Thank you for not shooting me (the messenger). I recently bought a large display for my computer because my eyes aren't soo good. The display happened to have HDMI with HDCP. I was lucky because I didn't fully understand the issues when I bought it. Then I bought the PS3 because I wanted to program it with Linux and utilize the multiple cores for an embedded application. As a matter of course, I happened to buy several BlueRay titles, and they are lovely. I am not very happy about the HDCP protection of BlueRay titles, but I lucked into a working combination of hardware. If you happen to own a compliant display, the PS3 is a fun choice for console, Linux computer, and BlueRay player. The whole HDCP thing is a fiasco and it is much worse for PCs wanting to play BlueRay media. Not only do you need a compliant display, but the current breed of video cards don't have encryption chips on board, and can't do the job. Google for "HDCP Fiasco" to read more about it. Cheers, Doug.
Your comment that HDMI provides very little advantage indicates that you don't understand about HDCP. If the PS3 didn't have HDMI and only had component, there would be no BlueRay because there would be no Protected Video Path. Google HDCP and get a handle on the HDCP spec and how high definition video content is not allowed over component video hardware witout down-sampling.
HP Will have to do some serious testing with various distros of Linux before they can claim to be interested in the Linux marketplace. I have had significant trouble with a half dozen different HP machines. Since Linux runs so well on almost any hardware, I wonder how I happen to have so many HP Pavilions that can't.
I have been reading non-disclosure agreements for 40 years. I have been learning to understand not only the meaning of the words but is what is behind it. In my spare time I read presidential proclamations of GWB.
The non-disclosure said a lot of the usual stuff about what is their's is their's. I expected that, then it said you can only use the materials for approved uses as stated previously. Then I read that the agreement could be terminated by them on 60 days notice at their will, without breaching any conditions.
It stinks. What it is says to me IMHO IANABCL, is that they arent sure what they have, and if you use their stuff and start to see more into its uses than they do, they can stop you in your tracks right there with no recourse. I realize that at that point, you could renegotiate with them for a new contract.
I stopped right there. I didn't need to read further. If they are so paranoid about this technology, I fail to see why they are announcing it. Maybe they should be discussing it in peer review journals of the appropriate science. I think they are planting seeds for a future patent trolling activity, should someone else develop something along these lines in the future. Right now its a waste of time.
When I started reading ths thread, I expected to see a glowing report. I hadn't occured to me the systems software would be judged on the basis of how well it played games. When I think about a computer, I think about the normal web, email... and then ssh to shell into my server, or python and c++ for software development. When I want to play a game, I fire up my PS3. There is a very good chance that many business desktops can run Linux suitably with email, web, open office... and the users can go home to play games. Games are a really sad justification for the existence of Microsoft. IMHO.
The time taken to load pages from hard drive should not be thought of as nearly free. Although there is relatively little time spent communicating with the hard disk controller hardware, when the DMA kicks in to fill the memory from hard disk, the DMA eats memory cycles like a crazy monkey. When the DMA reaches terminal count, interrupts take place and that takes more time.
OK. Now you are dancing on my hot buttons. Each time I have tried to make a living using Microsoft products, they have eventually put their boot up my ass. They preach about a new technology. They release beta API's, then they deprecate the toolkit and go off in another direction. If a particular tool kit seems too useful, the kill it and assign part of their consulting group to do that work directly for clients, instead of allowing independent developers to do the work. After years of membership in MSDN, I finally had to ask Microsoft for help with a technical issue stopping me from making progress for a client, and they repeatedly answered a question they liked rather than respond to my carefully worded requests. At the point where I started receiving hundreds of sympathy emails from Compuserve users watching Microsoft wag me around over my simple request, I got the message. It should be obvious at this point that they want everyone coding in Visual Basic and all the important programming done at Microsoft by Microsoft programmers. Microsoft has single handedly done more to hurt the independent programmers than any other company IMNSHO.
We are already there. Sure there are still unconnected computers lingering about, but the masses have web browsing capability and email. Modern computers, especially those running Unix or Linux, are now running the same code that "workstations" were fifteen years ago. Unix (Linux) and the X Window system. Networking and huge memory model. Getting eveyone network access is the next challenge. There is already a massive amount of wonderful information available to those who can issue a simple search engine query (google for instance). Scott McNealy was right. The combination of the workstations and the servers comprises the matrix of information that we use evey day. He probably wishes that we all bought Sun workstations, but in essence he had it right.
You have just been kicked in the balls by Microsoft.
What should you do?
