Or are you saying that I would be prosecuted under American law for shooting rabbits in England because to do so would be illegal in Fayetteville, Arkansas?
...if Wikileaks has published evidence of crimes by US military on foreign soil (for instance, just please for the sake of argument assume that this is in fact the case), then he would surely be afforded protection from extradition to the US on the grounds that due to such disclosures, his life would be endangered should he be turned over to US authorities?
on topic, if the US Government have an indictment they should make the detail public or I call bullshit.
...considering this company, at first glance at TFS, seems to be primarily concerned with passing information of a secure and sensitive nature between not only State agencies of different countries but also defence contractors which themselves are concerned also with collecting and dispersing such information for whatever purposes; I'm concerned that it is dealing with the company which had the dubious honour of processing in and storing the UK census data from 2011. This is considered live information and as far as I'm concerned, what with the nature of the questions* contained in that census (I was a refuser for the following reason), that information in the wrong hands (ie ANY agency or individual working under the flag of a different nation - ANY DIFFERENT NATION!) is a persistent threat to national security, and whoever authorised such an arrangement should hang by their bollocks. If Lockheed Martin are involved with such a company, how much of the UK census data have they passed through this company to other companies or agencies, or how much of that data that this company has been entrusted with has found its way to eg DHS? I for one am very concerned.
*ie, what's the occupation of every adult of working age in the household, what's their earning power, how many hours do they work, how often individuals travel abroad, where they travel to...
I grew up with film as well. To begin with, it was free (for me, not for my parents). Then I got the reality hammer which said "Get a paper route, you're costing too much in photo processing!" At which point I started missing some absolute gems. Glad when digital went mainstream, always been shopping for decent cameras. My brother bought himself a Canon EOS 50D accouple weeks ago, it's a bag of shite - low resolution (10MP I think), tiny ass screen, doesn't do low light at all, it's slow as hell, yet he's all over it like an Italian lover. Three hundred quid he's wasted there. I went PC World, had a go along the shelf, and settled on a Samsung PL22 compact. That thing does bloody everything, even HD video (720p), I've taken timelapse nightsky shots with it(!), it does sports shots at 6+ frames/sec, 3 seconds between full resolution (14MP) shots and it's instant shot and very fast AF sensor/motor even in low light. Best camera I ever owned.
hm... I dunno, with digital images coming in at over 3MB on an entry level camera these days, and SD cards at stupid prices which mean you can cram nearly 3,000 full resolution images per 16GB card (so deleting images is an exercise in timewasting more than saving limited space!), plus HD video at 8GB/30min, I don't think it's be that hard filling 300GB of/scratch space/.
Oh, my bad, they're actually produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing - on behalf of the Federal Reserve and at cost to the FR of around 4c per note (regardless of denomination), but the FR are the only body authorised to *issue* them.
I agree here, the C&C franchise went to pot when EA acquired Westwood Studios.
The last decent (IMHO) game that EA released was Need For Speed Underground. I bought Underground 2, played it like, twice(?) and it's been sat in its box in a very dark cupboard ever since. NFS World is an OK game, problem is it's online only and I'm glad I got it for free because I frankly wouldn't *pay* to play it.
on the same timescale as the Zip/Jaz drives, I still have a functioning IDE LS120 that I bought in 1997. For those who don't know what the hell an LS120 is, it's an optical drive similar to the Zip in that it uses two heads for read/write - one for the LS120 disc which has a 120MB unformatted capacity, and one for the physically similar 3.5" 1.44MB DSHD floppy, so you could use either disc in the same drive, and fortunately for us who still use LS120, used the 40-pin IDE bus rather than the now deprecated 32-pin floppy bus. Zip and Jaz are proprietary devices using proprietary formats on proprietary discs, that are completely incompatible with anything else. And the drives were frankly, unreliable.
Yes, my 1993 gaming rig that I bought before Win95 came out (and subsequently upgraded to Win95 when it did eventually come out in 1996!) wipes the floor with my 2011 dual core Win7 laptop.
Swap "megabyte" for "Gigabyte", and the room takes on an echo.
I remember way back (1993!) when a £1500 Pentium 60MHz gaming rig had a 4GB hard disk, 4x CDROM(!) an entire 16MB RAM and 4MB graphics memory, and the fastest internal modems had 50667bit throughput (6.something KB/sec download!), monitors were still CRT and a 15" FST (still only 13" viewable) was considered the dog's bits.
