The shouldn't come as any surprise. Computer simulations are routinely used for training and conditioning in a variety of situations from flight training to military applications.
Perhaps the base is camouflaged? They've been doing that sort of thing for a very long time. I remember seeing some pictures of an old base that was covered to look like a small neighborhood. That makes more sense to me than some Google censorship conspiracy. Besides, censoring Google Maps in this way hardly makes sense since because anyone wanting to see a detailed picture of the base could get it from some other source that could not be persuaded to censor it. It's much safer to disguise the base itself. I imagine there are many satellites controlled by quite a few countries that are capable of taking pictures at least as detailed as this.
Personally, I'm in favour of a nice, simple system where if a politician makes a promise before an election and then breaks it, a court can remove him or her from office.
I want politicians who aren't afraid to change course when new information becomes available. It's already bad enough that politicians will "stay the course" and continue with a bad plan to avoid being labeled a flip-flopper. I realize your point was with regards to campaign promises and in some contexts is a completely valid one, but there's a delicate balance here.
That didn't work too well for Mike Rowe, of Mike Rowe Software. It was genuinely his name, but a certain agressive trademark defender made him give up his domain.
Like hell it didn't. That kid got an MSDN subscription, an XBOX, training for a Microsoft certification and a free trip to TechFest.
It would probably be pretty difficult considering Red Hat doesn't use yum, but that's really just semantics. The main problem is the vendor-blessed version- and the one in the repository whether you use yum on CentOS or up2date on Red Hat- is the one that contains the bug.
I wholeheartedly agree that much of the copy protection methods out there are disincentivizing ownership, but as far as copy protection goes what Microsoft is doing here is pretty passive. They're not locking anybody out of anything. These are only a couple visual reminders that you're not using a legitimate copy. In fact, to me it seems like kind of an improvement over their typical shitty behavior towards customers.
With all the hell people have raised over product activation, WGA, etc. I shudder to even think of what would happen if they used the type of DRM we see on video games. These guys routinely put in rootkits and stuff that will disable or damage hardware. These guys sell products that routinely lock out paying customers. Game developers were always terrible about this. Remember when we had to turn to page 93 in the manual and type in the fourth word of the twelfth sentence in order to get the game to start up? Why is it we basically give these assholes a free pass while jump all over Microsoft for having comparitively friendly copy protection? I think any copy protection sucks, but any meaningful argument against it is going to gain a lot more traction if we go after the worst offenders.
How the hell did this get modded insightful? Aside from the ideas about a revamped configuration (which would only further complicate Registry hell), the rest would make Windows into a Linux clone. How would that make Windows a success? At that point, why not just use Linux instead? Who is going to choose a costly clone of something that's freely available?
The fact is there are a lot of people out there who like Windows. It's familiar and easy enough for most people, compatible with lots of other products and mostly works pretty well. Some may find it not configurable enough and the antipiracy measures infuriating. We, powerusers, are always going to use Linux or some other free and open OS, and we are always going to be the minority.
The reality is that the larger market doesn't care about window managers, terminals, filesystems or disk partitions. They certainly don't care about product activation because they almost never reinstall the OS. Once it's sufficiently junked up they buy a new computer. For them, Windows is for the most part transparent. It fills their needs without a whole lot of fuss, but they complain about it every once in a while because that's just what people do. Some of them probably just do it because the IT guy at works said Windows sucks and they want to sound like they know something. If they had real problems with it they'd investigate alternatives.
Microsoft makes a good enough product that caters to an enormous market and has some of the best marketing money can buy. Microsoft isn't in the business of making superior products. They're in the business of making money and that means making the products that sell the most. Openness and extensibility are for the most part only desired by a small, albeit vocal, minority and simply never enter into that equation.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the MacBook keyboard. That thing is such an abomination I don't even know where to start. It is the keyboard equivalent of the puck mouse from a few years ago.
