS is good and justified. More disturbingly, I see so many other posts by people who say they don't agree with this tactic, but that SCO "deserves" it. Deserves it for what? For believing that they have intellectual property that's been stolen and wanting to protect it? For not agreeing with the Church of Open Source and asserting that they have a right to keep intellectual property to themselves?
People don't know what or how much SCO claims is stolen, but since their claim threatens the First United Assembly of Linux, they're considered evil and they must be destroyed by any means possible. It's not about right or wrong, it's about us vs. them, and that is so very wrong.
This "us vs. them" mentality seems strangely similar to the attitudes of terrorists who want to cleanse the world of infidels. Sure, the users aren't killing actual people (so far), but obviously some are willing to cut off the lifeline of an offending business. Isn't this just another, softer, form of terrorism?
Some of the posts on this thread even propose that SCO or IBM or Microsoft are behind this whole thing. Doesn't that seem at least glancingly similar to the supporters of religious terrorism proposing that the countries which are the target of attacks are perpetrating the attacks themselves? Is the community so desperate to believe that it's right that it will blind itself to the reality that perhaps some of its own members are taking things too far?
Are there any reasonable voices left? Is anyone willing to wait and see what and how much SCO claims was stolen before convicting them of some perceived crime against their Linux God? Or is this really how the world operates now? Do we just read the headlines, draw conclusions using vague information, then either join the mobs or stand by while the mobs torch them and say "well, they deserve it"? If they're vindicated in the end, will we just excuse ourselves by saying that they deserved it anyhow for all their other crimes against Linux?
This thing looks like just what I've been looking for. I run a home server which serves up my personal web site, email and MP3s. I want to replace my current server because my home office runs off of solar power, but at 90 Watts while idle, my current server draws too much power to allow me to run the solar during the winter months (the filter for my garden pond also runs off of the system 24 hours a day). Reducing the server to 10 watts when idle would be great. The idea of leaving the solar on all year is really exciting to me (it's hard to explain why this would be such a thrill, it's just one of those geeky things :-)
Are there any other very-low-power boxes I should consider as well?
As a former Microsoft employee of five years, I was never much into asking brain teasers and always asked more straightforward algorithmic questions when interviewing candidates. Regardless of the type of question however, the questions really serve one main purpose -- to see how the candidate thinks under pressure.
I favored algorithmic questions because, like brain teasers, you got to test the candidates ability to reason but you also got some information about their ability to write algorithms and/or actual code. You'd be suprised how many candidates professed knowledge of an alphabet soup of industry technologies and languages, but had a difficult time correctly forming a "for" statement in C. Programming questions were also nice because once they were answered they lent themselves to further exploration such as optimizations.
I was never particularly concerned about anybody getting the answer "right" or "wrong". Interviews are tremendously stressful for most people and it's often difficult to think very clearly under such stress. What was much more valuable was observing how they handled that stress and the thought process that they used in trying to solve the problem -- what questions did they ask? What mistakes were made and were they found? Did the candidate declare the solution to be complete even when it was terribly flawed?
I think the most valuable person is one who isn't afraid to admit that he/she isn't sure and is willing to ask for clarifications. The scariest candidates were the ones who just plowed right in when they didn't really understand the question. I always assumed that I hadn't formed the question clearly (I wasn't deliberately vague, though that could be interesting too), but I expected the candidate to recognize that the problem was unclear and seek to understand it better.
Following up with questions about optimization was really nice since it really lent some insight into whether they really knew how computers and compilers make use of their code. Of course, being able to optimize wasn't critical to getting an approval from me, but you can bet that somebody who demonstrated knowledge of how to write tighter code got a stronger recommendation than somebody who didn't.
That's just the standard SprintPCS Vision price. Of course, you still have to have their cellphone service as well. Sorry if that was misleading.
I'd always thought that the boasts about 3G's speed seemed overblown. I bought a Toshiba 2032 3G cellphone/pda last December and it just never seemed to be all that fast at fetching my email or pulling up a map in Yahoo. I never knew that Sprint's (Qualcomm's?) implementation only barely meets 3G speed requirements. I feel sort of ripped off, but as the author of the article points out, $10 a month for unlimited data service is really hard to complain about, even if it is only around 128 kbps. I think I should try to stop buying into this "wonderful" cutting edge technology so early and start assuming that claims are exaggerated.