They can't do an LTS. Why would need RHEL if you can get Fedora LTS for free?
For the same reason that people buy RHEL even though CentOS exists? RHEL exists and is successful because of the support it offers. For users who don't want full support, CentOS fills that gap. So in effect, CentOS *is* the LTS version of Fedora. It just happens to be an LTS version that has a ten-year life-cycle and benefits from whatever fixes are driven by Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers.
That said, if we focus our efforts on the Fedora Server as a primary target (instead of an afterthought), I can very easily see Fedora being used as a real server for medium-term needs (such as deploying some software that has requirements that are too new for RHEL/CentOS).
Stephen Gallagher (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee)
I run Fedora 19 with KDE on my home machines. Basically I set aside about 5 to 6 hours every six months to upgrade and when I say upgrade I mean a complete re-installation of the latest Fedora from DVD. Even though I actually backup my data (over 1TB) progressively I have never had to recover my data since I use LVM to manage my disks and all I have to do is make sure the system volumes including swap and of course the/boot partition are sized properly. Actually the only time I did have to recover my data when I converted the file-system from ext3 to ext4 and IMHO the performance improvement was worth it.
I strongly recommend that you try upgrading with 'fedup' next time around. It's far-and-away better than our historical upgrade processes and works in-place. I've personally gone from F17->F18->F19 using it with no ill effects.
I have actually found Fedora from 10 onward have been remarkably stable although I will admit when KDE 4.0 came out (I think that was with Fedora 15) I actually switched to Gnome util they fixed the stability issues, however that was not a Fedora issue.
Would I recommend Fedora for the Enterprise? Hell no! since you want any enterprise solution to be supported and in large corporations this usually means a Microsoft OS (this is changing but slowly) for the desktop and a mix of Linux (in my experience Redhat), Microsoft and Unix for the server room.
That's going to depend on your definition of Enterprise. Would I recommend Fedora today as your long-term FreeIPA or other core infrastructure server? No, probably not. On the other hand, would I recommend it for DevOps and rapidly deployed-used-and-killed VM instances for newer technologies such as Ruby on Rails or Node.js? Absolutely. Fedora's rapid development cycle is much more in line with those DevOps behaviors. It's actually a myth that "Fedora isn't for production". I know a great many DevOps deployments using Fedora successfully.
That all said, the major piece that was missing from this incredibly (and clearly intentionally) misleading summary is that the purpose of splitting off Fedora into three targets is to provide better support for those who want to use Fedora in production (the cloud image), those who want to develop their layered software so that it will run on the next version of RHEL/CentOS (the server) and people who want a comprehensive desktop for getting stuff done (the workstation/client).
Stephen Gallagher (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee)
Man, I am so sick of this 're-birth' crap from Fedora. I liked Fedora 'core' back 7+ years ago before we had to be this uber bleeding edge -slash- agile uber aggressive build cycle that fucks everything up and obsoletes distribution usage to about 6 months.
When it was 'just' an upstream snapshot look to what RedHat Enterprise was going to be in the future, I was totally cool with that, and it melded nicely in a lot of environments. But that spin-off has become such a damn mess now with developer heavy ideas that, in some case, go against every foundation of a traditional UNIX-like operating system design, I could really give who shits what the do now.
Making a 'one-size-fits-all' OS is, pain and simple: a horrible idea. I don't want a damn highly integrated OS that I can use for everything. You'll never get that right, and some 'next-in-line' guy they give 5 minutes of talk time at the next conference will say the same thing.
When you take shit, and try and re-invent it with only shit, I'm sure everyone knows the result you get.
It's not surprising that you are confused here, since the original poster went out of his/her way to omit all of the substance of the proposal and instead focus on screaming "Fedora Core!". Of the three targets that were proposed, one of them (Fedora Server) is intended to be *exactly* what you just asked for. A clearly-defined server OS that is essentially snap-shots on the road to Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS stability. Then, there are two other targets: cloud images suitable for use in an IaaS or PaaS infrastructure and the Client Workstation which will be targeted at creators and IT specialists.
