This isn't flamebait. It really isn't. But to say that Mozilla is useful for anything besides light browsing for more then
15 minutes at a time(before it segfaults) is just wishful thinking and sour grapes at IE5.
Please, let us all know where you downloaded the final release version of Mozilla you're using as the basis of your review! Oh... wait... you're complaining that there are bugs and memory problems in an ALPHA version of software. Doh!
Maybe the strategy will be
to flood the market with poorly written Linux applications. People will say stuff like "Office runs bad on Linux, Linux
sucks".
Nah, they've used this strategy for years (flooding the market with poorly written MS applications), and the only effect it's had on Windows was to force people to upgrade faster.
journalists have the right and should be saying 'No thanks! I'd like to keep my integrity.'
Not to mention the pricetag they placed on that integrity.
Journalist whispers: "If you want a good review, I can be bought." Linux Company: "Oh yeah? How much?" Journalist whispers: "I'll do it for $0.00 and not a penny less!" Linux Company: "Done!"
If MS uses "features" that aren't standard and people don't like them, don't use them. If everyone decides to use them then they become the new standard.
MS != W3C They don't set the standards, that's the point. However, what they are doing is using their market domination to ignore the standards and write their own, leaving the rest of the market out in the cold... thus forcing even more people to use their products.
I think they might even have gone to court about this recently... guess they didn't learn anything from it.
I'd love it if they had some actual *teeth*, and control over the market. Even if they had to rigidly define both the standards (HTML, XML, different versions, etc.) and maybe even some browser behavior, I'd love it if they could sue Microsoft for claiming that IE5 was a compliant web browser instead of sitting idly by and letting them uglify the web.
W3C wouldn't succeed in this for one simple reason, MS has more money than they do. MS is arrogant enough to thumb their noses at the government, why should they care about the W3C.
Sure, you get a federal court to say he's not allowed to visit their site... but how do they enforce it? What can a federal court do to stop him from hitting that web page that a firewall can't. (Not that even a firewall can since he seems to be swapping around IP addresses alot)
This comes down to: The internet is still pretty annonymous, and there's really not much we could do about it even if we wanted to. I guess they could issue a restraining order and go after him for violating it if he's caught on the site again, but that's kind of like closing the barn door after the cows are already gone, assuming he doesn't just start going under another name. How would they know it was the same guy.
I just don't get what Ebay thinks a court can do for them.
this guy ends up on Lars' list? He better make sure he doesn't name the cukoo file after a Metallica song, otherwise you'll show up on their search and get his account cancelled.
1) Computers in the classroom 2) How computers are being used in the classroom
I see all the posts about how teachers are clueless, how computers are just teaching the kids to push buttons and not think, or how sticking kids infront of a computer is like putting them infront of a TV. But is having computers in the classroom really the bad thing here, or is it really a matter of the piss-poor implementation of computers as a learning tool.
To my mind, the real issue here is the phenomenal lack of support for computers within today's educational system. The School Board Admins down to the teachers in the classroom (on average) have a mastery of computers that lets them accomplish such demanding tasks as turning on the power and starting Microsoft Works. IMHO this is what leads to the problems that most other comments seem to be addressing.
Computers are just another tool, and if used properly, have the potential to be a great asset in a child's educational experience. The real problem here is that they are NOT being used properly (or even competently) in most schools that I have seen. Teachers are not CompSci majors nor are they network engineers (nor should they be expected to be). Sadly, the public school system lacks funding to pay the current staff what they deserve, not to mention hire personel that could do justice to the computer's potential as a tool for learning.
Does this mean that if the courts rule that linking to a site containing the DeCSS software is illegal, and thereby making the linking site responsible for the content of the sites they link to, they will be setting themselves up to be in violation of the law for linking to a site that collects user information?
Or, better yet, will they finally get the point that the whole notion is rediculous.
Oh goody, MS has invented the mainframe... just without any of the security because that makes it "too hard to use". Like anybody is going to trust their documents to MS for protection from the rest of the dotnet community, not to mention that after they get everybody and their brother using this service, they will start charging you a monthly fee to access it otherwise they'll delete all your files.
Hacking the mandatory subscription?
on
Hacking The Tivo
·
· Score: 2
The one and only reason I haven't looked into getting a Tivo yet is the mandatory subscription you have to pay for along with the price of the Tivo itself. If there was a way to remove this from the unit, or better yet, put in an ethernet card and have it "subscribe" to a server on your network so that you can feed it your own information, I would buy one of these in a heartbeat.
Once again, it seems that somebody is writing a search enging for Napster/Gnutella that makes the same mistaken assumption that the Name of the file will tell you everything about the contents. NetPD did the same thing in the Metallica search. Sure, they found 300K+ people who had a filename on their drives containing the word "metallica" or a close match to words in their song titles, but there's nothing illegal about naming a file "Sandman".
