Slashdot Mirror

OK, I'll go download it ... oh! It seems it is "NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD".

My god, Microsoft, a fellow human being's life is at stake, and you won't let us download IE?

AI looked so close in the 1960s, once it was realized that you could get a computer to do mathematical logic. All that was necessary was to express the real world in predicate calculus and prove theorems. After all, that's how logicians and philosophers all the way back to Aristotle said thinking worked. Well, no. We understand now that setting up the problem in a formal way is the hard part. That's the part that takes intelligence. Crunching out a solution by theorem proving is easily mechanized, but not too helpful. That formalism is too brittle, because it deals in absolutes.

AI looked so close in the 1960s, once it was realized that you could get a computer to do mathematical logic. All that was necessary was to express the real world in predicate calculus and prove theorems. After all, that's how logicians and philosophers all the way back to Aristotle said thinking worked. Well, no. We understand now that setting up the problem in a formal way is the hard part. That's the part that takes intelligence. Crunching out a solution by theorem proving is easily mechanized, but not too helpful. That formalism is too brittle, because it deals in absolutes.

This article is a good place to start.

You could also introduce him to the theory behind Bittorrent, which is a good demonstration of how many computers each doing a small task, given modest bandwidth, can add up to massive distribution and publication power in short order.

Now, what if some distributed network decided to siphon a gig of illegal or embarrassing materials onto a compromised target machine. Perhaps a politician that is voting the wrong way?

Then ask him, not if the entire banking industry is safe, but if an individual's information (SHA hash collision or private key, but that's not "average Joe" speak) could be subject to a distributed brute force attack.

With the growing power of computers making tiny pieces of malware harder and harder to notice (that 1% of processor time is more and more powerful), and malware being able to literally hide files from the user until such time that it chooses to reveal them, it seems like it's only a matter of time before someone with a large enough botnet, and enough imagination, could start attacking individuals and/or siphoning off their money. How you do this is not something I care to discuss, but the black hats (both the actual criminals and the security experts, as an exercise) already have ideas and are working on it. That's why you'll see them periodically calling for stronger encryption (more bits in the keys). If there was no possible threat, they wouldn't be creating and suggesting longer keys. Rootkits would not be a concern, if files hidden from the user were always benign (most are).

But all it takes is the wrong person to have the right idea, a breakthrough that changes the assumptions, especially in cryptography. Show him the movie "Sneakers" if you want to fuel some imagination regarding that. It's crap, but it's also fun and sizes the problem for the average Joe. Assuming that only ethical people work in cryptography is somewhat naive. Assuming that unethical people are not watching the progress of ethical individuals in the field is stupid.

There's nothing to say such solutions and attacks haven't occurred already, but it seems, as your son suggests, unlikely. You can bet if a criminal has figured it out, a little bit of money siphoned off here and there would be almost impossible to detect, especially in an environment where people are unwilling to believe it's even possible. Believe me, if the idea has hit Hollywood, it's old hat. That's exactly how such a criminal would proceed if they had found a way to leverage such distributed computing applications. They would target a distributed network of accounts, one by one, in a way that looked like banking errors (which are numerous and automatically corrected by the bank) and slowly siphon money from the banking industry itself, through compromised individual accounts. No individual would suffer, because of correction processes in the banks, the world's capital reserves would.

Then ask what that money could buy in terms of influence, weapons, elections?

Any compromised machine is a liability to its user. Botnets are a menace to society, and we're lucky all they're (hopefully) being used for is "penis enlargement" ads and DDoS attacks. That's barely scraping the surface of their potential.

If he wants to go on believing that his safety and security are a given, without any effort on his own part, there's little you can do, but anyone with any imagination, who is not in flat out denial, can demonstrate that distributed computing applications have a great deal of power, and that basic security is everyone's concern. It is definitely not good that these ne

Windows 2000 required a 133MHz processor and 64MB RAM.
Windows XP required a 233MHz processor and 128MB RAM. The ONLY FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCE between them was the thumbnail view mode. Everything else was eyecandy and toys, but it wasn't a huge upgrade cost.
Not really, XP had a lower latency kernel which made it better for audio production, along with other improvements. So yeah, on the surface it only looks like XP had superficial improvements over 2000, but that's only because it's all you care to find out about.

