Have her talk to a couple of cops - I'll bet they can offer a lot of advice.
Better yet, have her schmooze some cops. It works pretty well.
There's a street in my neighborhood that becomes a race track at night. People along it have been asking for the police to patrol it for years, to no avail.
On a local holiday, our neighborhood also has a reputation for illegal fireworks: To the tune of *thousands* of dollars worth. This year, they assigned two uniformed cops to our neighborhood party. We all shmoozed them, I cooked them some steaks, other people gave them drinks, food, everything. One of them even got their face painted. Then we told them about this street.
A week later, people started getting pulled over on this street all night long. I was walking by on the sidewalk, and the officer yelled at me "Hey, you! You gave me those steaks, didn't you? Thanks, man!"
Pepper spray - good idea. Hurts like hell, good deterent without causing lasting harm
There are a good number of dead policemen who were told that pepper spray could be relied upon to work with intoxicated persons. Unfortunately, real-world experience didn't coincide with the manufacturer's marketing hype.
Rubber balls in a shotgun. Sounds terrific. You're missing one thing, though: At close range (which, in all honesty, is what a defense situation is nearly always at), they'll act like a solid mass and go right through the guy. So those rubber balls did you no more good than a shell of buckshot.
At longer range, where they won't go through the guy, ask yourself this: If my life is really in enough danger that I'm willing to fire a shotgun at another human being, do I really want to screw around with something that will just hurt them and potentially piss them off worse?
Merely pissing off someone who had your life in real danger to begin with isn't always a bright idea.
You want to stop them, not kill them, right? Well, unfortunately, if someone is determined or drugged, the only way to stop them often IS to kill them. I've seen a video of a bank robber who was shot right directly through the heart. He ran around, shot the Sheriff dead, then ran out in the parking lot and died. Shooting him in the arm or leg probably wouldn't have worked much better, either.
If the situation really, truly calls for you to risk taking another human being's life, then it probably doesn't call for you messing around trying to piss the guy off, or hoping that he's really mostly harmless, and will just lay there and bleed like a good boy.
steve
Re:Well for those who favor Guns, and those who do
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Home Defense, Geek Style?
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· Score: 2, Informative
So.... let's say that someone breaks into your home and sees you pull out said imitation firearm. Let's say that they're packing heat as well, and so decide to return fire. Who's going to win?
If the situation truly calls for lethal force, then playing with toys is a stupid idea. And if the situation *doesn't* call for lethal force, whipping out an imitation gun is very likely to land *you* in jail.
Salt shot for a thief? Did you just finish watching "Kill Bill 2" or something?
Believe it or not, some intruders are very intent (and/or drugged to boot). I've seen a security camera video of a bank robber shot cleanly *through the heart* who ran around, shot the Sheriff dead, then ran out the door - and died in the parking lot. But the Sheriff was still just as dead.
If you're going to point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, you are escalating the situation to the point of lethal force, and should be ready for them to do likewise. Assuming that you don't believe in using deadly force unless someone's life or body is in real danger, then it's nothing short of rediculous to believe that merely pissing the guy off is a good move. If your life (or someone else's) was in danger to begin with, how much more likely is he to shoot you in the head once you've put some rock salt in him, or shot him in the crotch with an air rifle?
Even though getting kicked in the crotch works all the time in the movies, in a real-life fight, it mostly just gets their adrenaline going and pisses them off. Sure, their nuts will be sore after the fight, but during the fight - watch out. I've personally witnessed it all too many times.
It's common for Europeans to believe that they're enlightened enough not to need guns. Unfortunately, they're living in a dream.
Remember the massacre of the Israeli olympians in Munich? Well, about two years ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with the person who was the deputy mayor of the Olympic village at that time. He went into great detail about how they, as Germans, were very eager to prove to the rest of the world that they were an educated, enlightened society - that they didn't have need of heavy security, armed guards, etc..
The then told me about how horrible the massacre was, and the deep, personal pain that he endured having to assist the families of the slain athletes. After he had finished, he told me this:
"We thought that we were so educated and enlightened that we didn't need weapons. What we didn't realize is that no matter how enlightened we were, there are others in the world who are not."
You can be as enlightened and educated as you want, but when someone comes into your house with a baseball bat, smashes your face in, then rapes your wife and daughters as he chokes them to death, your enlightenment and education gained you exactly nothing. That's right, nothing.
