It's a new product. They can set whatever price (and price policy) they want.
It's up to Microsoft's costumers to decide if it's more cost efficient to upgrade to Windows XP or take any other path (including not-upgrading and stop having support in some years time or start a migration process of some or all systems to other operating systems with different cost structures)
As i see it a more expensive Windows just increases the number of situations in which it's cheaper to migrate/implement to/in another operating system and contract a System Administrator for that OS instead of a Windows System Admin.
'Police held two men at gun point in New Jersey after a bus driver reported they spoke, "little English," and seemed "suspicious."'
If speaking "little English" and looking "suspicious" are enough to make you be hold at gun point by police officers then half of New York cabbies would be in police custody by now...
Even more now that i'm living outside my country of birth - instead carrying a big cluncky passport, i carry my ID card (somewhat bigger than a credit card, fits neatly in my wallet) which i use anywhere i need to prove my identity (banks, airports, picking up packages in the post office).
Beter yet, it works anywhere in the EU (i've even used it in Ireland and England which are outside the Shengen Area) so i can travel all over europe without a passport.
On the other hand, and since i come from a smallish european country, i had to insist with the bank people to "check their little book of valid ID cards" before the would accept my ID card (now they don't even blink an eye when they see it)
"I didn't know what it (the worm) would do. I just clicked away... I did this without thinking and without overseeing the consequences and without the intent to cause damage to anyone," he said. "I am not a programmer; this was the first time I created something myself."
We should send a message to all clueless amateurs out there that go around "clicking" in virus making kits and creating Outlook viruses that force law abiding companies to close down their e-mail systems and loose thousands of dolars in revenues (imagine all those suffering employees that cannot send the latest joke to all their collegues).
If we don't act swiftly and decisively now, we risk having these "amateurs" playing around with Code Red Creation Kits.
I say hang the guy in Dam square in Amsterdam - that will show them!!!
Assume that your source is a 1024x768 RGB 24 fps stream.
First we apply a transformation to the RGB values in order to obtain the Lumiance values.
Next we pass those values through a downsampler ( in this case downsampling is done by left-shifting all the bits of each byte value and dropping the carry bit )
We do this 7 times
Next we pass the values through a resolution downsampler (which outputs 1 pixel for each 2x2 pixel input blocks by averaging the values of the 4 bits).
We do this 8 times.
Last but not least we pass the result through a time downsampler (which produces 1 output frame from 2 input frames by averaging the values of each bit in frame 1 against the corresponding bit in frame 2).
We do this 3 times.
And there we have it - a highly compressed stream running at 36 bps!!!
Sure, some of you might say that a black & white (and only black and white) 3x4 image at 3 frames-per-second doesn't have that much quality, but it think you're just jealous of my revolutionary new technology!!!
From what i read in other articles they seem to be something different from the e-wallet cards deployed in Portugal and Holland.
Altough the Portuguese and Dutch e-wallet smartcard-chips come embebed in a normal ATM card, they are actually used independently - any ATM/Shop Payment transaction uses the information in the magnetic strip of the card (plus a PIN and an online checking mechanism) while using the e-wallet allows you to transfer "virtual money" from your card to the store/Parking Meter card (this will only use the "money" stored in your card and has nothing to do with your bank account or whatever).
Also these seem to be more recent than the French ones (they were introduced in Portugal about 7 years ago)
From the descriptions i read in this thread, the french cards seem to contain a smartcard-chip so that an ATM transaction can be authenticated offline. This is a totally different application.
From a hacking point of view, the main difference is that if you hack an e-wallet chip you can produce money out of thin air (that is, you can mislead the card into thinking you have loaded it with money), while in if you hack one of those french cards you can pass yourself as the owner of some bank account (or maybe use an unexisting bank account number)
The smart-cards are used as a sort of electronic-wallet:
You load it with money from your account (usually at an automathic teller machine) and then you can go around buying things with that card until it's empty (and then you load it again).
If you loose the card: It's the same as if you loose your cash - whoever finds it can use it.