These days, I'm on a laptop with dual core 64-bit 1.6GHz with on-die HD graphics, DVD multi burner, 6GB RAM with up to 3GB dedicated graphics memory shared (312MB squirreled away somewhere for the graphics base memory), 15.6" of the fastest LED backlit panel I have ever come across, HDMI output, networking via USB (cellular), enhanced Bluetooth, Gigabit ethernet, wireless-n, 500GB hard drive and local server quota of over 20TB. Still isn't enough for decent performance on UT2004. Oh, and the cost for the laptop was change out of £400.
I've seen it before. In case you're not brave, I'll explain.
I'm sitting in front of a LINUX BOX, using Iceweasel, a LINUX BROWSER. Suddenly this popup appears telling me my LINUX BOX has been compromised, tells me I'm running IE9 (ohreali?) on Windows XP (ohreali?). It further tells me, with the help of an "automatic detection tool", that my computer is infected with 100...200...14,000+ WINDOWS viruses (ohreali?). For just $29.99, this amazing tool will "remove all infections in seconds!" (ohreali? Maybe it can do something about this sore throat that's been bugging me...).
At this point, I fell off my chair. I was laughing too hard even to tell my wife why I was in such paroxysms of hysterics. I could barely even inhale.
For those not versed in spotting the scam; the popup contained nothing more than an animated image producing what appeared to be a self-executing security program detecting computer viruses, linked to the real piece of malware - or should I term it scumware? (which is how I described it to the police) - via a merchant account. Clicking on anything but the X in the top right hand corner took you directly to the payment page, but also a popunder which attempted to download a stealth backdoor program into the system (I tried it on the Linux box knowing that since "Linux can't run Windows programs", it surely couldn't run a windows virus - HAH!) (which in turn would have downloaded the biggest load of keyloggers, browser hijacks, IRC clients and botnet clients you ever saw from a SINGLE RUSSIAN SERVER had it the chance). At which point the merchant account then attempted to extort another $299 out of you to get rid of *that lot* - which of course, the scammer had no intention of doing nor did he have the technical ability to do so. Basically you were about to to get screwed out of $329.99 and end up with a doorstop. Best thing to do if you see that thing appear on your Windows box is hardcycle the power and keep the machine off the net until it has had a professional and thorough sweep for scumware.
A variation on the theme (but the same exact scam) involves the user clicking a link on a page hosted on a compromised server. This will install a program into the system tray which changes the desktop background, hijacks your browser homepage, does some weird screwy shit with the registry and does the whole "You're-compromised!" dance all over your desktop. Again, the advice is hard power down and take the box to a shop.
This should clarify if you read the whole thing: in a nutshell, Microsoft were dragged through pretty much every US court by pretty much every service provider and competing browser, for bundling IE with Windows 95 OSR2. The claim that Gates made when the EU took him to task for continuing this trend in NT was that IE cannot be unbundled - it is part of the platform. The phrasing he actually used, IIRC, was "cannot be unbundled from the OS". The argument was that Win95 Gold did OK without a bundled browser; as did 3.1 and WFWG, which is completely logical in the face of it. Whether or not a single-vendor OS platform that comes bundled with a browser that already does everything and leaves the choice of whether or not to install Nutscrape or other browser to some political ideology, is a great idea, I leave to the reader to determine for himself, but as far as competing browsers were concerned, as they didn't have the option of bundling with the fastest selling desktop platform on the planet they felt a little put out - as I'm sure I would.
The whole argument, as far as I'm concerned, is a fallacy: I for instance wouldn't expect to find Windows 7 on my Mac, or Android on my iPhone - because they are competing hardware and software technologies on the same market, but as with shoes and everybody's favourite analogy, one size does not fit all. IF you want a computer for something a Mac is good at, you don't go buy a PC. If you want a computer for power gaming, YOU DO NOT GO BUY A MAC!
Microsoft bundling is not what killed Netscape, what killed Netscape was the bitching and moaning it made through its deluded fantasy that its severely outdated browser (that did not innovate because they were too busy biting the hand that fed it) deserved a space on a platform that they did not have any sort of hand in developing, and it died a well deserved death. Netscape usage fell because something better came along and Netscape stood stagnant. This might be an arguable point to some, but history recalls this as fact.
