I was thinking roughly the same thing. "Satellite orbited to study the environment fucks up (in a very small way) same environment, and cannot do the study it was launched to perform. Twice."
Third time's the charm?
Seriously, though, the term "this isn't rocket science" exists for a reason. Because this stuff IS rocket science. Monumentally complicated machines trying to perform monumentally complex tasks, built to a budget by several of the lowest bidders all trying to work together.
What's worse? Wasting money failing to try to do something good, or succeeding at doing something bad?
Yup, in that case you are not the system builder and as long as you don't swap out the motherboard after receiving the computer you're all set. The problem is that a lot of shops sell the Windows OEM pack along with, say, a hard drive or in some cases even just a network cable, claiming that qualifies as a piece of system-builder hardware. Sadly, it does not.
The builder must:
1. Assemble the computer. 2. Install the operating system. 3. Test the configuration and ship a known-working system. 4. Sell that system to a third party (this is the bit that makes self-builds a technical violation of the license). 5. Provide all technical and aftermarket support.
I'm not saying, by the way, that the license is right, or that there is something morally wrong with building a machine yourself based on an OEM disc from Microsoft. I just researched the license terms the way they actually are. I don't think Microsoft would EVER think about coming after a hobbyist who is building their own machine, that would be fundamentally stupid on their part.
Microsoft has, in the past, put out marketing blurbs that are directly in conflict with their license terms. That would probably invalidate the terms of the license if Microsoft ever decided to do something as dumbheaded as suing a hobbyist who built their own machine and actually paid Redmond for a license, and the case would almost certainly get thrown out of any court in the land, and it would get enough coverage to set the nerdosphere alight. It might even actually inspire the "year of the Linux desktop", and that's the last thing on this planet Microsoft really, honestly wants.
But if you read the license terms as written, which contain a lot of legalese but not terribly complicated legalese, it's a license violation to build a machine using an OEM disc for your own personal use. Again, I'd say it's safe to do so (I have an OEM XP install as a VM on one of my boxes), but it's technically not legit.
A "system builder" is defined as someone who builds a machine, configures it, tests it, and sells it to a third party. Technically, homebuilds have to buy the full license, according to Microsoft's own licensing agreement.
Not a point I think they'd ever enforce, of course, but it's part of their legalese.
"Old-school" controlling uses strips of paper. When a flight comes under your control, you grab a strip of paper and write the flight number on it. You stick it up on a board in front of you. When a flight gets near leaving your zone of control, you tell them to contact the next controller, and you physically hand the strip of paper to that controller or have a flunky run it down for you. Then when the pilot calls that controller, the controller is expecting the call (and if the pilot never calls the controller, the controller knows the pilot has screwed up his frequencies or made an error).
This is called "handing off" a flight, and handing the strip of paper over is the origination of that term.
And the problem here is not training the controllers to use the system. The problem is that the fancy new system had a tendency to slow down or fail, meaning the controllers needed to fall back on the strips of paper.
But this isn't "old technology fails". This is a problem with the reliability of a NEW system they are trying to implement, and they had to fall back on the old system (handing around little strips of paper with flight numbers on them) in order to keep the operation running.
Technology is not constantly updated in ATC because controllers and pilots value reliability over new sexiness. So they tend to like to stick with what's worked well for years or decades rather than updating to the latest shiny every couple of years and trying to debug problems with it while flying about in metal tubes at hundreds of miles an hour with passengers onboard.
Call it paranoia if you like. I like the new shiny sexiness on my cell phone, but I want my instrument panel to be based on shit that works.
The phasing-in began on 28 January, but has suffered problems, including latency and screens not working, according to forum posts.
It may (or may not) take a controller longer to write a flight number down on a strip of paper and use that as their handoff device. But, once captured, handing off a flight is as simple as handing the strip to the controller you just transferred the flight to.. The strips on your board tell you which flights are yours to manage at the moment.
The computer should be able to do it faster and more efficiently and show you a nice list of flights on a screen, but if the computer starts slowing down or your screen fails, you're missing information you need RIGHT NOW to keep two planes from attempting to occupy the same airspace. Now you have to figure out which flights you are responsible for from memory, and whether flight 2345 has been handed off yet or not.
The old system is certainly less efficient than a computer. But you only need the system to be efficient enough to get you the information when you need it, no faster response time is needed. There's also a reliability component that is apparently not being met in this case. If the computer slows down (even occasionally) to a point that is slower than you need the information, or your screen fails, you're in trouble and so are the passengers on the flights in your zone of responsibility.