And if you believe that the life of said murderer/rapist is so precious that you and your family should give up your lives so that he won't have to, well, good luck with that. The gene pool will be better off without you.
The best solution, as mentionned previously, is to have good neighbours and not expose your belongings.
Again, you're living in a dream world. Your neighbors can move and sell their house, then what do you do? I guess you can spend your entire life moving from place to place, but I don't believe that should be necessary.
And "don't expose your belongings"? HAH! I had a car that was broken into four times in three months, all in different areas. In no case was there anything of value in the car, and nothing was taken. These worthless little streat punks cost me over a thousand dollars in broken windows just so that they could take a peek inside to see if there was anything of value. People are mugged and killed often when their total possessions are worth less than $20. For someone of such esteemed education, you seem to have very little dealings in reality.
Ultimately isn't it better to just stop rewarding stupidity?
Oh, it is! The problem is that the stupid people (those who reward stupidity, either knowingly or unknowingly) greatly outnumber those who see things more clearly. "A person is smart, people are dumb."
In this particular case, I don't really think it's a "let's catch up with Linux" thing. I think it's just Microsoft trying to put on an air of security, and saying "What can we do to make people think that we are more secure than anyone else?"
How does the old adage go? Something like "Never attribute to malice what can be chalked up to stupidity."
... unless they're actually monitoring what goes out over port 80 and 8080, as they really *could* do if they wanted. (even if they don't actively monitor for suspicious activity, many places do at least log traffic and do automated scans for things like porn sites.) And while encryption will make your data unrecognizable, it can actually make it stick out even *more* to people who are looking for suspicious activity. "Hey, look, bob, an entirely encrypted session on port 8080...." You'd probably have better luck doing it over 443, but even then, it's not going to look like a valid HTTPS session.
At places where the security section really does take things seriously, doing something like that would have an "IT security" guy and a couple of "escort-you-out-of-the-building" security guys at your desk pretty soon.
Oh, of course they're standard practice. And, of course, some companies may lock their cases in order to keep you from clearing the BIOS. Many of them forget that very simple software routines can happily clear the BIOS for you.
Yes, I've worked in an environment where things were "locked down" (notice the quotation marks). In fact, they actually did a better job of it than most places do. But those of us who really wanted to get stuff out, did. Now all I took out were personal documents that really had little or nothing to do with the company, but I could have just as easily gotten out with material that would have (a) been very damaging to the company, and hence, (b) would have been worth a LOT to their competitors.
Oddly enough, the job I had where privacy/security was MOST critical was the one where grabbing/stealing data would have been the easiest.
You're assuming that the computer in question is connected to the Internet: Or that it is connected to *any* network at all. You're also assuming that your computer doesn't have a lock on it to prevent you from opening it up.
95% of the situations where things like this are (attempted to be) enforced are usually places where they don't need to be enforced. But there are environments where things really do need to be enforced, and people take more than just a passing interest in enforcing them.
When millions of dollars (or more) are on the line, you don't just hand out a standard Dell PC and hope that your employee is honest. Of course, when that much is on the line, you don't depend on Longhorn to protect it, either!
How is an iPod or a USB flash drive any different than a floppy disk? Or a ZIP disk? or CD-RW?
Easy... you can give your workers a computer without a floppy, zip, or CD-RW drive. Then they can't take things home. With USB storage, you can't do that without removing the USB ports - which, unfortunately, means you will be removing the ability to use many mice and printers.
There are some situations in which keeping your data secure is, indeed, important. And I've worked in such situations. And, from experience, I can tell you that trying to enforce those limitations in software simply will not work on those with true intent.
All locking out these devices does it make it inconvenient for people to do their job. No more storing that Powerpoint presentation on a USB drive and plugging it into the meeting room projector, you'll have to bring the whole computer.
You're thinking of the wrong type of environment. I could also say "All that (passwords|firewalls|encryption) does is to make it harder for people to do their work." I'd be just as wrong.
And if someone REALLY wanted to steal corporate data, they'd remove the hard drive, take it home, copy it, and bring it back.
Not if the case is physically locked, or even better, permanently sealed. True, they could circumvent the lock or sealing, but that leaves tell-tale evidence of their tampering. When that's noticed, inquiries/firings/lawsuits entail.
