http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=747 Here is one I found online for $15. Follow the plans and a few hundred dollars worth of materials and tools(less of course if you own a router and a table saw)
This sort of thing isn't hard to build, really. I do suggest using real wood, though, as MDF is very heavy and not nearly as easy to screw and bolt together for the first-time project builder.
But 15 years ago, it wasn't that way. Nearly nothing worked on inkjets and everything was made to work best with impact printers. NOW it is easy to switch, but then it was horrendous. Yet, twice as fast for half the cost is something that will kill the competition every time no matter how entrenched they are.
I don't like the "Apple tax", either, but it's not just Apple. Microsoft also has a "Microsoft Tax" as well in their insane pricing structure and the requirement to upgrade a lot of hardware and memory to switch from XP to Windows 7.
Microsoft's problem is that they are the slower and less flexible to change company that is rolling along on a couple of decades worth of momentum. I wonder what would happen if Apple decided to make their next OS no longer require Apple hardware? One small change and suddenly you have a thousand managers in Redmond sweating bullets. Microsoft is now stuck with facing a scenario like that. The only question is - will it be in one year or ten? The clock is ticking and so far I see them trying to eek that last bit of money out of their old designs.
Epson tried and tried but finally even they had to realize that it was better to just pay the patent fees to HP and move to the new technology. And in computers, that new technology is BSD(I would say Linux, but given that open-source isn't something Apple OR Microsoft believe in, BSD is the alternative barring a total new fork from scratch. And even Microsoft isn't likely to have the desire or skill to do that right now.
Yes, it's going to be brutal, but the alternative is to suddenly find themselves pushed out of the market. And if they are, we'll just use something else. Windows XP was the thirteenth operating system that I had used to date. OSX and Linux are #14 and #15, btw, if only because they came out later.
Oh, the list, as a footnote::) 1: PET(ouch that was a long time ago) 2:Atari(various) 3:TRS/80/etc 4: CP/M 5:Commodore 6:Apple II/IIe 7:Apple IIGS 8:Amiga 9:Macintosh "classic"(since system 2.0) 10:DOS 11:VMS 12:HP/UX(#10-13 in college) 13:Windows(various flavors since Windows 3.11) 14:OSX 15:Linux 16:?
30 years+ and 15 operating systems. I guess I have a different perspective than most people.:)
Vista/Windows 7 are written from scratch, they aren't derivatives of NT. That's what their marketing department tells you and yet you can run applications that were written for XP as well as many legacy applications on them. You can load up Visual Basic as an example and it runs.
Compare this to Apple - OS 8 just does not work on the new machines. Go get an emulation program if you want to do that. They were faced with an impending wall to get over and they made the right choice. It was drastic but had to be done. The result was amazing and sales have never been better for them.
Microsoft has to break backwards compatibility to move forward. And yet they refuse to do it. This will cause them endless headaches and problems as their competition will be able to move forward while they run into issues like this over and over again.
What needs to happen: 1 - *IX-like streamlined code and core. Most likely use BSD since it is closed-source enough to protect their IP. Or design their own version/OS from scratch. 2 - 64 bit only. Native support for the new hardware and ram limits and so on. 3 - Legacy applications run under an emulator until people get used to the new OS.
If this begins to sound a lot like Apple's solution, that's not surprise. Microsoft can easily make their own version/flavor if they so wish. There's plenty of room in the marketplace to complete. But if they do nothing and wait until Windows 9 Windows 10 to make this move (8 is as soon as they could do it- maybe 2 years from now) they will be dead and forgotten.
A perfect example of this is Epson. They were #1 in printing and printers for almost two decades. They had a lock on the market and it was considered law that it would always be that way. Then a small upstart named HP came along and bet everything on a new technology. Within a few years the entire industry had bailed on Epson and moved to inkjet technology. Epson went from being #1 to just another small player in a field of many. And they were one of the lucky ones that only did survive by adopting the new technology. Most of the entire impact printing industry just simply died off.
Microsoft could well remember this past history. They are not literally invulnerable and if a better competing product does come along the business world will flee to it without much hesitation. Currently they are getting close to the end of their life cycle, much like impact printers were. They need to move before too many of their users leave and they don't have enough market share left to force the rest/the loyal to come along when (not if) they have to eventually do a complete re-write/make a brand new OS)
Five years will be too long. By then, even Ubuntu will be mature and easy enough to use that it will make Window 7 look like the poor kid on the block who can only afford a set of Tinkertoys while everyone else is playing with Legos. It may be too late even now to fix the PR damage that they have piled upon themselves over the last decade. And unlike Apple, they don't have any Messiah to come and re-invent the company all over again. Even Gates has left it to its own fate.
The key may not be in throwing more energy into refining techniques such as parallel programming, but rather rethinking the basic abstractions that make up the Microsoft operating systems model.
There. Fixed it.
Windows is a lot like Apple's old OS 6/7/8 was - old and haggard and full of legacy cruft that just needs a complete ground-up re-write to address. Sure, it looks pretty and runs fairly decently now, but it's plainly also at the end if its life-cycle and showing extreme signs of stress.
Apple took an enormous risk in making a clean break from the past and it seems to be working well for them. Microsoft needs to as well. I doubt that it will, though, as it tends to operate more like GM than anything else. Tons of levels of bureaucracy and a general unwillingness to do serious innovation. After all, what worked in the past should work in the future? Right?
Let's hope that they figure it out sooner rather than later. Or else it's going to get very very lonely at the top.
What was the justification and evidence used to determine the likelihood of cases such as these to be life-threatening?
My guess is that they might have mistakenly thought it was meters instead of feet. Because a fall of more than 6 *meters* would likely have already been fatal. Every other possible explanation aside from the original posting being wrong(distinct possibility - it seems as if Slashdot's editors are nearly useless at pre-checking even basic facts lately).
But the original post was about his asking what to recommend to his relatives. This implies that they are not going to practice such rigid self-control or have tight control over the machine. The average time for a normal install of XP without anything installed to protect it and being compromised is literally only a few minutes.
My hardware firewall gives me this information: (last 365 days) 1,711,091 access attempts.