The whole point of this proposal is that many of us in the Fedora Project agree with you: One-size-fits-no-one isn't a lasting solution.
Furthermore, the original poster misrepresented two compatible-but-not-identical proposals that came up at Flock. The splitting of the target audiences into separate, isolated deliverables was actually my proposal (Stephen Gallagher), not Matthew's (though he and most of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee support it). The intent here is to have specific goals for sections of the Project and work towards meeting them. This is a large shift from Fedora's historical behavior which was to ship whatever the upstream projects shipped. With this proposal (backed by a design that is still in progress), we're going to make changes where they need to be made to produce a more cohesive whole.
In the end, we're working hard to ensure that Fedora is relevant in a changing age of cloud infrastructures and DevOps deployments, without ignoring our downstream RHEL and CentOS consumers as well. Certain other Linux OSes have decided to go the route of consumer electronics, but we as Fedora still believe that free software should be the infrastructure that powers those consumer products. And Fedora is a means to that end.
Stephen Gallagher (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee)
That's actually only partially true. Fedora 18 didn't include MATE as an option while doing a DVD install, but if you changed the package location in Anaconda to "closest mirror", you would suddenly get a much larger set of available desktops, including Cinnamon, MATE and others. The reason for this should be obvious: there's only so much space on a DVD, so we tend to keep the set of packages on it limited to the most popular set. Which at the time of Fedora 18's release did *not* include Cinnamon or MATE.
We're definitely accepting criticism for how we can clean up the interface and make important options more visible. That's very nearly the whole point of the Alpha release. Please file bugs at http://bugzilla.redhat.com/ against the "anaconda" component of the Fedora project.
GOTO is certainly very useful in some circumstances. For example, a common pattern in the samba and SSSD sources is this (taking advantage of the talloc() hierarchical memory allocator):
tmp_ctx = talloc_new(parent_ctx). *allocate memory on tmp_ctx * do stuff or fail and goto done. *allocate more memory on tmp_ctx * do stuff or fail and goto done.
done:
talloc_free(tmp_ctx);
return result;
It's really handy to be able to just jump directly to the done: tag on any error and know that any memory you allocated is cleaned up appropriately.
What I'm left wondering is why someone should need a username and password to comment on a blog post on their sites. Do they have a reputation system? Does it really prevent spam? Or is it just to gather a list of email addresses that they might sell later? There must be a better way to accomplish the little functionality that their login requirement provides. Especially now that they have to deal with the fact that their login system was not secure.
There are two primary reasons to require logins: 1) A registration system with a captcha is highly-effective at preventing spam on your blog comments or forum posts. 2) To a greater or lesser degree, it prevents people from impersonating you. Sure there are ways to trick this (create a username that's one lookalike character off, etc.) but on the whole it makes it easier to recognize who you're talking to.
My first experience with Linux was Red Hat 6.2. I installed it on some leftover hardware I had lying around after an upgrade and followed a HOWTO I found on the web to install an Action Quake 2 server. It ran for six months without a reboot until I had to take it home for the summer.
I'd like to set the record straight on your comments about the "other high profile distro" that "let attackers actually sign some rogue packages with their private key". This is verifiably false on all points.
No software vulnerability was exploited. It was a classic case of social engineering. A hacker was able to gain access to an ssh key providing access to the build infrastructure and uploaded a set of modified packages. They were designed to snoop for the passwords necessary to use the signing server. The intrusion was detected and repaired before any infected packages were signed.
Please do at least a trivial amount of homework before throwing about accusations.
The failing of the first distribution was in their insistence upon forking a private copy of the crypto libraries that the community at large refused to even look at, which is why the error went undiscovered for so long. This was a failure of the developers to follow the core tenets of collaborative development, and should serve to prove the effectiveness of community development rather than imply that open-source is somehow less secure.
