Spam won't just grow forever, just as the outlaws of the old west eventually saw the end of their reign.
In the broad sense, crime-fighting is a form of "filtering".
Eventually, we'll develop the appropriate techno-social mechanisms that will deal with this problem. It may not be until E-mail as we know it is dead - but I doubt it. Email is too important and too useful to truly die any time soon.
The great irony of the spam arms race is that the better we get at filtering the spam, the more garbage the spammers send out just to get the same return. You can't stop filtering it, because the mail you want would be buried in a torrent of spam. But filtering more just raises the bar for the next round of spam.
But that's not the case at all. Technologies other than filtering work well. In fact, I've stopped using filtering altogether simply because it doesn't work and is increasingly server-intensive.
Use some RBLs (such as SpamHaus, DUN, a few others) along with greylisting and you'll see a dramatic improvement with very little cost. Other things you can do include requiring strict adherence to the SMTP protocol, valid domains on to/from addresses, IP addresses with a reverse DNS, etc.
All these checks cost almost little to nothing on your server, yet are remarkably effective at stopping SPAM. If you're getting lots of SPAM, then either
1) Your ISP has a sysadmin that sucks, or
2) You're hosting it yourself, and you suck as a sysadmin.
I'm using greylisting and a number of RBLs, including DUN and SpamHaus.
I see perhaps a dozen or so spams/day despite my email address being plastered all over the Intarweb for the last 6 years. (I've made no effort to hide it)
This combination stops a ridiculous percentage of all inbound email.
Time to get those compact fluorescents. I have them in all but a few of the sockets in my house, and I estimate they save me big $$ given how much we have the lights on (there's almost always someone home, and I'm a night owl).
Boy, do I hear you! For a while, I had a 100 watt incandescent on the porch, until I realized that it single-handedly used almost as much electricity as every other light in the house!
I buy the 15 watt bulbs, they've been on sale locally for between $0.25 and $0.50 each. (subsidized by the local utility, I'm sure) I have about a kazillion of them. Since they last a pretty long time, I probably won't have to buy bulbs for another 10 years.
Windows strength is in the Bazaar. The marketplace. The middle class. Linux in the Cathedral. The French Parliament. The Munich city council. It has become the OS of choice of the Politically Correct.
It's obvious that you are oblivious of the server marketplace. Linux has become the default - servers are made and sold primarily to support Linux! Most hosting facilities have staff that are RHCE certified. Windows has a presense, and nobody snickers at Slowlaris, but Linux has much, much more steam in this space than you apparently realize.
Even if solar becomes cheap enough, what will prevent me is my home owners association. They don't allow solar panels. Move to a neighborhood that doesn't have that rule? I would have to move to a neighborhood that doesn't have a home owners association. Yeah, good luck in finding one! Folks are so afraid of their property values being hurt, they turn into housing fascists.
Yes, this is a real problem. However, if cells become reasonably priced, and can be "printed", what would it take to "print" them onto an attractive subsurface so that it blends in nicely?
You can get into ultralights for under $3,000. Granted this is really not "general aviation", but it's definitely affordable to just about anyone with a decent-paying steady job.
I don't know where you are, but the sub-$3,000 ultralights that I've seen look awfully reminiscent of a death-trap. Something that won't leave your spouse a widow starts about $10,000 and goes up fast from there.
Also, ultralights and sport planes have serious limitations - limitations on flight in controlled airspace, over urban areas, at night, etc. making them almost useless for any practical purpose.
Outside of gov't agencies and the mega-corps that service them, I don't see this taking off like the ipod. The PHB's in the banking world certainly won't understand why this is better than the systems they have now.
Funny that. When I read the price, my first thought was that this would very possibly explode!
It all comes down to benefits vs. cost. When there are billions of dollars on the line, protecting it with a mere $100,000 seems like chump change. And each $100,000 purchase helps prove a marketplace that will then lower costs.
With every new technology, there's an "adoption curve" where the price drops to a point where it makes sense at high economic levels. So the wealthy and the megacorps adopt the technology because it pays to do so. By doing so, the inventor/developer recoups their initial investments into the technology, and it begins to pay to reduce the price in order to encourage a larger marketplace.
Wash, rinse, repeat, and soon the new technology is available at very affordable prices to average people.
