The BIOS tool makes sense. Once the contents are in memory, it could potentially be read. Preventing that removes the chances of that tool being used in combination with another vulnerability - either to conduct some sort of attack that might fark the board, or to bypass security mechanisms like boot/bios passwords.
I don't know why ethtool/ping would be root only. I don't even know why xorg.conf requires higher permissions.
I think the big problem with desktop linux is it's still got that company-workstation-desktop mentality. It doesn't auto-elevate when the user wants it to. Yes, if I navigate to xorg.conf in Nautilus, and open it in gedit, and I try to save it, I do want to save it. I don't want to have to open the terminal and type sudo gedit/etc/X11/xorg.conf in order to make changes.
Also, it'd be nice if Nautilus could copy files from one Nautilus window to another.:/ Having multiple different folders open is how I quickly manage/move files on Windows.
Don't get me wrong - the GUI of a distro like Ubuntu is nice looking - but it's missing... polish.
I've been playing with Ubuntu, and for a large chunk of stuff I need to configure(xorg.conf, inputrc, etc.), I have to edit it in gedit. (simple enough)
For another large chunk(like boot menus), there's a tool available - but the tool is cryptic on what its actions are. "Clean boot menu" - what is that? Just removes the extra Ubuntu kernels from the boot menu, or will it wipe out references to unmounted NTFS/win32 installs? Too cryptic. Poorly designed GUI. I'd rather have a list with +/- buttons. In the end I used gedit to edit my boot menu.
For another small group of tools, the UI malfunctions randomly. Examples would be all the torrent clients I've tried on Ubuntu. Transmission sometimes wouldn't add torrents. Deluge often shrinks the size of the columns to the minimum size, so that the screen is blank until I re-resize them all, one by one. Oh, and if I double click to un-minimize it, it goes completely blank.:P
UIs like XFCE, Fluxbox, etc. are not what I'd call user friendly, and they are not "good looking".
While I've been impressed with how well windows get laid out on the screen(this is an X11 thing?), I am annoyed by all the stuff that can cover of the taskbar and prevent me from getting at it. Hotkey support is also absolutely abysmal. I can't even alt+tab from a lot of fullscreen stuff, without leaving a folder open in Nautilus...
Absolutely free text messages would result in people using them for everything, including massive file transfers. (hey, people use gmail as a storage drive. I can't wait for textmsg2avi to come out.:P )
Text messages save them bandwidth, but also costs them their bread and butter phone calls, so when you pair that with the huge negative that free text messages would create, it's obvious they have to charge for them.
I still think they charge way too much, though. You should be granted something like 100 free text messages per day - plenty for average use, but not enough to abuse them. Or they could have reasonable rates like $0.01 per 25 text-messages. (clumps, reset daily)
It's also been done wrong for ages. I can remember more than a couple installers that took minutes to start because it loaded the whole thing into memory.
The original Warhammer: Dawn of War demo was like that. Double-click it, then wait patiently for 2 minutes(literal), unless you have > 1GB of memory.
Although I suppose on new computers it'd be negligible, now.
Frankly I'd quite happily say goodbye to the side quests altogether and have them work on the main storyline more for these sorts of games. Games like Deadspace show how awesome games can be if you just focus on the storyline.
And Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time! Short, only a single story, but very awesome and fun to play!
Sometimes torrents can't even compete with Hulu's quality. I don't know if they're poorly encoded or what, but it seems that Hulu 480p has superior image quality to 720p mkv, much of the time.
That paired with instant-streaming makes it very attractive, even if I have to watch a minute and a half of advertisements.
But some people torrent just to torrent.
I figure, you waste more time torrenting than just sitting through the ads.
I have a win2k install from... way way back. Can't remember the year I got it.
It's still as fast as the day I got it. Actually, it's faster. Recently the registry took a dump(corrupt SYSTEM hive - some windows glitch), and I had to install a second OS to copy over a new hive file. The old install runs faster than the new one.
But I'm not certain if that makes it stable or not... I suppose the install is stable, but the kernel has a few bugs.:P
Vista is a very active OS. If you hardware isn't rock solid, Vista will usually crash well before another OS (WinXP or a Linux distro)
I've seen systems that were able to run XP for days without crashing - torrent overnight, play games for 9 hours straight, then back to torrenting - but they couldn't run Vista for 30 minutes without a BSOD.
Vista drivers are great now, but a year or two ago, not so much.
I'm not sure they deserve kudos for this. Looks more like they simply don't want to axe a paying customer. After all, they aren't losing the money from all the downloading.
It's funny you should mention that. Apparently the going rate for bandwidth is somewhere around $0.16/GB.
I'm of the opinion that it's probably a bit less, since AT&T is a huge backbone, and thus own all their own equipment including the buildings the stuff is sitting in. But it does raise the interesting point that if someone were torrenting 500+ GB/mo, they might be losing money.
Torrents are notoriously hard on ISP networks. Verizon even introduced torrent acceleration because of it - it connects peers to closer peers/seeds rather than farther away peers, thus dropping overall network usage.
