If you shot, let's say a Cliff Racer, it fell straight down.
If you killed something, then slept the moment it died (ie as it was falling), it would generally end up on the floor not where you killed it, but where it was when it first attacked you.
Apart from that, yeah, things just dropped straight down (or as another poster pointed out, floated down) That's not terribly realistic, but from the sounds of it, Oblivion has gone too far the other way, with pinball corpses...
you see, when highbandwidth hits mainstream, you'll have no choice when 60% of your subscribers demand massive usage....from their perspective "this is why i pay my fucking rediculous isp bill for!!!"
The ISPs won't be able to provide for that level of usage; basically, they all over-sell their connections. The idea is that most of the time, most users won't actually be using anything like their full bandwidth, a lot of users won't be using it at all, etc, and so those who actually are trying to use their connection's full speed will get it.
Once most of the users are trying to use it at the same time, the contention ratio will kick in and slow everything right down, and there's only one thing that can be done about that: lower the ratio. Unfortunately, that means fewer people sharing a pipe, which means fewer people paying for it, so either the pipe has to get a lot cheaper, or those cheap ADSL connections get a lot more expensive.
Now unless you believe that the average ISP is raking money in hand over fist at the moment, it should be pretty obvious that what'll happen is that those "fucking rediculous isp bills" are going to get a lot higher unless the backbone providers drop their costs significantly.
You could make Linux software that does retarded stuff like that too if you really felt the need.
Yes you could, although to be fair the box's admin could just setuid the offending binary (although that's generally seen as a security risk as the impact of any exploit is that much greater).
and then follow that up with limits in the fine print - which they know nobody reads.
While that sort of thing is certainly disingenuous, it's also so common as to be something that almost all companies do; people really, really ought to be reading the small print before signing up to things. They don't really have much of an excuse not to.
The hosts file is read-only to normal users on Windows; only members of the Administrators group have write access. That's pretty-much the same as it is on Linux.
The problem is that the vast majority of (home) Windows users run with an admin account, and so (almost) the entire drive is writable.
In related news, the same is true of Linux - ordinary user accounts are prevented from making system-level changes.
That's the whole point.
Now if you'd said that a lot of third-party Windows software doesn't run properly as a limited user account, then you'd have a point. (And even then, there's the "Run as..." service.)
NASA is publicly funded... ESA is funded by various governments
Sorry, you're going to have to explain the difference there. NASA is funded by a single government and so has a duty to the public whose money it receives, while ESA is funded by a number of governments, and so doesn't?
When Digial Restrictions Management puffs and wheezes its last breath in a few months
Well now, that's a nice thought, but I can't see it happening. Truth is that we've had DRM in one form or another on computers for at least 20 years, and it's not just going to disappear no matter how much you may wish it.
(For the purposes of this discussion, I am including copy prevention measures such as having to type in a given word on a given page of the manual, or using a hardware dongle, Elite's Lens-lok, etc - they're "Rights Management" in that they seek to enforce the copyright holder's right to be the only one prodcuing copies, and they're certainly applied to digital products)
No-one said that he isn't entitled to own and use the mikerowe.com domain; what is being argued is that a decade or so after Microsoft became a household name he does not have the right to use the domain mikerowesoft.com for a software consultancy business.
Try setting up a delivery and courier service at the domain fredex.com and see how far you get, even if you name is Fred Ex...
Any computer capable enough will come with Visa pre-installed, whenever that happens to be.
Really? The computer I'm currently using has an Athlon X2 4400+, 2 gig of RAM and an NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX, and didn't come with Vista pre-installed. Are you seriously saying it's not up to running it?
This has been common knowledge amongst search engine providers for years. I remember attending a training course for Verity K2 Enterprise back in 2002 or so and being told pretty much this; the upshot of which is that if your implementation means that relvant results are languishing down on page 4 or below, you might as well give up now...
The "I was only following orders" defense was invalidated at Nuremberg trials.
And there in lies the rub - refuse and you're shot for insubordination in a time of war. Comply and your side loses and you're executed for war crimes. Still, no-one ever said that life was fair, did they?
This world might be a lot less imperfect if its imperfection wouldn't be used as an excuse to justify corruption.
Indeed. It's just such a pity that there's nothing I can do about it. Frankly, I have enough other things to worry about without worrying about this, which will sort itself out in the end with no net effect other than that a large sum of money will have changed hands.
But all parties are permitted to conduct research. If said scientists are unable to gain public funding for their work, they are free to approach whatever other monied groups or individuals they wish to seek funding from. There is no law saying that the government is the only legal source of science funding. (In fact, an awful lot of research is privately funded - eg by the pharma companies)
The problem here is the alleged witholding of funding by the public funding bodies from scientists who hold controversial opinions on global warming. Well, then those scientists are free to pursue other sources of funding. The only difference between the situation now and in your scenario is that now, there's a default first choice to seek funding from.
There are many hidden places in Windows where the default browser might not be Firefox.