This doesn't happen to *all* technologies. For example, general aviation (EG: light, 1-12 person aircraft) is still pretty firmly entrenched in the ranks of the wealthy, for a variety of reasons. All too few people talk about the "family plane". But even in this case, commercial aviation is very reachable by the average Joe, a la SouthWest airlines.
So, to have perfectly unbreakable encryption over a 120 km link for just $100,000? I think that would get the attention of quite a number of large and middle-sized organizations, banks, and perhaps data warehouses.
If there was a single adjective I'd use to describe Wired, it would be "inconsistent". Because some works of pure genius came out of Wired, too.
For example, The Transparent Society is perhaps the best, clear, concise description of the privacy issues we face, and has the sharpest resolution picture of the best way to approach it.
Seriously - this article was prescient when it came out (now almost exactly 10 years ago!) and has altered my opinions about freedom and privacy forever.
Good luck to you and your unpatched Redhat, it doesn't have the volume of attacks a Windows box has - but don't assume it won't get rooted - it will.
As I recall, it takes an average of about 3 months for an unpatched RedHat box to get rooted, if left up in its default config and unpatched. Can't find a link - but there was a honeypot project on this a while back. And somehow, I doubt that even at 28.8 Kbps, it would take 3 months to complete an update.
However, patch the system, and apply reasonable "best practices" - such as NOT having the password of "god" for the root account - and you should expect a clean system.
I can put an unpatched RedHat Linux system on the public Internet and download patches without worrying about it. In fact, I routinely use such systems AS the router/firewall for other systems!
If you hear people around here saying things like "Windows is insecure and/or isn't really ready for the Internet", that's because it's true, or you wouldn't need that stupid $25 router in the first place!
The fact that you can't even imagine a server without a dedicated firewall in front of it speaks volumes.
My experience has been that you MUST teach yourself... especially if you work for the big cubicle farms. Teach yourself so you become better, so you keep your skills current, so you energize your imagination, and so you can go elsewhere when your employer enters the BRED ("Beancounters Rule Every Decision") Stage Of Atrophy.
I don't know where the big cubicle farm comes into play, here. Working as an independent contractor has led me to the exact same conclusion. Always learn, ALWAYS teach yourself. It's pretty much ALWAYS worth it.
And don't limit yourself to Comp Sci, either. For example, I'm currently training to be a private pilot. Why? I don't know, and never do. It's fun, I like to fly, and having more skills and experience has always paid me well. One of the best things you can do is to spend a few bux at the local Barnes and Nobles on a subject you know little about. B & N is a goldmine of business plans, technology information, and income opportunities!
I've attended numerous business courses in salesmanship and capital investment. They've also served me well, and helped me identify a startup with real potential, and gave me the skills to sell my way into partial ownership of the company. (that's now growing by leaps and bounds)
Another example - I did some research into using PHP as a scripting language for an SMTP daemon. I wanted to do some dynamic proxying that I didn't see elsewhere. I got it to work, using PHP as a script under xinet.d on Linux. Although that original business idea went nowhere, I used that very same software code to build a daemon that today transfers many gigabytes of data in a distributed software database, with about a thousand daily users.
Genetic research is not and never has been about "aborted embryos". This is one of the most common misconceptions of genetic research.
By the time an abortion has happened, it's WAY TOO LATE to use for genetic research.
What is used are frozen results from fertility clinics. When a couple has trouble reproducing, they'll sample some eggs and sperm from the couple, and put them together. They usually end up with a number of results, perhaps a dozen or more. They then try them, one by one.
When the woman gets pregnant, they're done - and there's usually a few left over.
So, once again: Genetic researchers do not use aborted fetuses.
Seriously - nothing fancy - just a single, white, LED bulb with a button on the side of the phone where I could dig for the keys I just dropped without having to grope like Mr. McGoo in the dark.
I'm asking for $0.10 for this feature, and would happily throw $20 at it just to not have to look for a !@#@! flashlight in a pinch.
*BSD is for People who Love *nix; Linux is for People who Hate Windows.
Ahem...
I'm a Linux lover. I don't deny it. Windows is great for games, and often for desktop use. MacOSX is the SHIZNIT for my grandmother - I'd use it more myself but the UI is a tad simplistic. (for me, annoying) Linux makes a great database/web/dns/mail/etc server.
BSD? What is it about BSD that you are enamored with?
A few years ago, I reviewed a switchover from our Linux infrastructure, and found the following:
1) SMP support was very green. Linux, OTOH, had been SMP capable for years.
