No, because there's absolutely no way they're going to sell ISA Server to home users, but a lot of home users will be using XP (Home, if not Pro, although that's what I have). On top of that, no business IT dept worthy of the name would rely on software firewalls on every desktop to secure their network, no matter how good.
It's unlikely in the extreme that MS would ever ship a comparable firewall as part of the OS, simply because that's not what the vast majority of their target userbase needs or wants.
Lets not go overboard here, women in some countries still do not have the right to vote or have basic human rights.
If we are ever able to create a truly self-aware machine, the fact that humans in other countries are denied basic rights would be no reason at all to deny that intelligence those same rights.
After all, those countries have their reasons (though we, of course, consider them to be wrong); are you seriously saying that we should do the same, just because we have our reasons too? How would denying our creations rights improve the situation for those humans? If anything, it would strengthen the countries' positions, giving them something to point at - "Look, you've created an intelligence and are doing to it what you accuse us of doing. How can you possibly expect us to not do something that you're doing yourselves?"
A couple of years ago, we went through a phase of playing Unreal Tournament after work on the work LAN. Before we all (finally) got new machines, we were using P2 450s with 1/2gig of RAM and whatever card we happened to have - I brought my old TNT2 Ultra in. It ran fine. No, you couldn't max out all the settings, but at sensible levels, it was smooth enough.
For that matter, when we did get the new machines, we got P4 1.9GHz ones with GeForce 4 MXs and 3/4 gig of RAM (so not that far off the quoted specs) and it was smooth at much higher settings.
Don't get me wrong, I consider machines like those to be sub-entry level these days, but they'll handle all but the most demanding of games just fine, as long as you're sensible with the settings. As for Quake - the guy must've been trolling. I remember when Quake was originally released; my housemate had a brand new, top-of-the-line PC from the place he did a year's placement with. It was a 200MHz Pentium Pro with a whopping 64 meg of RAM. 3D accelerators pretty-much didn't exist back then, at least for the likes of us. That machine is above the spec at which Quake was designed to run. (Although I do remember when he tried running the GL version when it was released a few months later - and got about 2 seconds per frame without hardware acceleration. Man, was it beautiful back then, though...)
On screen advertising: In exchange for your free PC, you must accept up to 3 minutes of on-screen advertising per hour of PC use.
By installing Gentoo over the top, you're removing your ability to comply with that clause, as you won't be able to view the advertising (or at least, not in a manner that will confirm your viewing of it to them). You will, therefore, be in breach of the terms of the agreement, and they'll come take the PC back.
Escape velocity is the speed required for a projectile, fired from sea-level, to escape Earth's gravity well.
The salient point here is that it's a projectile that's being considered. That's why rockets don't have to travel at 1100m/s - they're constantly under thrust. They could travel at 1m/s and still make it out, given sufficient fuel.
In the case of a plane travelling at greater than escape velocity, you're missing an important point, namely, that the plane is under control. Someone/something is going to be monitoring the plane's altitude, and correcting for increases. It won't get to orbit (or further) because it won't be allowed to.
I would think you're new here... but since you've got a low UID
173196 low? That's a joke, right?;-)
For what (little) it's worth, the problem is getting worse. A few years ago, when I was new here, there was hardly ever a dupe. As the site's grown, though, and I suppose the number of submissions has increased, they've started slipping through more and more often.
I wouldn't say it's a huge problem - after all, just because something's been discussed before doesn't stop us all discussing it again (eg Windows vs Linux, RIAA/MPAA vs the world, etc). I would have thought, though, that it would be fairly easy to search for recently-posted stories based on keywords from the submission under consideration... Maybe they do do that, though, and there're just so many that it'd be almost impossible not to miss one occassionally. After all, even if you only mess up one time in a hundred, as you increase the number of times you do something, you'll increase the number of mistakes you make.
Perhaps the astroturfers I've seen around here have managed to spread some disinformation.
Hey, maybe you can tell me - why is it that people on slashdot have taken to labelling anyone whose opinion they disagree with an "astroturfer"? Why is it so hard to accept that some people simply do not believe what you believe, and that they're not just saying what their employer is paying them to say?
It's no more than a slogan, used to assault on everybody's civil rights on cyberspace
I do not have the right to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent. Preventing me from doing so id not an "assault on my rights", as it's not a right I've ever had.
Now, trying to shut down P2P networks entirely would be an assualt on (one of) my rights, but that's not what's happening.
