I hate to break it to him, but with all the huge bugs it has, and the general slowness of doing ANYthing,.Mac is already mostly useless. Going to totally useless would only involve removing the picture album feature.
Seriously, though, just putting all that equipment in one building would create a zeppelin-hangar-sized building. Finding any specific router or PCI modem would be near impossible. The logistical difficulties of your plan I think would be insurmountable, not even considering the manpower question.
The real point Raymond mentions is that if MS does tons of testing on all the hardware they have available, they get bad press for being slow to release patches. If not, they get bad press for having to recall buggy patches. It's a lose/lose situation for them.
What bothers me is the fanboys using the amount of profit Microsoft makes as a justification of how much better Sony and/or Nintendo consoles are. As if I, as a consumer, give a rat's ass what the Xbox costs Microsoft to make... that's their problem, not mine.
"Yeah, Xbox 360 might have better graphics than Wii and PS 3 but, uh,... uh... Microsoft doesn't make a profit!"
Funny. I see HD-DVD drives coming with WinDVD/HD for free. Strange that Linux doesn't get the same benefit.
The maker of the drive paid for the license. Duh. Did you really believe that would be a convincing argument when you typed it? Next time, please just assume I have the brain power of an 8-year-old and don't waste my time with non-arguments.
They do edit stories. I know because I submitted one that I carefully checked for accuracy, for proper placement of the linked text, and for spelling and grammar... and the editor who posted it edited my entry to link misleading text instead of the correct text. So they edited it to make my submission worse and make it more inaccurate. (Fortunately, they didn't edit anything involving spelling or grammar, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did that to other posters.)
The only thing anybody learned here is that Greenpeace doesn't give a flying whit whether you're actually a "green" company or not; all they care about is whether you're vocal about being green or not.
Obligatory car analogy: They'd salute Chrysler for being so proactive in making hybrid cars just because Chrysler seems to announce a new hybrid model every month or so with a lot of PR fanfare. The fact that they don't actually manufacture or sell any of these mythical cars is unimportant to Greenpeace. Meanwhile, Honda and Toyota who actually make and sell a lot of hybrids would get lambasted for not being loudmouth braggarts.
The Halo is not the only science fiction element in the Halo universe, you know. It's just the one it's named after. It also has a pretty unique AI concept (pioneered from the Marathon games, I believe) as well as an interesting alien civilization consisting of different races with a strange and pretty complex social dynamic but all seem to work (more or less) together despite that. Then there's the Flood, which is some sort of super-evolved virus or bacteria.
If you read the novels, they also shove in a bunch of genetic engineering and spacesuit/armor construction and some other stuff.
Plus the Halo in Halo is actually build as an amplifier to some kind of neutron bomb or something which can kill all life in a huge radius.
I'm glad that you can come to Slashdot and show off your knowledge of Niven, but the Halo universe is actually a very well-constructed science fiction universe in its own right.
Until you can *prove* that corporations pay people to post positive PR, I'm classifying this under "urban legend." I've asked for proof of this in the past and I've received nothing. Personally, I think it's just part of the general Slashdot paranoia that crops up from time to time. (Take for example all the posts about RFID chips.)
Guess what? I happen to like the Xbox 360, and I have no particular dislike of Microsoft or their products. For instance, here's a "shill": Windows does networking a ton better than both Linux and OS X do because it has almost universal support for offline files. Here's another one: MS SQL is better than MySQL in almost every way I've ever used it for. (MySQL is ahead in one area: it comes free with most webhosting accounts, while MS SQL does not.)
If Microsoft would pay me for typing stuff like that, please hook me up with a representative. I'm giving away this valuable "service" for free.
Can somebody please explain to me how my honest opinion is "flamebait" please? (Overrated *maybe*, but flamebait?) Would be nice if someone on Slashdot did something about these blatant abuses of the mod system.
I think the solution is just for people to be educated so they're not dicks to each other.
If you passed by a cooler with some cans of pop in it and a coffee cup that said "honor system: $.50", you'd put $.50 in the cup before taking a can. Right? That's because you're not a dick. It's a good thing; that's what keeps civilization going.
Stealing a movie or song is taking a can without putting $.50 in the cup. Sure, everyone here on Slashdot justifies it in stupid ways: "oh but all modern music sucks, therefore it's ok to take it" (if it sucks, why would you want it?), "oh but record companies screw artists" (maybe; but isn't that their problem?), "oh movie companies won't let us play DVDs on Linux" (sure they will; you just have to license the player like everyone else on Earth.) But it amounts to being a dick in the end.