All things in aviation have multiple layers of safety backup. The paper-strip system is a backup / memory-aid for the controller. It helps the controller keep track of which flights are theirs, and it's pretty much not subject to failure. It's not fancy because it doesn't need to be, it just needs to work.
Trouble is, if you want to replace that with a computer, that's great, but the computer has to be as reliable as having strips of paper hanging about. So you need at least two computers at each station, one being a backup to the other, and even occasional slowdowns are unacceptable.
On 15 February, the IBM-based National Air Traffic Service system covering the UK stopped talking to EFD. Air traffic controllers at Prestwick scrambled to remedy the situation. Some people on days off had to go into work to try to move the traffic build-up, which caused numerous delays to flights
It states (not suggests) that the REAL problems came into the fore when the electronic communications that underlie the system failed. In other words, they had a system that was receiving no data, and had to fall back on the paper strip system, which they lacked the manpower on site to do effectively.
Not stated but probably also a problem was the fact that flights in progress were being tracked on the computer, and when those updates stopped coming in the controllers were actually missing information, so they had to quickly reconstruct everything on paper so they had a complete dataset to work with. Also not stated but probable was the possibility that manpower had already been reduced to take advantage of the efficiencies of the computer system, so they had to drag the people who ran the little strips of paper around back in to work in a hurry.
Are you Japanese? If not, then "we" spent nothing on this.
If you are, then a lot of it depends on how the study was funded, and why it was performed. TFA is not very informative on that point.
Was this a grad student project that a few grad students needed to get some lab time under their belts, or a government-funded study? If it's a grad student study, then the expected result of the study was to spend a few dozen hours in the lab (the presence of alcohol probably made the boredom of the study more manageable) and get a passing grade on a research report. That there was any interesting science that emerged from a student's work is purely coincidental. If there's a use for this behavioral information, it would be a bonus.
Not every grad project is going to cure cancer, or even set out to cure it.
If this is a government-funded study, there may (or may not) be a larger goal at work. Perhaps it was a cheap way to see how sensitively mice could discern chemical scent patterns, without actually asking the scientists to work with Sarin ingredients or explosives? Maybe the school administration was doing a mouse study to pattern the behavior of undergrad students when they learn alcohol is in the building?
If it only resides in one directory, consider yourself lucky. The last one I was dealing with (can't recall the name, but it was one of the ones that screws with your Internet connection and redirects everything to their "pay $75 and you get to use your computer again" site) put copies of itself in a half dozen places, several of them quite creative,all with different and innocuous-sounding filenames. Each one was programmed to start up, look for the existence of the others, and if one or more were missing it copied itself to them and re-established the startup for each of the missing ones.
One of them was even programmed to only check-and-restore on every five startups or so, so the whole damned thing came back while I was in the middle of catching the computer up on its Windows Updates, an hour after I thought I had the machine completely scrubbed clean. It was hiding itself under a filename that looked like a driver for the touchpad. Clever bit of thinking, actually - victim takes computer to pro, pro cleans the gunk out, victim takes machine back home and a week or so later the infection magically reappears.
Took me hours to rip out that sunovabitch. I told the user to back up their data NOW and if it came back to bring the machine back with the recovery discs so I could nuke the damned thing from orbit.
The problem with statistics like this from someone who offers a free antivirus scanner is that, well, people will download it as their first antivirus software, generally once they discover that antivirus might be a good idea. So that 39% is not fully representative of all computers out there, only ones where people have suddenly discovered a need for antivirus and want something free.
I don't know about you, but people only come to me for help once their computers start "slowing down" or "acting funny", and the first thing I do is install a free antivirus client for them and do a scan. And, surprise surprise, I'd say 90% of the Windows computers I've worked on have had some form of malware intrusion, in many cases pages full of them. I think I've had one co-worker have me look at a computer when she first bought it, and that was after her last computer had a really bad infection, so she wanted to make sure the new one stayed clean.
It's like the ER saying that 80% of the population they observe have severe injuries, or (oblig. car analogy) a tire shop claiming that 70% of the cars entering their shop have worn tires. Of course they do! You don't go to the ER unless you need to see a doctor RFN, and you generally don't go to a tire shop if you aren't seriously contemplating new tires. In the same vein, many (most?) people don't start taking antivirus seriously until their trial version of McNorton ran out a year ago and their computer is acting a little funny ever since that cute fluffy bunny video didn't work from that guy with the funny name in East Nowherestan.
So, honestly, I'm very surprised the number is that low.
Why? No, seriously, I'm not an Apple fanboi by any stretch, but why?
I have an old iPod, and use it as a minitablet-toy. I have my complaints about it, but "worrying about replacement" is not one of them. I plug it in once a week and hit SYNC, and I use Google Sync for my calendar, contacts, and email.