If you are online at all, you need to run something. And the truth is that public utilities just don't cut it.(nor does XP any more, to be honest)
It's not just cheaper labor. It's that they are doing what we did over a hundred years ago when we decided to just ignore the rest of the world's rights and patents and do our own thing. So we built and invented and took all of the credit where we could for ourselves. And it worked fine in the early days. Then lawyers and the courts got involved. And now, it's so cumbersome to even invent or create anything here in the U.S. that the only real option if you want rapid change and to stay ahead is to once again go to where there is no such idiocy.
And just like there was a giant brain-drain from Europe to the U.S. in the last century or so, there also will be once from elsewhere to China.
I know that if I wanted to start a new company, for instance, California would be the last place I'd want to start it. Or well, pretty much anyplace in the U.S., as just fighting and dealing with legal issues alone would take years and enormous amounts of money before even one item hit the shelves.
Pretty good advice, but the other thing is that you can't get free software to work reliably without multiple layers.
I have XP on my machine. - Router has hardware based firewall enabled. - Zone Alarm for outgoing firewall/app control. - Adblock/Peer Guardian/etc - Two virus scanners. Two malware scanners. - Spybot This all is free and it still only works ~80% of the time. - Spyhunter (paid for this) - One other professional app I paid for (no, not Norton or anything typical consumer junk) The fact is that you need a professional AV and anti-malware/registry locker. The free ones are just not up to the task or updated days or weeks later than they need to be.
Also, - Complete removal of the following from the OS down to the registry/core level: 1: Internet Explorer - my machine throws up "what application should I open this with?" 2: Remote Desktop/Remote Access 3: File Sharing (also remove the relevant parts from the TCP/IP connection) Plus blocking of FTP and other remote protocols in and out of the machine. If I absolutely have to use it, I'll enable it for those few minutes.
It takes all of that to lock down XP. And that's only if I don't get online and hit a bad site on the web or something that I purposely get caught in.(note - torrent, password cracking, and Online Gaming gold/money sites are nearly 100% infected - avoid like the plague) Secondary are social networking sites and online gaming forums and the like.
Yes, this means you really should be using the net for work and a few specific applications you know are secure. Pretty much common sense. No AV in the world will help you if you start going to astalavista or other crack sites and start clicking links to various sites.
So... What to do? Upgrading to Windows 7 or ditching it all and getting Apple/BSD or Linux makes a lot of sense if for no other reason than it's so new that the botnets haven't have time to adjust and are still going mostly after the biggest installed target group of users. They're not much more secure but they are a lot less likely to be targeted, which is something I guess...
It stinks but XP is going to be no longer supported at all in a couple of years, tops, and then the entire industry will abandon it and stop keeping the AV and firewall software as up to date. So changing now to something else is probably the best course of action if this really bothers you. (myself I don't keep anything I can't replace on this machine so I don't care...)
True, but no iPhone means a small amount of panic from those in power who really REALLY don't want us knowing what they are doing.(and email and Gmail and all the rest that they use.
But this also means it needs to be on their own secure network that is wholly run and operated from beginning to end by them. I can't imagine our government and military and courts all having their own dedicated lines back and forth and never touching a single intermediary server or part of the backbone that is owned by Sprint or AT&T or similar along the way. Ie - if you do a trace route and it's not.gov and.mil 100% of the way round trip, it's open to take for free at the point at which it is no longer wholly owned and run by the Government. What this law says is that if it hits *any* non-secure or unencrypted point, it's fair game. Technically it's fair game anyways if they decide to crack the encryption - and a LOT of services use encryption that a dedicated staff of professionals could grind on and crack if they really really wanted that data.
Queue chaos in D.C. when the reality of this hits the fan. D.C. and the Pentagon and the like are more than likely already secure. But I guarantee that the local City hall and Congress Member's office near where I live isn't. And all it takes is a few chinks in the armor to get someone thrown out of office. Everyone is going on as if this is a disaster. Yet, it gives us legal rights to essentially bust our Government wide open and keep tabs on what they are doing. I think it's a wonderfully sneaky way for us to get back at them. Doubly so when you consider that they already did this sort of thing without our permission in the past. As citizens, our rights are already an illusion and if they want us or our information, they already have it. This at least levels the playing field.
1:Run online social site 2:Need to increase income 3:????? 4:Profit!
**** We just figured out what #3 is - sell user data to data mining company(read: foreign botnet, which is where it eventually does end up).
Unfortunately this seems to work for almost anything online. Expect targeted spam to increase tenfold in your email accounts due to this move by them. Well, that is, if you ever signed up for MySpace. Expect Facebook to follow in a few months or years.
What this says about our privacy and all of that is troubling, to be sure, but this also applies as well to the government itself, doesn't it? Ie - if their emails aren't going from a government system to a government system without anyone in between, then they also are fair game for law enforcement?
What I get out of this boils down to essentially: "If it hits any public source or ISP along the way, it's no longer considered protected."
So much for iPhones and Blackberrys and all of that in D.C...
When this flip side of the ruling is understood in a few days(they are a bit slow at times in Congress), I expect it to be changed back fairly quickly.
These lawsuits take months or years to grind through the courts and yet I had one of these pieces of spam just a couple of days ago from them. You'd think that they would at least stop the activity while they are being sued. But from the looks of it, they are going to pay the fine and continue doing it anyways as it's cheaper than stopping their illegal activity.
Did you just advocate the ACTA, but on a much larger scale?
Obviously not. But what exactly should we do when there is a known criminal element(remember this - it's kind of important) that is abusing and making the rest of us unsafe as well as so burdened by their activity that it actually is causing the entire Internet to nearly come to a screeching halt? Perhaps my previous example was wrong and I should have likened it to an outbreak of a disease. Of course you quarantine the area. If they won't do it themselves, you stop the flights and deny them entry at your borders. Each nation has a responsibility here to keep the Internet operating properly and without it being a burden to the rest of the planet. Or else they don't get to play.