Essentially almost any Windows app that displays HTML and isn't either Firefox, Mozilla, Opera or Thunderbird is most likely using mshtml.dll and so is likely to be vulnerable to the exploit.
Bottom line is that any Windows user should download and apply every IE update whether they use IE or not, as simply not using IE does not guarantee safety.
Unfortunately Microsoft does listen to its customers, and its biggest (and loudest) customers are corporate IT departments. Those customers have specifically demanded that patches be released on a regular schedule, to ease their own testing and rollout procedures.
No, MS doesn't always release patches as quickly as they could, but in this particular case it certainly looks as though they got it out at the earliest opportunity, where this is defined as "as quickly as the largest proportion of their customer base allows them to".
I'm surprised to discover that a business to which I have paid loads of money values a schedule over my security.
Blame MS for bowing to pressure from their customers; blame the corporations for bringing that pressure to bear in the first place.
So what? His point wasn't that engineering apps all run on Windows and often nothing else, his point was that a number of commonly-used engineering apps only run on Windows (or at least, don't have a Mac version available).
Or, you can ask anyone who uses both regularly for their office work.
Assuming that by "both" you mean "Windows and Linux", then there's no need, as I am such a person. In fact I used Linux exclusively for about a year, before going back to Windows.
Even my best Windows machines, if I need to use them hours daily, don't go a week between re-boots.
Then no offence, but you're doing something wrong, as I regularly get weeks or months of uptime on my machine at work (I switch my home machine off at night; I have no reason not to), depending on whether or not updates require a reboot.
Still, all we're doing is matching anecdote for anecdote. I am willing to concede that for the average user, Linux or OS X is more stable and secure than XP; at the same time however, I am thankful that I am not an average user.
A common user sees at least an order of magnitude difference in the frequency of lockups.
Bullshit. Got any proof of that?
Windows crashes regularly
Not on any PC I use, or have used for the last 6 years or so. Yes, the 9x line is unstable, but the NT line is not, especially since 2k. My XP Pro machine at home locks up about as often as my linux box - which is to say almost never.
Slashdot Mirror
If you shot, let's say a Cliff Racer, it fell straight down.
If you killed something, then slept the moment it died (ie as it was falling), it would generally end up on the floor not where you killed it, but where it was when it first attacked you.
Apart from that, yeah, things just dropped straight down (or as another poster pointed out, floated down) That's not terribly realistic, but from the sounds of it, Oblivion has gone too far the other way, with pinball corpses...
Compared to how many confirmed cases of an EULA being found unenforcable?
companyname.tel is so much better than companyname.com/contact.html!
Man, I'm in the wrong business; if only I could get paid for coming up with ideas like this...
I've had "excellent karma" here since, what 2001?
If that's true, then I've been posting here for a lot longer than I realised...
you see, when highbandwidth hits mainstream, you'll have no choice when 60% of your subscribers demand massive usage....from their perspective "this is why i pay my fucking rediculous isp bill for!!!"
The ISPs won't be able to provide for that level of usage; basically, they all over-sell their connections. The idea is that most of the time, most users won't actually be using anything like their full bandwidth, a lot of users won't be using it at all, etc, and so those who actually are trying to use their connection's full speed will get it.
Once most of the users are trying to use it at the same time, the contention ratio will kick in and slow everything right down, and there's only one thing that can be done about that: lower the ratio. Unfortunately, that means fewer people sharing a pipe, which means fewer people paying for it, so either the pipe has to get a lot cheaper, or those cheap ADSL connections get a lot more expensive.
Now unless you believe that the average ISP is raking money in hand over fist at the moment, it should be pretty obvious that what'll happen is that those "fucking rediculous isp bills" are going to get a lot higher unless the backbone providers drop their costs significantly.
You could make Linux software that does retarded stuff like that too if you really felt the need.
Yes you could, although to be fair the box's admin could just setuid the offending binary (although that's generally seen as a security risk as the impact of any exploit is that much greater).
and then follow that up with limits in the fine print - which they know nobody reads.
While that sort of thing is certainly disingenuous, it's also so common as to be something that almost all companies do; people really, really ought to be reading the small print before signing up to things. They don't really have much of an excuse not to.
The hosts file is read-only to normal users on Windows; only members of the Administrators group have write access. That's pretty-much the same as it is on Linux.
The problem is that the vast majority of (home) Windows users run with an admin account, and so (almost) the entire drive is writable.
In related news, the same is true of Linux - ordinary user accounts are prevented from making system-level changes.
That's the whole point.
Now if you'd said that a lot of third-party Windows software doesn't run properly as a limited user account, then you'd have a point. (And even then, there's the "Run as..." service.)
Assuming you have a Windows PC, you could always just download the demo and see for yourself; the demo of Hitman 2 is only about a 50MB download.
NASA is publicly funded... ESA is funded by various governments
Sorry, you're going to have to explain the difference there. NASA is funded by a single government and so has a duty to the public whose money it receives, while ESA is funded by a number of governments, and so doesn't?
I can't say that I really see the difference...