In what way is cracking the encryption the "only" way to view HD DVD movies on Linux? What's stopping a Linux software company from licensing the code, just like every other software company that wants to play HD DVDs has to do? I'm sorry, there's no reason Linux should get special treatment. ("Special treatment" in that they think they're entitled to it for free when nobody else is.)
The artist read the contract they signed before they signed it. How much they get is not my problem, it's between their manager/agent and the record company. If they signed a good contract, good for them. If not, well, they need a better agent. It's a complete non-factor in my purchasing decision.
This is the same logic people use to convince me that Xbox is a bad video game console because Microsoft doesn't make a profit on it... as if I, as a consumer, should give a rat's crap about Microsoft's accounting when deciding what to buy.
I think the Linux argument is ridiculous. Linux has to operate under the exact same rules as all DVD player makers and OS makers. There's no reason Linux should get a free pass to break whatever IP laws it wants just because nobody bothers to properly license the player on that OS. Like you said, there's no technical reason you can't license it on Linux (see Linspire, for example), so it seems to me it's just Linux users throwing a "I want free stuff!" tantrum.
If you want to play HD content on Linux, buy a license like every other software maker has to do.
If you take a movie without paying for it, that movie studio has to reduce the "few cents an hour" it pays its employees. Duh. Ditto with the guys in the recording studio.
I don't know about you, but like a ton of people in the IT industry, I work for a company that produces pretty much nothing but intellectual property. (Unless you count the t-shirts and logoed pens we give out at trade shows, that's all we do: intellectual property.) Those rock-bottom prices for digital stuff will put me out of a job, and probably a good proportion of Slashdot's userbase as well.
Given, the MPAA/RIAA have gone way overboard, but the other side is just as guilty. There has to be a common ground where everybody is happy and everybody with the genuine talent can make a living from it, but posting some stupid encryption key that the MPAA's already stopped using isn't really getting anybody any closer to that ideal.
I'm the last one to defend the MPAA, but the only reason for sharing this number is so that cheapskates can get free movies. Right? If you really want to protest the MPAA in a meaningful fashion, try actually, you know, campaigning for industry change. Maybe a boycott, or perhaps you can lobby your congress-folk. Posting a encryption key that's already been deprecated all over the Internet is unlikely to accomplish anything productive.
NTFS is actually designed to put small files (smaller than the block size, IIRC) into the directory structure itself instead of wasting a bunch of space required to put them in individual files. So it already takes care of this issue with current drives, and will continue to do so with future drives.
Why would they bother rejecting any domain until they were forced to? They make money from people registering domains, you know... and it's not like GoDaddy gives a crap whether the key gets out in the wild or not. (They don't sell DVD players.)
To be fair to Microsoft, at the time Windows was developed, NO OS intended for home use had file permissions, not Amiga, not Apple's Macintosh, and not DOS. They were a lot quicker than Apple in implementing it, also.
I agree with you, though, that the real weak point of Windows security is crappy software from third parties.
It is weak. Very weak. A much better comparison would be with OS X.
Sudo doesn't even work with GUIs, as far as I'm aware. And with Sudo you need to know which commands require privileges *before* you run them. If you don't know for sure, you have to run it twice: once for it to fail, and once with Sudo. And if it's (for instance) a long Make Install process, you might end up having to do a LOT of work over again because you didn't know to use Sudo first.
Apple and Microsoft's system will ask your permission only when a command/program attempts to do something that requires credentials, which solves that problem.
Sudo is more equivalent to "Run As..." in Windows, except Run As: 1) Works in a CLI and GUI, and 2) Allows you to run as a user with *less* permissions if you want. Or another user with the same level of permissions, for that matter.
In fact, when you think about it, Sudo's pretty primitive.
And, of course, none of these systems solve the most fundamental problem in computer security: programs don't *need* admin/root access to delete every document in your home folder.
To be fair, Apple's system is pretty easy to spoof.
Write a goofy screen saver and get people to download it. On install, say "you need to log in to install" which isn't unusual for a screen saver (at least not to the layman.) You put up a fake login dialog, and record their password. You install the screen saver in the user's folder, which doesn't require a password, and will trick the user into thinking it's all legit. Then you just transmit the saved password to God knows where when the screensaver activates.
I don't know if Microsoft's system offers more protection against that scenario.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't get this constant slamming of Microsoft for "missing the web."
They sure as hell beat Apple to it. In fact, as far as home systems go, Microsoft was the first to realize the potential of the web, IMO.
I hate to break it to him, but with all the huge bugs it has, and the general slowness of doing ANYthing, .Mac is already mostly useless. Going to totally useless would only involve removing the picture album feature.
And the manpower to run it all costs... how much?