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The shouldn't come as any surprise. Computer simulations are routinely used for training and conditioning in a variety of situations from flight training to military applications.
Perhaps the base is camouflaged? They've been doing that sort of thing for a very long time. I remember seeing some pictures of an old base that was covered to look like a small neighborhood. That makes more sense to me than some Google censorship conspiracy. Besides, censoring Google Maps in this way hardly makes sense since because anyone wanting to see a detailed picture of the base could get it from some other source that could not be persuaded to censor it. It's much safer to disguise the base itself. I imagine there are many satellites controlled by quite a few countries that are capable of taking pictures at least as detailed as this.
Are the moderators even reading posts? How the hell did an obvious joke get modded insightful?
I want politicians who aren't afraid to change course when new information becomes available. It's already bad enough that politicians will "stay the course" and continue with a bad plan to avoid being labeled a flip-flopper. I realize your point was with regards to campaign promises and in some contexts is a completely valid one, but there's a delicate balance here.
Oh, I don't know... Maybe the human ear is a bit more sophisticated than a wooden box full of wires and whatever else they use to make speakers.
Like hell it didn't. That kid got an MSDN subscription, an XBOX, training for a Microsoft certification and a free trip to TechFest.
It would probably be pretty difficult considering Red Hat doesn't use yum, but that's really just semantics. The main problem is the vendor-blessed version- and the one in the repository whether you use yum on CentOS or up2date on Red Hat- is the one that contains the bug.
I wholeheartedly agree that much of the copy protection methods out there are disincentivizing ownership, but as far as copy protection goes what Microsoft is doing here is pretty passive. They're not locking anybody out of anything. These are only a couple visual reminders that you're not using a legitimate copy. In fact, to me it seems like kind of an improvement over their typical shitty behavior towards customers. With all the hell people have raised over product activation, WGA, etc. I shudder to even think of what would happen if they used the type of DRM we see on video games. These guys routinely put in rootkits and stuff that will disable or damage hardware. These guys sell products that routinely lock out paying customers. Game developers were always terrible about this. Remember when we had to turn to page 93 in the manual and type in the fourth word of the twelfth sentence in order to get the game to start up? Why is it we basically give these assholes a free pass while jump all over Microsoft for having comparitively friendly copy protection? I think any copy protection sucks, but any meaningful argument against it is going to gain a lot more traction if we go after the worst offenders.
How the hell did this get modded insightful? Aside from the ideas about a revamped configuration (which would only further complicate Registry hell), the rest would make Windows into a Linux clone. How would that make Windows a success? At that point, why not just use Linux instead? Who is going to choose a costly clone of something that's freely available?
The fact is there are a lot of people out there who like Windows. It's familiar and easy enough for most people, compatible with lots of other products and mostly works pretty well. Some may find it not configurable enough and the antipiracy measures infuriating. We, powerusers, are always going to use Linux or some other free and open OS, and we are always going to be the minority.
The reality is that the larger market doesn't care about window managers, terminals, filesystems or disk partitions. They certainly don't care about product activation because they almost never reinstall the OS. Once it's sufficiently junked up they buy a new computer. For them, Windows is for the most part transparent. It fills their needs without a whole lot of fuss, but they complain about it every once in a while because that's just what people do. Some of them probably just do it because the IT guy at works said Windows sucks and they want to sound like they know something. If they had real problems with it they'd investigate alternatives.
Microsoft makes a good enough product that caters to an enormous market and has some of the best marketing money can buy. Microsoft isn't in the business of making superior products. They're in the business of making money and that means making the products that sell the most. Openness and extensibility are for the most part only desired by a small, albeit vocal, minority and simply never enter into that equation.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the MacBook keyboard. That thing is such an abomination I don't even know where to start. It is the keyboard equivalent of the puck mouse from a few years ago.
The Wayback Machine says php.net has been doing this since at least 2002 (that's when the documentation for it first appeared):
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.php.net/urlhowto.php