Submission Summary: 0 pending, 74 declined, 32 accepted (106 total, 30.19% accepted)
"Ulevitch's complaint also stems from the fact that the error redirector breaks some of OpenDNS's functionality. If an OpenDNS user types "digg.xom" by mistake, their browser pulls up the correct "digg.com" instead. But the redirector breaks the free service's typo correction — as well as the browser shortcut feature it unveiled last month. "Google's application breaks just about every user-benefiting feature we provide with client software that no user ever asked for," Ulevitch said.
Elgan calls on manufacturers to respect his "Gadget Bill of Lights" to restrict the use of nag lights and allow users to turn them off. He also says the industry should pay more attention to industrial design when creating new products."My PC and other computing equipment make my office look like a jet cockpit. I have two LCD monitors, each of which has two indicator lights that flash even when the PC is turned off. The attached sound control has a light on it. My keyboard has multiple lights. The power cord has lights, the printer has lights, and the power button is illuminated. My cable modem and Linksys router flash like crazy all the time. Together, these useless lights create a visual cacophony of blinking, multicolored lights that make me feel like I'm taking part in a NASA stress test for astronaut candidates.
The article says that the industry has backed down in some states and some credit-freeze laws have passed, but with conditions and business-friendly exceptions — for instance, Delaware had to eliminate a provision that included fines for merchants that failed to secure customer data, before the law could be passed."'The banks, the insurance companies, credit bureaus and retailers really came out of the woodwork and fought hard against it,' [activist George Fitzgerald] said. 'I thought it was good for them and the banks. I thought with all the ID theft going on, people might even get to the point where they'd be afraid of using the [banking] system. I thought that since the credit bureaus were making a bundle of money off of trading consumers' information... that they should offer a way to protect that information.'
"Of course, if an application writer makes assumptions that ignore realities such as the speed of light or temporary congestion, their application's going to behave badly. But no premium QoS in the world is going to help that. My sense is still that the ISPs that are complaining about net neutrality are simply being greedy and don't want to invest money to cope with the growth in usage.
Computerworld's Frank Hayes responds to LeBlanc and questions Microsoft's logic:You may rightfully say that crashing is always bad, and having a server-class app background, I agree. Crashing means you made a mistake, bad programmer, no biscuit. However, crashing may be the lesser of the evils in many places. In the event that our apps crash, we have recovery mechanisms, ways to report the crash so we know what function had the problem, and so on. I really take issue with those who would characterize a client-side crash as a denial of service. If you can crash my app so that I can't restart it, or have to reboot my system, well, OK — that's a DoS. If you blew up my app, and I just don't load that document again, big deal. On the server side, all crashes are bad — though it is still better to drop the service than to give the attacker a command prompt.
"So can we expect to see that approach in other products that use Windows Embedded? Like maybe...a TV that, when the cable service goes pixellated, shorts out all the circuitry in your house? ("Users can reset circuit breakers to resume normal operations.") A car CD player that, when it's fed a scratched disc, disconnects the steering and brakes and disengages the clutch? ("Users who survive can restart the car to resume normal operations.")
If your application code is in control, it can gracefully reject bad input. If your app code ISN'T in control, you crash. You're already owned. This suicide-before-capture approach isn't "by-design" behavior. It's lack-of-design behavior.
Meanwhile, Vista is rising, the article says, with just over 2% of computers connected to the Internet using the new Windows OS. The figures are from a company called Net Applications, which collects its data from the browsers of visitors to its network of 40,000+ Web sites."The share of PowerPC-based Macs fell... from 4.29% in February to 3.94% in March. That dip was not fully offset by an increase in Intel-based Mac hardware, leading to a overall net decline in Mac share of 0.3%, to 6.08% in March.
"It's an inevitable result of a thriving free market and tech expertise. An underground economy often mirrors the legal, above-ground one. Scratch a criminal, and sometimes you find a misguided entrepreneur, looking to get rich a little too quick.
"If you have the right kind of job, you can take vacations while you're "on the clock." In other words, you can travel for fun and adventure and keep on working. You can travel a lot more without needing more official vacation time. I've done it. In August I took a monthlong vacation to Central America, backpacking from one Mayan ruin to the next, and I never officially took time off. I submitted my columns, provided reports and other input, participated in conference calls and interacted via e-mail. I used hotel Wi-Fi connections and local cybercafes to communicate and Skype to make business calls. Nobody knew I was sunburned, drinking from a coconut and listening to howler monkeys as I replied to their e-mails.
"While the technology would most likely first be used to track medication, it could also be used to store text and images for many millennia, thwarting the longevity issues associated with today's disk and tape storage systems... The artificial DNA that carries the data to be preserved makes multiple copies of the DNA and inserts the original as well as identical copies into the bacterial genome sequence. The multiple copies work as backup files to counteract natural degradation of the preserved data, according to the newswire. Bacteria have particularly compact DNA, which is passed down from generation to generation. The information stored in that DNA can also be passed on for long-term preservation of large data files, the scientists said.
According to the article, Dell says that lining up certification, support and training will 'take a lot of work.'"The company said today that the note was just about certifying the hardware for being ready to work with Novell SUSE Linux, not an announcement that the computers would be loaded and sold with the operating system in the near future.
Another area in which Vista has found to be lacking is gaming, as discussed earlier on Slashdot."Popular Windows software that is conspicuously missing from Microsoft's list includes Adobe Systems Inc.'s entire line of graphics and multimedia software, Symantec Corp.'s security products, as well as the Mozilla Foundation's open-source Firefox Web browser, Skype Ltd.'s free voice-over-IP software and the OpenOffice.org alternative to Microsoft Office
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