One service that's becoming popular with laptop users would be the EVDO/3G adapters. These allow laptop computers (or, with USB versions, any computer) access to the EVDO (Verizon) and 3G (AT&T, T-Mobile) high-speed networks in most regions. Living in Massachusetts myself, I happen to know that the signal is very strong for both of these services in most populated areas. Basically, you can get broadband access from the cell tower networks for about $60/month (citing Verizon's price for 5GB monthly allowance).
Both services offer speeds that are roughly equivalent to consumer DSL lines. While it is more expensive than DSL in most locations, if they're not going to run DSL, FiOS or digital cable lines out to you, then you don't have a lot of choices.
The one thing that most people overlook about time travel is this: If time travel were possible, it would be ubiquitous.
Think about it. Assuming that time travel were possible, presumably, there would be time travelers present all throughout history. All inventions, given enough time, eventually filter down into common usage. So, let's work through this.
First, we make two assumptions: 1) Time travel is possible 2) Human beings or some other intelligent life form is capable of discovering and harnessing time travel.
So now, let's travel (in our minds) into the future. Time travel has been invented. It is now possible to experience any point in history or the future. So we now have to assume that, at least at any major historical events, researchers from other time periods must be present.
But no matter what the technology is, it never remains controlled. Travel far enough ahead and I guarantee that eventually time travel will be (re-discovered) time and again. It would be unreasonable to assume anything less than complete penetration into daily life eventually.
Raised into a society in which time travel (and presumably the additional prerequisite of teleportation to remain on the planet's surface) is common, what would ever stop people from visiting all points of history?
Additionally, the discovery of time travel would pretty much render government impossible. A society in which all or most of its citizens have access to what is basically ultimate power would be completely ungovernable. The only way to avoid total chaos would require the evolution of a self-regulating system. If you think about it, having the ability to literally unmake any decision anyone ever made would be truly chaotic.
So now we have a society of self-regulating humanoids who are unbound in time and (presumably) exist all throughout history. So the simplest way to prove that time travel is impossible is simply to observe that we don't have access to it. Because, in order to maintain the self-regulating society described above, all potential citizens in that society, throughout all history, would need to be brought into the fold and taught about the dangers and the rules necessary to avoid temporal armageddon.
no doubt we'll see DVD players with HD H264 support before long H.264 is the video standard used by both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray high-definition disc formats. Any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player already has support for accelerated H.264 playback.
I might get flamed on Slashdot for even suggesting this, but is it possible that Microsoft's intentions in this are benign? Slashdot users are quick to point fingers at big companies that buy their way through the patent office with well-known technologies, then turn around and start suing other people for infringing on their patents.
Microsoft certainly has the financial power to be a powerful force if this gets granted. They don't have any need to actually write adware of their own: they can force adware companies out of business by tying them up in court on a frivolous patent infringement charge.
This story is inaccurate. When I signed up for Comcast a few years ago, I had the following problem: I had only Linux installed on my computer and the CD that came with the installer only supported Windows and Mac.
I called their tech support line and explained the problem. The first person I got didn't know how to handle it, so they passed me on to their supervisor. The supervisor recognized the problem and knew how to solve it. He asked me for the serial number of my cable modem, the MAC address of the network card connecting to it and a few other minor bits of data. He entered it manually into their systems and told me to reboot the cable modem. It came up perfectly.
Admittedly, needing to call tech support for your "self-install" is a hassle, but it's still a far cry from "not supporting".
In addition to their traditional "key-fobs", RSA Security has a product called RSA Mobile which is far more convenient for the average user. Taking advantage of the fact that most customers also own a cellphone, they offer an additional method of verifying "something you have". You go to a website and log in with your username and "something you know", be it a password or other, more complicated forms. Then, they will send an SMS message to the cellphone number associated with the account. This SMS message will contain a 6-12 digit one-time use code that will only be valid for 2 minutes. The user enters this code and gains access to their account.
When combined with strong "something you know" technology (such as linking to other public databases to ask you what car you used to own, or what your phone number was at your first apartment), this method works as well as any other two-factor authentication (and better than some), without requiring you to carry around an additional piece of hardware.
By having it sent to a cellphone, you can in fact use the same piece of "something you have" hardware with many sites.