Recently I had a firmware upgrade go bad, and it came up in recovery mode. (note: running iTunes in a Windows XP VirtualBox machine is not the ideal way to do a firmware upgrade, since the USB device has to be reconnected each time the iPod changes device types, which it does about 5 times during a firmware upgrade. Silly me, I missed #5 and it timed out).
Anyway, when I finished the upgrade, it was "factory fresh", no nothing. I simply plugged it back in, iTunes recognized it as a "new or recovery device" and asked if I wanted to load my profile to it or treat it as a new device. I chose "load" and a little while later my iPod was right back where I had started, all data and settings intact. About the only thing it screwed up was the organization of my icons, and I had to reload my music and MP3s to it.
I don't see a lot of difference between that and sending it back for a battery swap and getting a refurb phone. As long as you've backed stuff up before you sent it out, you'll hardly know the difference (as long as the new phone isn't broken or nasty-looking).
It depends on the nature of the application. Facebook, for example, wanted access to my Blackberry address book. Not just "Deny", but "Hell, DENY!". It also wanted access to my Internet connection, which I approved. Internet is about all Facebook has access to on my phone (and it only has access to the facebook.com domain, so it can't crossscript anything on me).
Google Maps got Internet, but also wanted access to the phone, the internal network, the Bluetooth, the... (actually, it wanted EVERYTHING, which was really creepy). It got Internet (to the Google domain only) and GPS. That's it. When I go to get directions to a contact, I have to type their address into Google Maps. I can live with that. If I find a phone number on Google Maps, I can't click on the phone number to call the business I've found, I have to rekey the number into the dialer or cut-and-paste it. I can live with that.
If someone faked an application that would realistically have asked for access to, say, my contacts list, then it's possible they could gain a copy of my contacts list, because I would have given it permission. But when I look for applications that want access to important bits of data on my BB, I vet them out pretty carefully. As in, I currently have no third party applications I feel should have access to my address book.
Games? Not so much, but any game that starts requesting access to make a phone call on my Blackberry, or asks for theme data injection, or whatever, is gonna get a big fat NO followed by an immediate uninstall and a zero-star review with WARNING POSSIBLE MALWARE - AVOID as the text of my review. And, of course, I don't install ANY applications EVER that I expect to be accessing my contacts list, so that default is "Prompt" (so I get a warning if something wants access to it).
Is a trojan impossible? Absolutely not! But at least I have some level of granular control and reporting that tells me when an app is trying to access something I find suspicious.
I also (mostly) use Blackberry App World to install my applications, so there's some chance they've been vetted. But I like that extra layer of protection that granular access permissions give me.
Well, which side of the decimal you're on is really a matter of opinion. As far as I know, there are no hard-and-fast standards that "X% of your functionality or codebase has to change to qualify for an increase to the left of the decimal". So let's not get too stuck on a distinction that's really more for marketing weenies and the very anal to worry about. If number > previous number OR number prepresents new numbering system, version has changed, see changelog for how big the change is.
Mozilla would be well-advised to go with a year/month version scheme a'la Canonical (10.10 = October 2010).
On the other hand, where does this put us with "shoot for the moon" technologies? If it's so hard that it takes a year to finish a big new piece of tech, is that more of a Minefield Alpha series thing rather than "perpetual betas"?
I think that's the point, 4.0 was treated as if there were several "shoot for the moon" changes, when there really weren't. 4.0 was a very "waterfall" project. "We can't release it all yet because we're only 95% complete on this last feature that can't be pulled out because of dependencies!"
Don't get me wrong, it's good stuff, but this could easily have been released as several smaller more interim releases. Tell the team working on feature X that they cannot commit their changes to the official dev version until feature Y is out of beta. Don't allow a dozen teams to be working on new features all at once and build a massive, snarling dependency interlock that requires everything must go or nothing can go.
Will it slow the pace of overall development? Yes, it probably will. However, you'll make it up at test time, because you won't spend 6 months in development and 3 months rolling out beta after beta after beta. You'll have actual features in the hands of your users more quickly, so people don't have to choose between "last year's browser" and "the new buggy beta" when they want a helping of Firefox.
I'm assuming a decent algorithm could compensate for this. After all, you really only need information from one eye to track eye movement. So the user chooses which eye they want tracked, and the computer tracks that eye and ignores the other.
Sounds mostly good to me, but I'd use straight percentages of the annual return and get rid of minimums. That way, people who have a minor inheritance (say, a semi-popular children's book that brings in $5,000 a year in royalties) wouldn't have its entire value stripped in 14 years while Disney only loses a fixed percent.
I'd also give the work a 20-year run to start but make the renewal after that a little different.