Yeah, I agree that pirating software via Napster/Gnutella sucks, but these search engines are just as stupid. It'd be similar for going to google.com and running a search on a common word. Sure, you turn up 3 million URLs, but how many of them really have the CONTENT you're looking for, rather than just contain the word out of context somewhere... how do you tell the difference?
Until somebody comes up with a way of knowing that the file you found contains an actual song, rather than just a filename that appears to describe a song (this may even be impossible), what use are these searches?
It seems that alot of music savy people are looking towards these searches to protect themselves, but they are definitely not computer savy enough to realise that these searches are meaningless. The problem is that the lawyers and courts aren't computer savy either (Ask the 300K people kicked off Napster because of a filename).
Slashdot Mirror
This economist has obviously never been to freshmeat before.
Maybe when they fix the bugs and memory problems?
Please, let us all know where you downloaded the final release version of Mozilla you're using as the basis of your review! Oh... wait... you're complaining that there are bugs and memory problems in an ALPHA version of software. Doh!
Nah, they've used this strategy for years (flooding the market with poorly written MS applications), and the only effect it's had on Windows was to force people to upgrade faster.
I tried, but I kept falling off. I think I need to build the matress larger next time.
I doubt there'll be a long line to play the "fuzzy bunny" game.
Not to mention the pricetag they placed on that integrity.
Journalist whispers: "If you want a good review, I can be bought."
Linux Company: "Oh yeah? How much?"
Journalist whispers: "I'll do it for $0.00 and not a penny less!"
Linux Company: "Done!"
MS != W3C
They don't set the standards, that's the point. However, what they are doing is using their market domination to ignore the standards and write their own, leaving the rest of the market out in the cold... thus forcing even more people to use their products.
I think they might even have gone to court about this recently... guess they didn't learn anything from it.
W3C wouldn't succeed in this for one simple reason, MS has more money than they do. MS is arrogant enough to thumb their noses at the government, why should they care about the W3C.
This comes down to: The internet is still pretty annonymous, and there's really not much we could do about it even if we wanted to. I guess they could issue a restraining order and go after him for violating it if he's caught on the site again, but that's kind of like closing the barn door after the cows are already gone, assuming he doesn't just start going under another name. How would they know it was the same guy.
I just don't get what Ebay thinks a court can do for them.
this guy ends up on Lars' list? He better make sure he doesn't name the cukoo file after a Metallica song, otherwise you'll show up on their search and get his account cancelled.
Does this mean that if your computer locks up, instead of the 3-finger salute, you just "give it the finger"?
2) How computers are being used in the classroom
I see all the posts about how teachers are clueless, how computers are just teaching the kids to push buttons and not think, or how sticking kids infront of a computer is like putting them infront of a TV. But is having computers in the classroom really the bad thing here, or is it really a matter of the piss-poor implementation of computers as a learning tool.
To my mind, the real issue here is the phenomenal lack of support for computers within today's educational system. The School Board Admins down to the teachers in the classroom (on average) have a mastery of computers that lets them accomplish such demanding tasks as turning on the power and starting Microsoft Works. IMHO this is what leads to the problems that most other comments seem to be addressing.
Computers are just another tool, and if used properly, have the potential to be a great asset in a child's educational experience. The real problem here is that they are NOT being used properly (or even competently) in most schools that I have seen. Teachers are not CompSci majors nor are they network engineers (nor should they be expected to be). Sadly, the public school system lacks funding to pay the current staff what they deserve, not to mention hire personel that could do justice to the computer's potential as a tool for learning.
Or, better yet, will they finally get the point that the whole notion is rediculous.
Oh goody, MS has invented the mainframe... just without any of the security because that makes it "too hard to use". Like anybody is going to trust their documents to MS for protection from the rest of the dotnet community, not to mention that after they get everybody and their brother using this service, they will start charging you a monthly fee to access it otherwise they'll delete all your files.
The one and only reason I haven't looked into getting a Tivo yet is the mandatory subscription you have to pay for along with the price of the Tivo itself. If there was a way to remove this from the unit, or better yet, put in an ethernet card and have it "subscribe" to a server on your network so that you can feed it your own information, I would buy one of these in a heartbeat.
Yeah, I agree that pirating software via Napster/Gnutella sucks, but these search engines are just as stupid. It'd be similar for going to google.com and running a search on a common word. Sure, you turn up 3 million URLs, but how many of them really have the CONTENT you're looking for, rather than just contain the word out of context somewhere... how do you tell the difference?
Until somebody comes up with a way of knowing that the file you found contains an actual song, rather than just a filename that appears to describe a song (this may even be impossible), what use are these searches?
It seems that alot of music savy people are looking towards these searches to protect themselves, but they are definitely not computer savy enough to realise that these searches are meaningless. The problem is that the lawyers and courts aren't computer savy either (Ask the 300K people kicked off Napster because of a filename).