Just to cut out independent competition for the purpose of preserving an obsolete business model a few years longer. In what way is that a legitimate public policy goal?
Of course it's legitimate, from their point of view - they're trying to preserve their profits, that's the entire reason they exist. This is what happens when you let companies get too powerful - they will enevitably act in their own best interests, regardless of what would be in the public's best interests. If the companies are small/weak, that's fine. If they're big/powerful, there's more chance they'll be successful, to the detriment of everyone else.
My point was in the context of the article: he's specifically referring to Win 3.1 and Win 95.
Heh - well, I didn't read the article, just the summary then the posts:-)
In my defence, I was only addressing specific points made in people's posts, and only ones that didn't seem to be quoting the article:-)
That said, I agree - no Windows version before NT had anything like what I'd even begin to call security. Hell, Win 9x only had user accounts so different users could have different settings (eg screensaver, fonts, etc), and most people didn't know about them anyway.
Your google link returns 19 documents. I checked them all. NONE of them give any evidence of millions "of Windows PCs known to be cracked by recent vulnerabilities". One, one of them quotes an unnamed employee of a security firm estimating that "tens of millions" of machines could be infected by a recently-seen virus.
Most of them speak of the millions of emails caused by viruses self-propagating by emailing to all contacts in address books, or of millions of dollars being cost companies by viruses, etc.
It took me about 5 minutes to check your link, and yet at time of posting this, you're at +5, Insightful. Yet more proof, as if any were needed, that most "moderators" round here just see that a post is anti-"M$" and mod it up.
If you have some hard data to back up your claim that millions of Windows PCs have been cracked by recent vulnerabilities, I'd love to see it. Otherwise, quit trolling for easy karma.
but also the fact that UNIX was built to run as a multi-user environment
As were the NT-series of desktop Windows versions, namely NT, 2000 and XP.
For that matter, a couple of years ago I read a book called "Practical UNIX Security" (iirc it's an O'Reilly), which, in the preface, contained the phrase (and I'm paraphrasing) "a few years ago, talking about 'UNIX security' would have been very odd". From that, and later, admittedly half-remembered phrases, I infer that even local, multi-user security was non-existant in UNIX at the start. I'm sure the book talks about the introduction of file permissions, etc.
Of course you're joking (you are, right?), but while it is true that time moves infinitely slowly (in our reference frame) for a moving photon (it progresses noramlly for it, subjectively), time for a photon that's stationary in our reference frame would move at the same speed as it does for us.
I don't know about you, but I'd sure as hell consider Mandrake Linux to be a "consumer" operating system.
I use Mandrake; in fact, it's my preferred Linux distro, and has been for a couple of years now. I do not consider it to be a "consumer" OS, though.
Why not? Because I can't be sure that any given piece of hardware will work with it. Because I can't go into a shop and buy software for it.
Yes, I know that that's true of all distros, and I'm aware of the reasons - but it doesn't matter. It won't and can't be a consumer OS until the average consumer can buy it without having to worry unduly about hard- and software support, like they can with the latest version of Windows and new hard- and software.
I'm not knocking Linux, I just truly do not consider *any* distro to be truly a "consumer" distro. They may be aimed at that, and be working very hard towards it, but there's a long way to go yet, imnho.
But portable CD players go through batteries like they're going out of fashion, and things like the iPod are just too damn expensive.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a portable mp3/ogg player (especially one of the iriver ones...), but right now I simply can't justify the expense.
If they're good, and are producing sophisticated tools and methods for spamming, then it's imperative that it is admitted, so people will understand the true nature of the problem and what anti-spammers are up against.
One of the most fatal mistakes you can make in any conflict is to underestimate your opponent.
And in my company, where we're *required* to put lunch in our calendar if we're planning on not being at our desks for it, some schmuck will *still* schedule a meeting during that time.
Slashdot Mirror
No, because there's absolutely no way they're going to sell ISA Server to home users, but a lot of home users will be using XP (Home, if not Pro, although that's what I have). On top of that, no business IT dept worthy of the name would rely on software firewalls on every desktop to secure their network, no matter how good.
It's unlikely in the extreme that MS would ever ship a comparable firewall as part of the OS, simply because that's not what the vast majority of their target userbase needs or wants.
They either:
report an error to the user, and redisplay the data input screen/page/fields/whatever; or
if things really go wrong, throw an exception and display an error message to the user - note that this does not take the application as a whole down
But then, my programs are mostly server-side apps written in Java, so catastrophic crashes are much harder to produce...