Seriously, though, just putting all that equipment in one building would create a zeppelin-hangar-sized building. Finding any specific router or PCI modem would be near impossible. The logistical difficulties of your plan I think would be insurmountable, not even considering the manpower question.
The real point Raymond mentions is that if MS does tons of testing on all the hardware they have available, they get bad press for being slow to release patches. If not, they get bad press for having to recall buggy patches. It's a lose/lose situation for them.
What bothers me is the fanboys using the amount of profit Microsoft makes as a justification of how much better Sony and/or Nintendo consoles are. As if I, as a consumer, give a rat's ass what the Xbox costs Microsoft to make... that's their problem, not mine.
... uh... Microsoft doesn't make a profit!"
"Yeah, Xbox 360 might have better graphics than Wii and PS 3 but, uh,
If it looks anything like what the beta looked like, then yes I agree whole-heartedly.
l y.pngg gy.png
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/gaim_2_is_ug
http://schend.net/images/screenshots/gaim_2_is_bu
I had a terrible experience with it.
Hard to know if this article is worth reading or not when the summary doesn't even tell me WHAT RDF IS!! Criminy.
Funny. I see HD-DVD drives coming with WinDVD/HD for free. Strange that Linux doesn't get the same benefit.
The maker of the drive paid for the license. Duh. Did you really believe that would be a convincing argument when you typed it? Next time, please just assume I have the brain power of an 8-year-old and don't waste my time with non-arguments.
They do edit stories. I know because I submitted one that I carefully checked for accuracy, for proper placement of the linked text, and for spelling and grammar... and the editor who posted it edited my entry to link misleading text instead of the correct text. So they edited it to make my submission worse and make it more inaccurate. (Fortunately, they didn't edit anything involving spelling or grammar, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did that to other posters.)
The only thing anybody learned here is that Greenpeace doesn't give a flying whit whether you're actually a "green" company or not; all they care about is whether you're vocal about being green or not.
Obligatory car analogy: They'd salute Chrysler for being so proactive in making hybrid cars just because Chrysler seems to announce a new hybrid model every month or so with a lot of PR fanfare. The fact that they don't actually manufacture or sell any of these mythical cars is unimportant to Greenpeace. Meanwhile, Honda and Toyota who actually make and sell a lot of hybrids would get lambasted for not being loudmouth braggarts.
The Halo is not the only science fiction element in the Halo universe, you know. It's just the one it's named after. It also has a pretty unique AI concept (pioneered from the Marathon games, I believe) as well as an interesting alien civilization consisting of different races with a strange and pretty complex social dynamic but all seem to work (more or less) together despite that. Then there's the Flood, which is some sort of super-evolved virus or bacteria.
If you read the novels, they also shove in a bunch of genetic engineering and spacesuit/armor construction and some other stuff.
Plus the Halo in Halo is actually build as an amplifier to some kind of neutron bomb or something which can kill all life in a huge radius.
I'm glad that you can come to Slashdot and show off your knowledge of Niven, but the Halo universe is actually a very well-constructed science fiction universe in its own right.
Until you can *prove* that corporations pay people to post positive PR, I'm classifying this under "urban legend." I've asked for proof of this in the past and I've received nothing. Personally, I think it's just part of the general Slashdot paranoia that crops up from time to time. (Take for example all the posts about RFID chips.)
Guess what? I happen to like the Xbox 360, and I have no particular dislike of Microsoft or their products. For instance, here's a "shill": Windows does networking a ton better than both Linux and OS X do because it has almost universal support for offline files. Here's another one: MS SQL is better than MySQL in almost every way I've ever used it for. (MySQL is ahead in one area: it comes free with most webhosting accounts, while MS SQL does not.)
If Microsoft would pay me for typing stuff like that, please hook me up with a representative. I'm giving away this valuable "service" for free.
Can somebody please explain to me how my honest opinion is "flamebait" please? (Overrated *maybe*, but flamebait?) Would be nice if someone on Slashdot did something about these blatant abuses of the mod system.
I think the solution is just for people to be educated so they're not dicks to each other.
If you passed by a cooler with some cans of pop in it and a coffee cup that said "honor system: $.50", you'd put $.50 in the cup before taking a can. Right? That's because you're not a dick. It's a good thing; that's what keeps civilization going.
Stealing a movie or song is taking a can without putting $.50 in the cup. Sure, everyone here on Slashdot justifies it in stupid ways: "oh but all modern music sucks, therefore it's ok to take it" (if it sucks, why would you want it?), "oh but record companies screw artists" (maybe; but isn't that their problem?), "oh movie companies won't let us play DVDs on Linux" (sure they will; you just have to license the player like everyone else on Earth.) But it amounts to being a dick in the end.