Back to the originating issue in this subthread: when it came to the point of arguing against bundling IE with NT, the EC imposed daily mounting fines on Microsoft sometime in the late 90's (I forget the exact date) for what it considered to be "anti-competitive policy". To date, even though the oversights have ended, I don't think any portion of the fines have been paid nor have the fines stopped. Please correct me if I'm wrong (don't forget citations!). In the US cases, Microsoft offered, and had accepted, the issue of discount vouchers to the value of the fines for individuals, groups and companies for volume licensing of Windows, Office/BackOffice and Exchange, and SQL Server. At around this time the price of new computer equipment also plummeted overnight because as part of this deal, Microsoft agreed to subsidise the ICO of PC equipment to all. It was the scam to beat all scams: Microsoft won anyway - they guaranteed sales and also guaranteed that nobody could force it to part ways with itself.
the way we did it before service providers took over the tedious task of assigning IPs and charging obscene amounts of money for the privilege: point to point, over telephone lines.
Just because technology's "obsoleted" because something "newer, faster, *better*" comes along, does not mean it should be forgotten. One of these days you might find yourself with no power and no matches. How will you keep your family warm? Rail at the power company? Or get off your duff and learn a technology that's been known for ever: how to make fire by striking two rocks over kindling?
Learn how to use a computer. Learn how to build your own network. Because when TPTB take the Internet and emasculate it, turning it into Encarta 2.0, you'll wonder why you spent stupid money on that thing that just became a very expensive doorstop.
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mod parent up. This is the same argument I'm seeing a lot in this discussion.
only if he commits it on American soil.
Or are you saying that I would be prosecuted under American law for shooting rabbits in England because to do so would be illegal in Fayetteville, Arkansas?
...if Wikileaks has published evidence of crimes by US military on foreign soil (for instance, just please for the sake of argument assume that this is in fact the case), then he would surely be afforded protection from extradition to the US on the grounds that due to such disclosures, his life would be endangered should he be turned over to US authorities?
on topic, if the US Government have an indictment they should make the detail public or I call bullshit.
it's fer killer chords.
...considering this company, at first glance at TFS, seems to be primarily concerned with passing information of a secure and sensitive nature between not only State agencies of different countries but also defence contractors which themselves are concerned also with collecting and dispersing such information for whatever purposes; I'm concerned that it is dealing with the company which had the dubious honour of processing in and storing the UK census data from 2011. This is considered live information and as far as I'm concerned, what with the nature of the questions* contained in that census (I was a refuser for the following reason), that information in the wrong hands (ie ANY agency or individual working under the flag of a different nation - ANY DIFFERENT NATION!) is a persistent threat to national security, and whoever authorised such an arrangement should hang by their bollocks. If Lockheed Martin are involved with such a company, how much of the UK census data have they passed through this company to other companies or agencies, or how much of that data that this company has been entrusted with has found its way to eg DHS? I for one am very concerned.
*ie, what's the occupation of every adult of working age in the household, what's their earning power, how many hours do they work, how often individuals travel abroad, where they travel to...
I grew up with film as well. To begin with, it was free (for me, not for my parents). Then I got the reality hammer which said "Get a paper route, you're costing too much in photo processing!" At which point I started missing some absolute gems. Glad when digital went mainstream, always been shopping for decent cameras. My brother bought himself a Canon EOS 50D accouple weeks ago, it's a bag of shite - low resolution (10MP I think), tiny ass screen, doesn't do low light at all, it's slow as hell, yet he's all over it like an Italian lover. Three hundred quid he's wasted there. I went PC World, had a go along the shelf, and settled on a Samsung PL22 compact. That thing does bloody everything, even HD video (720p), I've taken timelapse nightsky shots with it(!), it does sports shots at 6+ frames/sec, 3 seconds between full resolution (14MP) shots and it's instant shot and very fast AF sensor/motor even in low light. Best camera I ever owned.
hm... I dunno, with digital images coming in at over 3MB on an entry level camera these days, and SD cards at stupid prices which mean you can cram nearly 3,000 full resolution images per 16GB card (so deleting images is an exercise in timewasting more than saving limited space!), plus HD video at 8GB/30min, I don't think it's be that hard filling 300GB of /scratch space/.
ka-CHING!