As a Linux zealot, why do you care what's in a Windows service pack? If you're not running XP, does it matter?
Lets not go overboard here, women in some countries still do not have the right to vote or have basic human rights.
If we are ever able to create a truly self-aware machine, the fact that humans in other countries are denied basic rights would be no reason at all to deny that intelligence those same rights.
After all, those countries have their reasons (though we, of course, consider them to be wrong); are you seriously saying that we should do the same, just because we have our reasons too? How would denying our creations rights improve the situation for those humans? If anything, it would strengthen the countries' positions, giving them something to point at - "Look, you've created an intelligence and are doing to it what you accuse us of doing. How can you possibly expect us to not do something that you're doing yourselves?"
(Isn't this even mentioned in the article description? I mean, really, how kneejerk can you get)
Welcome to slashdot, where people ignore inconvenient facts that would otherwise get in the way of a good bit of FUD.
A couple of years ago, we went through a phase of playing Unreal Tournament after work on the work LAN. Before we all (finally) got new machines, we were using P2 450s with 1/2gig of RAM and whatever card we happened to have - I brought my old TNT2 Ultra in. It ran fine. No, you couldn't max out all the settings, but at sensible levels, it was smooth enough.
For that matter, when we did get the new machines, we got P4 1.9GHz ones with GeForce 4 MXs and 3/4 gig of RAM (so not that far off the quoted specs) and it was smooth at much higher settings.
Don't get me wrong, I consider machines like those to be sub-entry level these days, but they'll handle all but the most demanding of games just fine, as long as you're sensible with the settings. As for Quake - the guy must've been trolling. I remember when Quake was originally released; my housemate had a brand new, top-of-the-line PC from the place he did a year's placement with. It was a 200MHz Pentium Pro with a whopping 64 meg of RAM. 3D accelerators pretty-much didn't exist back then, at least for the likes of us. That machine is above the spec at which Quake was designed to run. (Although I do remember when he tried running the GL version when it was released a few months later - and got about 2 seconds per frame without hardware acceleration. Man, was it beautiful back then, though...)
Point 1:
On screen advertising: In exchange for your free PC, you must accept up to 3 minutes of on-screen advertising per hour of PC use.
By installing Gentoo over the top, you're removing your ability to comply with that clause, as you won't be able to view the advertising (or at least, not in a manner that will confirm your viewing of it to them). You will, therefore, be in breach of the terms of the agreement, and they'll come take the PC back.
One of those puppies just broke the 500kmh barrier with passengers.
I believe that that was the maglev (see final paragraph)
Escape velocity is the speed required for a projectile, fired from sea-level, to escape Earth's gravity well.
The salient point here is that it's a projectile that's being considered. That's why rockets don't have to travel at 1100m/s - they're constantly under thrust. They could travel at 1m/s and still make it out, given sufficient fuel.
In the case of a plane travelling at greater than escape velocity, you're missing an important point, namely, that the plane is under control. Someone/something is going to be monitoring the plane's altitude, and correcting for increases. It won't get to orbit (or further) because it won't be allowed to.
I would think you're new here... but since you've got a low UID
;-)
173196 low? That's a joke, right?
For what (little) it's worth, the problem is getting worse. A few years ago, when I was new here, there was hardly ever a dupe. As the site's grown, though, and I suppose the number of submissions has increased, they've started slipping through more and more often.
I wouldn't say it's a huge problem - after all, just because something's been discussed before doesn't stop us all discussing it again (eg Windows vs Linux, RIAA/MPAA vs the world, etc). I would have thought, though, that it would be fairly easy to search for recently-posted stories based on keywords from the submission under consideration... Maybe they do do that, though, and there're just so many that it'd be almost impossible not to miss one occassionally. After all, even if you only mess up one time in a hundred, as you increase the number of times you do something, you'll increase the number of mistakes you make.
Perhaps the astroturfers I've seen around here have managed to spread some disinformation.
Hey, maybe you can tell me - why is it that people on slashdot have taken to labelling anyone whose opinion they disagree with an "astroturfer"? Why is it so hard to accept that some people simply do not believe what you believe, and that they're not just saying what their employer is paying them to say?
It's no more than a slogan, used to assault on everybody's civil rights on cyberspace
I do not have the right to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent. Preventing me from doing so id not an "assault on my rights", as it's not a right I've ever had.