First, screw the "assessed value", that's guaranteed work for accountants and makes "Hollywood accounting" bullshittery too easy. I'd go with a "declared value". The rightsholder declares what the work is worth, then pays the set percentage of that value. They can set any dollar amount they damned well please. If you want your work worth 5 bucks, set 5 bucks and taxes are set accordingly. The calculations can be done in crayon on a paper napkin, no accountant required.
But here's the kicker - if someone approaches the rightsholder within a month of the annual renewal and offers to pay that "declared value" and release the license to the public domain, the rightsholder must accept that amount and immediately release the license to the public domain, no exceptions. So if there's a devoted enough fan base or a company that wants to make a derivative work, they can force the license to be public domain for everyone if they pay the declared value. Note that I didn't say that someone could buy the license and keep the work to themselves (which introduces predatory practices by big rich companies), they can ONLY pay the rightsholder to release it for everyone to use freely.
This will force rightsholders to be realistic in declaring values, and give a channel for an interested public to purchase the rights to stuff they really want freed while compensating the rightsholder fairly (based on a value the rightsholder themselves set). But anything "forcibly transferred" under this becomes public domain, so we won't have, say, Disney buying up everything under the sun just because they can.
The rightsholder can, of course, sell their right at whatever price they wish at any other time, so we're not restricting an author's right to sell a work to a publishing house, or movie rights, or whatever, based on a negotiated price. And during the first 20 years, the rightsholder has an exclusive right to the work with no "forced buyout" risk just like they do today. At 19 years and 364 days, the author can freely sell the work to anyone they want for any price they want (but the new owner has to declare the work and start paying taxes the next day, the 20 years is from the original creation of the work).
So the basics would be:
Creation to twenty years: Status quo. Author or person who purchases rights from author has absolute control over the work. Clock starts when the author first declares copyright.
At 20 years and each year for another 20 years, the rightsholder has to declare a value and pay 1% of that value in taxes, which buys them one more year of copyright protection. At this point, a "forced public domain release" is possible each year between the declaration of the value and payment and 30 days after that. If someone sees a work that they feel is important enough to release to the public, they can pay the "declared value" and the rightsholder has to accept that payment and release the work to public domain.
At the end of the 40 years, the taxes on declared value go up to 5% per year. A company that cares that much about their works can maintain it in perpetuity if they set a value high enough that no one will pay AND pay taxes on that. Most works would go to public domain at this point, and 40 years is a good run to make money off a single work. But if you've got a major cash cow on your hands, you can pay to keep it.
This way, if Disney feels that copyright protection of "Steamboat Willie" is vital to their existence, they can declare its value to be one billion dollars and pay 5 million dollars a year in taxes on it. How
Maybe not for the creation of new animated cartoons, but you only need to stop by one of their theme parks or take one of their cruises to see how actively Mickey Mouse is in use.
Most of us who love Thinkpads deny the existence of the R line entirely, in the same way that most Dell fans deny the complete existence of the Inspiron laptop line. It's like a sequel to The Matrix, never gonna happen, doesn't exist, LA LA LA LA LA!:)
I have a Dell Latitude D400 and my current company issue is a Thinkpad T500. Both are (for their respective timeframes) seriously kick-ass laptops. I've experienced firsthand the horrors that are the Thinkpad R line and the Dell Inspiron line, and both are great if you have a door that keeps opening, or need something to level an uneven chair.
Or the possibility that the $200,000 was not, in fact, what you or I would consider "discretionary income".
The person he thought was the love of his life was in trouble. $200,000 is pretty easy to get for anyone in any kind of a decent financial position. How much mortgage capacity is in your house? How about cashing in your 401K and IRA?
Plus, skill at detecting scams is not, last I checked, a job skill that most people had to demonstrate in order to earn decent money. I have a relative who's a doctor, and he's an incredibly smart and very kind and generous soul, but it's a good thing he's married and his wife is a practical and reasonably skeptical person, because I suspect he'd fall for any number of scams that play to his generosity and kindness.
Love's a lot more powerful a "hook", and they played him for two years setting him up.
Slashdot Mirror
Crap, I guess I have to go check my car now.
(checks skin color)
Oh, wait, I guess I'm good. I'm McVeigh-colored, so I'm obviously safe.
Fred Phelps, is that you? How are things in Westboro?
I was thinking roughly the same thing. "Satellite orbited to study the environment fucks up (in a very small way) same environment, and cannot do the study it was launched to perform. Twice."
Third time's the charm?
Seriously, though, the term "this isn't rocket science" exists for a reason. Because this stuff IS rocket science. Monumentally complicated machines trying to perform monumentally complex tasks, built to a budget by several of the lowest bidders all trying to work together.