I'm sure there are cases that running all Linux is cheaper, server-side especially, but I would say that this story in particular is about as credible as any of these - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluat ion/casestudies/r2casestudies.mspx, and at least the Microsoft "studies" provide figures, and specifics of why they got a saving.

In the complex world of IT, neither closed source nor open-source is the perfect solution for everything.

If you are looking for more resources and good examples here are some resources for you. Silverlight Developer Center on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412395. aspx Public Community Site http://silverlight.net/ Scott Guthrie Blog Developer focused but with good general insight... http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/04/ silverlight-1-0-released-and-silverlight-for-linux -announced.aspx Webcasts http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx ?EventID=1032345586&Culture=en-US http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDeta ils.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032345591&CountryC ode=US 6 page architectural overview... http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428859. aspx Suresh

If you are looking for more resources and good examples here are some resources for you. Silverlight Developer Center on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412395. aspx Public Community Site http://silverlight.net/ Scott Guthrie Blog Developer focused but with good general insight... http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/04/ silverlight-1-0-released-and-silverlight-for-linux -announced.aspx Webcasts http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx ?EventID=1032345586&Culture=en-US http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDeta ils.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032345591&CountryC ode=US 6 page architectural overview... http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428859. aspx Suresh

If you are looking for more resources and good examples here are some resources for you. Silverlight Developer Center on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412395. aspx Public Community Site http://silverlight.net/ Scott Guthrie Blog Developer focused but with good general insight... http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/04/ silverlight-1-0-released-and-silverlight-for-linux -announced.aspx Webcasts http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx ?EventID=1032345586&Culture=en-US http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDeta ils.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032345591&CountryC ode=US 6 page architectural overview... http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428859. aspx Suresh

If you are looking for more resources and good examples here are some resources for you. Silverlight Developer Center on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412395. aspx Public Community Site http://silverlight.net/ Scott Guthrie Blog Developer focused but with good general insight... http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/04/ silverlight-1-0-released-and-silverlight-for-linux -announced.aspx Webcasts http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx ?EventID=1032345586&Culture=en-US http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDeta ils.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032345591&CountryC ode=US 6 page architectural overview... http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428859. aspx Suresh

If you are looking for more resources and good examples here are some resources for you. Silverlight Developer Center on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb412395. aspx Public Community Site http://silverlight.net/ Scott Guthrie Blog Developer focused but with good general insight... http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/04/ silverlight-1-0-released-and-silverlight-for-linux -announced.aspx Webcasts http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx ?EventID=1032345586&Culture=en-US http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDeta ils.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032345591&CountryC ode=US 6 page architectural overview... http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428859. aspx Suresh

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Util ities/BlueScreen.mspx
It's called BlueScreen Screen Saver v3.2 ^^

I like Process Explorer as a replacement for taskmanager. It's almost the opposite of what this thread is about, it looks like a bloated taskmanager, but it really does manage to show you simple process info without going crazy. Comes without an installer (yeah!).

Best feature, right click a process and pick "Search Online".

I like Opera, modo, foobar2000, VLC Media Player, 7zip, Pidgin, Process Explorer, uTorrent, TCPView, Foxit Reader, and WinDirStat.

I like Opera, modo, foobar2000, VLC Media Player, 7zip, Pidgin, Process Explorer, uTorrent, TCPView, Foxit Reader, and WinDirStat.

It is possible on Windows, by setting up an event with CreateMemoryResourceNotification - see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa366541. aspx

You're assuming that the 2GB a day could be spread evenly over the disk. This would vary depending on how much free space you have on the device. If your drive is 1% full then you can distribute your writes over the other 99%. But most people don't keep their storage mainly empty. In fact people tend to run just under the limit - hence the saying that crap always expands to fill the available space. If your drive was 99% full then you can't distribute the writes over the parts with data (as it would have to be moved somewhere else negating the benefit), and then you run into the problem with the limited duty cycle.

Wear levelling happens inside the device - the OS can't see it.