When Digial Restrictions Management puffs and wheezes its last breath in a few months
Well now, that's a nice thought, but I can't see it happening. Truth is that we've had DRM in one form or another on computers for at least 20 years, and it's not just going to disappear no matter how much you may wish it.
(For the purposes of this discussion, I am including copy prevention measures such as having to type in a given word on a given page of the manual, or using a hardware dongle, Elite's Lens-lok, etc - they're "Rights Management" in that they seek to enforce the copyright holder's right to be the only one prodcuing copies, and they're certainly applied to digital products)
No-one said that he isn't entitled to own and use the mikerowe.com domain; what is being argued is that a decade or so after Microsoft became a household name he does not have the right to use the domain mikerowesoft.com for a software consultancy business.
Try setting up a delivery and courier service at the domain fredex.com and see how far you get, even if you name is Fred Ex...
Stupid son to name his company that way knowing full well how Microsoft would react - really, how any company in their position would react.
Besides which, classing mikerowesoft as a typo of microsoft is a stretch even by slashdot standards...
Any computer capable enough will come with Visa pre-installed, whenever that happens to be.
Really? The computer I'm currently using has an Athlon X2 4400+, 2 gig of RAM and an NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX, and didn't come with Vista pre-installed. Are you seriously saying it's not up to running it?
This has been common knowledge amongst search engine providers for years. I remember attending a training course for Verity K2 Enterprise back in 2002 or so and being told pretty much this; the upshot of which is that if your implementation means that relvant results are languishing down on page 4 or below, you might as well give up now...
The "I was only following orders" defense was invalidated at Nuremberg trials.
And there in lies the rub - refuse and you're shot for insubordination in a time of war. Comply and your side loses and you're executed for war crimes. Still, no-one ever said that life was fair, did they?
This world might be a lot less imperfect if its imperfection wouldn't be used as an excuse to justify corruption.
Indeed. It's just such a pity that there's nothing I can do about it. Frankly, I have enough other things to worry about without worrying about this, which will sort itself out in the end with no net effect other than that a large sum of money will have changed hands.
If you permit all parties to conduct research
But all parties are permitted to conduct research. If said scientists are unable to gain public funding for their work, they are free to approach whatever other monied groups or individuals they wish to seek funding from. There is no law saying that the government is the only legal source of science funding. (In fact, an awful lot of research is privately funded - eg by the pharma companies)
The problem here is the alleged witholding of funding by the public funding bodies from scientists who hold controversial opinions on global warming. Well, then those scientists are free to pursue other sources of funding. The only difference between the situation now and in your scenario is that now, there's a default first choice to seek funding from.
Ah, but who's the fraud? The lawyers who are merely doing as they are being paid to do, or their clients who are paying them and calling the shots?
I freely admit that in a perfect world, no case as obviously devoid of merit would be taken on by any lawyer, but this is hardly a perfect world...
There are many hidden places in Windows where the default browser might not be Firefox.
Essentially almost any Windows app that displays HTML and isn't either Firefox, Mozilla, Opera or Thunderbird is most likely using mshtml.dll and so is likely to be vulnerable to the exploit.
Bottom line is that any Windows user should download and apply every IE update whether they use IE or not, as simply not using IE does not guarantee safety.
Unfortunately Microsoft does listen to its customers, and its biggest (and loudest) customers are corporate IT departments. Those customers have specifically demanded that patches be released on a regular schedule, to ease their own testing and rollout procedures.
No, MS doesn't always release patches as quickly as they could, but in this particular case it certainly looks as though they got it out at the earliest opportunity, where this is defined as "as quickly as the largest proportion of their customer base allows them to".
I'm surprised to discover that a business to which I have paid loads of money values a schedule over my security.
Blame MS for bowing to pressure from their customers; blame the corporations for bringing that pressure to bear in the first place.
So what? His point wasn't that engineering apps all run on Windows and often nothing else, his point was that a number of commonly-used engineering apps only run on Windows (or at least, don't have a Mac version available).
Or, you can ask anyone who uses both regularly for their office work.
Assuming that by "both" you mean "Windows and Linux", then there's no need, as I am such a person. In fact I used Linux exclusively for about a year, before going back to Windows.
Even my best Windows machines, if I need to use them hours daily, don't go a week between re-boots.
Then no offence, but you're doing something wrong, as I regularly get weeks or months of uptime on my machine at work (I switch my home machine off at night; I have no reason not to), depending on whether or not updates require a reboot.
Still, all we're doing is matching anecdote for anecdote. I am willing to concede that for the average user, Linux or OS X is more stable and secure than XP; at the same time however, I am thankful that I am not an average user.
It's not humour "dumbass", it's the same tired old crap that gets posted to every article that mentions OS X.
A common user sees at least an order of magnitude difference in the frequency of lockups.
Bullshit. Got any proof of that?
Windows crashes regularly
Not on any PC I use, or have used for the last 6 years or so. Yes, the 9x line is unstable, but the NT line is not, especially since 2k. My XP Pro machine at home locks up about as often as my linux box - which is to say almost never.