Remember this the next time you think about specifying Microsoft products at your business.
I am not happy about this. I don't like this disruption to busnesses. But I am paying attention.
This is about every known version of word having a vulnerability for which there is no patch or update. This isn't the place to argue about Mac OS. This is about an unleashed weapon of mass destruction like we have been worrying about where the infrastructure of the country that includes millions of Windows systems running Office are now vulnerable to the most simple of attacks. Microsoft better have a lot of "Error and Ommisions" insurance. They are already being sued by at least one state for releasing insecure buggy code. This situation is intolerable. It throws most companies into a tizzy of paranoia about the use of Word documents. I think there is a good case for Open Office today. I simply don't use Microsoft Office anymore. This isn't about I told you so. It must be obvious that cracks are appearing in the Microsoft code monopoly. Microsoft fanboys may want to reconsider their position.
Microsoft would be my vey last choice as the vendor for the OLPC program. I think it would be better to find a "free" software solution. There are a host of alternative operating systems available. This would be a big win for M$.
IMHO, As long as the.com TLD is considered to be the "One", buying up domains for speculation purposes should be wrong. As it turns out, companies with trademarks have some say over rights to similar domains. I guess that is as it should be. I grabbed the.com domain of my last name, and I feel fortunate to have it. But it turns my stomach every time I think of a domain I would like to use for a product and when I whois, it is already owned by a domain speculator.
My hat is off to SONY, who uses one domain for all their sites.
It seems to me that the trouble starts when you are able to convert your second life money into dollars. It the IRS wants a piece of the action in Second Life, they should buy premium accounts and tax earnings of virtual money. They could then spend their virtual money buying virtual land and buying virtual buildings to set up an IRS office, and hire a fellow I met in SL that flies helecopters in SL to fly their SL helos. Taxing SL income would make it more realistic. If you didn't pay, when you sign in, you would find yourself in jail, and unable to fly out. Personally, I find SL more friendly than RL, and taxing it wold be a drag, but real income is real income, and transactions over ten thousand dollars probably have to get reported.
I wonder if terrorists can funnel money through Second Life transactions, DHS pay attention.
A while back I was working for a large financial institution as a security consultant. They asked me to prove my abilities by breaking into a well known site and proving I did it. I told then that I knew the owner of a large site and could get permission to try. They abviously weren't satisfied with my approach, and they layed me off and hired a "real hacker". Later they called my wife and told her that they had made a mistake, and sholdn't have gone anywhere near one. In the long run, you make decisions about what you will do and what you won't. If you are a person of character, people do notice. Although I appreared to get the small end of the stick in this deal, my reputation with Fair Isaac remains that I am an honest software engineer who wouldn't cross the line. They had been showing great trust in me for quite some time as I had been hosting their domain and email gateway from the Internet to usenet at my business for over a year. I am really tired of hackers getting jobs with prominent agencies. They are not the cream of the crop, they are the scum on top.
I think if we are going to question high speed wireless data effects, how about the effects of high speed wired cables that are not shielded. Its in the name.
People have already started to notice, with the release of IE7 that the CUA compliant menu bar has vanished. When Microsoft was busy stealing Apple's look and feel, they joined the CUA camp because, "it made the users more comfortable to see a standard gui with a file menu, file/exit...". Now that they have assimulated the look and feel, i guess they no longer care about how comfortable the user is because their new programs have completely different UIs and we all get to start over learning how to use the programs. I spent some time in the new office trying to find the file save equivelent. I don't like the IE7 for the same reason. I knew where the controls were before, now I guess they want us to all go buy books and trainaing so we can use their expensive new software that is no longer intuitive to use.
I say, who needs all this new stuff, when they never properly fixed the old stuff? Vista included. Not me.
I believe that this agreement between Microsoft and Novell has o do with Mono.
Mono is a non-Microsoft implementation of parts of.NET that where engineered fromthe ECMA-INTERNATIONAL documents that claim to be open standards and yet contain patented IP of member companies (Microsoft for instance). The Mono code lets some.NET programs run on non-Microsoft Windows platforms. Microsoft sat by and let thousands of developers write mono knowing the day would come when they could sprint the troll-trap. Microsoft wants a piece of the action for non-Windows platforms too, and I think that is what this is about. If you go to www.ecma-international.org and read the web page, "About ECMA", you will see that ECMA standards documents contains patented material which ECMA assumes can be licensed from the member company under the RAND licensing scheme. If Microsoft wants to kill Mono, they can. But Novell has been kind to the Mono project, and blessing Novell's use of the c# and CLI standards documents helps Microsoft get an edge into Linux and any other platforms that Mono can cover. This means that the programmers contributing to the Mono project are actually working for free for Microsoft. Nifty, eh?