So even if you keep writing to the same logical sector over and over again that physical location moves around so that the erase count remains the same for each erase unit. The device has just needs to keep track of the mapping from logical blocks that the OS uses to physical blocks which are an actual location in flash.

It has to be like this, since all filesystems tend to write to the area at the start of the disk very frequently. On FAT the FAT needs to updated everytime a file grows. On EXT2/3 or NTFS it's actually worse - the inode needs to be updated on file growth or when the file "last accessed time" changes. People have worked on "last accessed time" problem though - XP only updated it with a one hour granularity, and Vista disables it by default. Linux has a relatime mount option.

"It looks like you ran into a dependency hell. Try to uncomment these in your repo config:

http://download.microsoft.com/apt/os/unstable
http://download.microsoft.com/apt/patience/testing "

Yeah - but "unstable" and "testing" are the only repositories Microsoft has. What now?

"It looks like you ran into a dependency hell. Try to uncomment these in your repo config:

http://download.microsoft.com/apt/os/unstable
http://download.microsoft.com/apt/patience/testing "

Yeah - but "unstable" and "testing" are the only repositories Microsoft has. What now?

Singularity + Silverlight

See https://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/

thegnu, you got owned, just admit it and then STFU.
I don't know, Anonymous Coward, I seem to see you get owned all the time

Right from the horse's mouth, scroll to the bottom and read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296088

APPLIES TO
        Microsoft Outlook 2000 Standard Edition
        Microsoft Outlook 2002 Standard Edition
        Microsoft Outlook 98 Standard Edition
        Microsoft Outlook 97 Standard Edition

And check this out, asshole:
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/repair2gbpst.asp

I had Office XP SP1, and now I know why she got cut off at 1.82GB, except her computer exhibited the same behaviour as if I had just hit 2gb. And, I may add, you'll notice that it's an issue in Office 2000. Also, the fact that they changed it to a lockdown at 1.82 GB, rather than just throwing up a message that let you save your ass, is still kind of fucking weird.

See here, http://www.brienposey.com/kb/pst_maintenance.asp, that Microsoft is getting better, because at least you don't have to call them for the repair tool anymore. Hrm.

And, to further address the "providing support for all their 10 year old software" troll, here's a reference to product support lifecycle for Office 2003, which states that they will support it "until users start adopting" 2007. The actual number is Jan 18th, 2009. 2 years after the successor is quite reasonable, given the nature of the application.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA10229 4401033.aspx#3

Now, given that one can infer from MS's own actions (in addition to regular old logic) that it would be reasonable to support Outlook for 2 years past the subsequent release, it's odd that sometime between 2003 and 2005, MS didn't port back some patch that made 2002 less broken. But that's obviously not something they're interested in.

again, AC, fuck you and your family.

thegnu, you got owned, just admit it and then STFU.
I don't know, Anonymous Coward, I seem to see you get owned all the time

Right from the horse's mouth, scroll to the bottom and read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296088

APPLIES TO
        Microsoft Outlook 2000 Standard Edition
        Microsoft Outlook 2002 Standard Edition
        Microsoft Outlook 98 Standard Edition
        Microsoft Outlook 97 Standard Edition

And check this out, asshole:
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/repair2gbpst.asp

I had Office XP SP1, and now I know why she got cut off at 1.82GB, except her computer exhibited the same behaviour as if I had just hit 2gb. And, I may add, you'll notice that it's an issue in Office 2000. Also, the fact that they changed it to a lockdown at 1.82 GB, rather than just throwing up a message that let you save your ass, is still kind of fucking weird.

See here, http://www.brienposey.com/kb/pst_maintenance.asp, that Microsoft is getting better, because at least you don't have to call them for the repair tool anymore. Hrm.

And, to further address the "providing support for all their 10 year old software" troll, here's a reference to product support lifecycle for Office 2003, which states that they will support it "until users start adopting" 2007. The actual number is Jan 18th, 2009. 2 years after the successor is quite reasonable, given the nature of the application.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA10229 4401033.aspx#3

Now, given that one can infer from MS's own actions (in addition to regular old logic) that it would be reasonable to support Outlook for 2 years past the subsequent release, it's odd that sometime between 2003 and 2005, MS didn't port back some patch that made 2002 less broken. But that's obviously not something they're interested in.

again, AC, fuck you and your family.