First point. THAAD is actually "Terminal High Altitude Area Defense" and is being developed concurrently between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
I worked on the THAAD project for Raytheon from 1999-2000. Here is the unclassified description of how it functions:
Upon radar detection of an incoming missile (such as a SCUD) the THAAD missile is launched against it. Unlike earlier technologies for missile defense (such as the PATRIOT*), the THAAD missile does not contain any explosive warhead, instead using the available space and weight for a more sophisticated guidance system. The THAAD warhead contains an active guidance system that will seek the incoming missile and collide with it, destroying the incoming missile with its own warhead.
Earlier technologies relied on a wide-area warhead that would be detonated once the missile was within a certain diameter about the target, relying on the concussion wave and shrapnel to destroy the missile. This was unsatisfactory as in some circumstances the missile would destroy only the target's propulsion system and allow the undamaged warhead to fall to the ground, resulting in collateral damage.
*The PATRIOT missile was not designed as an anti-missile weapon, it was in fact designed as an anti-aircraft weapon, but was retasked during Operation: Desert Storm to shoot down SCUD missiles. It was considered very impressive that it worked at all, considering it was designed for use against much slower-moving targets.
Judging by your spelling, you're STILL a 15 year old virgin boy.
That being said, there are a lot of inherent difficulties in producing video games targeted to the *ahem* adult market. The first of course, is that Walmart won't sell it. Neither will pretty much any other major retailer. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to get the kind of exposure (pardon the pun) that you would need in order to turn a profit on a game with a very high production cost. (Artists to design high-polygon human models are expensive).
Secondly, the control scheme is extremely difficult. How do you play the game with one hand (or none!)?
I suppose you could attempt to do something like the PS2's Eye Toy and have it track your movements, but now you're getting ridiculous.
Actually, if you look at the breakdown for insurance companies and their policies, you'll see that they give very different rates based on the car you drive, for two reasons: rate of theft, and rate of accidents statistically for those cars.
Aside from the obvious Adblock extension, there are also extensions available to spoof one's browser id. I usually set my ID to IE in order to avoid a lot of pages' JavaScript popups telling me that I need to use IE to view their page (which is no longer true).
Will this artificial heart have an automatic flow regulator, or will there be a nob on the pacemaker allowing the recipient to regulate the flow?
Basically, the body needs to pump varying amounts of oxygen through the body at different times (i.e. running) and would need some method of varying the flow rate.
Or would they perhaps replace one of the patient's nipples with a regulator dial?
Personally, I thought it was wonderful when Jennings announced that his good luck charm was a stuffed Totoro doll from Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), a Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki animated film. (See nausicaa.net for more)
Basically, it seems that they're trying to restrict the law in a very reasonable way. The law states that in order to be in violation, it has to be proven that the P2P application's only method of commercially viability is by inducing copyright violations.
Sounds reasonably fair to me. It's not an end-all "P2P is evil and must be stopped" bill. It's a method to keep out the more dangerous offenders. For example, BitTorrent should be immune to prosecution under this law because its main intended purpose is to lighten the hit on the download of new versions of legal software, specifically Linux distributions.
Kazaa, on the other hand, really doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. Perhaps if they didn't have a built-in MP3/Video player in the client, they might have gotten away with it, but they specifically built the GUI so as to make it easy and convenient to download illegal songs and movies.
And yes, I acknowledge that there are legal downloads that can be made through Kazaa, but most of those were added as an afterthought in order to try and delay/counter litigation.
Section 501 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(g)(1) In this subsection, the term `intentionally induces' means intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.
`(2) Whoever intentionally induces any violation identified in subsection (a) shall be liable as an infringer.
`(3) Nothing in this subsection shall enlarge or diminish the doctrines of vicarious and contributory liability for copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright infringement.'.
Slashdot Mirror
Trying to sell something that can be got for free is unlikely to be highly profitable.
http://www.redhat.com/ - A $1 billion a year revenue company
They can't do an LTS. Why would need RHEL if you can get Fedora LTS for free?