2) Driver support was weak.
3) "Hot hands" support at colos was weak - they were frequently RHCE but never BSD.
5) BSD has a somewhat better security track record, but mainly because it usually comes configured with basically no services enabled. Since most of the vulnerabilities come from the applications used, the security benefits appeared to be minor.
I'm really asking: What is it about BSD that prompts you to use such an inflamatory sig?
Do you remember when Windows 2000 was "good enough"?
Do you remember when Windows 95 was "good enough"?
Do you remember when Windows 3.x was "good enough"?
Do you remember when DOS 5.0 was "good enough"?
I remember all of these stages. The point is not that older software is more or less efficient, or that you are mentally deficient. (I don't actually think you are, BTW) The point is that the bar is constantly changing.
In a year or two, you'll probably be using Windows Vista. Just like you'll probably be driving a different car, and the jacket that you have today that's "good enough" will fall prey to newer stock.
It IS stupid to declare that the newer thingy represents no improvements - what you are really saying is that "Windows XP meets the bar" without acknowledging that the bar will change. New games come out that require DirectX upgrades. Office documents require newer versions of Office. Browsers come out that no longer work with your "old" Windows XP. Printer drivers come out that no longer support Windows XP.
Over time, the utility of your O/S becomes mitigated by a thousand minor factors, as it had long ago with Windows 3.11.
I got sick of buying new hardware just to open the same document because the O/S or new Office suite was bloated/full of shit/required way more horsepower just to do the same task. No Vista for me. I'll stay will XP and Linux on my (older) machines. And if MS forces people to go Vista, I'll go Linux or BSD. If I get new hardware, it will be to make these systems faster, not make new software, doing the same job, run the same speed.
Golly shucks, I sure agree with you! All this newfangled crap is sooooo worthless. Why, my 80486 SX/33 with 8 MB of RAM runs MS Windows 3.11 and WordPerfect just dandy, thank you! I've stayed away from them overpriced Pent - eh, what's that again?
Increasingly, researches seem to be finding a clear connection between stem cells, aging, and cancer. It looks like cancer depends on errant stem cells for its rejuvination - and years of cancer study supports this theory.
So, by all appearances, if we could destroy just the right cells, a small percentage (0.10%) of the tumor, the tumor goes away!
So, while the mathematical model of growth might represent some predictive value, it certainly will not effectively model new developments, such as the above, when they are found.
Click Once is the biggest problem with MS software. Already we have zero click and back door click software installs. It is the bane of my daily chores to remove and recover from web based installs and applications. As a system administrator, having to run in a windows environment I struggle daily to remind the users to NOT INSTALL SOFTWARE FROM THE INTERNET.
Let's call a spade a spade.
If your users can install software, then you are not the system administrator - they are. You are the "pick up the crap left behind by the horses at the parade" guy. You *may* be a network administrator. But don't delude yourself with titles that don't match reality.
However, if you intend to listen to music through a nice set of headphones or speakers in a quiet listening environment, then you'll want it to be as uncompressed as possible. The same generally applies for music with wide dynamic ranges, such as classical/orchestral music.
Amen, brother!
I had a cheezeball, thrift-store stereo setup - big, cheap-ass speakers with "lotza wattz-a" that kicked pretty good and was quite loud but I knew it was out of whack. I have a great big collection of MP3 files gleaned from the Napster days (remember when we thought it was LEGAL?) and really badly wanted to hear some of the stuff on a decent sounding system. (especially some of the southern baptist choirs and solo vocals)
So, I went out to one of the best audio stores in the area, and spent $500 on a much better-quality sub-woofer and satellite speaker system.
I remember putting it all together, and with baited breath, threw in the one song I most wanted to hear.... and it not only didn't sound better, it sounded WORSE! All of a sudden, I could hear all kinds of artifacts and distortions that the newer, much crisper sounding speakers brought out that the cheezeball system could never reveal.
I was so disappointed!
However, I will say that at 192Kbps to 256 Kbps, that problem goes away. (which, alas, meant that most of my treasure from Napster is not much more than fool's gold)
I have to do software development for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux simultaneously.
I came *THIS CLOSE* (holds fingers close together) to buying a Macbook Pro a month ago - it was the lack of a right mouse button and non-native support for Linux that killed it for me.
However, I've been waiting for VMWare to come out with a decent release for OSX - the ability to have a portable Windows install that works on any of the three platforms would just ROCK.