Protocols like FTP are much lighter, which is why many companies swear by Client-to-Server downloads. They have to pay for it, after all...
Well, we better hope the captcha crackers don't use this technology to identify objects based on their 3D shape.
I suppose if only a flat 2D image is sent out, it'd be more difficult - but if a 3D model is sent out, which is rendered on the client side, then it's asking to get cracked.
Although... a smart AI could learn over time if someone were dedicated enough to teach it what every image represents, from multiple angles - but that'd take a long time.
They need to alternate the selected images a lot, so that the same IP never gets the same image captcha twice. (if possible)
That would make the process of educating a captcha-decryption-ai take far too long to be worthwhile, which means the fallback would indeed be third world country workers.
Anyway, I feel bad for the lobsters, and really dislike feeling as is I am causing them pain. In the future, I'm going to go with the knife-through-the-head method of killing, as recommended by one of my dive buddies (and someone earlier in this thread).
With observations like that, I can see why!
A pot of boiling water will kill the brain quickly, but not instantly. Hot water from a tap won't do it quick at all.
Games are not the same as real creatures that evolved over time. Game AIs have clear and known boundaries. We're just beginning to understand real animals and our own bodies.
The best way to handle pain is to connect it to conscious thought, so that intelligent decisions about avoiding it in the future can be made.
Most animals evolved with some limited form of conscious thought. I'm hesitant to completely write off crustaceans feeling pain as false.
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The BIOS tool makes sense. Once the contents are in memory, it could potentially be read. Preventing that removes the chances of that tool being used in combination with another vulnerability - either to conduct some sort of attack that might fark the board, or to bypass security mechanisms like boot/bios passwords.
I don't know why ethtool/ping would be root only. I don't even know why xorg.conf requires higher permissions.
I think the big problem with desktop linux is it's still got that company-workstation-desktop mentality. It doesn't auto-elevate when the user wants it to. Yes, if I navigate to xorg.conf in Nautilus, and open it in gedit, and I try to save it, I do want to save it. I don't want to have to open the terminal and type sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf in order to make changes.
Also, it'd be nice if Nautilus could copy files from one Nautilus window to another. :/ Having multiple different folders open is how I quickly manage/move files on Windows.
Linux's downfall always has been the horrible UI.
Don't get me wrong - the GUI of a distro like Ubuntu is nice looking - but it's missing... polish.
I've been playing with Ubuntu, and for a large chunk of stuff I need to configure(xorg.conf, inputrc, etc.), I have to edit it in gedit. (simple enough)
For another large chunk(like boot menus), there's a tool available - but the tool is cryptic on what its actions are. "Clean boot menu" - what is that? Just removes the extra Ubuntu kernels from the boot menu, or will it wipe out references to unmounted NTFS/win32 installs? Too cryptic. Poorly designed GUI. I'd rather have a list with +/- buttons. In the end I used gedit to edit my boot menu.
For another small group of tools, the UI malfunctions randomly. Examples would be all the torrent clients I've tried on Ubuntu. Transmission sometimes wouldn't add torrents. Deluge often shrinks the size of the columns to the minimum size, so that the screen is blank until I re-resize them all, one by one. Oh, and if I double click to un-minimize it, it goes completely blank. :P
UIs like XFCE, Fluxbox, etc. are not what I'd call user friendly, and they are not "good looking".
While I've been impressed with how well windows get laid out on the screen(this is an X11 thing?), I am annoyed by all the stuff that can cover of the taskbar and prevent me from getting at it. Hotkey support is also absolutely abysmal. I can't even alt+tab from a lot of fullscreen stuff, without leaving a folder open in Nautilus...
Linux needs more GUI polish.
Let's assume for the moment that you're right.
Explain the cost of SMS.
That one's easy.
Absolutely free text messages would result in people using them for everything, including massive file transfers. (hey, people use gmail as a storage drive. I can't wait for textmsg2avi to come out. :P )
Text messages save them bandwidth, but also costs them their bread and butter phone calls, so when you pair that with the huge negative that free text messages would create, it's obvious they have to charge for them.
I still think they charge way too much, though. You should be granted something like 100 free text messages per day - plenty for average use, but not enough to abuse them. Or they could have reasonable rates like $0.01 per 25 text-messages. (clumps, reset daily)
No... this is an April Fool's joke.
This isn't, though.
The pic in the article above bears a striking resemblance to a CPU w/ IHS in one of those hard plastic CPU holders.
GIMP is notoriously unstable on Windows.
But on Windows you have PaintdotNet, so why would you use GIMP?
Yes, XP is faster. Gnome is quite bloated, just like Aero.
Linux has had superior power management for... years, now?
I have a 1.2ghz VIA Eden sitting next to me. Let me tell you, the difference between XP and Ubuntu is clear as day. And Vista won't even run... :P
It's also been done wrong for ages. I can remember more than a couple installers that took minutes to start because it loaded the whole thing into memory.