Someone who makes technology decisions based on his emotional reaction to Steve Balmer's FUD may be very bored with Microsofts attitudes and actions and be ready to try something different. With as many options as we have today of operating systems, office suites, and hardware bases, there is life after Microsoft. My empathy is with the CIO who has business realities and has to make expensive decisions inclluding whether to pay big for Microsoft products and support, over and over.
I only just learned about force-quit last night while trying to load HP printer drivers on Mac OS X 10.4.8. I have been very happy with my Mac and I have always been very happy with my HP printers, but last night I lost a lot of confidence. I was trying to install the drivers for my Photosmart C4180 printer on Tiger. The installer kept erroring out and not quiting gracefully. I tried both the CD copy and the downloaded copies of the driver. HP support said they have never heard of this trouble before. I always hate it when they say that because I don't believe I am the only persone on earth with a Mac and an HP printer. I asked the HP support person what the OS level was on their Macs and he said 10.4.6. Well 10.4.8 is the current version and HP's support depeartment is two versions behind. Considering it's HP, I would of expected them two have at least one machine on every known version of Mac OS X. But no, after making me try the install six times, they told me to call Apple and get help from them. Ah, its the old multi-vendor finger pointing exercise. How I hate that. Anyway, the moral lof the story is HP doesn't bother to keep up with Apple software releases any more. I guess I am lucky I never had to learn about force-quit before now.
The workers that are needed to handle new technologies need to be grown where the need is. A lot of computer technology is designed and built here and a partnership between technical companies and local colleges would help the supply of properly trained workers. While I was programming microcomputers in C++ they were still teaching pascal in colleges. I never could figure it out. Guess if Microsoft's new operating system's kernel can only be worked on by Microsoft employees, all we have to teach the masses is Visual Basic. I hope I am joking. I have discontinued all use of Microsoft products in my company.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for not shooting me (the messenger). I recently bought a large display for my computer because my eyes aren't soo good. The display happened to have HDMI with HDCP. I was lucky because I didn't fully understand the issues when I bought it. Then I bought the PS3 because I wanted to program it with Linux and utilize the multiple cores for an embedded application. As a matter of course, I happened to buy several BlueRay titles, and they are lovely. I am not very happy about the HDCP protection of BlueRay titles, but I lucked into a working combination of hardware. If you happen to own a compliant display, the PS3 is a fun choice for console, Linux computer, and BlueRay player. The whole HDCP thing is a fiasco and it is much worse for PCs wanting to play BlueRay media. Not only do you need a compliant display, but the current breed of video cards don't have encryption chips on board, and can't do the job. Google for "HDCP Fiasco" to read more about it. Cheers, Doug.
Your comment that HDMI provides very little advantage indicates that you don't understand about HDCP. If the PS3 didn't have HDMI and only had component, there would be no BlueRay because there would be no Protected Video Path. Google HDCP and get a handle on the HDCP spec and how high definition video content is not allowed over component video hardware witout down-sampling.
HP Will have to do some serious testing with various distros of Linux before they can claim to be interested in the Linux marketplace. I have had significant trouble with a half dozen different HP machines. Since Linux runs so well on almost any hardware, I wonder how I happen to have so many HP Pavilions that can't.
I have been reading non-disclosure agreements for 40 years. I have been learning to understand not only the meaning of the words but is what is behind it. In my spare time I read presidential proclamations of GWB. The non-disclosure said a lot of the usual stuff about what is their's is their's. I expected that, then it said you can only use the materials for approved uses as stated previously. Then I read that the agreement could be terminated by them on 60 days notice at their will, without breaching any conditions. It stinks. What it is says to me IMHO IANABCL, is that they arent sure what they have, and if you use their stuff and start to see more into its uses than they do, they can stop you in your tracks right there with no recourse. I realize that at that point, you could renegotiate with them for a new contract. I stopped right there. I didn't need to read further. If they are so paranoid about this technology, I fail to see why they are announcing it. Maybe they should be discussing it in peer review journals of the appropriate science. I think they are planting seeds for a future patent trolling activity, should someone else develop something along these lines in the future. Right now its a waste of time.