But, with features like this, it seems that Parallels is keeping "one step ahead" of their 300-lb competitor... Features such as this would be TOTALLY AWESOME if VMWare were to come out with it for their workstation product. (Can you imagine IE 7 and IE6 as standalone programs on a KDE desktop?!)
Not that I see this coming to commercial flights any time soon (if ever), but: having the pilot not actually on the plane would make airplane hijacking a hell of a lot harder. If the pilot can't be personally threatened, and isn't directly faced with passengers being threatened*, it would be easier for "don't go along" training to be effective.
What most people don't realize is that the commercial airliners have had auto-pilot and auto-land for years. (yes, auto-land) Pilots use the auto-land about 1/2 of the time, from an account I read from a commercial pilot. (Some planes land roughly, Boeings are apparently very smooth)
There's even a designated radio identity signal for "I've been hijacked"! (Ask a pilot sometime about "squawking 7500")
So, all that's left is that ATC have the ability to tap into and/or activate the auto-pilot and auto-land capabilities built into any large aircraft. It might only be possible when the plane's radio is broadcasting the "I've been hijacked" signal, or something to avoid malicious takeovers.
Because the processing is being done locally, there's no real signal to jam - it's not remote control! So, at the worst, your terrorist might jam the GPS and/or VOR locator signals that the plane's autopilot/autoland computers use, at which point you just (at worst) crash the plane harmlessly at some random location, which is lots less likely to be disastrous than a well-aimed strike at some public monument.
I'm sure there's lots at stake, so they'd really take their time before implementing something like this - but why isn't this being done?
Slashdot Mirror
You're still not on the money.
Spam won't just grow forever, just as the outlaws of the old west eventually saw the end of their reign.
In the broad sense, crime-fighting is a form of "filtering".
Eventually, we'll develop the appropriate techno-social mechanisms that will deal with this problem. It may not be until E-mail as we know it is dead - but I doubt it. Email is too important and too useful to truly die any time soon.
The great irony of the spam arms race is that the better we get at filtering the spam, the more garbage the spammers send out just to get the same return. You can't stop filtering it, because the mail you want would be buried in a torrent of spam. But filtering more just raises the bar for the next round of spam.
But that's not the case at all. Technologies other than filtering work well. In fact, I've stopped using filtering altogether simply because it doesn't work and is increasingly server-intensive.
Use some RBLs (such as SpamHaus, DUN, a few others) along with greylisting and you'll see a dramatic improvement with very little cost. Other things you can do include requiring strict adherence to the SMTP protocol, valid domains on to/from addresses, IP addresses with a reverse DNS, etc.
All these checks cost almost little to nothing on your server, yet are remarkably effective at stopping SPAM. If you're getting lots of SPAM, then either
1) Your ISP has a sysadmin that sucks, or
2) You're hosting it yourself, and you suck as a sysadmin.
Not much more to it than that.
I'm using greylisting and a number of RBLs, including DUN and SpamHaus.
I see perhaps a dozen or so spams/day despite my email address being plastered all over the Intarweb for the last 6 years. (I've made no effort to hide it)
This combination stops a ridiculous percentage of all inbound email.
Time to get those compact fluorescents. I have them in all but a few of the sockets in my house, and I estimate they save me big $$ given how much we have the lights on (there's almost always someone home, and I'm a night owl).
Boy, do I hear you! For a while, I had a 100 watt incandescent on the porch, until I realized that it single-handedly used almost as much electricity as every other light in the house!
I buy the 15 watt bulbs, they've been on sale locally for between $0.25 and $0.50 each. (subsidized by the local utility, I'm sure) I have about a kazillion of them. Since they last a pretty long time, I probably won't have to buy bulbs for another 10 years.
...there is something to be said for how easy it is for a developer to install MySQL and just start working with it.
And, since this is a Mysql v. Postgresql comparison, here's what it takes (no kidding!) to get PostgreSQL up and running on RedHat ES or CentOS:
# yum -y install postgresql-server;
# service postgresql start;
Yep! That's it!
If you knew enough to download it for him you should have known enough to turn on antialiasing for font sizes 8 and lower in the options menu.
And if you knew end-users enough to comment on them, you should have known enough that end-users won't know how to turn this on.
See, software shouldn't "get in the way" of what you're trying to do.