What's worse? Wasting money failing to try to do something good, or succeeding at doing something bad?
Yup, in that case you are not the system builder and as long as you don't swap out the motherboard after receiving the computer you're all set. The problem is that a lot of shops sell the Windows OEM pack along with, say, a hard drive or in some cases even just a network cable, claiming that qualifies as a piece of system-builder hardware. Sadly, it does not.
The builder must:
1. Assemble the computer.
2. Install the operating system.
3. Test the configuration and ship a known-working system.
4. Sell that system to a third party (this is the bit that makes self-builds a technical violation of the license).
5. Provide all technical and aftermarket support.
I'm not saying, by the way, that the license is right, or that there is something morally wrong with building a machine yourself based on an OEM disc from Microsoft. I just researched the license terms the way they actually are. I don't think Microsoft would EVER think about coming after a hobbyist who is building their own machine, that would be fundamentally stupid on their part.
Microsoft has, in the past, put out marketing blurbs that are directly in conflict with their license terms. That would probably invalidate the terms of the license if Microsoft ever decided to do something as dumbheaded as suing a hobbyist who built their own machine and actually paid Redmond for a license, and the case would almost certainly get thrown out of any court in the land, and it would get enough coverage to set the nerdosphere alight. It might even actually inspire the "year of the Linux desktop", and that's the last thing on this planet Microsoft really, honestly wants.
But if you read the license terms as written, which contain a lot of legalese but not terribly complicated legalese, it's a license violation to build a machine using an OEM disc for your own personal use. Again, I'd say it's safe to do so (I have an OEM XP install as a VM on one of my boxes), but it's technically not legit.
I wish he was, but, sadly, he's correct.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/is-it-ok-to-use-oem-windows-on-your-own-pc-dont-ask-microsoft/1561
http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/localized_licenses.aspx
A "system builder" is defined as someone who builds a machine, configures it, tests it, and sells it to a third party. Technically, homebuilds have to buy the full license, according to Microsoft's own licensing agreement.
Not a point I think they'd ever enforce, of course, but it's part of their legalese.
Not ticker tape. A Flight Progress strip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_progress_strip
"Old-school" controlling uses strips of paper. When a flight comes under your control, you grab a strip of paper and write the flight number on it. You stick it up on a board in front of you. When a flight gets near leaving your zone of control, you tell them to contact the next controller, and you physically hand the strip of paper to that controller or have a flunky run it down for you. Then when the pilot calls that controller, the controller is expecting the call (and if the pilot never calls the controller, the controller knows the pilot has screwed up his frequencies or made an error).
This is called "handing off" a flight, and handing the strip of paper over is the origination of that term.
And the problem here is not training the controllers to use the system. The problem is that the fancy new system had a tendency to slow down or fail, meaning the controllers needed to fall back on the strips of paper.
But this isn't "old technology fails". This is a problem with the reliability of a NEW system they are trying to implement, and they had to fall back on the old system (handing around little strips of paper with flight numbers on them) in order to keep the operation running.
Technology is not constantly updated in ATC because controllers and pilots value reliability over new sexiness. So they tend to like to stick with what's worked well for years or decades rather than updating to the latest shiny every couple of years and trying to debug problems with it while flying about in metal tubes at hundreds of miles an hour with passengers onboard.
Call it paranoia if you like. I like the new shiny sexiness on my cell phone, but I want my instrument panel to be based on shit that works.
The phasing-in began on 28 January, but has suffered problems, including latency and screens not working, according to forum posts.
It may (or may not) take a controller longer to write a flight number down on a strip of paper and use that as their handoff device. But, once captured, handing off a flight is as simple as handing the strip to the controller you just transferred the flight to.. The strips on your board tell you which flights are yours to manage at the moment.
The computer should be able to do it faster and more efficiently and show you a nice list of flights on a screen, but if the computer starts slowing down or your screen fails, you're missing information you need RIGHT NOW to keep two planes from attempting to occupy the same airspace. Now you have to figure out which flights you are responsible for from memory, and whether flight 2345 has been handed off yet or not.
The old system is certainly less efficient than a computer. But you only need the system to be efficient enough to get you the information when you need it, no faster response time is needed. There's also a reliability component that is apparently not being met in this case. If the computer slows down (even occasionally) to a point that is slower than you need the information, or your screen fails, you're in trouble and so are the passengers on the flights in your zone of responsibility.
All things in aviation have multiple layers of safety backup. The paper-strip system is a backup / memory-aid for the controller. It helps the controller keep track of which flights are theirs, and it's pretty much not subject to failure. It's not fancy because it doesn't need to be, it just needs to work.