UNLESS YOU EXPRESSLY OPT OUT OF THIS FEATURE, YOU CONSENT TO THE TRANSMISSION OF CERTAIN STANDARD COMPUTER INFORMATION TO MICROSOFT ... The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software ... You may not work around any technical limitations in the software; reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software ... The software is subject to United States export laws and regulations ... The software is licensed "as-is."

Go the the Find Another Search Provider Page.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en -en/default.mspx#

On the right there, there's a nice big yellow box titled "Create Your Own".
Open a search in another window to http://www.google.ca/ and search for TEST
Paste the URL into the Box in the Search Provider's page, and call it Google Canada
Select Google Canada as your default Search provider

Voila.

My, that was hard wasn't it. Want to have a go at proving black is white? Though I would suggest avvoiding Zebra Crossing if you do.

err:module:import_dll Library WINHTTP.dll (which is needed by L"Z:\\home\\kwabbles\\Desktop\\WLinstaller.exe") not found

It looks like you ran into a dependency hell. Try to uncomment these in your repo config:

http://download.microsoft.com/apt/os/unstable
http://download.microsoft.com/apt/patience/testing

err:module:import_dll Library WINHTTP.dll (which is needed by L"Z:\\home\\kwabbles\\Desktop\\WLinstaller.exe") not found

It looks like you ran into a dependency hell. Try to uncomment these in your repo config:

http://download.microsoft.com/apt/os/unstable
http://download.microsoft.com/apt/patience/testing

like that for photos in that Microsoft table demo, whatever it was called.

I believe F# is another language to check out. They now have a Visual Studio 2008 Add-in, check it out.

wget http://download.microsoft.com/WLinstaller.exe ./WLinstaller.exe

err:module:import_dll Library WINHTTP.dll (which is needed by L"Z:\\home\\kwabbles\\Desktop\\WLinstaller.exe") not found
err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L"Z:\\home\\kwabbles\\Desktop\\WLinstaller.exe" failed, status c0000135

No worky. Oh well. Back to reading slashdot.

The very first page I visited to 'Showcase SilverLight Features' resulted in a 'AG_E_NETWORK_ERROR' and closed my browser. I'm Using Vista Ultimate 64 with Firefox.

I'm not impressed. I can get errors with plain old JavaScript.

The binary codecs will initially support x86 and x86-64

They also provide a complete list of the supported codecs. I hope that, though I'm never touching *light with a 10-foot pole, this move makes Adobe finally release a x86_64 version of Flash (yeah, we all hate those banners and such, but being able to watch youtube videos without hacks like nspluginviewer would be quite nice. Besides, my nspluginviwer-ed version of Flash SUX at playing real time streaming video...).

Yeah, people still think you need special permission to use software.

The whole Microsoft WGA thread I mentioned, and Quake3 Auth server outages before it, impressed on me the problems of buying any product with any kind of self termination, especially remotely. But even time-locked software. If I ever needed it, I may want it twenty years from now nested into three emulators, on a machine without USB ports for a dongle and long after a manufacturer has shut down the authentication site. If I can't hope to do that to get my data, I just can't use it. Not to mention that MS even tries to forbid running their software under an emulator.

Google for windows shared source. First result is this page, which seems to suggest that, while you need to be a certain type of entity to qualify, at least this type of entity can be bought outright by having 1500 Windows licenses.

Or something like that; point is, they're not going to refuse the Chinese government just because they're the Chinese government; in fact, they have a program specifically for governments, as well.

More information can be found here.

Google for windows shared source. First result is this page, which seems to suggest that, while you need to be a certain type of entity to qualify, at least this type of entity can be bought outright by having 1500 Windows licenses.

Or something like that; point is, they're not going to refuse the Chinese government just because they're the Chinese government; in fact, they have a program specifically for governments, as well.

More information can be found here.