...how does a production shortfall of less than 50% result in a price hike of *over 300%*??
...I had to look that up, so it's I hope understandable why I made the original assertion. Anyone else would have.
Oh, my bad, they're actually produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing - on behalf of the Federal Reserve and at cost to the FR of around 4c per note (regardless of denomination), but the FR are the only body authorised to *issue* them.
Ohreali? So why does it say, right across the top of the face of a one Dollar bill, "FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE"?
The US Federal Reserve has been producing counterfeit bills since its inception.
I agree here, the C&C franchise went to pot when EA acquired Westwood Studios.
The last decent (IMHO) game that EA released was Need For Speed Underground. I bought Underground 2, played it like, twice(?) and it's been sat in its box in a very dark cupboard ever since. NFS World is an OK game, problem is it's online only and I'm glad I got it for free because I frankly wouldn't *pay* to play it.
on the same timescale as the Zip/Jaz drives, I still have a functioning IDE LS120 that I bought in 1997. For those who don't know what the hell an LS120 is, it's an optical drive similar to the Zip in that it uses two heads for read/write - one for the LS120 disc which has a 120MB unformatted capacity, and one for the physically similar 3.5" 1.44MB DSHD floppy, so you could use either disc in the same drive, and fortunately for us who still use LS120, used the 40-pin IDE bus rather than the now deprecated 32-pin floppy bus. Zip and Jaz are proprietary devices using proprietary formats on proprietary discs, that are completely incompatible with anything else. And the drives were frankly, unreliable.
Yes, my 1993 gaming rig that I bought before Win95 came out (and subsequently upgraded to Win95 when it did eventually come out in 1996!) wipes the floor with my 2011 dual core Win7 laptop.
Swap "megabyte" for "Gigabyte", and the room takes on an echo.
I remember way back (1993!) when a £1500 Pentium 60MHz gaming rig had a 4GB hard disk, 4x CDROM(!) an entire 16MB RAM and 4MB graphics memory, and the fastest internal modems had 50667bit throughput (6.something KB/sec download!), monitors were still CRT and a 15" FST (still only 13" viewable) was considered the dog's bits.
These days, I'm on a laptop with dual core 64-bit 1.6GHz with on-die HD graphics, DVD multi burner, 6GB RAM with up to 3GB dedicated graphics memory shared (312MB squirreled away somewhere for the graphics base memory), 15.6" of the fastest LED backlit panel I have ever come across, HDMI output, networking via USB (cellular), enhanced Bluetooth, Gigabit ethernet, wireless-n, 500GB hard drive and local server quota of over 20TB. Still isn't enough for decent performance on UT2004. Oh, and the cost for the laptop was change out of £400.
I've seen it before. In case you're not brave, I'll explain.
I'm sitting in front of a LINUX BOX, using Iceweasel, a LINUX BROWSER. Suddenly this popup appears telling me my LINUX BOX has been compromised, tells me I'm running IE9 (ohreali?) on Windows XP (ohreali?). It further tells me, with the help of an "automatic detection tool", that my computer is infected with 100...200...14,000+ WINDOWS viruses (ohreali?). For just $29.99, this amazing tool will "remove all infections in seconds!" (ohreali? Maybe it can do something about this sore throat that's been bugging me...).
At this point, I fell off my chair. I was laughing too hard even to tell my wife why I was in such paroxysms of hysterics. I could barely even inhale.
For those not versed in spotting the scam; the popup contained nothing more than an animated image producing what appeared to be a self-executing security program detecting computer viruses, linked to the real piece of malware - or should I term it scumware? (which is how I described it to the police) - via a merchant account. Clicking on anything but the X in the top right hand corner took you directly to the payment page, but also a popunder which attempted to download a stealth backdoor program into the system (I tried it on the Linux box knowing that since "Linux can't run Windows programs", it surely couldn't run a windows virus - HAH!) (which in turn would have downloaded the biggest load of keyloggers, browser hijacks, IRC clients and botnet clients you ever saw from a SINGLE RUSSIAN SERVER had it the chance). At which point the merchant account then attempted to extort another $299 out of you to get rid of *that lot* - which of course, the scammer had no intention of doing nor did he have the technical ability to do so. Basically you were about to to get screwed out of $329.99 and end up with a doorstop. Best thing to do if you see that thing appear on your Windows box is hardcycle the power and keep the machine off the net until it has had a professional and thorough sweep for scumware.