For the same reason that people buy RHEL even though CentOS exists? RHEL exists and is successful because of the support it offers. For users who don't want full support, CentOS fills that gap. So in effect, CentOS *is* the LTS version of Fedora. It just happens to be an LTS version that has a ten-year life-cycle and benefits from whatever fixes are driven by Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers.
That said, if we focus our efforts on the Fedora Server as a primary target (instead of an afterthought), I can very easily see Fedora being used as a real server for medium-term needs (such as deploying some software that has requirements that are too new for RHEL/CentOS).
Stephen Gallagher (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee)
I run Fedora 19 with KDE on my home machines. Basically I set aside about 5 to 6 hours every six months to upgrade and when I say upgrade I mean a complete re-installation of the latest Fedora from DVD. Even though I actually backup my data (over 1TB) progressively I have never had to recover my data since I use LVM to manage my disks and all I have to do is make sure the system volumes including swap and of course the /boot partition are sized properly. Actually the only time I did have to recover my data when I converted the file-system from ext3 to ext4 and IMHO the performance improvement was worth it.
I strongly recommend that you try upgrading with 'fedup' next time around. It's far-and-away better than our historical upgrade processes and works in-place. I've personally gone from F17->F18->F19 using it with no ill effects.
I have actually found Fedora from 10 onward have been remarkably stable although I will admit when KDE 4.0 came out (I think that was with Fedora 15) I actually switched to Gnome util they fixed the stability issues, however that was not a Fedora issue.
Would I recommend Fedora for the Enterprise? Hell no! since you want any enterprise solution to be supported and in large corporations this usually means a Microsoft OS (this is changing but slowly) for the desktop and a mix of Linux (in my experience Redhat), Microsoft and Unix for the server room.
That's going to depend on your definition of Enterprise. Would I recommend Fedora today as your long-term FreeIPA or other core infrastructure server? No, probably not. On the other hand, would I recommend it for DevOps and rapidly deployed-used-and-killed VM instances for newer technologies such as Ruby on Rails or Node.js? Absolutely. Fedora's rapid development cycle is much more in line with those DevOps behaviors. It's actually a myth that "Fedora isn't for production". I know a great many DevOps deployments using Fedora successfully.
That all said, the major piece that was missing from this incredibly (and clearly intentionally) misleading summary is that the purpose of splitting off Fedora into three targets is to provide better support for those who want to use Fedora in production (the cloud image), those who want to develop their layered software so that it will run on the next version of RHEL/CentOS (the server) and people who want a comprehensive desktop for getting stuff done (the workstation/client).
Stephen Gallagher (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee)
Man, I am so sick of this 're-birth' crap from Fedora. I liked Fedora 'core' back 7+ years ago before we had to be this uber bleeding edge -slash- agile uber aggressive build cycle that fucks everything up and obsoletes distribution usage to about 6 months.
When it was 'just' an upstream snapshot look to what RedHat Enterprise was going to be in the future, I was totally cool with that, and it melded nicely in a lot of environments. But that spin-off has become such a damn mess now with developer heavy ideas that, in some case, go against every foundation of a traditional UNIX-like operating system design, I could really give who shits what the do now.
Making a 'one-size-fits-all' OS is, pain and simple: a horrible idea. I don't want a damn highly integrated OS that I can use for everything. You'll never get that right, and some 'next-in-line' guy they give 5 minutes of talk time at the next conference will say the same thing.
When you take shit, and try and re-invent it with only shit, I'm sure everyone knows the result you get.
It's not surprising that you are confused here, since the original poster went out of his/her way to omit all of the substance of the proposal and instead focus on screaming "Fedora Core!". Of the three targets that were proposed, one of them (Fedora Server) is intended to be *exactly* what you just asked for. A clearly-defined server OS that is essentially snap-shots on the road to Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS stability. Then, there are two other targets: cloud images suitable for use in an IaaS or PaaS infrastructure and the Client Workstation which will be targeted at creators and IT specialists.