1.1 Million Libraries of Congress
When I started reading ths thread, I expected to see a glowing report. I hadn't occured to me the systems software would be judged on the basis of how well it played games. When I think about a computer, I think about the normal web, email... and then ssh to shell into my server, or python and c++ for software development. When I want to play a game, I fire up my PS3. There is a very good chance that many business desktops can run Linux suitably with email, web, open office... and the users can go home to play games. Games are a really sad justification for the existence of Microsoft. IMHO.
The time taken to load pages from hard drive should not be thought of as nearly free. Although there is relatively little time spent communicating with the hard disk controller hardware, when the DMA kicks in to fill the memory from hard disk, the DMA eats memory cycles like a crazy monkey. When the DMA reaches terminal count, interrupts take place and that takes more time.
OK. Now you are dancing on my hot buttons. Each time I have tried to make a living using Microsoft products, they have eventually put their boot up my ass. They preach about a new technology. They release beta API's, then they deprecate the toolkit and go off in another direction. If a particular tool kit seems too useful, the kill it and assign part of their consulting group to do that work directly for clients, instead of allowing independent developers to do the work. After years of membership in MSDN, I finally had to ask Microsoft for help with a technical issue stopping me from making progress for a client, and they repeatedly answered a question they liked rather than respond to my carefully worded requests. At the point where I started receiving hundreds of sympathy emails from Compuserve users watching Microsoft wag me around over my simple request, I got the message. It should be obvious at this point that they want everyone coding in Visual Basic and all the important programming done at Microsoft by Microsoft programmers. Microsoft has single handedly done more to hurt the independent programmers than any other company IMNSHO.
We are already there. Sure there are still unconnected computers lingering about, but the masses have web browsing capability and email. Modern computers, especially those running Unix or Linux, are now running the same code that "workstations" were fifteen years ago. Unix (Linux) and the X Window system. Networking and huge memory model. Getting eveyone network access is the next challenge. There is already a massive amount of wonderful information available to those who can issue a simple search engine query (google for instance). Scott McNealy was right. The combination of the workstations and the servers comprises the matrix of information that we use evey day. He probably wishes that we all bought Sun workstations, but in essence he had it right.
You have just been kicked in the balls by Microsoft. What should you do? Remember this the next time you think about specifying Microsoft products at your business. I am not happy about this. I don't like this disruption to busnesses. But I am paying attention.
This is about every known version of word having a vulnerability for which there is no patch or update. This isn't the place to argue about Mac OS. This is about an unleashed weapon of mass destruction like we have been worrying about where the infrastructure of the country that includes millions of Windows systems running Office are now vulnerable to the most simple of attacks. Microsoft better have a lot of "Error and Ommisions" insurance. They are already being sued by at least one state for releasing insecure buggy code. This situation is intolerable. It throws most companies into a tizzy of paranoia about the use of Word documents. I think there is a good case for Open Office today. I simply don't use Microsoft Office anymore. This isn't about I told you so. It must be obvious that cracks are appearing in the Microsoft code monopoly. Microsoft fanboys may want to reconsider their position.
Microsoft would be my vey last choice as the vendor for the OLPC program. I think it would be better to find a "free" software solution. There are a host of alternative operating systems available. This would be a big win for M$.
Maybe a generation of American engineers will have a place in the marketplace after all.
IMHO, As long as the .com TLD is considered to be the "One", buying up domains for speculation purposes should be wrong. As it turns out, companies with trademarks have some say over rights to similar domains. I guess that is as it should be. I grabbed the .com domain of my last name, and I feel fortunate to have it. But it turns my stomach every time I think of a domain I would like to use for a product and when I whois, it is already owned by a domain speculator.
My hat is off to SONY, who uses one domain for all their sites.
It's an asterick. Look it up in the dictionary. I know you don't believe it, but it's true.
It seems to me that the trouble starts when you are able to convert your second life money into dollars. It the IRS wants a piece of the action in Second Life, they should buy premium accounts and tax earnings of virtual money. They could then spend their virtual money buying virtual land and buying virtual buildings to set up an IRS office, and hire a fellow I met in SL that flies helecopters in SL to fly their SL helos. Taxing SL income would make it more realistic. If you didn't pay, when you sign in, you would find yourself in jail, and unable to fly out. Personally, I find SL more friendly than RL, and taxing it wold be a drag, but real income is real income, and transactions over ten thousand dollars probably have to get reported. I wonder if terrorists can funnel money through Second Life transactions, DHS pay attention.
