From an interesting article with some insights about the reason why most spam is US based:
http://www.compliancepipeline.com/28700163
"The United States is the origin of choice for spammers, said Alperovitch, because of the plentiful supply of cheap high-speed bandwidth. "Spammers need big pipes, and they don't want to pay much for it," he said.
That explains the low percentage of spam messages originating from overseas' IP addresses. The lack of cheap bandwidth outside the United States is stymieing spammers' attempts to scale up the volume of their mailings to U.S. sizes."
"It's exciting," said 10-year-old Zak Shilling, whose early passion for all things engineering lured him out to the event. "I've been trying to make flying machines for years."
At 10 I was f*cking playing Lego.. for Christ's sake.
Companies abuse the patent system by issuing patents on almost everythnig they can think of.
Take for example IBM. They have patented everything related to object oriented operating systems under their Taligent/San Francisco project.
They could sue Sun (J2EE) or Microsoft (.NET), and just anybody using things like Object-oriented window area display system, pat. no. 6,750,858, Object-oriented event notification system with listener registration of both interests and methods, pat. no. 6,424,354 or Distributed object networking service, pat. no. 6,223,217, just to name a few.
Crazy. We have to figure out a better patent system which stills protect intelectual property but also protects us from this nonsense.
> There is nothing in this story that requires mentioning an iPod.
Right. I first thought by reading just the headline that it was about a new cool hack that enables your iPod to listen to some E.T. radio station or something..
> I say fight the problem of child pornography >(etc..) from the other end. Arrest the people, > not the websites and protocols.
But this *is* fighting child pornography. By putting barriers to the potential demand you're actually affecting the offer.
I'm willing to lose some of my 'rights online' if I can improve the 'rights offline' of some children by accepting this kind of measures even with the risk of potential misuses.
Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems. All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease, Sun and Microsoft are software vendors so they want the iron to be free.
It makes perfect sense for MS but I really don't understand what's going on with Sun. They want to stop being a hardware vendor to become exactly what? Where is their business model?
Please mod parent up to (Score:500, SoFuckingTrue).
"The web was *not* designed for applications and applications will *not* run well on the web."
10,000 times I've repeated this to my boss, still, my primary task at work is replacing rich full-featured client server applications with poor and dull J2EE web apps.
Article from the Chicago Tribune (free reg needed): http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-02102 2ink,1,1030029.story
A cartridge conspiracy
By Phillip Robinson Knight Ridder/Tribune Published October 22, 2002
Ford and Chevron have partnered to design a new SUV. They claim it will run smoother and longer on a gallon of gas than any other SUV in the same class.
However, you'll have to use a special Chevron Premium gas that costs 30 percent to 70 percent more than typical gas. It's up around the $3- to $4-a-gallon level. Use any other gas from any other station and a microchip in the tank will detect the difference and prevent the SUV from starting. That protects you from poor performance and possible damage to the finely tuned engine. In fact, trying to use any other gas can sometimes void your warranty.
Relax. It isn't true. In cars, that is. (My apologies to Ford and Chevron.)
But it is true in computer printers.
Time to stop relaxing.
Some of the biggest inkjet printer makers are implanting chips in inkjet cartridges. These chips monitor the ink supply and let you know when you're getting low. They can even freeze the printer when the cartridge is empty. Supposedly that can permanently damage the printer.
So far, not so bad. Pretty much all cars have a fuel gauge, and all printers should, too. I loved when Lexmark added ink supply monitors to its software, so I could see how much was left. Few things are more annoying than getting halfway through a vital document only to run out of ink.
If and when you do find the cartridge, let's hope it isn't your first time buying replacement ink. First-timers are typically shocked at what they have to pay. That $100 inkjet printer may need three $35 cartridges to get back in a printing mood.
No wonder HP makes more profit on "consumables" such as ink than on anything else. No wonder Dell wants into the business. No wonder there's a busy "recycling" and "remanufacturing" business in discount ink cartridges.
A growing number of companies refill used cartridges, and then sell them - often on the Internet - for 30 percent to 50 percent less. That saves you a lot of money and saves dumps from piles of dead cartridges.
But the remanufacturers won't be able to put a new chip in this latest cartridge design. Or be able to set the old chip back to recognizing "full." Once that cartridge is empty, it's kaput. No recycling, no savings. The chip "squeals" on any attempt to reuse.