The whole point of this proposal is that many of us in the Fedora Project agree with you: One-size-fits-no-one isn't a lasting solution.
Furthermore, the original poster misrepresented two compatible-but-not-identical proposals that came up at Flock. The splitting of the target audiences into separate, isolated deliverables was actually my proposal (Stephen Gallagher), not Matthew's (though he and most of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee support it). The intent here is to have specific goals for sections of the Project and work towards meeting them. This is a large shift from Fedora's historical behavior which was to ship whatever the upstream projects shipped. With this proposal (backed by a design that is still in progress), we're going to make changes where they need to be made to produce a more cohesive whole.
In the end, we're working hard to ensure that Fedora is relevant in a changing age of cloud infrastructures and DevOps deployments, without ignoring our downstream RHEL and CentOS consumers as well. Certain other Linux OSes have decided to go the route of consumer electronics, but we as Fedora still believe that free software should be the infrastructure that powers those consumer products. And Fedora is a means to that end.
Stephen Gallagher (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee)
That's actually only partially true. Fedora 18 didn't include MATE as an option while doing a DVD install, but if you changed the package location in Anaconda to "closest mirror", you would suddenly get a much larger set of available desktops, including Cinnamon, MATE and others. The reason for this should be obvious: there's only so much space on a DVD, so we tend to keep the set of packages on it limited to the most popular set. Which at the time of Fedora 18's release did *not* include Cinnamon or MATE.
We're definitely accepting criticism for how we can clean up the interface and make important options more visible. That's very nearly the whole point of the Alpha release. Please file bugs at http://bugzilla.redhat.com/ against the "anaconda" component of the Fedora project.
GOTO is certainly very useful in some circumstances. For example, a common pattern in the samba and SSSD sources is this (taking advantage of the talloc() hierarchical memory allocator):
tmp_ctx = talloc_new(parent_ctx).
*allocate memory on tmp_ctx *
do stuff or fail and goto done.
*allocate more memory on tmp_ctx *
do stuff or fail and goto done.
done:
talloc_free(tmp_ctx);
return result;
It's really handy to be able to just jump directly to the done: tag on any error and know that any memory you allocated is cleaned up appropriately.
There's a nice article here on setting up the LAMP stack on Fedora (or its relatives, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS):
http://fedorasolved.org/server-solutions/lamp-stack
What I'm left wondering is why someone should need a username and password to comment on a blog post on their sites. Do they have a reputation system? Does it really prevent spam? Or is it just to gather a list of email addresses that they might sell later? There must be a better way to accomplish the little functionality that their login requirement provides. Especially now that they have to deal with the fact that their login system was not secure.
There are two primary reasons to require logins:
1) A registration system with a captcha is highly-effective at preventing spam on your blog comments or forum posts.
2) To a greater or lesser degree, it prevents people from impersonating you. Sure there are ways to trick this (create a username that's one lookalike character off, etc.) but on the whole it makes it easier to recognize who you're talking to.
My first experience with Linux was Red Hat 6.2. I installed it on some leftover hardware I had lying around after an upgrade and followed a HOWTO I found on the web to install an Action Quake 2 server. It ran for six months without a reboot until I had to take it home for the summer.
I'd like to set the record straight on your comments about the "other high profile distro" that "let attackers actually sign some rogue packages with their private key". This is verifiably false on all points.
The full description of how this attack took place is available here: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-March/msg00010.html
No software vulnerability was exploited. It was a classic case of social engineering. A hacker was able to gain access to an ssh key providing access to the build infrastructure and uploaded a set of modified packages. They were designed to snoop for the passwords necessary to use the signing server. The intrusion was detected and repaired before any infected packages were signed.
Please do at least a trivial amount of homework before throwing about accusations.
The failing of the first distribution was in their insistence upon forking a private copy of the crypto libraries that the community at large refused to even look at, which is why the error went undiscovered for so long. This was a failure of the developers to follow the core tenets of collaborative development, and should serve to prove the effectiveness of community development rather than imply that open-source is somehow less secure.