Remember, companies and corporations own the infrastructure, so as a last resort they can do what they did here and take action on their own. The normal "rules" that apply in the U.S. to public works and projects don't apply here since there isn't technically "freedom" of anything online. It's not a right, it's a privilege that you pay for, the same as a cell phone or a car. They are just currently not enforcing the fine print that you agree to when you get a connection. I'm 100% positive there's a clause against criminal and malicious behavior in the fine print.
This is known and verified criminal behavior going on here and as such deserves a different response. People can go on and on about freedom like some wet behind the ears college student or pre-law wanna-be, but without someone physically putting a stop to it, all you end up with is a bunch of victims. So of course the public safety has to override other concerns in these cases. And this is what happens in real life as well. Some people might dislike the police, but we do need them, nonetheless.
Since this is online and not some physical crime, though, it's not seen as a big deal in most of the world. So the only way to get the police in those countries to see it as something worth dealing with seems to be to put pressure on the governments that allow this criminal behavior. The easiest way is just to cut the connection until they adequately police their own criminals.
P.S. I like the other comment: "So you suggest our great leaders should cut every country from the internet that doesn't implement the terrorist-and-child-molester-stopping three strikes law?"
Um, what part of illegal and criminal isn't getting through? As much as I dislike these sorts of actions, what should we do? Remember, the Internet isn't a god-given right. It's a paid optional service that the provider has every right to deny you access to if you are doing illegal things with it. If it was me, there would be a 1 strike and we target your house from orbit rule for child molesters and child porn. Three strikes is already more than they deserve.
Sensible and caring people would muzzle him so that he could still listen and participate (via writing or sign language), you NARGIN FLARGIN WERTHERS CANDIES!
Heh. But, seriously. They can't get internet, but they do have news feeds and newspapers and all of the non-digital technology at their disposal, so it IS a bit like they can effectively only listen to part of what's going on until they stop trying to ruin it for everyone else.
The only way to truly combat cybercrime is to just cut the connection.
What will end up happening is that there will be several chunks of the "Net". So Nigeria can do its own thing(as an example). There's absolutely nothing to keep other countries from yanking the plug on anyone that they want as soon as it crosses their borders. "We don't like you - get lost" seems like a fairly effective way, especially for countries that lack a proper satellite infrastructure and have to rely on optical and metal/copper wire connections to get in and out.
Often this boils down to as few as 2-3 main optical cables. Cut those at the border and they're in the dark. People are exactly correct that this is a political problem. The countries of the world that have the power need to flex their muscles and deny those who don't police their own traffic adequately a chance to participate. Now, I'm all for freedom and all of that, but it's like having a town meeting and one guy in the back with Tourette's keeps screaming at the top of his lungs. Sensible people politely push him out the door, lock it, and proceed with the meeting.
I bet even a week without any net in most countries would suddenly get a few thousand police mobilized and start kicking down doors. But as it is, without any stick, there's no incentive for them to do anything at all about it.
I would recommend that your son try to pick up Scratch as an introductory programming language.
I have looked at it(and so has he) and it's really not "nuts-and-bolts" type programming. That's the problem, really. There's very little any more between the big complex languages that adults use and stuff like this that really isn't teaching you serious programming. The obvious question(there were similar programs and "languages" in the past in the 80s and 90s) is where do the kids go from this? Right. Usually thrown into the major languages in high school and college where their heads explode because it's a course for a grade rather than something that they can easily learn in their free time. I suppose HTML and PERL and the like is somewhat usable as an entry level(not sure I want to call it a "language", though, since it's really running scripts and formatting and the like), but it's really not serious low-level programming, either.
BASIC, as much of a bad rep as it gets, actually does fill a lot of that gap for beginners(though they might actually have to learn that evil stuff called math - oh no!). Yes, it's old, yes, it's not cool. But last I checked, the world didn't explode when we all learned it growing up. Plus, there are tons of emulators out there.
My son is currently at the age where he wants to start learning to program. The thing is, other than Basic or similar entry-level languages, he just can't wrap his 11 year old mind around C++ or other more complex languages to start. And I can't exactly drop him straight into SQL or Linux either. He has to start somewhere, and simple languages fill this gap very well for the young. It's also the same reason why I hope that they never stop making those ###-in-one electronic kits. The basics may be old and useless to most of us here, but to our kids and grand-kids someday, it'll make the difference between being a good engineer or technical person versus just another brainless repairer who swaps parts without knowing why.
Learning out of a book in high school or college isn't obviously the same as hands-on building and programming.
Plant Yucca. Nothing but big giant pointy nasty sharp Yucca plants. Bonus points for a Cactus or two. No water required and that 40% requirement will be a cinch to meet.
True, but it's a major minus for a lot of potential buyers later on. Though I guess some paranoid or EMI sensitive types might seek out a place like this...(or bad guys not wanting to be traced...)
The FCC may have something to say about that though. If he is close enough, his mesh may block enough of the signal to put the antenna out of use.
Any passive blocking that he puts on the walls or windows as an owner is something that he can't he held liable for(as opposed to active blocking or putting up a billboard or similar). I'd love to see the judge's face when the cell phone company tries to explain how their antenna requires his apartment to be non-shielded to operate properly(ie - we need to beam the signal *through* it because we put it in a bad location). They are supposed to be placed in such a manner that they are clear of buildings and physical obstructions. Hence the reason they are almost always on a small tower above a roof top. One thing, though - if you shield your place from these frequencies, you won't be able to use your cell phone at all while at home. You *can* turn your house into a giant Faraday cage. But expect it to act like one as well. You likely also won't be able to use your radio or HDTV over the air. Nothing comes in means nothing gets out as well. (OTOH, Wi-fi in home would be secure - heh)
Also, the refit won't be cheap. That Scotchtint runs about $1000 for a 60"x100ft roll. EMI resistant mesh for the walls generally runs the same. Generally you have to re-plaster or put another thin layer of drywall over top of it, which is factored into that price. And of course, it has to be installed properly. At that range(feet vs hundreds of feet) it will generate a significant amount of current.
Possible? Of course. But in today's world, being without tv, radio, wireless, and so on in such a place in NYC would be horrendous. In fact, trying to sell a place that you purposely turned into that would probably make it just as hard to resell as if you did nothing at all. I'd just keep looking. Maybe there's a similar place a block or two over?