Now, trying to shut down P2P networks entirely would be an assualt on (one of) my rights, but that's not what's happening.
Just to cut out independent competition for the purpose of preserving an obsolete business model a few years longer. In what way is that a legitimate public policy goal?
Of course it's legitimate, from their point of view - they're trying to preserve their profits, that's the entire reason they exist. This is what happens when you let companies get too powerful - they will enevitably act in their own best interests, regardless of what would be in the public's best interests. If the companies are small/weak, that's fine. If they're big/powerful, there's more chance they'll be successful, to the detriment of everyone else.
Perhaps. But it's also the truth.
what does it do better than Windows 98SE?
Fail to crash and provide a truly multiuser environment to name but two things.
Well, it can't do insertions, deletions, transactional support...
My point was in the context of the article: he's specifically referring to Win 3.1 and Win 95.
:-)
:-)
Heh - well, I didn't read the article, just the summary then the posts
In my defence, I was only addressing specific points made in people's posts, and only ones that didn't seem to be quoting the article
That said, I agree - no Windows version before NT had anything like what I'd even begin to call security. Hell, Win 9x only had user accounts so different users could have different settings (eg screensaver, fonts, etc), and most people didn't know about them anyway.
Your google link returns 19 documents. I checked them all. NONE of them give any evidence of millions "of Windows PCs known to be cracked by recent vulnerabilities". One, one of them quotes an unnamed employee of a security firm estimating that "tens of millions" of machines could be infected by a recently-seen virus.
Most of them speak of the millions of emails caused by viruses self-propagating by emailing to all contacts in address books, or of millions of dollars being cost companies by viruses, etc.
It took me about 5 minutes to check your link, and yet at time of posting this, you're at +5, Insightful. Yet more proof, as if any were needed, that most "moderators" round here just see that a post is anti-"M$" and mod it up.
If you have some hard data to back up your claim that millions of Windows PCs have been cracked by recent vulnerabilities, I'd love to see it. Otherwise, quit trolling for easy karma.
but also the fact that UNIX was built to run as a multi-user environment
As were the NT-series of desktop Windows versions, namely NT, 2000 and XP.
For that matter, a couple of years ago I read a book called "Practical UNIX Security" (iirc it's an O'Reilly), which, in the preface, contained the phrase (and I'm paraphrasing) "a few years ago, talking about 'UNIX security' would have been very odd". From that, and later, admittedly half-remembered phrases, I infer that even local, multi-user security was non-existant in UNIX at the start. I'm sure the book talks about the introduction of file permissions, etc.
Just FYI, the correct term is "inversely proportional" - ie as one quantity increases, the other decreases.
Just another way to enslave the masses I guess.
That's an interesting definition you have of slavery, making it easy for them to spend more money than they realise...
Of course you're joking (you are, right?), but while it is true that time moves infinitely slowly (in our reference frame) for a moving photon (it progresses noramlly for it, subjectively), time for a photon that's stationary in our reference frame would move at the same speed as it does for us.
I don't know about you, but I'd sure as hell consider Mandrake Linux to be a "consumer" operating system.
I use Mandrake; in fact, it's my preferred Linux distro, and has been for a couple of years now. I do not consider it to be a "consumer" OS, though.
Why not? Because I can't be sure that any given piece of hardware will work with it. Because I can't go into a shop and buy software for it.
Yes, I know that that's true of all distros, and I'm aware of the reasons - but it doesn't matter. It won't and can't be a consumer OS until the average consumer can buy it without having to worry unduly about hard- and software support, like they can with the latest version of Windows and new hard- and software.
I'm not knocking Linux, I just truly do not consider *any* distro to be truly a "consumer" distro. They may be aimed at that, and be working very hard towards it, but there's a long way to go yet, imnho.
But portable CD players go through batteries like they're going out of fashion, and things like the iPod are just too damn expensive.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a portable mp3/ogg player (especially one of the iriver ones...), but right now I simply can't justify the expense.
Not if yours are already built and ready to launch...
If they're good, and are producing sophisticated tools and methods for spamming, then it's imperative that it is admitted, so people will understand the true nature of the problem and what anti-spammers are up against.
One of the most fatal mistakes you can make in any conflict is to underestimate your opponent.
And in my company, where we're *required* to put lunch in our calendar if we're planning on not being at our desks for it, some schmuck will *still* schedule a meeting during that time.