A variation on the theme (but the same exact scam) involves the user clicking a link on a page hosted on a compromised server. This will install a program into the system tray which changes the desktop background, hijacks your browser homepage, does some weird screwy shit with the registry and does the whole "You're-compromised!" dance all over your desktop. Again, the advice is hard power down and take the box to a shop.
a popup in Iceweasel saying "Attention! Your computer is compromised!" then some spiel about IE9 and no antivirus...
oh, wait, now where have I seen this before? (link for information only! Do the clicky on "free scan" links at your own risk!)
in which case it would be as well to apply a little Darwinian pruning. Adapt or die.
Sorry to be blunt, that's the way it is.
Apologies, I should cite my sources:
This should clarify if you read the whole thing: in a nutshell, Microsoft were dragged through pretty much every US court by pretty much every service provider and competing browser, for bundling IE with Windows 95 OSR2. The claim that Gates made when the EU took him to task for continuing this trend in NT was that IE cannot be unbundled - it is part of the platform. The phrasing he actually used, IIRC, was "cannot be unbundled from the OS". The argument was that Win95 Gold did OK without a bundled browser; as did 3.1 and WFWG, which is completely logical in the face of it. Whether or not a single-vendor OS platform that comes bundled with a browser that already does everything and leaves the choice of whether or not to install Nutscrape or other browser to some political ideology, is a great idea, I leave to the reader to determine for himself, but as far as competing browsers were concerned, as they didn't have the option of bundling with the fastest selling desktop platform on the planet they felt a little put out - as I'm sure I would.
The whole argument, as far as I'm concerned, is a fallacy: I for instance wouldn't expect to find Windows 7 on my Mac, or Android on my iPhone - because they are competing hardware and software technologies on the same market, but as with shoes and everybody's favourite analogy, one size does not fit all. IF you want a computer for something a Mac is good at, you don't go buy a PC. If you want a computer for power gaming, YOU DO NOT GO BUY A MAC!
Microsoft bundling is not what killed Netscape, what killed Netscape was the bitching and moaning it made through its deluded fantasy that its severely outdated browser (that did not innovate because they were too busy biting the hand that fed it) deserved a space on a platform that they did not have any sort of hand in developing, and it died a well deserved death. Netscape usage fell because something better came along and Netscape stood stagnant. This might be an arguable point to some, but history recalls this as fact.
Back to the originating issue in this subthread: when it came to the point of arguing against bundling IE with NT, the EC imposed daily mounting fines on Microsoft sometime in the late 90's (I forget the exact date) for what it considered to be "anti-competitive policy". To date, even though the oversights have ended, I don't think any portion of the fines have been paid nor have the fines stopped. Please correct me if I'm wrong (don't forget citations!). In the US cases, Microsoft offered, and had accepted, the issue of discount vouchers to the value of the fines for individuals, groups and companies for volume licensing of Windows, Office/BackOffice and Exchange, and SQL Server. At around this time the price of new computer equipment also plummeted overnight because as part of this deal, Microsoft agreed to subsidise the ICO of PC equipment to all. It was the scam to beat all scams: Microsoft won anyway - they guaranteed sales and also guaranteed that nobody could force it to part ways with itself.
and as far as I'm aware, the rolling fine the EC imposed on Microsoft is still going.
...Pot or Kettle today?
I think China existed a good while before Corporate America was created.
the way we did it before service providers took over the tedious task of assigning IPs and charging obscene amounts of money for the privilege: point to point, over telephone lines.
Just because technology's "obsoleted" because something "newer, faster, *better*" comes along, does not mean it should be forgotten. One of these days you might find yourself with no power and no matches. How will you keep your family warm? Rail at the power company? Or get off your duff and learn a technology that's been known for ever: how to make fire by striking two rocks over kindling?
Learn how to use a computer. Learn how to build your own network. Because when TPTB take the Internet and emasculate it, turning it into Encarta 2.0, you'll wonder why you spent stupid money on that thing that just became a very expensive doorstop.