I have read it and the number of companies with severe problems is actually over a hundred, total. *One* got canceled and the rest were essentially "warned" not to do it any more. I'm just simply not impressed with the lack of teeth in their policies. The report reads like typical corporate BS as well, showing that they are "tough" by having one token supplier face real sanctions. The wage issue also implies that they only covered wages where they were legally required to do so by the countr(ies) in question(charging fees to get jobs).
*** At 60 facilities, we found records that indicated workers had exceeded weekly work-hour limits more than 50 percent of the time. Similarly, at 65 facilities, more than half of the records we reviewed indicated that workers had worked more than six consecutive days at least once per month. To address these issues, we required each facility to develop management systems--or improve existing systems--to drive compliance with Apple's limits on work hours and required days of rest. *** In essence, no money or back wages were paid - just a slap on the wrist and corporate "programs". That 2.2 million only was in the case of agencies requiring fees, which was illegal under those countries' laws.(but evidently where labor laws are lose, they did nothing)
My point in all of this is that Apple is just like any of the other billion dollar plus companies out there. Now, if they were up front about it like most of them are, that would be fine. But I do get seriously tired of seeing them try to pass themselves off as some sort of "moral" or "upstanding" company that's faultless and pure.
"they condemned the violations and threatened to terminate their business with facilities that did not change their ways.
In other words, no change at all. Just enough press coverage and feigned outrage to cover themselves and shift the blame if required to do so at a later date. But nobody got fired. Nor did any contract get canceled.
The problem with EvE is that you're looking at months of real life time to fly a ship that's halfway fun. If you want to fly a bigger ship, it will take over a year to fly it T2 (and T1 is worthless for anything but making money in). THat's not time spent that can be altered by player skill and strategy, that's clock time due to their skill system. Give me a character with 30 million points and I'd subscribe tomorrow. Starting from scratch I wouldn't advise anyone to bother.
Nor would I. But the easy solution is to buy a character that's 6-12 months or so old already(since the game is going on 6 years now, that's a non-factor). The game itself is free to download, so if you pay the $50 that you normally would have paid for the program itself for most online games, but apply that towards in-game credits to buy a character in EVE, you're half way to your goal of just flying and having fun right from the start.
The way I see it is that if you were going to spend 6-12 months on fees to get to where you wanted/or get burned out and leave it anyways, why not spend that up front and save yourself the year of grinding? With a year old character that's reasonably well set up, you're able to skip all of the annoying nonsense and get right to playing the game. And without that mind-numbing boredom, you're more likely to remain playing as well.
That said, EVE does have one major issue for U.S. players, and that is jaw-dropping lag. Everything is in Europe and the majority of players and guilds are also over there. So North American players are the night shift. So we get double-nerfed.
Still, It's not perfect by any means, and the game as some serious flaws, but it's the best we have. The community keeps waiting for some new game to come out to replace it, but so far, nothing else has. The WoW/Everquest model of dumbed-down quests seems to have become the norm since it's easier and simpler to program and manage than a giant 50,000 player sandbox.
BTW, if you do like the WoW type of game, try out the D&D version that's out. It's no better or worse, IMO, but is 100% free to play. This mitigates most of the problems right there.
There are two main types of computer people in this world - those who know theory and books and those who know from experience. If I was running a company, I'd want 100% self-taught and capable programmers and not a bunch of cookie-cutter designers. Sure, the formally taught employees might get the job done a bit faster most of the time, but thinking laterally and outside of the box as well as cleaning up and fixing problems and emergencies, well, that's something that self-taught people have to do or have done many times in the past. It's a different type of thinking, really. And it's something that a lot of college educated students just don't have skills in or have to spend years learning.
Perhaps another example would be those 100-in-1 electronics kits that a lot of us had growing up. We may replace components now instead of fixing the actual parts that broke, but there's a world of difference between an engineer or even a PC tech who understands and knows why the stuff works from using/making it themselves versus just what they were taught somewhere. One knows why it failed and will likely fail again, and the other knows how to use a screwdriver. (and yes they still make those kits, so get your kids one!)
Plus, most college courses require you to take tons of useless classes to GET to the more advanced stuff that you could just as easily go out and buy a book on Linux and save yourself 1-2 years of classes. Of course, your education matters, since if for no other reason than to get that interview, but programming should be something you know and learn and not necessarily what you actually got your degree in. IMO, the smart CIS major switches to Math, Physics, or Engineering instead and does programming as a skill they happen to know.
If it were 1.5 then it can be said that he passed it on to 1 person and half of it onto another person (and then there'd need to be discussion as to how much was lost by passing half an MP3 onto someone).
It is possible to configure bittorrent (as an example) to not seed at all and to limit it to 1 connection at 1kb/sec. They don't like telling you HOW to do this, as it "isn't fair", but it's a necessary tactic for anyone who still has a modem. Unfortunately there isn't a client that I know of where it can be turned off completely.
If you can prove that you only shared a small fraction of one file to one person, AND the amount was less than the number of seconds that would constitute "fair use"(say the amount added up to 20 seconds of music), then would it be considered distribution? It seems like if you took this approach, you would at most be liable for one instance of infringement, which would lower the damages significantly. You might even have a good defense against the claim of distribution, since the original laws implied mass distribution by criminal means and not giving away a single copy to someone.
I guess the moral of the story is to just not use these file sharing programs until there is a leech only option that works. Yes, it's not "fair" to others. So what. If you had chose between the RIAA and a miserable seed ratio, I know what one most people would chose. As a side note - I hate videos(NOT the same as in a theater and who has $2000+ to spend on a proper HT setup? That's a LOT of movie tickets. I also don't d/l or buy MP3s - the sound quality is rubbish compared to a good CD. And used CDs are a few dollars if you know where to shop. Why pay ITunes 99 cents a song when you can get the entire CD used for $5 or less?
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=747
Here is one I found online for $15. Follow the plans and a few hundred dollars worth of materials and tools(less of course if you own a router and a table saw)
http://www.ultimategamingtable.org/instructions.html
This one is $11. I like the slide out tray concept a bit more than drawers, personally.