If you damage your card: For you it's the same as if you destroy some cash - for the bank is nicer 'cause they get to keep your money
Is it used?
The two situations i know best are Portugal and Holland.
Most banks introduced it in Portugal some years ago (a country wide standard) and went around offering cards, providing stores with card readers and advertising the cards. It was a total fiasco - they spent loads of money promoting it and in the end nobody uses it. Then again, the only advantage it had compared with hard cash was that it made it easier to pay for car-parking (instead of using coins).
In Holland they're doing the exact same thing as in Portugal except they are 1 or 2 years behind (they just recently stopped promoting it). Again a total fiasco.
So what's the problem with these cards?
For one they've been positioned as an electronic wallet. This means they have to compete with the ease of use of hard cash. (Accepted everywhere; physically more resistent; well known; widelly deployed).
Also the currently deployed solution doesn't offer many advantages over hard cash (you can used it in some (few) parking metters instead of coins - that's about it)
Finally, you can't use it to pay things in the Net (you need special equipment to use one of those cards) - this means they can't compete with the existing standard (credit cards).
Actually the Quake 3 demo benchmark is the one showing the best improvements for the AMD Duron 1GHz compared to the 950MHz. (I totally ignored the high-resolution values because of exactly the reason you stated above and the 640x400 values because nobody needs to play Quake like that even with a crapy monitor)
The point here is that this new microprocessor will have a nice premium compared to the Duron 950Mhz (i expect it to be 10% more expensive - just like the Duron 950MHz still is in relation to the 900Mhz) while only giving a boost of about 8% to something that really doesn't need that boost (119fps-Quake3@800x600) - things like kernel compilations don't even have that big an increase in speed (less than 2% best case).
Is it worth it buying it instead of the cheaper Duron 950MHz?
Judging from these reviews, and unless it's price is less that 5% above that of the Duron 950Mhz - No.
Then again who ever said that human beings were logical....
I've no idea what average wind speeds at 100,000 feet are, but I know wind speeds at airliner altitudes are typically *much* faster than 20 mph. Assuming that's the case at these higher altitudes, sounds like you'd have about as much control over where these planes went as a high-altitude balloon (ie not very much).
What matters is the force the wind exerts agains the plane. Given that pressure decreases with altitude, this means that for the same speed of wind, the force exerted in the plane also decreases with altitude.
The data about the items, and which item belongs to which character is stored in a database. This data was slowly gathered by thousands of people using millions of man-hours (10000 people * 100 hours each = 1 million man/hours).
If this data is definitivly lost millions of man/hours get lost.
If people were previously aware that this would happen, all or at least some of this time investment could've been used in other activities (like downloading p0rn or sleeping in front of the TV during another episode of the latest "reality show"), which in light of this data loss, would yielding a better return on investment (more enjoyment per time unit invested)
Altough it's a ground level explosion (much less efective than airborne) it still has a lot of punch.
Or how about putting it in one of those advertisement blimps...
Or maybe use one of those recreational sail-ships...
Or put it on a plane from some crappy security airport...
I think that probably the only reason why no terrorist group has ever tried one of this methods (or something else i can't even concieve), is because the lack the fissionable material (there aro too many "rogue" governments out there with big pockets trying to get their hands on the stuff - the price of it is probably too high for terrorist groups)
I've been around the Net for some time now, and i've seen it go from purely academic to (almost) purely commercial (yep, when AOL gave their costumers access to the Internet it was the beginning of the end).
I've seen the fall of Usenet (information to noise ratio is now about 1-10 in most groups) and the raise of spamming...
Do i get spam on my e-mail account? - Nope.
How?
I have three e-mail accounts:
One for my friends and my informal humor mailing lists and official stuff (note: subscriptions to banana-girls-with-big-breasts.com sort of sites does not count as official). I never put this address in any public forum (that includes/.).
Number of spams per-month = zero
The other one is at work. I only use it for work related stuff. When i change companies this one changes but my friends can always get me through the other one (for all the other ones, well - if you don't have my personal e-mail that means i don't want to hear from you again). I never publish this one in public forums.