Some inkjet printer owners use their own refill kits to save even more money on ink. These kits are available even in some standard stores. They include a syringe, large bottles of ink and instructions. You fill the syringe and then inject your cartridges. There's the danger of a mess, and of voiding the warranty, but there's also the prospect of saving 80 percent to 90 percent.
Smart chips in cartridges will also be able to terminate this savings. Once a cartridge is detected as empty, the chip can refuse to recognize it again as full.
It's called "lock in." Many tech companies are looking for ways to lock their customers in, to make it difficult or impossible for customers to switch to using other suppliers in the future.
Of course, they don't advertise it that way. And many of their engineers and marketers may honestly not believe it that way.
They'll talk about the quality of the ink they make. How it's as much a part of the printing technology as the hardware and software. How you need all three working together to get the full performance. How they want to protect you from bad prints, and the clogged inkjet tubes and broken printers that cheap ink can cause.
And you know, they're sometimes right. Cheap ink can make cheap-looking prints. No-name ink can clog those tiny jets in your printer.
But shouldn't you be the one to make the decision about which to use? Do you want the company "protecting" you ag
Loneliness is the 1st problem for the senior citizens here in Europe. We don't need robots to assist them we need human beings to keep them company. I thinkt hat being surrounded by machines is even more depressing than being all alone, I'd feel totally worthless if I was given to a robot to take care of me.
We need to humanize the problem of the increasing elder population and stop talking about 'technical' solutions.
GPS? Not yet, maybe just a matter of time
on
Stolen Laptop Alarms
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
See LAPTOP SECURITY: PAST, PRESENT by Andrew Mueller (google's pdf cache) which is a bit outdated but still very interesting:
In the end it comes down to the intelligence of the thief, the amount of computer
experience they have, and the reason the laptop is stolen in the first place. The two
reasons would be data recovery, the other to just sell the hardware. (I suppose a third
would be to use it themselves).
The future of this technology I believe will be a BIOS based service. Something hard-
coded in the BIOS that will be used to track the laptop. The car industry uses a GPS
satellite to track some of its more expensive automobiles and perhaps that is where the
laptop industry will go.
[..]
Systems hard coded with small GPS tracking units will creep into the corporate world,
and users will be able to track where their laptops are if they?ve been stolen, and recovery
will be more and more common.
This is my main source of stress and frustration on a daily basis.
Pity is also my main source of income.
I guess you can't have everything.
Re:Massive deployments of Linux desktops
on
Rome Moving to Linux
·
· Score: 4, Informative
For more info on other massive deployments taking place in Europe see The Register's Linux in Europe.
Very interesting.
Massive deployments of Linux desktops
on
Rome Moving to Linux
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Largo, Florida (400), Munich, Germany (14,000); Extremadura, Spain (80,000); Thailand (up to one million subsidized PCs to low income people, with 160,000 already shipped) and Rome now.
Do you see a trend here? Massive deployments are taking place, mostly in the public sector, I think Linux has a bright future as the main option for tax funded massive deployments.
August 2000 - MP3.com pays Sony $20m in damages for copyright infringement
September 2000 - MP3.com pays Universal $250m in damages for copyright infringement
May 2001 - Vivendi Universal announces intention to purchase MP3.com
Vivendi-Universal's former chief executive Jean-Marie Messier bought MP3.com for $372m in 2001 and integrated it into Vivendi Universal Net. The rise of file-sharing, the dot.com crash and perceptions of MP3.com as a 'sell-out' resulted in the investment failing to meet its potential.
November 14, 2003
MP3.com to close
CNET has acquired MP3.com and will be shutting down the downloading service. According to an email sent to MP3.com subscribers, the site will no longer be available as of December 2nd. According to the same email, CNET is planning to launch a service in the future.
Feb 25, 2004
Complete Liquidation of 100,000 sq ft facility - 100s of Servers (Sun, Compaq, HP, & Dell) Clarion EMC Storage - 100s of PCs, Notebooks, Printers - 100s of Herman Miller Aeron Chairs - 10,000 sq ft health club - Pool Table, Foosball, Video Arcade Games, Ping Pong. Artwork, Collectable Musical instruments, Contemporary Furniture & more...