Yes, I know, in the end, someone with sufficient intent, time, and resources will probably be able to beat just about anything you can come up with. But just like you don't use the password "password" on your root account, there are situations where you need to take reasonable precautions to prevent misuse of your data and facilities. And to what extent you want to go depends on how much you stand to lose, and how much of a pain-in-the-neck you're willing to put up with along the way.
So, in the end, I don't disagree at all with the idea of disallowing removable media in certain environments. But I certainly don't think that any software methods (particularly those created by Microsoft) will be capable of achieving that goal.
Current desktop AMD chips draw less power than current desktop Intel chips.
The Pentium M's might be a bit better on the juice, but that's alright - Via and Transmeta make chips that make the Pentium-M look like a power-hungry pig.
Instead of the latest Prescott-cored P4, use one of the Epia/Eden/etc. machines, where the entire machine uses 20 watts. And what does a 15" flat panel run, another 20 watts?
And there's an upshot to that: You can fit many of those boards with a power supply that runs from 12V DC current, so no inverter needed.
I had the pleasure of taking my human physiology class from a lady named Marjorie Billeter. She'd just finished up her masters in reproductive endocrinology, and she loved physiology. Really. She'd show up for class wide-eyed and excited about it. It was almost comical! And as she taught the class, she'd get more and more excited about physiology, until by the end, she was talking so fast that it was like trying to decipher a movie on fast-forward. She was honestly like a little kid on Christmas afternoon telling you about all the cool toys she just got. And with her masters, boy, you should have seen what she was like teaching about the phiology of reproduction.
Even better, if you had a question, she took a great personal interest in helping you understand the subject matter. She really, really, loved to teach.
Our university, each year, gave out one award for teaching excellence from the faculty, and one from the student popular vote. The one year that she taught, she won both awards - and it was the first time that had ever happened. This lady taught, and she taught well.
So, what happened to her? The tenured professor that she had been inteded to replace decided not to retire after all, so she got the boot. So long, good riddence. One of the best, if not THE best teacher the biology department had ever seen, and she was just dumped along the way. I can think of at least five of the tenured professers that weren't one-quarter of the teacher she was.
steve
What, exactly, did Paul Graham study?
on
The Age of the Essay
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Either he went to a pretty odd school, or he just never managed to walk outside of the English department.
Essays that I wrote in school weren't just about things like symbolism in Dickins, they were intended to give the student the choice about where he wanted to go with his paper. They were on a wide range of topics, anything from the career of your choice to what economic methods you favored. I only recall one teacher that gave out essays on virtually pre-decided topics, and I recall hearing about one or two others.
I even wrote a paper once on why monkeys should rule the world - and gave enough convincing arguments that I ended up getting a few bonus points, putting me at something like 104 of 100.
Even in English class, we were sometimes given room to really explore what we wanted. One year in high school, while our textbook served for the grammer and rhetoric assignments, the great bulk of our actual literature reading was up to us: We could read just about whatever we wanted, but we had to read at least something like 1,000 or 2,000 pages per quarter, and we had to talk to the class about what we read, and what we saw in it. Some of the romance novels that the girls were reading were enough to make the teacher pretty uncomfortable in discussing in front of a high-school class, but he still allowed it.
Even in grade school, you were assigned days on which you had to bring in a couple of newspaper stories on current events, and had to talk about them. Because nobody wanted to have a "repeat" of the news story before them, everybody tried to stay away from just the easy, front-page stories.
The part that astounds me is that I didn't go to any great school - it was just a small school in a small hick-town. While I haven't exactly tried to turn this into a well-written essay, even what I thought was a very poor essay on my part on with my college admissions got me into the class where you pass it, and your English and writing requirements are completely satisfied.
It came in first in several benchmarks, and only "lost" (came in last) in some of the others.
It's the benchmark in terms of what you get. I happen to be using the SoundStorm, and I can tell you that it's an incredibly nice sound solution. I honestly don't know what I'll do when I upgrade my motherboard, anything comparable is likely to cost an extra $100 or more.
You'll be able to buy a 4-way Opteron system, use it for a while, then tie it into another 4-way Opteron later. And another, and another, up to 8 boxes with 4 CPU's each, or 64 CPUs if you're using the upcoming dual-core chips.