Number of spams per-month = zero
The last one is my public e-mail. I'll look at it maybe once a week. I'll use it publicly (although i still refrain myself from using it "as is" in Usenet - beter transform it so that humans can understand the real one but not e-mail address collection programs). Registration to any moderatly crappy site involves using this one. For extra crappy sites i just create a new one in Hotmail.
Number of spams per-month = about 10 to 20
So, after all my gloating about my own cunningness, what's the conclusion:
Levels of privacy!!!
Set up e-mail accounts the same way as you set up your life: friends; work; everybody else
If kids now get used to use Free Software programs instead of Commercial ones, then 10-20 year from now you will have a whole pool of new workers that are actually used to working with Free Software instead of Comercial software and cannot concieve of ever paying for a Spreadsheet or a Word Processor ("Why should i pay for it now if i've got if for free all my life?").
When confronted with the options of:
Re-train all new personnel AND pay for the software
In a situation in which several different competitors can provide the same good, it's very difficult to remove rights from the consumer (ie move the consumer to a worse situation). Simply put, any provider that removes rights from the consumer will loose costumers to the other providers that did not change their conditions.
Unfortunatly this only works in a pure competition situation, hence the RIAA and MPAA situations (plus the latest changes from Microsoft to their pricing schemes).
In terms of the Internet, people are used to free content, so it's going to be very difficult for any one site to make them pay for what they can get free somewhere else.
A sugestion:
The way most people connect to the Internet nowadays (except via modem in Europe) is basicaly a flat-fee. I would think (and this is purely my personal opinion) that the payment of a flat-fee to have free access to a pool of content (for example: all the music you want to hear for $10/month) would match the current model of payment for Internet access and thus be much more easy to accept.
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It's a new product. They can set whatever price (and price policy) they want.
It's up to Microsoft's costumers to decide if it's more cost efficient to upgrade to Windows XP or take any other path (including not-upgrading and stop having support in some years time or start a migration process of some or all systems to other operating systems with different cost structures)
As i see it a more expensive Windows just increases the number of situations in which it's cheaper to migrate/implement to/in another operating system and contract a System Administrator for that OS instead of a Windows System Admin.
If speaking "little English" and looking "suspicious" are enough to make you be hold at gun point by police officers then half of New York cabbies would be in police custody by now...
The system should include an auxiliary set of physical measures - for example Penis or Breast geometry.
I bet it would be a huge success in airports!!!
... i have to say it's very usefull.
Even more now that i'm living outside my country of birth - instead carrying a big cluncky passport, i carry my ID card (somewhat bigger than a credit card, fits neatly in my wallet) which i use anywhere i need to prove my identity (banks, airports, picking up packages in the post office).
Beter yet, it works anywhere in the EU (i've even used it in Ireland and England which are outside the Shengen Area) so i can travel all over europe without a passport.
On the other hand, and since i come from a smallish european country, i had to insist with the bank people to "check their little book of valid ID cards" before the would accept my ID card (now they don't even blink an eye when they see it)
...
Resident Evil with Sesame Street
We should send a message to all clueless amateurs out there that go around "clicking" in virus making kits and creating Outlook viruses that force law abiding companies to close down their e-mail systems and loose thousands of dolars in revenues (imagine all those suffering employees that cannot send the latest joke to all their collegues).
If we don't act swiftly and decisively now, we risk having these "amateurs" playing around with Code Red Creation Kits.
I say hang the guy in Dam square in Amsterdam - that will show them!!!
First we apply a transformation to the RGB values in order to obtain the Lumiance values.
Next we pass those values through a downsampler ( in this case downsampling is done by left-shifting all the bits of each byte value and dropping the carry bit )
We do this 7 times
Next we pass the values through a resolution downsampler (which outputs 1 pixel for each 2x2 pixel input blocks by averaging the values of the 4 bits).
We do this 8 times.