This sort of thing isn't hard to build, really. I do suggest using real wood, though, as MDF is very heavy and not nearly as easy to screw and bolt together for the first-time project builder.
But 15 years ago, it wasn't that way. Nearly nothing worked on inkjets and everything was made to work best with impact printers. NOW it is easy to switch, but then it was horrendous. Yet, twice as fast for half the cost is something that will kill the competition every time no matter how entrenched they are.
I don't like the "Apple tax", either, but it's not just Apple. Microsoft also has a "Microsoft Tax" as well in their insane pricing structure and the requirement to upgrade a lot of hardware and memory to switch from XP to Windows 7.
Microsoft's problem is that they are the slower and less flexible to change company that is rolling along on a couple of decades worth of momentum. I wonder what would happen if Apple decided to make their next OS no longer require Apple hardware? One small change and suddenly you have a thousand managers in Redmond sweating bullets. Microsoft is now stuck with facing a scenario like that. The only question is - will it be in one year or ten? The clock is ticking and so far I see them trying to eek that last bit of money out of their old designs.
Epson tried and tried but finally even they had to realize that it was better to just pay the patent fees to HP and move to the new technology. And in computers, that new technology is BSD(I would say Linux, but given that open-source isn't something Apple OR Microsoft believe in, BSD is the alternative barring a total new fork from scratch. And even Microsoft isn't likely to have the desire or skill to do that right now.
Yes, it's going to be brutal, but the alternative is to suddenly find themselves pushed out of the market. And if they are, we'll just use something else. Windows XP was the thirteenth operating system that I had used to date. OSX and Linux are #14 and #15, btw, if only because they came out later.
Oh, the list, as a footnote: :)
1: PET(ouch that was a long time ago) 2:Atari(various) 3:TRS/80/etc 4: CP/M 5:Commodore 6:Apple II/IIe 7:Apple IIGS 8:Amiga 9:Macintosh "classic"(since system 2.0) 10:DOS 11:VMS 12:HP/UX(#10-13 in college) 13:Windows(various flavors since Windows 3.11) 14:OSX 15:Linux 16:?
30 years+ and 15 operating systems. I guess I have a different perspective than most people. :)
Vista/Windows 7 are written from scratch, they aren't derivatives of NT.
That's what their marketing department tells you and yet you can run applications that were written for XP as well as many legacy applications on them. You can load up Visual Basic as an example and it runs.
Compare this to Apple - OS 8 just does not work on the new machines. Go get an emulation program if you want to do that. They were faced with an impending wall to get over and they made the right choice. It was drastic but had to be done. The result was amazing and sales have never been better for them.
Microsoft has to break backwards compatibility to move forward. And yet they refuse to do it. This will cause them endless headaches and problems as their competition will be able to move forward while they run into issues like this over and over again.
What needs to happen:
1 - *IX-like streamlined code and core. Most likely use BSD since it is closed-source enough to protect their IP. Or design their own version/OS from scratch.
2 - 64 bit only. Native support for the new hardware and ram limits and so on.
3 - Legacy applications run under an emulator until people get used to the new OS.
If this begins to sound a lot like Apple's solution, that's not surprise. Microsoft can easily make their own version/flavor if they so wish. There's plenty of room in the marketplace to complete. But if they do nothing and wait until Windows 9 Windows 10 to make this move (8 is as soon as they could do it- maybe 2 years from now) they will be dead and forgotten.
A perfect example of this is Epson. They were #1 in printing and printers for almost two decades. They had a lock on the market and it was considered law that it would always be that way. Then a small upstart named HP came along and bet everything on a new technology. Within a few years the entire industry had bailed on Epson and moved to inkjet technology. Epson went from being #1 to just another small player in a field of many. And they were one of the lucky ones that only did survive by adopting the new technology. Most of the entire impact printing industry just simply died off.
Microsoft could well remember this past history. They are not literally invulnerable and if a better competing product does come along the business world will flee to it without much hesitation. Currently they are getting close to the end of their life cycle, much like impact printers were. They need to move before too many of their users leave and they don't have enough market share left to force the rest/the loyal to come along when (not if) they have to eventually do a complete re-write/make a brand new OS)
Five years will be too long. By then, even Ubuntu will be mature and easy enough to use that it will make Window 7 look like the poor kid on the block who can only afford a set of Tinkertoys while everyone else is playing with Legos. It may be too late even now to fix the PR damage that they have piled upon themselves over the last decade. And unlike Apple, they don't have any Messiah to come and re-invent the company all over again. Even Gates has left it to its own fate.
The key may not be in throwing more energy into refining techniques such as parallel programming, but rather rethinking the basic abstractions that make up the Microsoft operating systems model.
There. Fixed it.
Windows is a lot like Apple's old OS 6/7/8 was - old and haggard and full of legacy cruft that just needs a complete ground-up re-write to address. Sure, it looks pretty and runs fairly decently now, but it's plainly also at the end if its life-cycle and showing extreme signs of stress.
Apple took an enormous risk in making a clean break from the past and it seems to be working well for them. Microsoft needs to as well. I doubt that it will, though, as it tends to operate more like GM than anything else. Tons of levels of bureaucracy and a general unwillingness to do serious innovation. After all, what worked in the past should work in the future? Right?
Let's hope that they figure it out sooner rather than later. Or else it's going to get very very lonely at the top.
What was the justification and evidence used to determine the likelihood of cases such as these to be life-threatening?
My guess is that they might have mistakenly thought it was meters instead of feet. Because a fall of more than 6 *meters* would likely have already been fatal. Every other possible explanation aside from the original posting being wrong(distinct possibility - it seems as if Slashdot's editors are nearly useless at pre-checking even basic facts lately).
But the original post was about his asking what to recommend to his relatives. This implies that they are not going to practice such rigid self-control or have tight control over the machine. The average time for a normal install of XP without anything installed to protect it and being compromised is literally only a few minutes.
My hardware firewall gives me this information:
(last 365 days)
1,711,091 access attempts.