Windows strength is in the Bazaar. The marketplace. The middle class. Linux in the Cathedral. The French Parliament. The Munich city council. It has become the OS of choice of the Politically Correct.
It's obvious that you are oblivious of the server marketplace. Linux has become the default - servers are made and sold primarily to support Linux! Most hosting facilities have staff that are RHCE certified. Windows has a presense, and nobody snickers at Slowlaris, but Linux has much, much more steam in this space than you apparently realize.
Even if solar becomes cheap enough, what will prevent me is my home owners association. They don't allow solar panels. Move to a neighborhood that doesn't have that rule? I would have to move to a neighborhood that doesn't have a home owners association. Yeah, good luck in finding one! Folks are so afraid of their property values being hurt, they turn into housing fascists.
Yes, this is a real problem. However, if cells become reasonably priced, and can be "printed", what would it take to "print" them onto an attractive subsurface so that it blends in nicely?
And, lest you think this is a NEW idea, an "I'm feeling lucky" Google search led me to somebody else who already had the same idea.
More expensive? Sure! Why else would they go to the extra effort? But it's at least POSSIBLE.
You can get into ultralights for under $3,000. Granted this is really not "general aviation", but it's definitely affordable to just about anyone with a decent-paying steady job.
I don't know where you are, but the sub-$3,000 ultralights that I've seen look awfully reminiscent of a death-trap. Something that won't leave your spouse a widow starts about $10,000 and goes up fast from there.
Also, ultralights and sport planes have serious limitations - limitations on flight in controlled airspace, over urban areas, at night, etc. making them almost useless for any practical purpose.
Outside of gov't agencies and the mega-corps that service them, I don't see this taking off like the ipod. The PHB's in the banking world certainly won't understand why this is better than the systems they have now.
Funny that. When I read the price, my first thought was that this would very possibly explode!
It all comes down to benefits vs. cost. When there are billions of dollars on the line, protecting it with a mere $100,000 seems like chump change. And each $100,000 purchase helps prove a marketplace that will then lower costs.
With every new technology, there's an "adoption curve" where the price drops to a point where it makes sense at high economic levels. So the wealthy and the megacorps adopt the technology because it pays to do so. By doing so, the inventor/developer recoups their initial investments into the technology, and it begins to pay to reduce the price in order to encourage a larger marketplace.
Wash, rinse, repeat, and soon the new technology is available at very affordable prices to average people.
This doesn't happen to *all* technologies. For example, general aviation (EG: light, 1-12 person aircraft) is still pretty firmly entrenched in the ranks of the wealthy, for a variety of reasons. All too few people talk about the "family plane". But even in this case, commercial aviation is very reachable by the average Joe, a la SouthWest airlines.
So, to have perfectly unbreakable encryption over a 120 km link for just $100,000? I think that would get the attention of quite a number of large and middle-sized organizations, banks, and perhaps data warehouses.
Wired is an overrated collection of BS.
If there was a single adjective I'd use to describe Wired, it would be "inconsistent". Because some works of pure genius came out of Wired, too.
For example, The Transparent Society is perhaps the best, clear, concise description of the privacy issues we face, and has the sharpest resolution picture of the best way to approach it.
Seriously - this article was prescient when it came out (now almost exactly 10 years ago!) and has altered my opinions about freedom and privacy forever.
Good luck to you and your unpatched Redhat, it doesn't have the volume of attacks a Windows box has - but don't assume it won't get rooted - it will.
As I recall, it takes an average of about 3 months for an unpatched RedHat box to get rooted, if left up in its default config and unpatched. Can't find a link - but there was a honeypot project on this a while back. And somehow, I doubt that even at 28.8 Kbps, it would take 3 months to complete an update.
However, patch the system, and apply reasonable "best practices" - such as NOT having the password of "god" for the root account - and you should expect a clean system.
Perhaps the key difference is this:
I can put an unpatched RedHat Linux system on the public Internet and download patches without worrying about it. In fact, I routinely use such systems AS the router/firewall for other systems!
If you hear people around here saying things like "Windows is insecure and/or isn't really ready for the Internet", that's because it's true, or you wouldn't need that stupid $25 router in the first place!
The fact that you can't even imagine a server without a dedicated firewall in front of it speaks volumes.
My experience has been that you MUST teach yourself... especially if you work for the big cubicle farms. Teach yourself so you become better, so you keep your skills current, so you energize your imagination, and so you can go elsewhere when your employer enters the BRED ("Beancounters Rule Every Decision") Stage Of Atrophy.