One service that's becoming popular with laptop users would be the EVDO/3G adapters. These allow laptop computers (or, with USB versions, any computer) access to the EVDO (Verizon) and 3G (AT&T, T-Mobile) high-speed networks in most regions. Living in Massachusetts myself, I happen to know that the signal is very strong for both of these services in most populated areas. Basically, you can get broadband access from the cell tower networks for about $60/month (citing Verizon's price for 5GB monthly allowance).
Both services offer speeds that are roughly equivalent to consumer DSL lines. While it is more expensive than DSL in most locations, if they're not going to run DSL, FiOS or digital cable lines out to you, then you don't have a lot of choices.
The one thing that most people overlook about time travel is this:
If time travel were possible, it would be ubiquitous.
Think about it. Assuming that time travel were possible, presumably, there would be time travelers present all throughout history. All inventions, given enough time, eventually filter down into common usage. So, let's work through this.
First, we make two assumptions:
1) Time travel is possible
2) Human beings or some other intelligent life form is capable of discovering and harnessing time travel.
So now, let's travel (in our minds) into the future. Time travel has been invented. It is now possible to experience any point in history or the future. So we now have to assume that, at least at any major historical events, researchers from other time periods must be present.
But no matter what the technology is, it never remains controlled. Travel far enough ahead and I guarantee that eventually time travel will be (re-discovered) time and again. It would be unreasonable to assume anything less than complete penetration into daily life eventually.
Raised into a society in which time travel (and presumably the additional prerequisite of teleportation to remain on the planet's surface) is common, what would ever stop people from visiting all points of history?
Additionally, the discovery of time travel would pretty much render government impossible. A society in which all or most of its citizens have access to what is basically ultimate power would be completely ungovernable. The only way to avoid total chaos would require the evolution of a self-regulating system. If you think about it, having the ability to literally unmake any decision anyone ever made would be truly chaotic.
So now we have a society of self-regulating humanoids who are unbound in time and (presumably) exist all throughout history. So the simplest way to prove that time travel is impossible is simply to observe that we don't have access to it. Because, in order to maintain the self-regulating society described above, all potential citizens in that society, throughout all history, would need to be brought into the fold and taught about the dangers and the rules necessary to avoid temporal armageddon.
I might get flamed on Slashdot for even suggesting this, but is it possible that Microsoft's intentions in this are benign? Slashdot users are quick to point fingers at big companies that buy their way through the patent office with well-known technologies, then turn around and start suing other people for infringing on their patents.
Microsoft certainly has the financial power to be a powerful force if this gets granted. They don't have any need to actually write adware of their own: they can force adware companies out of business by tying them up in court on a frivolous patent infringement charge.
This story is inaccurate. When I signed up for Comcast a few years ago, I had the following problem: I had only Linux installed on my computer and the CD that came with the installer only supported Windows and Mac.
I called their tech support line and explained the problem. The first person I got didn't know how to handle it, so they passed me on to their supervisor. The supervisor recognized the problem and knew how to solve it. He asked me for the serial number of my cable modem, the MAC address of the network card connecting to it and a few other minor bits of data. He entered it manually into their systems and told me to reboot the cable modem. It came up perfectly.
Admittedly, needing to call tech support for your "self-install" is a hassle, but it's still a far cry from "not supporting".
In addition to their traditional "key-fobs", RSA Security has a product called RSA Mobile which is far more convenient for the average user. Taking advantage of the fact that most customers also own a cellphone, they offer an additional method of verifying "something you have". You go to a website and log in with your username and "something you know", be it a password or other, more complicated forms. Then, they will send an SMS message to the cellphone number associated with the account. This SMS message will contain a 6-12 digit one-time use code that will only be valid for 2 minutes. The user enters this code and gains access to their account.
When combined with strong "something you know" technology (such as linking to other public databases to ask you what car you used to own, or what your phone number was at your first apartment), this method works as well as any other two-factor authentication (and better than some), without requiring you to carry around an additional piece of hardware.
By having it sent to a cellphone, you can in fact use the same piece of "something you have" hardware with many sites.