If you are online at all, you need to run something. And the truth is that public utilities just don't cut it.(nor does XP any more, to be honest)
It's not just cheaper labor. It's that they are doing what we did over a hundred years ago when we decided to just ignore the rest of the world's rights and patents and do our own thing. So we built and invented and took all of the credit where we could for ourselves. And it worked fine in the early days. Then lawyers and the courts got involved. And now, it's so cumbersome to even invent or create anything here in the U.S. that the only real option if you want rapid change and to stay ahead is to once again go to where there is no such idiocy.
And just like there was a giant brain-drain from Europe to the U.S. in the last century or so, there also will be once from elsewhere to China.
I know that if I wanted to start a new company, for instance, California would be the last place I'd want to start it. Or well, pretty much anyplace in the U.S., as just fighting and dealing with legal issues alone would take years and enormous amounts of money before even one item hit the shelves.
Pretty good advice, but the other thing is that you can't get free software to work reliably without multiple layers.
I have XP on my machine.
- Router has hardware based firewall enabled.
- Zone Alarm for outgoing firewall/app control.
- Adblock/Peer Guardian/etc
- Two virus scanners. Two malware scanners.
- Spybot
This all is free and it still only works ~80% of the time.
- Spyhunter (paid for this)
- One other professional app I paid for (no, not Norton or anything typical consumer junk)
The fact is that you need a professional AV and anti-malware/registry locker. The free ones are just not up to the task or updated days or weeks later than they need to be.
Also,
- Complete removal of the following from the OS down to the registry/core level:
1: Internet Explorer - my machine throws up "what application should I open this with?"
2: Remote Desktop/Remote Access
3: File Sharing (also remove the relevant parts from the TCP/IP connection)
Plus blocking of FTP and other remote protocols in and out of the machine. If I absolutely have to use it, I'll enable it for those few minutes.
It takes all of that to lock down XP. And that's only if I don't get online and hit a bad site on the web or something that I purposely get caught in.(note - torrent, password cracking, and Online Gaming gold/money sites are nearly 100% infected - avoid like the plague) Secondary are social networking sites and online gaming forums and the like.
Yes, this means you really should be using the net for work and a few specific applications you know are secure. Pretty much common sense. No AV in the world will help you if you start going to astalavista or other crack sites and start clicking links to various sites.
So... What to do?
Upgrading to Windows 7 or ditching it all and getting Apple/BSD or Linux makes a lot of sense if for no other reason than it's so new that the botnets haven't have time to adjust and are still going mostly after the biggest installed target group of users. They're not much more secure but they are a lot less likely to be targeted, which is something I guess...
It stinks but XP is going to be no longer supported at all in a couple of years, tops, and then the entire industry will abandon it and stop keeping the AV and firewall software as up to date. So changing now to something else is probably the best course of action if this really bothers you.
(myself I don't keep anything I can't replace on this machine so I don't care...)
True, but no iPhone means a small amount of panic from those in power who really REALLY don't want us knowing what they are doing.(and email and Gmail and all the rest that they use.
But this also means it needs to be on their own secure network that is wholly run and operated from beginning to end by them. I can't imagine our government and military and courts all having their own dedicated lines back and forth and never touching a single intermediary server or part of the backbone that is owned by Sprint or AT&T or similar along the way. Ie - if you do a trace route and it's not .gov and .mil 100% of the way round trip, it's open to take for free at the point at which it is no longer wholly owned and run by the Government. What this law says is that if it hits *any* non-secure or unencrypted point, it's fair game. Technically it's fair game anyways if they decide to crack the encryption - and a LOT of services use encryption that a dedicated staff of professionals could grind on and crack if they really really wanted that data.
Queue chaos in D.C. when the reality of this hits the fan. D.C. and the Pentagon and the like are more than likely already secure. But I guarantee that the local City hall and Congress Member's office near where I live isn't. And all it takes is a few chinks in the armor to get someone thrown out of office. Everyone is going on as if this is a disaster. Yet, it gives us legal rights to essentially bust our Government wide open and keep tabs on what they are doing. I think it's a wonderfully sneaky way for us to get back at them. Doubly so when you consider that they already did this sort of thing without our permission in the past. As citizens, our rights are already an illusion and if they want us or our information, they already have it. This at least levels the playing field.
1:Run online social site
2:Need to increase income
3:?????
4:Profit!
****
We just figured out what #3 is - sell user data to data mining company(read: foreign botnet, which is where it eventually does end up).
Unfortunately this seems to work for almost anything online. Expect targeted spam to increase tenfold in your email accounts due to this move by them. Well, that is, if you ever signed up for MySpace. Expect Facebook to follow in a few months or years.
What this says about our privacy and all of that is troubling, to be sure, but this also applies as well to the government itself, doesn't it? Ie - if their emails aren't going from a government system to a government system without anyone in between, then they also are fair game for law enforcement?
What I get out of this boils down to essentially: "If it hits any public source or ISP along the way, it's no longer considered protected."
So much for iPhones and Blackberrys and all of that in D.C...
When this flip side of the ruling is understood in a few days(they are a bit slow at times in Congress), I expect it to be changed back fairly quickly.
These lawsuits take months or years to grind through the courts and yet I had one of these pieces of spam just a couple of days ago from them. You'd think that they would at least stop the activity while they are being sued. But from the looks of it, they are going to pay the fine and continue doing it anyways as it's cheaper than stopping their illegal activity.
Did you just advocate the ACTA, but on a much larger scale?
Obviously not. But what exactly should we do when there is a known criminal element(remember this - it's kind of important) that is abusing and making the rest of us unsafe as well as so burdened by their activity that it actually is causing the entire Internet to nearly come to a screeching halt? Perhaps my previous example was wrong and I should have likened it to an outbreak of a disease. Of course you quarantine the area. If they won't do it themselves, you stop the flights and deny them entry at your borders. Each nation has a responsibility here to keep the Internet operating properly and without it being a burden to the rest of the planet. Or else they don't get to play.