The original Warhammer: Dawn of War demo was like that. Double-click it, then wait patiently for 2 minutes(literal), unless you have > 1GB of memory.
Although I suppose on new computers it'd be negligible, now.
Banana stickers!
You've got to stick them somewhere!
iCall has been available on the iPhone for about a half-year now. (apparently in beta)
It integrates seamlessly with the iPhone. Those skype guys are behind. :P
Frankly I'd quite happily say goodbye to the side quests altogether and have them work on the main storyline more for these sorts of games. Games like Deadspace show how awesome games can be if you just focus on the storyline.
And Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time! Short, only a single story, but very awesome and fun to play!
Sometimes torrents can't even compete with Hulu's quality. I don't know if they're poorly encoded or what, but it seems that Hulu 480p has superior image quality to 720p mkv, much of the time.
That paired with instant-streaming makes it very attractive, even if I have to watch a minute and a half of advertisements.
But some people torrent just to torrent.
I figure, you waste more time torrenting than just sitting through the ads.
Hulu seems to average ~2 minutes of advertising per show. Sometimes less.
TV averages ~18 minutes.
TV has roughly 10x the advertising. I'd take Hulu over that any day. Sadly, they don't allow Canadians to watch.
Fascinating! I can see the potential here. My run box is similar to that, and it's quite handy.
But the URL stuff mentioned above already works in Firefox, thanks to Google.
I must be cursed. About 40% of the drives I touch die shortly thereafter. (figurative - not literal)
At home, I've had to RMA about... 6 drives, now? :/
I have a win2k install from... way way back. Can't remember the year I got it.
It's still as fast as the day I got it. Actually, it's faster. Recently the registry took a dump(corrupt SYSTEM hive - some windows glitch), and I had to install a second OS to copy over a new hive file. The old install runs faster than the new one.
But I'm not certain if that makes it stable or not... I suppose the install is stable, but the kernel has a few bugs. :P
Vista is a very active OS. If you hardware isn't rock solid, Vista will usually crash well before another OS (WinXP or a Linux distro)
I've seen systems that were able to run XP for days without crashing - torrent overnight, play games for 9 hours straight, then back to torrenting - but they couldn't run Vista for 30 minutes without a BSOD.
Vista drivers are great now, but a year or two ago, not so much.
I'm not sure they deserve kudos for this. Looks more like they simply don't want to axe a paying customer. After all, they aren't losing the money from all the downloading.
It's funny you should mention that. Apparently the going rate for bandwidth is somewhere around $0.16/GB.
I'm of the opinion that it's probably a bit less, since AT&T is a huge backbone, and thus own all their own equipment including the buildings the stuff is sitting in. But it does raise the interesting point that if someone were torrenting 500+ GB/mo, they might be losing money.
Torrents are notoriously hard on ISP networks. Verizon even introduced torrent acceleration because of it - it connects peers to closer peers/seeds rather than farther away peers, thus dropping overall network usage.
Protocols like FTP are much lighter, which is why many companies swear by Client-to-Server downloads. They have to pay for it, after all...
The only way to defeat captchas once and for all is to teach an AI to identify all the shapes and objects a normal human can.
This is a monumental task, but once done, where do the captcha creators have left to go?
It's not often that I point to Paypal, for the way to do something right, but...
Your original transaction fee will be credited to you. When issuing partial refunds, a portion of the original fees paid will be returned to you.
Big companies stagnate easily. I wouldn't want them to fall into that trap.
Well, we better hope the captcha crackers don't use this technology to identify objects based on their 3D shape.
I suppose if only a flat 2D image is sent out, it'd be more difficult - but if a 3D model is sent out, which is rendered on the client side, then it's asking to get cracked.
Although... a smart AI could learn over time if someone were dedicated enough to teach it what every image represents, from multiple angles - but that'd take a long time.
They need to alternate the selected images a lot, so that the same IP never gets the same image captcha twice. (if possible)
That would make the process of educating a captcha-decryption-ai take far too long to be worthwhile, which means the fallback would indeed be third world country workers.
It might not save anything if the packets are the same size.
I think sites like Youtube waste more bandwidth.
1) Watch vid.
2) Post comment. (Page reloads)
3) Vid re-downloaded. (in part, or in full)
Anyway, I feel bad for the lobsters, and really dislike feeling as is I am causing them pain. In the future, I'm going to go with the knife-through-the-head method of killing, as recommended by one of my dive buddies (and someone earlier in this thread).
With observations like that, I can see why!
A pot of boiling water will kill the brain quickly, but not instantly. Hot water from a tap won't do it quick at all.
Games are not the same as real creatures that evolved over time. Game AIs have clear and known boundaries. We're just beginning to understand real animals and our own bodies.
The best way to handle pain is to connect it to conscious thought, so that intelligent decisions about avoiding it in the future can be made.
Most animals evolved with some limited form of conscious thought. I'm hesitant to completely write off crustaceans feeling pain as false.
So ignorance is an excuse for doing something? Awesome!