Trouble is, if you want to replace that with a computer, that's great, but the computer has to be as reliable as having strips of paper hanging about. So you need at least two computers at each station, one being a backup to the other, and even occasional slowdowns are unacceptable.
On 15 February, the IBM-based National Air Traffic Service system covering the UK stopped talking to EFD. Air traffic controllers at Prestwick scrambled to remedy the situation. Some people on days off had to go into work to try to move the traffic build-up, which caused numerous delays to flights
It states (not suggests) that the REAL problems came into the fore when the electronic communications that underlie the system failed. In other words, they had a system that was receiving no data, and had to fall back on the paper strip system, which they lacked the manpower on site to do effectively.
Not stated but probably also a problem was the fact that flights in progress were being tracked on the computer, and when those updates stopped coming in the controllers were actually missing information, so they had to quickly reconstruct everything on paper so they had a complete dataset to work with. Also not stated but probable was the possibility that manpower had already been reduced to take advantage of the efficiencies of the computer system, so they had to drag the people who ran the little strips of paper around back in to work in a hurry.
How much did we spend on this?
It depends.
Are you Japanese? If not, then "we" spent nothing on this.
If you are, then a lot of it depends on how the study was funded, and why it was performed. TFA is not very informative on that point.
Was this a grad student project that a few grad students needed to get some lab time under their belts, or a government-funded study? If it's a grad student study, then the expected result of the study was to spend a few dozen hours in the lab (the presence of alcohol probably made the boredom of the study more manageable) and get a passing grade on a research report. That there was any interesting science that emerged from a student's work is purely coincidental. If there's a use for this behavioral information, it would be a bonus.
Not every grad project is going to cure cancer, or even set out to cure it.
If this is a government-funded study, there may (or may not) be a larger goal at work. Perhaps it was a cheap way to see how sensitively mice could discern chemical scent patterns, without actually asking the scientists to work with Sarin ingredients or explosives? Maybe the school administration was doing a mouse study to pattern the behavior of undergrad students when they learn alcohol is in the building?
Because money makes you crazy. Duh. :)
If it only resides in one directory, consider yourself lucky. The last one I was dealing with (can't recall the name, but it was one of the ones that screws with your Internet connection and redirects everything to their "pay $75 and you get to use your computer again" site) put copies of itself in a half dozen places, several of them quite creative,all with different and innocuous-sounding filenames. Each one was programmed to start up, look for the existence of the others, and if one or more were missing it copied itself to them and re-established the startup for each of the missing ones.
One of them was even programmed to only check-and-restore on every five startups or so, so the whole damned thing came back while I was in the middle of catching the computer up on its Windows Updates, an hour after I thought I had the machine completely scrubbed clean. It was hiding itself under a filename that looked like a driver for the touchpad. Clever bit of thinking, actually - victim takes computer to pro, pro cleans the gunk out, victim takes machine back home and a week or so later the infection magically reappears.
Took me hours to rip out that sunovabitch. I told the user to back up their data NOW and if it came back to bring the machine back with the recovery discs so I could nuke the damned thing from orbit.
The problem with statistics like this from someone who offers a free antivirus scanner is that, well, people will download it as their first antivirus software, generally once they discover that antivirus might be a good idea. So that 39% is not fully representative of all computers out there, only ones where people have suddenly discovered a need for antivirus and want something free.
I don't know about you, but people only come to me for help once their computers start "slowing down" or "acting funny", and the first thing I do is install a free antivirus client for them and do a scan. And, surprise surprise, I'd say 90% of the Windows computers I've worked on have had some form of malware intrusion, in many cases pages full of them. I think I've had one co-worker have me look at a computer when she first bought it, and that was after her last computer had a really bad infection, so she wanted to make sure the new one stayed clean.
It's like the ER saying that 80% of the population they observe have severe injuries, or (oblig. car analogy) a tire shop claiming that 70% of the cars entering their shop have worn tires. Of course they do! You don't go to the ER unless you need to see a doctor RFN, and you generally don't go to a tire shop if you aren't seriously contemplating new tires. In the same vein, many (most?) people don't start taking antivirus seriously until their trial version of McNorton ran out a year ago and their computer is acting a little funny ever since that cute fluffy bunny video didn't work from that guy with the funny name in East Nowherestan.
So, honestly, I'm very surprised the number is that low.
Why? No, seriously, I'm not an Apple fanboi by any stretch, but why?
I have an old iPod, and use it as a minitablet-toy. I have my complaints about it, but "worrying about replacement" is not one of them. I plug it in once a week and hit SYNC, and I use Google Sync for my calendar, contacts, and email.