A while back I was working for a large financial institution as a security consultant. They asked me to prove my abilities by breaking into a well known site and proving I did it. I told then that I knew the owner of a large site and could get permission to try. They abviously weren't satisfied with my approach, and they layed me off and hired a "real hacker". Later they called my wife and told her that they had made a mistake, and sholdn't have gone anywhere near one. In the long run, you make decisions about what you will do and what you won't. If you are a person of character, people do notice. Although I appreared to get the small end of the stick in this deal, my reputation with Fair Isaac remains that I am an honest software engineer who wouldn't cross the line. They had been showing great trust in me for quite some time as I had been hosting their domain and email gateway from the Internet to usenet at my business for over a year. I am really tired of hackers getting jobs with prominent agencies. They are not the cream of the crop, they are the scum on top.
I think if we are going to question high speed wireless data effects, how about the effects of high speed wired cables that are not shielded. Its in the name.
People have already started to notice, with the release of IE7 that the CUA compliant menu bar has vanished. When Microsoft was busy stealing Apple's look and feel, they joined the CUA camp because, "it made the users more comfortable to see a standard gui with a file menu, file/exit...". Now that they have assimulated the look and feel, i guess they no longer care about how comfortable the user is because their new programs have completely different UIs and we all get to start over learning how to use the programs. I spent some time in the new office trying to find the file save equivelent. I don't like the IE7 for the same reason. I knew where the controls were before, now I guess they want us to all go buy books and trainaing so we can use their expensive new software that is no longer intuitive to use. I say, who needs all this new stuff, when they never properly fixed the old stuff? Vista included. Not me.
I believe that this agreement between Microsoft and Novell has o do with Mono. Mono is a non-Microsoft implementation of parts of .NET that where engineered fromthe ECMA-INTERNATIONAL documents that claim to be open standards and yet contain patented IP of member companies (Microsoft for instance). The Mono code lets some .NET programs run on non-Microsoft Windows platforms. Microsoft sat by and let thousands of developers write mono knowing the day would come when they could sprint the troll-trap. Microsoft wants a piece of the action for non-Windows platforms too, and I think that is what this is about. If you go to www.ecma-international.org and read the web page, "About ECMA", you will see that ECMA standards documents contains patented material which ECMA assumes can be licensed from the member company under the RAND licensing scheme. If Microsoft wants to kill Mono, they can. But Novell has been kind to the Mono project, and blessing Novell's use of the c# and CLI standards documents helps Microsoft get an edge into Linux and any other platforms that Mono can cover. This means that the programmers contributing to the Mono project are actually working for free for Microsoft. Nifty, eh?
Someone who makes technology decisions based on his emotional reaction to Steve Balmer's FUD may be very bored with Microsofts attitudes and actions and be ready to try something different. With as many options as we have today of operating systems, office suites, and hardware bases, there is life after Microsoft. My empathy is with the CIO who has business realities and has to make expensive decisions inclluding whether to pay big for Microsoft products and support, over and over.
I only just learned about force-quit last night while trying to load HP printer drivers on Mac OS X 10.4.8. I have been very happy with my Mac and I have always been very happy with my HP printers, but last night I lost a lot of confidence. I was trying to install the drivers for my Photosmart C4180 printer on Tiger. The installer kept erroring out and not quiting gracefully. I tried both the CD copy and the downloaded copies of the driver. HP support said they have never heard of this trouble before. I always hate it when they say that because I don't believe I am the only persone on earth with a Mac and an HP printer. I asked the HP support person what the OS level was on their Macs and he said 10.4.6. Well 10.4.8 is the current version and HP's support depeartment is two versions behind. Considering it's HP, I would of expected them two have at least one machine on every known version of Mac OS X. But no, after making me try the install six times, they told me to call Apple and get help from them. Ah, its the old multi-vendor finger pointing exercise. How I hate that. Anyway, the moral lof the story is HP doesn't bother to keep up with Apple software releases any more. I guess I am lucky I never had to learn about force-quit before now.
The workers that are needed to handle new technologies need to be grown where the need is. A lot of computer technology is designed and built here and a partnership between technical companies and local colleges would help the supply of properly trained workers. While I was programming microcomputers in C++ they were still teaching pascal in colleges. I never could figure it out. Guess if Microsoft's new operating system's kernel can only be worked on by Microsoft employees, all we have to teach the masses is Visual Basic. I hope I am joking. I have discontinued all use of Microsoft products in my company.
I like where he says: I used to work with UK banks, They can't attract anybody with any intellect. Then simple logic says, poster == intellect not
Thats not a bug, thats a feature. It could keep Vista from claiming ring0. I want one. :-)