Why did I receive a ban notice from them?
I don't even have an account...
Will this mean that I have to pay royalties to the RIAA every time I criticize the government?
First point. THAAD is actually "Terminal High Altitude Area Defense" and is being developed concurrently between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
I worked on the THAAD project for Raytheon from 1999-2000. Here is the unclassified description of how it functions:
Upon radar detection of an incoming missile (such as a SCUD) the THAAD missile is launched against it. Unlike earlier technologies for missile defense (such as the PATRIOT*), the THAAD missile does not contain any explosive warhead, instead using the available space and weight for a more sophisticated guidance system. The THAAD warhead contains an active guidance system that will seek the incoming missile and collide with it, destroying the incoming missile with its own warhead.
Earlier technologies relied on a wide-area warhead that would be detonated once the missile was within a certain diameter about the target, relying on the concussion wave and shrapnel to destroy the missile. This was unsatisfactory as in some circumstances the missile would destroy only the target's propulsion system and allow the undamaged warhead to fall to the ground, resulting in collateral damage.
*The PATRIOT missile was not designed as an anti-missile weapon, it was in fact designed as an anti-aircraft weapon, but was retasked during Operation: Desert Storm to shoot down SCUD missiles. It was considered very impressive that it worked at all, considering it was designed for use against much slower-moving targets.
Judging by your spelling, you're STILL a 15 year old virgin boy.
That being said, there are a lot of inherent difficulties in producing video games targeted to the *ahem* adult market. The first of course, is that Walmart won't sell it. Neither will pretty much any other major retailer. Therefore, you wouldn't be able to get the kind of exposure (pardon the pun) that you would need in order to turn a profit on a game with a very high production cost. (Artists to design high-polygon human models are expensive).
Secondly, the control scheme is extremely difficult. How do you play the game with one hand (or none!)?
I suppose you could attempt to do something like the PS2's Eye Toy and have it track your movements, but now you're getting ridiculous.
Actually, if you look at the breakdown for insurance companies and their policies, you'll see that they give very different rates based on the car you drive, for two reasons: rate of theft, and rate of accidents statistically for those cars.
Aside from the obvious Adblock extension, there are also extensions available to spoof one's browser id. I usually set my ID to IE in order to avoid a lot of pages' JavaScript popups telling me that I need to use IE to view their page (which is no longer true).
I'd be curious to see the figures on that.
Will this artificial heart have an automatic flow regulator, or will there be a nob on the pacemaker allowing the recipient to regulate the flow?
Basically, the body needs to pump varying amounts of oxygen through the body at different times (i.e. running) and would need some method of varying the flow rate.
Or would they perhaps replace one of the patient's nipples with a regulator dial?
Personally, I thought it was wonderful when Jennings announced that his good luck charm was a stuffed Totoro doll from Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), a Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki animated film. (See nausicaa.net for more)
Basically, it seems that they're trying to restrict the law in a very reasonable way. The law states that in order to be in violation, it has to be proven that the P2P application's only method of commercially viability is by inducing copyright violations.
Sounds reasonably fair to me. It's not an end-all "P2P is evil and must be stopped" bill. It's a method to keep out the more dangerous offenders. For example, BitTorrent should be immune to prosecution under this law because its main intended purpose is to lighten the hit on the download of new versions of legal software, specifically Linux distributions.
Kazaa, on the other hand, really doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. Perhaps if they didn't have a built-in MP3/Video player in the client, they might have gotten away with it, but they specifically built the GUI so as to make it easy and convenient to download illegal songs and movies.
And yes, I acknowledge that there are legal downloads that can be made through Kazaa, but most of those were added as an afterthought in order to try and delay/counter litigation.
Section 501 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
`(g)(1) In this subsection, the term `intentionally induces' means intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.
`(2) Whoever intentionally induces any violation identified in subsection (a) shall be liable as an infringer.
`(3) Nothing in this subsection shall enlarge or diminish the doctrines of vicarious and contributory liability for copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright infringement.'.