Recently I had a firmware upgrade go bad, and it came up in recovery mode. (note: running iTunes in a Windows XP VirtualBox machine is not the ideal way to do a firmware upgrade, since the USB device has to be reconnected each time the iPod changes device types, which it does about 5 times during a firmware upgrade. Silly me, I missed #5 and it timed out).
Anyway, when I finished the upgrade, it was "factory fresh", no nothing. I simply plugged it back in, iTunes recognized it as a "new or recovery device" and asked if I wanted to load my profile to it or treat it as a new device. I chose "load" and a little while later my iPod was right back where I had started, all data and settings intact. About the only thing it screwed up was the organization of my icons, and I had to reload my music and MP3s to it.
I don't see a lot of difference between that and sending it back for a battery swap and getting a refurb phone. As long as you've backed stuff up before you sent it out, you'll hardly know the difference (as long as the new phone isn't broken or nasty-looking).
It depends on the nature of the application. Facebook, for example, wanted access to my Blackberry address book. Not just "Deny", but "Hell, DENY!". It also wanted access to my Internet connection, which I approved. Internet is about all Facebook has access to on my phone (and it only has access to the facebook.com domain, so it can't crossscript anything on me).
Google Maps got Internet, but also wanted access to the phone, the internal network, the Bluetooth, the ... (actually, it wanted EVERYTHING, which was really creepy). It got Internet (to the Google domain only) and GPS. That's it. When I go to get directions to a contact, I have to type their address into Google Maps. I can live with that. If I find a phone number on Google Maps, I can't click on the phone number to call the business I've found, I have to rekey the number into the dialer or cut-and-paste it. I can live with that.
If someone faked an application that would realistically have asked for access to, say, my contacts list, then it's possible they could gain a copy of my contacts list, because I would have given it permission. But when I look for applications that want access to important bits of data on my BB, I vet them out pretty carefully. As in, I currently have no third party applications I feel should have access to my address book.
Games? Not so much, but any game that starts requesting access to make a phone call on my Blackberry, or asks for theme data injection, or whatever, is gonna get a big fat NO followed by an immediate uninstall and a zero-star review with WARNING POSSIBLE MALWARE - AVOID as the text of my review. And, of course, I don't install ANY applications EVER that I expect to be accessing my contacts list, so that default is "Prompt" (so I get a warning if something wants access to it).
Is a trojan impossible? Absolutely not! But at least I have some level of granular control and reporting that tells me when an app is trying to access something I find suspicious.
I also (mostly) use Blackberry App World to install my applications, so there's some chance they've been vetted. But I like that extra layer of protection that granular access permissions give me.
Well, it might assist in choosing whether I need new underwear and pants while out shopping...
Heh, good point. I suspect sda and sdb would be safe.
Especially since it appears that the command is copying from sdx to random, and not the other way 'round.
"'dd' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."
Thank goodness for the inherent security in Windows. If I had run that in Linux, who knows what could have happened? ;)
Well, which side of the decimal you're on is really a matter of opinion. As far as I know, there are no hard-and-fast standards that "X% of your functionality or codebase has to change to qualify for an increase to the left of the decimal". So let's not get too stuck on a distinction that's really more for marketing weenies and the very anal to worry about. If number > previous number OR number prepresents new numbering system, version has changed, see changelog for how big the change is.
Mozilla would be well-advised to go with a year/month version scheme a'la Canonical (10.10 = October 2010).
On the other hand, where does this put us with "shoot for the moon" technologies? If it's so hard that it takes a year to finish a big new piece of tech, is that more of a Minefield Alpha series thing rather than "perpetual betas"?
I think that's the point, 4.0 was treated as if there were several "shoot for the moon" changes, when there really weren't. 4.0 was a very "waterfall" project. "We can't release it all yet because we're only 95% complete on this last feature that can't be pulled out because of dependencies!"
Don't get me wrong, it's good stuff, but this could easily have been released as several smaller more interim releases. Tell the team working on feature X that they cannot commit their changes to the official dev version until feature Y is out of beta. Don't allow a dozen teams to be working on new features all at once and build a massive, snarling dependency interlock that requires everything must go or nothing can go.
Will it slow the pace of overall development? Yes, it probably will. However, you'll make it up at test time, because you won't spend 6 months in development and 3 months rolling out beta after beta after beta. You'll have actual features in the hands of your users more quickly, so people don't have to choose between "last year's browser" and "the new buggy beta" when they want a helping of Firefox.
Resources?
Microsoft interoperating more easily with open source formats and tools (better support for open document formats, etc)?
So, "Don't Blink"
You don't want to anyway, the weeping angels will get you.