Last but not least we pass the result through a time downsampler (which produces 1 output frame from 2 input frames by averaging the values of each bit in frame 1 against the corresponding bit in frame 2).
We do this 3 times.
And there we have it - a highly compressed stream running at 36 bps!!!
Sure, some of you might say that a black & white (and only black and white) 3x4 image at 3 frames-per-second doesn't have that much quality, but it think you're just jealous of my revolutionary new technology!!!
... in adittion to the 1 week i already took
... and this still leaves me with 1 1/2 weeks vacations during Christmas and New Year
... Plus i can do it every year.
Ain't i a stinker!??
From what i read in other articles they seem to be something different from the e-wallet cards deployed in Portugal and Holland.
Altough the Portuguese and Dutch e-wallet smartcard-chips come embebed in a normal ATM card, they are actually used independently - any ATM/Shop Payment transaction uses the information in the magnetic strip of the card (plus a PIN and an online checking mechanism) while using the e-wallet allows you to transfer "virtual money" from your card to the store/Parking Meter card (this will only use the "money" stored in your card and has nothing to do with your bank account or whatever).
Also these seem to be more recent than the French ones (they were introduced in Portugal about 7 years ago)
From the descriptions i read in this thread, the french cards seem to contain a smartcard-chip so that an ATM transaction can be authenticated offline. This is a totally different application.
From a hacking point of view, the main difference is that if you hack an e-wallet chip you can produce money out of thin air (that is, you can mislead the card into thinking you have loaded it with money), while in if you hack one of those french cards you can pass yourself as the owner of some bank account (or maybe use an unexisting bank account number)
You load it with money from your account (usually at an automathic teller machine) and then you can go around buying things with that card until it's empty (and then you load it again).
Is it used?
The two situations i know best are Portugal and Holland.
Most banks introduced it in Portugal some years ago (a country wide standard) and went around offering cards, providing stores with card readers and advertising the cards. It was a total fiasco - they spent loads of money promoting it and in the end nobody uses it. Then again, the only advantage it had compared with hard cash was that it made it easier to pay for car-parking (instead of using coins).
In Holland they're doing the exact same thing as in Portugal except they are 1 or 2 years behind (they just recently stopped promoting it). Again a total fiasco.
So what's the problem with these cards?
For one they've been positioned as an electronic wallet. This means they have to compete with the ease of use of hard cash. (Accepted everywhere; physically more resistent; well known; widelly deployed).
Also the currently deployed solution doesn't offer many advantages over hard cash (you can used it in some (few) parking metters instead of coins - that's about it)
Finally, you can't use it to pay things in the Net (you need special equipment to use one of those cards) - this means they can't compete with the existing standard (credit cards).
The point here is that this new microprocessor will have a nice premium compared to the Duron 950Mhz (i expect it to be 10% more expensive - just like the Duron 950MHz still is in relation to the 900Mhz) while only giving a boost of about 8% to something that really doesn't need that boost (119fps-Quake3@800x600) - things like kernel compilations don't even have that big an increase in speed (less than 2% best case).
Is it worth it buying it instead of the cheaper Duron 950MHz?
Judging from these reviews, and unless it's price is less that 5% above that of the Duron 950Mhz - No.
Then again who ever said that human beings were logical
... must be VERY popular in Canada
Oh wait - my monitor is not good enough for 119.5 and my network connection is the limiting factor for "real gamming"
It's ok anyway - at least i will know that those extra dolars give me the possibility of getting those extra 11fps
Really, the Romans had no zeros (well, maybe some of the emperors, but that's a different story...)
Just think how important the zero is:
I've no idea what average wind speeds at 100,000 feet are, but I know wind speeds at airliner altitudes are typically *much* faster than 20 mph. Assuming that's the case at these higher altitudes, sounds like you'd have about as much control over where these planes went as a high-altitude balloon (ie not very much). What matters is the force the wind exerts agains the plane. Given that pressure decreases with altitude, this means that for the same speed of wind, the force exerted in the plane also decreases with altitude.