For those from outer space the text 'the vision, conception, and development of the principles for, and their effective integration in, the world's first practical networked personal computers' refers to the development of the ethernet network technology, no more no less.
Other developments from PARC are the Graphical user interface (GUI), the mouse, the WYSIWYG text editor, the laser printer, the desktop computer and the Smalltalk programming language.
One of the firs applications of this new tech could be immersive karaokes, where you can sing your favourite song among a living 3D projection of the real band (without the singer of course)...
Just imagine, the *huge* market that there is in Japan for this kind of stuff: all those japanesse business men impersontating Freddie Mercury after work;)
In some residential areas of Madrid (Spain) you can currently get a symetric (600 Kbps upload and download) internet access via power lines for 39 euros/month. Here they call this technology Power Line Communications (PLC) but I think it's the same as BPL.
I don't know how it works though, I use regular DSL access.
You can get more info here: http://www.neo.es (in spanish).
According to the National Institute of Mental Health exposing patients to the simulated event actually works, see:
Treatments for PTSD
PTSD can be extremely debilitating. Fortunately, research--including studies supported by NIMH and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)--has led to the development of treatments to help people with PTSD.
Studies have demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and exposure therapy, in which the person gradually and repeatedly re-lives the frightening experience under controlled conditions to help him or her work through the trauma. 6,7 Studies also have found that several types of medication, particularly the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and other antidepressants, can help relieve the symptoms of PTSD.
Other research shows that giving people an opportunity to talk about their experiences very soon after a catastrophic event may reduce some of the symptoms of PTSD. A study of 12,000 schoolchildren who lived through a hurricane in Hawaii found that those who got counseling early on were doing much better 2 years later than those who did not.
Basically they have been cashing the Ultima and Wing Commander cows for years, complete list from IGN:
publisher
3DO, CyberMage, Super Wing Commander
Amiga Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Wing Commander
Apple IIe/c/c+ Ogre,Omega,Ultima,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
Atari 400/800/XL/XE Autoduel,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Atari ST Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Commodore 64 Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
MSX Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Macintosh Super Wing Commander,Ultima III: Exodus,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
PC Abuse,CyberMage: Darklight Awakening,Privateer 2: The Darkening,Shadowcaster,Ulitma IX: Ascension,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima IX: Ascension,Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds,Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle,Ultima VII: The Black Gate,Ultima VII: The Forge of Virtue,Ultima VIII: Pagan,Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams,Wing Commander,Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger,Wing Commander: Privateer,Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams,Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire
PlayStation Crusader: No Remorse,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger,Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
Saturn Crusader: No Remorse
Sega CD Wing Commander
Super NES Wing Commander: Secret Missions
developer
3DO CyberMage,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Amiga Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet Wing Commander,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Apple IIe/c/c+ Ogre,Omega,Ultima,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
Atari 400/800/XL/XE Autoduel,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
Atari ST Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Commodore 64 Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
Game Boy Ultima: Runes of Virtue,Ultima: Runes of Virtue II
MSX Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Macintosh Super Wing Commander,System Shock,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
NES Ultima: Exodus,Ultima: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima: Warriors of Destiny
PC Crusader: No Regret,Crusader: No Remorse,CyberMage: Darklight Awakening,Strike Commander,Ultima Collection,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima IX: Ascension,Ultima Online,Ultima Online: Age of Shadows,Ultima Online: Lord Bl
Nonsense. They don't see the forrest for the trees? I beg your pardon?
You're a asuming that there is a Microsoft way to look at code and that every MS developer is a robot brain washed to think that way. MS hire very capable and brilliant people, you couldn't tell the difference between a bunch of NT kernel hackers and a bunch of Linux kernel hackers, both groups are extremely knowledgeable and manufacture high quallity code.
MS has the biggest industrial infrastructure in the world of quallity assurance. Every developer should go trhough an internship in Redmond to see this.
Large software *is* complex, period. Given a finite amount of talent and time, bugs are depedent of the size of the project, it really don't make a difference whether you're code is open source or not.
How many people do you think actually look at open source code to look for bugs?
Moral: if MS releases buggy, exploitalbe and potentially unsafe code is *not* because they are sloppy or because propietary code is inherently worse than open source, is because large software is complex and takes a lot of time to do it right.