A 32- or 64-way system, with 32 128-bit DDR400 memory controllers (total aggregate memory bandwidth: 102 GB/s) with hardware partitioning, hot-plug connect/disconnect between systems, and even up to 64 megs of RDC cache between each link.
And, even better than the current offerings: If you think you might need 32 chips in a machine from one of the big names, then you buy a 32-way chassis/backplane to start with. These let you buy only what you need.
There are still some features that are found in the true "big iron" that aren't found in this platform, and some that will never be found in the Opteron platform. But with this level of advancement, you just can't tell me that the Opterons aren't eating in to the "high-end" server market.
This is sort of a chicken-and-egg dilemna. Even with digital cable, in my area, you can only get two HDTV feeds - one is an ESPN channel, one is a nature channel. And DVD's don't currently take full advantage of an HDTV screen.
So, will many people buy an HDTV? No. And so prices will stay high as well, keeping more people (like me(*)) from buying one.
Because nobody has one, will anyone pony up content? Not really. They don't want to invest the money until sets are more prevalent.
So, what are you going to do? Sooner or later, somebody's got to give in and put forth an investment in the technology by delivering content. Then the rest will happen.
(*) I'd really like to buy a good HDTV. But I won't buy one until I can get a decent widescreen HDTV for a price that makes it attractive to me. And because I don't watch ESPN, that means that I'd be buying the TV to watch a nature channel. I'll hold off until there's more content, then I'll blow a pile of cash on a good model.
If I buy a product (software) I CANNOT return it when it doesn';t work for ANY reason. cause I already opened it. Cause I broke the seal to read the agreement that was stuffed inside that says if you can read this, it is yours. Software companies only insure the MEDIA. Not the content. This is what I have issues with.
That's why I believe that all software is shareware. I try it out, see if it's worth keeping. If it is, I buy it. ; )
Ummmm. Opteron does well in the high-end workstation market. Maybe the high-end gamer market. In terms of server technology it's still a bit of a joke. The biggest boxes at 4-ways.
Sun has promised to make 8-way and larger opteron systems, but don't expect them for a couple years.
AMD has done some leaning on the manufacturers, and you should see 8-way Opterons by the end of this year.
None of them support hardware partitioning, most don't even do chip-kill memory.
For every server sold that does have those, a hundred thousand are sold which don't.
Opterons don't really compete with Itanium, they compete with Xeon
AMD sold more Opterons in the first year of launch than Intel sold Itaniums in the several years since then. Opterons are outselling Itaniums left and right, and there are quite a few shops buying Opterons instead of Itaniums.
In the real server world Itanium is trying to break into the territory of sparc, power, pa-risc, and alpha. Opteron doesn't even exist in that space.
Funny, Opterons seem to be eating into the smaller Sparc boxes pretty well. Sun has certainly seen that. You're right, you won't see a hardware-partitioned 128-way Opteron any time soon. But it's certainly starting to eat into the server market. If you went back in time four years, and someone told you that you'd be able to buy an 8-way, 64-bit, embedded memory controller, high-bandwidth interconnect server as a commodity product, you'd think that they were insane.
So end users want someone to hold their hand Step-by-Step (sometimes baby steps)
I once started a restore procedure for a guy which would format his hard drive, and restore it to the factory software packages. I told him it would take an hour or two, then reboot, and everything would be fine. He asked if I could stay on the line for that time. I politely told him that I couldn't but that everything would work out. He kept getting more and more insistant that I stay on the line. I asked him why, and he replied "I'm kinda scared to be alone with this computer." I asked him why he was scared to be alone with it. He responded "It... it... it's been doing strange things on me lately."
For example: You wouldn't believe how many people don't know where the # key is
Or how many people don't know where their "enter" key is. I can't tell you how many times I told people "Press the ENTER key on your keyboard." When they'd say "I don't see the enter key", I'd say "It's on your keyboard." They'd respond "I don't see the enter button on my screen." "No, it's NOT ON YOUR SCREEN! THE ENTER KEY IS ON YOUR KEYBOARD!!!!!!"
you'll tell them it's below the 9 or it looks like a tic-tac-toe symbol)
How do you get a computer-illiterate woman to find the CPU heat sink every time? Tell them to look for the hair brush. I mean it. I never had it fail.
Slashdot Mirror
Have her talk to a couple of cops - I'll bet they can offer a lot of advice.