I see that you like dancing ...
Besides, as long as the 3D card can render it, you can send many more polygons/second if you have 6.6 GBps of bandwidth
Another thing that comes to mind is Video Capture and processing of HDTV signals.
There is loads of highly concentrated wisdom in here
-
First it has a propagation period in which it spreads using 199 threads (we got improve on the code red thing some way).
-
Next phase starts at a synchronized moment (using some web available Atomic Clock) and reboots Windows.
Ideally all Windows machines with unpatched IIS in the whole world would be down for a couple of minutes - that should flush the little bugger...The data about the items, and which item belongs to which character is stored in a database. This data was slowly gathered by thousands of people using millions of man-hours (10000 people * 100 hours each = 1 million man/hours).
If this data is definitivly lost millions of man/hours get lost. If people were previously aware that this would happen, all or at least some of this time investment could've been used in other activities (like downloading p0rn or sleeping in front of the TV during another episode of the latest "reality show"), which in light of this data loss, would yielding a better return on investment (more enjoyment per time unit invested)
Altough it's a ground level explosion (much less efective than airborne) it still has a lot of punch.
Or how about putting it in one of those advertisement blimps...
Or maybe use one of those recreational sail-ships ...
Or put it on a plane from some crappy security airport ...
I think that probably the only reason why no terrorist group has ever tried one of this methods (or something else i can't even concieve), is because the lack the fissionable material (there aro too many "rogue" governments out there with big pockets trying to get their hands on the stuff - the price of it is probably too high for terrorist groups)
My account has been there for 3 years now - and no spam.
Use Hotmail at your own risk...
You seem to have hit on something with that:
Just what planet are your "zero spam" accounts on? .me? .ma? .ve? .ju? .ur?
The idea of using free e-mails in sites on non-.com domains might be usefull, given that most spam is oriented to an US audience ...
I've seen the fall of Usenet (information to noise ratio is now about 1-10 in most groups) and the raise of spamming...
Do i get spam on my e-mail account? - Nope.
How?
I have three e-mail accounts:
- One for my friends and my informal humor mailing lists and official stuff (note: subscriptions to banana-girls-with-big-breasts.com sort of sites does not count as official). I never put this address in any public forum (that includes
/.).
- The other one is at work. I only use it for work related stuff. When i change companies this one changes but my friends can always get me through the other one (for all the other ones, well - if you don't have my personal e-mail that means i don't want to hear from you again). I never publish this one in public forums.
- The last one is my public e-mail. I'll look at it maybe once a week. I'll use it publicly (although i still refrain myself from using it "as is" in Usenet - beter transform it so that humans can understand the real one but not e-mail address collection programs). Registration to any moderatly crappy site involves using this one. For extra crappy sites i just create a new one in Hotmail.
So, after all my gloating about my own cunningness, what's the conclusion:Number of spams per-month = zero
Number of spams per-month = zero
Number of spams per-month = about 10 to 20
Levels of privacy!!!
Set up e-mail accounts the same way as you set up your life: friends; work; everybody else
It works!
When confronted with the options of:
- Re-train all new personnel AND pay for the software
- Use Free Software
what will be easier for a company to choose?In a situation in which several different competitors can provide the same good, it's very difficult to remove rights from the consumer (ie move the consumer to a worse situation). Simply put, any provider that removes rights from the consumer will loose costumers to the other providers that did not change their conditions.
Unfortunatly this only works in a pure competition situation, hence the RIAA and MPAA situations (plus the latest changes from Microsoft to their pricing schemes).
In terms of the Internet, people are used to free content, so it's going to be very difficult for any one site to make them pay for what they can get free somewhere else.
A sugestion:
The way most people connect to the Internet nowadays (except via modem in Europe) is basicaly a flat-fee. I would think (and this is purely my personal opinion) that the payment of a flat-fee to have free access to a pool of content (for example: all the music you want to hear for $10/month) would match the current model of payment for Internet access and thus be much more easy to accept.