I don't know where the big cubicle farm comes into play, here. Working as an independent contractor has led me to the exact same conclusion. Always learn, ALWAYS teach yourself. It's pretty much ALWAYS worth it.
And don't limit yourself to Comp Sci, either. For example, I'm currently training to be a private pilot. Why? I don't know, and never do. It's fun, I like to fly, and having more skills and experience has always paid me well. One of the best things you can do is to spend a few bux at the local Barnes and Nobles on a subject you know little about. B & N is a goldmine of business plans, technology information, and income opportunities!
I've attended numerous business courses in salesmanship and capital investment. They've also served me well, and helped me identify a startup with real potential, and gave me the skills to sell my way into partial ownership of the company. (that's now growing by leaps and bounds)
Another example - I did some research into using PHP as a scripting language for an SMTP daemon. I wanted to do some dynamic proxying that I didn't see elsewhere. I got it to work, using PHP as a script under xinet.d on Linux. Although that original business idea went nowhere, I used that very same software code to build a daemon that today transfers many gigabytes of data in a distributed software database, with about a thousand daily users.
Having more saleable skills will always pay.
Genetic research is not and never has been about "aborted embryos". This is one of the most common misconceptions of genetic research.
By the time an abortion has happened, it's WAY TOO LATE to use for genetic research.
What is used are frozen results from fertility clinics. When a couple has trouble reproducing, they'll sample some eggs and sperm from the couple, and put them together. They usually end up with a number of results, perhaps a dozen or more. They then try them, one by one.
When the woman gets pregnant, they're done - and there's usually a few left over.
So, once again: Genetic researchers do not use aborted fetuses.
I would add one stoopid feature - a FLASHLIGHT!
Seriously - nothing fancy - just a single, white, LED bulb with a button on the side of the phone where I could dig for the keys I just dropped without having to grope like Mr. McGoo in the dark.
I'm asking for $0.10 for this feature, and would happily throw $20 at it just to not have to look for a !@#@! flashlight in a pinch.
*BSD is for People who Love *nix; Linux is for People who Hate Windows.
Ahem...
I'm a Linux lover. I don't deny it. Windows is great for games, and often for desktop use. MacOSX is the SHIZNIT for my grandmother - I'd use it more myself but the UI is a tad simplistic. (for me, annoying) Linux makes a great database/web/dns/mail/etc server.
BSD? What is it about BSD that you are enamored with?
A few years ago, I reviewed a switchover from our Linux infrastructure, and found the following:
1) SMP support was very green. Linux, OTOH, had been SMP capable for years.
2) Driver support was weak.
3) "Hot hands" support at colos was weak - they were frequently RHCE but never BSD.
4) Updates frequently (usually) required recompile.
5) BSD has a somewhat better security track record, but mainly because it usually comes configured with basically no services enabled. Since most of the vulnerabilities come from the applications used, the security benefits appeared to be minor.
I'm really asking: What is it about BSD that prompts you to use such an inflamatory sig?
My point is this:
Do you remember when Windows 2000 was "good enough"?
Do you remember when Windows 95 was "good enough"?
Do you remember when Windows 3.x was "good enough"?
Do you remember when DOS 5.0 was "good enough"?
I remember all of these stages. The point is not that older software is more or less efficient, or that you are mentally deficient. (I don't actually think you are, BTW) The point is that the bar is constantly changing.
In a year or two, you'll probably be using Windows Vista. Just like you'll probably be driving a different car, and the jacket that you have today that's "good enough" will fall prey to newer stock.
It IS stupid to declare that the newer thingy represents no improvements - what you are really saying is that "Windows XP meets the bar" without acknowledging that the bar will change. New games come out that require DirectX upgrades. Office documents require newer versions of Office. Browsers come out that no longer work with your "old" Windows XP. Printer drivers come out that no longer support Windows XP.
Over time, the utility of your O/S becomes mitigated by a thousand minor factors, as it had long ago with Windows 3.11.
I got sick of buying new hardware just to open the same document because the O/S or new Office suite was bloated/full of shit/required way more horsepower just to do the same task. No Vista for me. I'll stay will XP and Linux on my (older) machines. And if MS forces people to go Vista, I'll go Linux or BSD. If I get new hardware, it will be to make these systems faster, not make new software, doing the same job, run the same speed.