Slashdot Mirror
Because spammers go where the bandwith is.
From an interesting article with some insights about the reason why most spam is US based:
http://www.compliancepipeline.com/28700163
"The United States is the origin of choice for spammers, said Alperovitch, because of the plentiful supply of cheap high-speed bandwidth. "Spammers need big pipes, and they don't want to pay much for it," he said.
That explains the low percentage of spam messages originating from overseas' IP addresses. The lack of cheap bandwidth outside the United States is stymieing spammers' attempts to scale up the volume of their mailings to U.S. sizes."
At 10 I was f*cking playing Lego.. for Christ's sake.
Next generation nerds, you see.
Take for example IBM. They have patented everything related to object oriented operating systems under their Taligent/San Francisco project.
They could sue Sun (J2EE) or Microsoft (.NET), and just anybody using things like Object-oriented window area display system, pat. no. 6,750,858, Object-oriented event notification system with listener registration of both interests and methods, pat. no. 6,424,354 or Distributed object networking service, pat. no. 6,223,217, just to name a few.
Crazy. We have to figure out a better patent system which stills protect intelectual property but also protects us from this nonsense.
> There is nothing in this story that requires mentioning an iPod.
Right. I first thought by reading just the headline that it was about a new cool hack that enables your iPod to listen to some E.T. radio station or something..
> I say fight the problem of child pornography
>(etc..) from the other end. Arrest the people,
> not the websites and protocols.
But this *is* fighting child pornography. By putting barriers to the potential demand you're actually affecting the offer.
I'm willing to lose some of my 'rights online' if I can improve the 'rights offline' of some children by accepting this kind of measures even with the risk of potential misuses.
No problem with me.
Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems. All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease, Sun and Microsoft are software vendors so they want the iron to be free. It makes perfect sense for MS but I really don't understand what's going on with Sun. They want to stop being a hardware vendor to become exactly what? Where is their business model?
In theory, could a private individual put a satelite in orbit?
Am I free to build, launch and use my own space gadgets?
What does international law say about this?
Please mod parent up to (Score:500, SoFuckingTrue).
"The web was *not* designed for applications and applications will *not* run well on the web."
10,000 times I've repeated this to my boss, still, my primary task at work is replacing rich full-featured client server applications with poor and dull J2EE web apps.
Let's wait for the fad to vanish..
> I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
:-)
This is the first time I post a reply to a sig but I do exactly the same.
I usually save a mod point to mod up a very funny and well thought controversial post, even if the guy is clearly trolling.
News for nerds, stuff that matters... with a bit of humour
Article from the Chicago Tribune (free reg needed): http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-02102 2ink,1,1030029.story
A cartridge conspiracy
By Phillip Robinson
Knight Ridder/Tribune
Published October 22, 2002
Ford and Chevron have partnered to design a new SUV. They claim it will run smoother and longer on a gallon of gas than any other SUV in the same class.
However, you'll have to use a special Chevron Premium gas that costs 30 percent to 70 percent more than typical gas. It's up around the $3- to
$4-a-gallon level. Use any other gas from any other station and a microchip in the tank will detect the difference and prevent the SUV from starting.
That protects you from poor performance and possible damage to the finely tuned engine. In fact, trying to use any other gas can sometimes void your warranty.
Relax. It isn't true. In cars, that is. (My apologies to Ford and Chevron.)
But it is true in computer printers.
Time to stop relaxing.
Some of the biggest inkjet printer makers are implanting chips in inkjet cartridges. These chips monitor the ink supply and let you know when you're getting low. They can even freeze the printer when the cartridge is empty. Supposedly that can permanently damage the printer.
So far, not so bad. Pretty much all cars have a fuel gauge, and all printers should, too. I loved when Lexmark added ink supply monitors to its software, so I could see how much was left. Few things are more annoying than getting halfway through a vital document only to run out of ink.
If and when you do find the cartridge, let's hope it isn't your first time buying replacement ink. First-timers are typically shocked at what they have to pay. That $100 inkjet printer may need three $35 cartridges to get back in a printing mood.
No wonder HP makes more profit on "consumables" such as ink than on anything else. No wonder Dell wants into the business. No wonder there's a busy
"recycling" and "remanufacturing" business in discount ink cartridges.