Remember, companies and corporations own the infrastructure, so as a last resort they can do what they did here and take action on their own. The normal "rules" that apply in the U.S. to public works and projects don't apply here since there isn't technically "freedom" of anything online. It's not a right, it's a privilege that you pay for, the same as a cell phone or a car. They are just currently not enforcing the fine print that you agree to when you get a connection. I'm 100% positive there's a clause against criminal and malicious behavior in the fine print.
This is known and verified criminal behavior going on here and as such deserves a different response. People can go on and on about freedom like some wet behind the ears college student or pre-law wanna-be, but without someone physically putting a stop to it, all you end up with is a bunch of victims. So of course the public safety has to override other concerns in these cases. And this is what happens in real life as well. Some people might dislike the police, but we do need them, nonetheless.
Since this is online and not some physical crime, though, it's not seen as a big deal in most of the world. So the only way to get the police in those countries to see it as something worth dealing with seems to be to put pressure on the governments that allow this criminal behavior. The easiest way is just to cut the connection until they adequately police their own criminals.
P.S. I like the other comment:
"So you suggest our great leaders should cut every country from the internet that doesn't implement the terrorist-and-child-molester-stopping three strikes law?"
Um, what part of illegal and criminal isn't getting through? As much as I dislike these sorts of actions, what should we do? Remember, the Internet isn't a god-given right. It's a paid optional service that the provider has every right to deny you access to if you are doing illegal things with it. If it was me, there would be a 1 strike and we target your house from orbit rule for child molesters and child porn. Three strikes is already more than they deserve.
Sensible and caring people would muzzle him so that he could still listen and participate (via writing or sign language), you NARGIN FLARGIN WERTHERS CANDIES!
Heh. But, seriously. They can't get internet, but they do have news feeds and newspapers and all of the non-digital technology at their disposal, so it IS a bit like they can effectively only listen to part of what's going on until they stop trying to ruin it for everyone else.
The only way to truly combat cybercrime is to just cut the connection.
What will end up happening is that there will be several chunks of the "Net". So Nigeria can do its own thing(as an example). There's absolutely nothing to keep other countries from yanking the plug on anyone that they want as soon as it crosses their borders. "We don't like you - get lost" seems like a fairly effective way, especially for countries that lack a proper satellite infrastructure and have to rely on optical and metal/copper wire connections to get in and out.
Often this boils down to as few as 2-3 main optical cables. Cut those at the border and they're in the dark. People are exactly correct that this is a political problem. The countries of the world that have the power need to flex their muscles and deny those who don't police their own traffic adequately a chance to participate. Now, I'm all for freedom and all of that, but it's like having a town meeting and one guy in the back with Tourette's keeps screaming at the top of his lungs. Sensible people politely push him out the door, lock it, and proceed with the meeting.
I bet even a week without any net in most countries would suddenly get a few thousand police mobilized and start kicking down doors. But as it is, without any stick, there's no incentive for them to do anything at all about it.
I would recommend that your son try to pick up Scratch as an introductory programming language.
I have looked at it(and so has he) and it's really not "nuts-and-bolts" type programming. That's the problem, really. There's very little any more between the big complex languages that adults use and stuff like this that really isn't teaching you serious programming. The obvious question(there were similar programs and "languages" in the past in the 80s and 90s) is where do the kids go from this? Right. Usually thrown into the major languages in high school and college where their heads explode because it's a course for a grade rather than something that they can easily learn in their free time. I suppose HTML and PERL and the like is somewhat usable as an entry level(not sure I want to call it a "language", though, since it's really running scripts and formatting and the like), but it's really not serious low-level programming, either.
BASIC, as much of a bad rep as it gets, actually does fill a lot of that gap for beginners(though they might actually have to learn that evil stuff called math - oh no!). Yes, it's old, yes, it's not cool. But last I checked, the world didn't explode when we all learned it growing up. Plus, there are tons of emulators out there.
My son is currently at the age where he wants to start learning to program. The thing is, other than Basic or similar entry-level languages, he just can't wrap his 11 year old mind around C++ or other more complex languages to start. And I can't exactly drop him straight into SQL or Linux either. He has to start somewhere, and simple languages fill this gap very well for the young. It's also the same reason why I hope that they never stop making those ###-in-one electronic kits. The basics may be old and useless to most of us here, but to our kids and grand-kids someday, it'll make the difference between being a good engineer or technical person versus just another brainless repairer who swaps parts without knowing why.
Learning out of a book in high school or college isn't obviously the same as hands-on building and programming.
Plant Yucca. Nothing but big giant pointy nasty sharp Yucca plants. Bonus points for a Cactus or two. No water required and that 40% requirement will be a cinch to meet.
True, but it's a major minus for a lot of potential buyers later on. Though I guess some paranoid or EMI sensitive types might seek out a place like this...(or bad guys not wanting to be traced...)
The FCC may have something to say about that though. If he is close enough, his mesh may block enough of the signal to put the antenna out of use.
Any passive blocking that he puts on the walls or windows as an owner is something that he can't he held liable for(as opposed to active blocking or putting up a billboard or similar). I'd love to see the judge's face when the cell phone company tries to explain how their antenna requires his apartment to be non-shielded to operate properly(ie - we need to beam the signal *through* it because we put it in a bad location). They are supposed to be placed in such a manner that they are clear of buildings and physical obstructions. Hence the reason they are almost always on a small tower above a roof top. One thing, though - if you shield your place from these frequencies, you won't be able to use your cell phone at all while at home. You *can* turn your house into a giant Faraday cage. But expect it to act like one as well. You likely also won't be able to use your radio or HDTV over the air. Nothing comes in means nothing gets out as well. (OTOH, Wi-fi in home would be secure - heh)
Also, the refit won't be cheap. That Scotchtint runs about $1000 for a 60"x100ft roll. EMI resistant mesh for the walls generally runs the same. Generally you have to re-plaster or put another thin layer of drywall over top of it, which is factored into that price. And of course, it has to be installed properly. At that range(feet vs hundreds of feet) it will generate a significant amount of current.
Possible? Of course. But in today's world, being without tv, radio, wireless, and so on in such a place in NYC would be horrendous. In fact, trying to sell a place that you purposely turned into that would probably make it just as hard to resell as if you did nothing at all. I'd just keep looking. Maybe there's a similar place a block or two over?