Golly shucks, I sure agree with you! All this newfangled crap is sooooo worthless. Why, my 80486 SX/33 with 8 MB of RAM runs MS Windows 3.11 and WordPerfect just dandy, thank you! I've stayed away from them overpriced Pent - eh, what's that again?
What is this "Vista" you speak of?
Increasingly, researches seem to be finding a clear connection between stem cells, aging, and cancer. It looks like cancer depends on errant stem cells for its rejuvination - and years of cancer study supports this theory.
So, by all appearances, if we could destroy just the right cells, a small percentage (0.10%) of the tumor, the tumor goes away!
So, while the mathematical model of growth might represent some predictive value, it certainly will not effectively model new developments, such as the above, when they are found.
I wish I would have known this before I spent a ton on a new Dell Inspiron. (which still works well, BTW)
Click Once is the biggest problem with MS software. Already we have zero click and back door click software installs. It is the bane of my daily chores to remove and recover from web based installs and applications. As a system administrator, having to run in a windows environment I struggle daily to remind the users to NOT INSTALL SOFTWARE FROM THE INTERNET.
Let's call a spade a spade.
If your users can install software, then you are not the system administrator - they are. You are the "pick up the crap left behind by the horses at the parade" guy. You *may* be a network administrator. But don't delude yourself with titles that don't match reality.
However, if you intend to listen to music through a nice set of headphones or speakers in a quiet listening environment, then you'll want it to be as uncompressed as possible. The same generally applies for music with wide dynamic ranges, such as classical/orchestral music.
Amen, brother!
I had a cheezeball, thrift-store stereo setup - big, cheap-ass speakers with "lotza wattz-a" that kicked pretty good and was quite loud but I knew it was out of whack. I have a great big collection of MP3 files gleaned from the Napster days (remember when we thought it was LEGAL?) and really badly wanted to hear some of the stuff on a decent sounding system. (especially some of the southern baptist choirs and solo vocals)
So, I went out to one of the best audio stores in the area, and spent $500 on a much better-quality sub-woofer and satellite speaker system.
I remember putting it all together, and with baited breath, threw in the one song I most wanted to hear.... and it not only didn't sound better, it sounded WORSE! All of a sudden, I could hear all kinds of artifacts and distortions that the newer, much crisper sounding speakers brought out that the cheezeball system could never reveal.
I was so disappointed!
However, I will say that at 192Kbps to 256 Kbps, that problem goes away. (which, alas, meant that most of my treasure from Napster is not much more than fool's gold)
I have to do software development for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux simultaneously.
I came *THIS CLOSE* (holds fingers close together) to buying a Macbook Pro a month ago - it was the lack of a right mouse button and non-native support for Linux that killed it for me.
However, I've been waiting for VMWare to come out with a decent release for OSX - the ability to have a portable Windows install that works on any of the three platforms would just ROCK.
But, with features like this, it seems that Parallels is keeping "one step ahead" of their 300-lb competitor... Features such as this would be TOTALLY AWESOME if VMWare were to come out with it for their workstation product. (Can you imagine IE 7 and IE6 as standalone programs on a KDE desktop?!)
Not that I see this coming to commercial flights any time soon (if ever), but: having the pilot not actually on the plane would make airplane hijacking a hell of a lot harder. If the pilot can't be personally threatened, and isn't directly faced with passengers being threatened*, it would be easier for "don't go along" training to be effective.
What most people don't realize is that the commercial airliners have had auto-pilot and auto-land for years. (yes, auto-land) Pilots use the auto-land about 1/2 of the time, from an account I read from a commercial pilot. (Some planes land roughly, Boeings are apparently very smooth)
There's even a designated radio identity signal for "I've been hijacked"! (Ask a pilot sometime about "squawking 7500")
So, all that's left is that ATC have the ability to tap into and/or activate the auto-pilot and auto-land capabilities built into any large aircraft. It might only be possible when the plane's radio is broadcasting the "I've been hijacked" signal, or something to avoid malicious takeovers.
Because the processing is being done locally, there's no real signal to jam - it's not remote control! So, at the worst, your terrorist might jam the GPS and/or VOR locator signals that the plane's autopilot/autoland computers use, at which point you just (at worst) crash the plane harmlessly at some random location, which is lots less likely to be disastrous than a well-aimed strike at some public monument.
I'm sure there's lots at stake, so they'd really take their time before implementing something like this - but why isn't this being done?