A growing number of companies refill used cartridges, and then sell them - often on the Internet - for 30 percent to 50 percent less. That saves you a lot of money and saves dumps from piles of dead cartridges.
But the remanufacturers won't be able to put a new chip in this latest cartridge design. Or be able to set the old chip back to recognizing "full."
Once that cartridge is empty, it's kaput. No recycling, no savings. The chip "squeals" on any attempt to reuse.
Some inkjet printer owners use their own refill kits to save even more money on ink. These kits are available even in some standard stores. They include a syringe, large bottles of ink and instructions. You fill the syringe and
then inject your cartridges. There's the danger of a mess, and of voiding the warranty, but there's also the prospect of saving 80 percent to 90
percent.
Smart chips in cartridges will also be able to terminate this savings. Once a cartridge is detected as empty, the chip can refuse to recognize it again as full.
It's called "lock in." Many tech companies are looking for ways to lock their customers in, to make it difficult or impossible for customers to
switch to using other suppliers in the future.
Of course, they don't advertise it that way. And many of their engineers and marketers may honestly not believe it that way.
They'll talk about the quality of the ink they make. How it's as much a part of the printing technology as the hardware and software. How you need all three working together to get the full performance. How they want to protect
you from bad prints, and the clogged inkjet tubes and broken printers that cheap ink can cause.
And you know, they're sometimes right. Cheap ink can make cheap-looking prints. No-name ink can clog those tiny jets in your printer.
But shouldn't you be the one to make the decision about which to use? Do you want the company "protecting" you ag
We need to humanize the problem of the increasing elder population and stop talking about 'technical' solutions.
Loneliness can kill.
In the end it comes down to the intelligence of the thief, the amount of computer experience they have, and the reason the laptop is stolen in the first place. The two reasons would be data recovery, the other to just sell the hardware. (I suppose a third would be to use it themselves).
The future of this technology I believe will be a BIOS based service. Something hard- coded in the BIOS that will be used to track the laptop. The car industry uses a GPS satellite to track some of its more expensive automobiles and perhaps that is where the laptop industry will go.
[..]
Systems hard coded with small GPS tracking units will creep into the corporate world, and users will be able to track where their laptops are if they?ve been stolen, and recovery will be more and more common.
..this definitely hacking for fun and [for apple's] profit ;)
Pity is also my main source of income.
I guess you can't have everything.
Very interesting.
Largo, Florida (400), Munich, Germany (14,000); Extremadura, Spain (80,000); Thailand (up to one million subsidized PCs to low income people, with 160,000 already shipped) and Rome now. Do you see a trend here? Massive deployments are taking place, mostly in the public sector, I think Linux has a bright future as the main option for tax funded massive deployments.
Here's a quick, brief MP3.com timeline:
July 1999 - MP3.com floats, raising $344 million.
August 2000 - MP3.com pays Sony $20m in damages for copyright infringement
September 2000 - MP3.com pays Universal $250m in damages for copyright infringement
May 2001 - Vivendi Universal announces intention to purchase MP3.com
Vivendi-Universal's former chief executive Jean-Marie Messier bought MP3.com for $372m in 2001 and integrated it into Vivendi Universal Net. The rise of file-sharing, the dot.com crash and perceptions of MP3.com as a 'sell-out' resulted in the investment failing to meet its potential.
November 14, 2003
MP3.com to close
CNET has acquired MP3.com and will be shutting down the downloading service. According to an email sent to MP3.com subscribers, the site will no longer be available as of December 2nd. According to the same email, CNET is planning to launch a service in the future.
Feb 25, 2004
Complete Liquidation of 100,000 sq ft facility - 100s of Servers (Sun, Compaq, HP, & Dell) Clarion EMC Storage - 100s of PCs, Notebooks, Printers - 100s of Herman Miller Aeron Chairs - 10,000 sq ft health club - Pool Table, Foosball, Video Arcade Games, Ping Pong. Artwork, Collectable Musical instruments, Contemporary Furniture & more...
Other developments from PARC are the Graphical user interface (GUI), the mouse, the WYSIWYG text editor, the laser printer, the desktop computer and the Smalltalk programming language.