Google for windows shared source. First result is this page, which seems to suggest that, while you need to be a certain type of entity to qualify, at least this type of entity can be bought outright by having 1500 Windows licenses.

Or something like that; point is, they're not going to refuse the Chinese government just because they're the Chinese government; in fact, they have a program specifically for governments, as well.

More information can be found here.

Yes. Unfortunately Portugal is not part of the "rich, developed countries". It continues to exist as a Bananas' Republic, although it belongs to Western Europe... (well geographically, at least).
Really-western-European countries adopt open source, open office and open standards for their public institutions. Seems Portugal goes the other way around :

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F %2Fgrandelojadoqueijolimiano.blogspot.com%2F2006%2 F02%2Fo-acordo-com-microsoft.html&langpair=pt%7Cen &hl=en&ie=UTF8
http://www.microsoft.com/portugal/presspass/press/ 2006/fev06/02-01msftplanotec.mspx

Thanks go to the recent Portuguese Governments (TM) for continually supporting Micro$oft.

Microsoft have released a program called Windows Steadystate which is a replacement of the "Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit". It is software designed by Microsoft that hooks into the normal windows security to lock down any PC. It is specifically designed for Kiosk environments. Link Here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamil y/sharedaccess/default.mspx The great thing about this piece of software is that it prevents changes to disk at logon level or at reboot level. Evdeployed this software in a public internet kiosk environment at work and it has been running very smoothly. I wonder if this will get modded down for being Pro-Microsoft?

I think the people that talked Cuba and Syria into voting for MS OOXML should have some kind of award.

"Please vote for our standard. BTW we make the only software can use it properly and we wont sell it to you".
http://www.microsoft.com/exporting/faq.htm

Your arrogance amazes me. If people like me are the reason why HTML coding sucks, people like you are the reason the entire industry sucks.

Service providers should provide service. You're advocating typical finger pointing crap, 'oh, not my problem, I won't fix it and I don't care if my customers suffer, let Microsoft fix it'.

Yeah, I'm dumb; I mistakenly believe that both parties should do something to provide a fix or workaround for the services people pay for.

And like I said before, I'll write in HTML strict, I'll even write XHTML strict, but if my users say 'I can't see your content' I'm not going to get on a soapbox and say, 'Blame Microsoft', I'm going to work around it. Anything else is just typical arrogance, the type that eventually puts you out of business.

By the way, do you know what appears to be the problem with the DHCP setup? http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/02/vista-users-in- swedish-community-cant-get-online/ http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/92823 3 Sounds like the ISP is at least partially to blame.

If you're using Microsoft as your OS just install Steadystate from M$ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=D077A52D-93E9-4B02-BD95-9D770CCDB431&displa ylang=en

An easy tool which you can lock down the PC for just browsing and nothing else - it takes an image of your drive and when you reboot it restores the PC to that original image - no need fopr Anti Virus / Spyware and the rest of the crap.

I never talk up M$ products but this kind of fits the posters requirements without shelling out money or learning other OS's.

Ok, if you want to run windows (and why wouldn't you? that's a joke, kids..) you can download microsoft shared computer toolkit, or as the intertube's amazing google shows me what is now called windows steadystate. linky: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamil y/sharedaccess/default.mspx

lets you run up a basic windows box, get it configured to the point you want it (firefox starting in fullscreen mode on startup, perhaps?) then set it so that no matter what the user does, no changes survive a reboot. if they want to save photos get them to do it to a second partition or a usb drive.

That way, every morning when they boot up, it's that same fresh load you prepared for them months ago. Tasty. I used to use this in a school where the kids needed admin rights for a certain piece of badly written software and it works a treat, no matter what they did it was brand new after a reboot.

Better yet, Microsoft Steady State Software http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamil y/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Software is the answer. http://pcwin.com/popular/Lock_xp_kiosk-1.htm Or the Microsoft way http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555463/en-us

... grinding that anti-MS axe.

Hey, that's not fair. I stand up for Microsoft now and then. Were those posts not helpful?

The Fine Article is about HP selling consumer desktop PCs with Linux, though. I don't what your post has to do with that but you anonymous cowards aren't getting astroturf points off of me today. Instead I'll provide informative topical discussion and foil your evil plot.