I'm assuming a decent algorithm could compensate for this. After all, you really only need information from one eye to track eye movement. So the user chooses which eye they want tracked, and the computer tracks that eye and ignores the other.
Sounds mostly good to me, but I'd use straight percentages of the annual return and get rid of minimums. That way, people who have a minor inheritance (say, a semi-popular children's book that brings in $5,000 a year in royalties) wouldn't have its entire value stripped in 14 years while Disney only loses a fixed percent.
I'd also give the work a 20-year run to start but make the renewal after that a little different.
First, screw the "assessed value", that's guaranteed work for accountants and makes "Hollywood accounting" bullshittery too easy. I'd go with a "declared value". The rightsholder declares what the work is worth, then pays the set percentage of that value. They can set any dollar amount they damned well please. If you want your work worth 5 bucks, set 5 bucks and taxes are set accordingly. The calculations can be done in crayon on a paper napkin, no accountant required.
But here's the kicker - if someone approaches the rightsholder within a month of the annual renewal and offers to pay that "declared value" and release the license to the public domain, the rightsholder must accept that amount and immediately release the license to the public domain, no exceptions. So if there's a devoted enough fan base or a company that wants to make a derivative work, they can force the license to be public domain for everyone if they pay the declared value. Note that I didn't say that someone could buy the license and keep the work to themselves (which introduces predatory practices by big rich companies), they can ONLY pay the rightsholder to release it for everyone to use freely.
This will force rightsholders to be realistic in declaring values, and give a channel for an interested public to purchase the rights to stuff they really want freed while compensating the rightsholder fairly (based on a value the rightsholder themselves set). But anything "forcibly transferred" under this becomes public domain, so we won't have, say, Disney buying up everything under the sun just because they can.
The rightsholder can, of course, sell their right at whatever price they wish at any other time, so we're not restricting an author's right to sell a work to a publishing house, or movie rights, or whatever, based on a negotiated price. And during the first 20 years, the rightsholder has an exclusive right to the work with no "forced buyout" risk just like they do today. At 19 years and 364 days, the author can freely sell the work to anyone they want for any price they want (but the new owner has to declare the work and start paying taxes the next day, the 20 years is from the original creation of the work).
So the basics would be:
Creation to twenty years: Status quo. Author or person who purchases rights from author has absolute control over the work. Clock starts when the author first declares copyright.
At 20 years and each year for another 20 years, the rightsholder has to declare a value and pay 1% of that value in taxes, which buys them one more year of copyright protection. At this point, a "forced public domain release" is possible each year between the declaration of the value and payment and 30 days after that. If someone sees a work that they feel is important enough to release to the public, they can pay the "declared value" and the rightsholder has to accept that payment and release the work to public domain.
At the end of the 40 years, the taxes on declared value go up to 5% per year. A company that cares that much about their works can maintain it in perpetuity if they set a value high enough that no one will pay AND pay taxes on that. Most works would go to public domain at this point, and 40 years is a good run to make money off a single work. But if you've got a major cash cow on your hands, you can pay to keep it.
This way, if Disney feels that copyright protection of "Steamboat Willie" is vital to their existence, they can declare its value to be one billion dollars and pay 5 million dollars a year in taxes on it. How
The character is still very much in use.
Maybe not for the creation of new animated cartoons, but you only need to stop by one of their theme parks or take one of their cruises to see how actively Mickey Mouse is in use.
Most of us who love Thinkpads deny the existence of the R line entirely, in the same way that most Dell fans deny the complete existence of the Inspiron laptop line. It's like a sequel to The Matrix, never gonna happen, doesn't exist, LA LA LA LA LA! :)
I have a Dell Latitude D400 and my current company issue is a Thinkpad T500. Both are (for their respective timeframes) seriously kick-ass laptops. I've experienced firsthand the horrors that are the Thinkpad R line and the Dell Inspiron line, and both are great if you have a door that keeps opening, or need something to level an uneven chair.
Or the possibility that the $200,000 was not, in fact, what you or I would consider "discretionary income".
The person he thought was the love of his life was in trouble. $200,000 is pretty easy to get for anyone in any kind of a decent financial position. How much mortgage capacity is in your house? How about cashing in your 401K and IRA?
Plus, skill at detecting scams is not, last I checked, a job skill that most people had to demonstrate in order to earn decent money. I have a relative who's a doctor, and he's an incredibly smart and very kind and generous soul, but it's a good thing he's married and his wife is a practical and reasonably skeptical person, because I suspect he'd fall for any number of scams that play to his generosity and kindness.
Love's a lot more powerful a "hook", and they played him for two years setting him up.