One of the firs applications of this new tech could be immersive karaokes, where you can sing your favourite song among a living 3D projection of the real band (without the singer of course)...
;)
Just imagine, the *huge* market that there is in Japan for this kind of stuff: all those japanesse business men impersontating Freddie Mercury after work
In some residential areas of Madrid (Spain) you can currently get a symetric (600 Kbps upload and download) internet access via power lines for 39 euros/month. Here they call this technology Power Line Communications (PLC) but I think it's the same as BPL.
I don't know how it works though, I use regular DSL access.
You can get more info here: http://www.neo.es (in spanish).
According to the National Institute of Mental Health exposing patients to the simulated event actually works, see:
Treatments for PTSD
PTSD can be extremely debilitating. Fortunately, research--including studies supported by NIMH and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)--has led to the development of treatments to help people with PTSD.
Studies have demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and exposure therapy, in which the person gradually and repeatedly re-lives the frightening experience under controlled conditions to help him or her work through the trauma. 6,7 Studies also have found that several types of medication, particularly the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and other antidepressants, can help relieve the symptoms of PTSD.
Other research shows that giving people an opportunity to talk about their experiences very soon after a catastrophic event may reduce some of the symptoms of PTSD. A study of 12,000 schoolchildren who lived through a hurricane in Hawaii found that those who got counseling early on were doing much better 2 years later than those who did not.
Basically they have been cashing the Ultima and Wing Commander cows for years, complete list from IGN:
publisher
3DO, CyberMage, Super Wing Commander
Amiga
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Wing Commander
Apple IIe/c/c+
Ogre,Omega,Ultima,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
Atari 400/800/XL/XE
Autoduel,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Atari ST
Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Commodore 64
Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
MSX
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Macintosh
Super Wing Commander,Ultima III: Exodus,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
PC
Abuse,CyberMage: Darklight Awakening,Privateer 2: The Darkening,Shadowcaster,Ulitma IX: Ascension,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima IX: Ascension,Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds,Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle,Ultima VII: The Black Gate,Ultima VII: The Forge of Virtue,Ultima VIII: Pagan,Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams,Wing Commander,Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger,Wing Commander: Privateer,Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams,Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire
PlayStation
Crusader: No Remorse,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger,Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
Saturn
Crusader: No Remorse
Sega CD
Wing Commander
Super NES
Wing Commander: Secret Missions
developer
3DO
CyberMage,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Amiga
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Wing Commander,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Apple IIe/c/c+
Ogre,Omega,Ultima,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
Atari 400/800/XL/XE
Autoduel,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
Atari ST
Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Commodore 64
Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny,Ultima VI: The False Prophet,Ultima: The First Age of Darkness
Game Boy
Ultima: Runes of Virtue,Ultima: Runes of Virtue II
MSX
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
Macintosh
Super Wing Commander,System Shock,Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
NES
Ultima: Exodus,Ultima: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima: Warriors of Destiny
PC
Crusader: No Regret,Crusader: No Remorse,CyberMage: Darklight Awakening,Strike Commander,Ultima Collection,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness,Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (Pony Canyon),Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress,Ultima III: Exodus,Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar,Ultima IX: Ascension,Ultima Online,Ultima Online: Age of Shadows,Ultima Online: Lord Bl
If you google for "internet iran" you'll get pretty much the opposite impresion.
You're a asuming that there is a Microsoft way to look at code and that every MS developer is a robot brain washed to think that way. MS hire very capable and brilliant people, you couldn't tell the difference between a bunch of NT kernel hackers and a bunch of Linux kernel hackers, both groups are extremely knowledgeable and manufacture high quallity code.
MS has the biggest industrial infrastructure in the world of quallity assurance. Every developer should go trhough an internship in Redmond to see this.
Large software *is* complex, period. Given a finite amount of talent and time, bugs are depedent of the size of the project, it really don't make a difference whether you're code is open source or not.
How many people do you think actually look at open source code to look for bugs?
Moral: if MS releases buggy, exploitalbe and potentially unsafe code is *not* because they are sloppy or because propietary code is inherently worse than open source, is because large software is complex and takes a lot of time to do it right.
Oracle is 1st (France Telecom). I bet larry Ellison is launching a *big* advertising campaing based on these data.
They are going to exploit this thing "ad nauseam". Wait and see.