The original source for this story is apcmag. From that article:

Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC manufacturer, has announced it will start selling Linux-based PCs from $AU600 in Australia.

I can only hope this is a pilot, with PCs for the US market to follow. Like many of the people leaving comments on that story, I would like to buy some Linux laptops from HP here in the US. I would also like to see a choice of processors. This is a nice start though.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop also comes with OpenOffice preinstalled, Firefox for web browsing and Evolution for email.

That sounds like a full featured environment for the average user. Much better than Microsoft Works, a non-removable trial copy of Office and the usual collection of junkware that comes with a Windows PC. With compatible software vendors like this impressive list finding commercial software for your HP/Red Hat system should be no trouble. Dag has a whole bunch of free stuff available for it too. I imagine Windows users will have a hard time understanding that yes, you can just click on one of thousands of great free programs and it will install but it won't turn your PC into a spam zombie. It shouldn't take them long to get fond of it though. That's a significant change for people used to dealing with a software vendor that's proud that three quarters of a million of their customers were infested with root kits.

Windows gamers will be relieved to hear that for a measly $5/mo they can join Transgaming and play Windows games. If they have Windows programs they don't want to throw away like one of these, Wine will be a nice free addition to their Red Hat desktop. If they prefer a professionally maintained compatibility engine they might like Codeweavers' Crossover Linux which supports these programs and only costs $40.

The list of hardware known to be compatible with RHEL 5 is impressive, as is the list of systems that are certified and supported.

Disclosure - I also don't work for anybody mentioned here or sell their stuff. My opinions belong to me and I'm not getting paid to have them. YMMV, yadda yadda.

The choice of Red Hat as a partner in this venture shows just how GNU/Linux

Animation and 3d are great ways to show the concepts. Beats the heck out of static reading/powerpoints, especially for modern high schoolers. Jim Blinn & cohorts at Cal tech did a pair of great works on Physics (The Mechanical Universe, circa 1987) and Project Mathmeatics (much more recent). Then try your own lessons (or have the kids do some) using Alice 3D

Project Mathematics Home Page

Project MATHEMATICS! videos explore basic topics in high school mathematics in ways that cannot be done at the chalkboard or in a textbook. They bring mathematics to life with imaginative computer animation, live action, music, special effects, and a sense of humor.

Mechanical Universe Home

The Mechanical Universe...and Beyond is a critically-acclaimed series of 52 thirty-minute videotape programs covering the basic topics of an introductory university physics course. The series was originally produced as a broadcast telecourse by the California Institute of Technology and Intelecom, Inc. with program funding from the Annenberg/CPB Project.

see see Jim Blinn's title list

A neat toy that I found is the Microsoft Physics Illustrator for Tablet PC. This application lets you draw physics diagrams, and then animates them. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=56347faf-a639-4f3b-9b87-1487fd4b5a53&displa ylang=en

So if you were stupid enough to use Windows in a safety critical application you risk WGA putting people's lives at risk?

Imagine if you used Windows in a doctors surgery to hold patient records, or store drug allergy data on it. WGA flags the PC as counterfeit, after that only Window Explorer works, and you can't get their records or allergy info.


Read the EULA. Pay attention to the section regarding life critical application. It clearly states it is not to be used in life support applications. It simply isn't reliable for that. MS is avoiding lawsuits from people depending on Windows for life support by explicitly stating it is not designed, manufactured, or intended for that.

"Note on Java Support. The SOFTWARE may contain support for programs written in Java. Java technology is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as online control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapon systems, in which the failure of Java technology could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage. Sun Microsystems, Inc. has contractually obligated MS to make this disclaimer."

snipped from here;
http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/ieplatform/ie/ license.txt

Can a Vista user confirm this MS page accurate? It seems the worst issue is no logon for more than 1 hour. There is vague talk of "local access" and "certain activities" - what exactly does this mean? And what triggers a WGA check, apart from downloads?

And paying $100s to have my machine remotely crippled? Why do consumers like to bend over and spread so wide?