In what way is cracking the encryption the "only" way to view HD DVD movies on Linux? What's stopping a Linux software company from licensing the code, just like every other software company that wants to play HD DVDs has to do? I'm sorry, there's no reason Linux should get special treatment. ("Special treatment" in that they think they're entitled to it for free when nobody else is.)
The artist read the contract they signed before they signed it. How much they get is not my problem, it's between their manager/agent and the record company. If they signed a good contract, good for them. If not, well, they need a better agent. It's a complete non-factor in my purchasing decision.
This is the same logic people use to convince me that Xbox is a bad video game console because Microsoft doesn't make a profit on it... as if I, as a consumer, should give a rat's crap about Microsoft's accounting when deciding what to buy.
I think the Linux argument is ridiculous. Linux has to operate under the exact same rules as all DVD player makers and OS makers. There's no reason Linux should get a free pass to break whatever IP laws it wants just because nobody bothers to properly license the player on that OS. Like you said, there's no technical reason you can't license it on Linux (see Linspire, for example), so it seems to me it's just Linux users throwing a "I want free stuff!" tantrum.
If you want to play HD content on Linux, buy a license like every other software maker has to do.
If you take a movie without paying for it, that movie studio has to reduce the "few cents an hour" it pays its employees. Duh. Ditto with the guys in the recording studio.
I don't know about you, but like a ton of people in the IT industry, I work for a company that produces pretty much nothing but intellectual property. (Unless you count the t-shirts and logoed pens we give out at trade shows, that's all we do: intellectual property.) Those rock-bottom prices for digital stuff will put me out of a job, and probably a good proportion of Slashdot's userbase as well.
Given, the MPAA/RIAA have gone way overboard, but the other side is just as guilty. There has to be a common ground where everybody is happy and everybody with the genuine talent can make a living from it, but posting some stupid encryption key that the MPAA's already stopped using isn't really getting anybody any closer to that ideal.
This entire thing is extremely stupid.
I'm the last one to defend the MPAA, but the only reason for sharing this number is so that cheapskates can get free movies. Right? If you really want to protest the MPAA in a meaningful fashion, try actually, you know, campaigning for industry change. Maybe a boycott, or perhaps you can lobby your congress-folk. Posting a encryption key that's already been deprecated all over the Internet is unlikely to accomplish anything productive.
NTFS is actually designed to put small files (smaller than the block size, IIRC) into the directory structure itself instead of wasting a bunch of space required to put them in individual files. So it already takes care of this issue with current drives, and will continue to do so with future drives.
But, you know, good troll and all.
Free world?
Tell me, how many government-owned video cameras do you have on your main street? For my town in the US, it's zero.
Congratulations, you figured out the joke!
Now let's work towards laughing at it.
(Seriously, where the hell do these humorless people come from? I used to think everybody was born with a sense of humor. What a fool I was!)
Why would they bother rejecting any domain until they were forced to? They make money from people registering domains, you know... and it's not like GoDaddy gives a crap whether the key gets out in the wild or not. (They don't sell DVD players.)
To be fair to Microsoft, at the time Windows was developed, NO OS intended for home use had file permissions, not Amiga, not Apple's Macintosh, and not DOS. They were a lot quicker than Apple in implementing it, also.
I agree with you, though, that the real weak point of Windows security is crappy software from third parties.
It is weak. Very weak. A much better comparison would be with OS X.
Sudo doesn't even work with GUIs, as far as I'm aware. And with Sudo you need to know which commands require privileges *before* you run them. If you don't know for sure, you have to run it twice: once for it to fail, and once with Sudo. And if it's (for instance) a long Make Install process, you might end up having to do a LOT of work over again because you didn't know to use Sudo first.
Apple and Microsoft's system will ask your permission only when a command/program attempts to do something that requires credentials, which solves that problem.
Sudo is more equivalent to "Run As..." in Windows, except Run As: 1) Works in a CLI and GUI, and 2) Allows you to run as a user with *less* permissions if you want. Or another user with the same level of permissions, for that matter.
In fact, when you think about it, Sudo's pretty primitive.
And, of course, none of these systems solve the most fundamental problem in computer security: programs don't *need* admin/root access to delete every document in your home folder.
To be fair, Apple's system is pretty easy to spoof.
Write a goofy screen saver and get people to download it. On install, say "you need to log in to install" which isn't unusual for a screen saver (at least not to the layman.) You put up a fake login dialog, and record their password. You install the screen saver in the user's folder, which doesn't require a password, and will trick the user into thinking it's all legit. Then you just transmit the saved password to God knows where when the screensaver activates.
I don't know if Microsoft's system offers more protection against that scenario.