I have read it and the number of companies with severe problems is actually over a hundred, total. *One* got canceled and the rest were essentially "warned" not to do it any more. I'm just simply not impressed with the lack of teeth in their policies. The report reads like typical corporate BS as well, showing that they are "tough" by having one token supplier face real sanctions. The wage issue also implies that they only covered wages where they were legally required to do so by the countr(ies) in question(charging fees to get jobs).
***
At 60 facilities, we found records that indicated workers
had exceeded weekly work-hour limits more than 50 percent of the time.
Similarly, at 65 facilities, more than half of the records we reviewed indicated
that workers had worked more than six consecutive days at least once
per month. To address these issues, we required each facility to develop
management systems--or improve existing systems--to drive compliance
with Apple's limits on work hours and required days of rest.
***
In essence, no money or back wages were paid - just a slap on the wrist and corporate "programs". That 2.2 million only was in the case of agencies requiring fees, which was illegal under those countries' laws.(but evidently where labor laws are lose, they did nothing)
My point in all of this is that Apple is just like any of the other billion dollar plus companies out there. Now, if they were up front about it like most of them are, that would be fine. But I do get seriously tired of seeing them try to pass themselves off as some sort of "moral" or "upstanding" company that's faultless and pure.
"they condemned the violations and threatened to terminate their business with facilities that did not change their ways.
In other words, no change at all. Just enough press coverage and feigned outrage to cover themselves and shift the blame if required to do so at a later date. But nobody got fired. Nor did any contract get canceled.
The problem with EvE is that you're looking at months of real life time to fly a ship that's halfway fun. If you want to fly a bigger ship, it will take over a year to fly it T2 (and T1 is worthless for anything but making money in). THat's not time spent that can be altered by player skill and strategy, that's clock time due to their skill system. Give me a character with 30 million points and I'd subscribe tomorrow. Starting from scratch I wouldn't advise anyone to bother.
Nor would I. But the easy solution is to buy a character that's 6-12 months or so old already(since the game is going on 6 years now, that's a non-factor). The game itself is free to download, so if you pay the $50 that you normally would have paid for the program itself for most online games, but apply that towards in-game credits to buy a character in EVE, you're half way to your goal of just flying and having fun right from the start.
The way I see it is that if you were going to spend 6-12 months on fees to get to where you wanted/or get burned out and leave it anyways, why not spend that up front and save yourself the year of grinding? With a year old character that's reasonably well set up, you're able to skip all of the annoying nonsense and get right to playing the game. And without that mind-numbing boredom, you're more likely to remain playing as well.
That said, EVE does have one major issue for U.S. players, and that is jaw-dropping lag. Everything is in Europe and the majority of players and guilds are also over there. So North American players are the night shift. So we get double-nerfed.
Still, It's not perfect by any means, and the game as some serious flaws, but it's the best we have. The community keeps waiting for some new game to come out to replace it, but so far, nothing else has. The WoW/Everquest model of dumbed-down quests seems to have become the norm since it's easier and simpler to program and manage than a giant 50,000 player sandbox.
BTW, if you do like the WoW type of game, try out the D&D version that's out. It's no better or worse, IMO, but is 100% free to play. This mitigates most of the problems right there.
There are two main types of computer people in this world - those who know theory and books and those who know from experience. If I was running a company, I'd want 100% self-taught and capable programmers and not a bunch of cookie-cutter designers. Sure, the formally taught employees might get the job done a bit faster most of the time, but thinking laterally and outside of the box as well as cleaning up and fixing problems and emergencies, well, that's something that self-taught people have to do or have done many times in the past. It's a different type of thinking, really. And it's something that a lot of college educated students just don't have skills in or have to spend years learning.
Perhaps another example would be those 100-in-1 electronics kits that a lot of us had growing up. We may replace components now instead of fixing the actual parts that broke, but there's a world of difference between an engineer or even a PC tech who understands and knows why the stuff works from using/making it themselves versus just what they were taught somewhere. One knows why it failed and will likely fail again, and the other knows how to use a screwdriver. (and yes they still make those kits, so get your kids one!)
Plus, most college courses require you to take tons of useless classes to GET to the more advanced stuff that you could just as easily go out and buy a book on Linux and save yourself 1-2 years of classes. Of course, your education matters, since if for no other reason than to get that interview, but programming should be something you know and learn and not necessarily what you actually got your degree in. IMO, the smart CIS major switches to Math, Physics, or Engineering instead and does programming as a skill they happen to know.
If it were 1.5 then it can be said that he passed it on to 1 person and half of it onto another person (and then there'd need to be discussion as to how much was lost by passing half an MP3 onto someone).
It is possible to configure bittorrent (as an example) to not seed at all and to limit it to 1 connection at 1kb/sec. They don't like telling you HOW to do this, as it "isn't fair", but it's a necessary tactic for anyone who still has a modem. Unfortunately there isn't a client that I know of where it can be turned off completely.
If you can prove that you only shared a small fraction of one file to one person, AND the amount was less than the number of seconds that would constitute "fair use"(say the amount added up to 20 seconds of music), then would it be considered distribution? It seems like if you took this approach, you would at most be liable for one instance of infringement, which would lower the damages significantly. You might even have a good defense against the claim of distribution, since the original laws implied mass distribution by criminal means and not giving away a single copy to someone.
I guess the moral of the story is to just not use these file sharing programs until there is a leech only option that works. Yes, it's not "fair" to others. So what. If you had chose between the RIAA and a miserable seed ratio, I know what one most people would chose. As a side note - I hate videos(NOT the same as in a theater and who has $2000+ to spend on a proper HT setup? That's a LOT of movie tickets. I also don't d/l or buy MP3s - the sound quality is rubbish compared to a good CD. And used CDs are a few dollars if you know where to shop. Why pay ITunes 99 cents a song when you can get the entire CD used for $5 or less?
http://www.amoeba.com/content/blowouts.html
Only fools bother with any of this online minefield when real CDs are this inexpensive.