Better yet, have her schmooze some cops. It works pretty well.
There's a street in my neighborhood that becomes a race track at night. People along it have been asking for the police to patrol it for years, to no avail.
On a local holiday, our neighborhood also has a reputation for illegal fireworks: To the tune of *thousands* of dollars worth. This year, they assigned two uniformed cops to our neighborhood party. We all shmoozed them, I cooked them some steaks, other people gave them drinks, food, everything. One of them even got their face painted. Then we told them about this street.
A week later, people started getting pulled over on this street all night long. I was walking by on the sidewalk, and the officer yelled at me "Hey, you! You gave me those steaks, didn't you? Thanks, man!"
Yep. You catch more flies with honey....
steve
Pepper spray - good idea. Hurts like hell, good deterent without causing lasting harm
There are a good number of dead policemen who were told that pepper spray could be relied upon to work with intoxicated persons. Unfortunately, real-world experience didn't coincide with the manufacturer's marketing hype.
steve
Rubber balls in a shotgun. Sounds terrific. You're missing one thing, though: At close range (which, in all honesty, is what a defense situation is nearly always at), they'll act like a solid mass and go right through the guy. So those rubber balls did you no more good than a shell of buckshot.
At longer range, where they won't go through the guy, ask yourself this: If my life is really in enough danger that I'm willing to fire a shotgun at another human being, do I really want to screw around with something that will just hurt them and potentially piss them off worse?
Merely pissing off someone who had your life in real danger to begin with isn't always a bright idea.
You want to stop them, not kill them, right? Well, unfortunately, if someone is determined or drugged, the only way to stop them often IS to kill them. I've seen a video of a bank robber who was shot right directly through the heart. He ran around, shot the Sheriff dead, then ran out in the parking lot and died. Shooting him in the arm or leg probably wouldn't have worked much better, either.
If the situation really, truly calls for you to risk taking another human being's life, then it probably doesn't call for you messing around trying to piss the guy off, or hoping that he's really mostly harmless, and will just lay there and bleed like a good boy.
steve
So.... let's say that someone breaks into your home and sees you pull out said imitation firearm. Let's say that they're packing heat as well, and so decide to return fire. Who's going to win?
If the situation truly calls for lethal force, then playing with toys is a stupid idea. And if the situation *doesn't* call for lethal force, whipping out an imitation gun is very likely to land *you* in jail.
steve
Salt shot for a thief? Did you just finish watching "Kill Bill 2" or something?
Believe it or not, some intruders are very intent (and/or drugged to boot). I've seen a security camera video of a bank robber shot cleanly *through the heart* who ran around, shot the Sheriff dead, then ran out the door - and died in the parking lot. But the Sheriff was still just as dead.
If you're going to point a gun at someone and pull the trigger, you are escalating the situation to the point of lethal force, and should be ready for them to do likewise. Assuming that you don't believe in using deadly force unless someone's life or body is in real danger, then it's nothing short of rediculous to believe that merely pissing the guy off is a good move. If your life (or someone else's) was in danger to begin with, how much more likely is he to shoot you in the head once you've put some rock salt in him, or shot him in the crotch with an air rifle?
Even though getting kicked in the crotch works all the time in the movies, in a real-life fight, it mostly just gets their adrenaline going and pisses them off. Sure, their nuts will be sore after the fight, but during the fight - watch out. I've personally witnessed it all too many times.
steve
It's common for Europeans to believe that they're enlightened enough not to need guns. Unfortunately, they're living in a dream.
Remember the massacre of the Israeli olympians in Munich? Well, about two years ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with the person who was the deputy mayor of the Olympic village at that time. He went into great detail about how they, as Germans, were very eager to prove to the rest of the world that they were an educated, enlightened society - that they didn't have need of heavy security, armed guards, etc..
The then told me about how horrible the massacre was, and the deep, personal pain that he endured having to assist the families of the slain athletes. After he had finished, he told me this:
"We thought that we were so educated and enlightened that we didn't need weapons. What we didn't realize is that no matter how enlightened we were, there are others in the world who are not."
You can be as enlightened and educated as you want, but when someone comes into your house with a baseball bat, smashes your face in, then rapes your wife and daughters as he chokes them to death, your enlightenment and education gained you exactly nothing. That's right, nothing.
And if you believe that the life of said murderer/rapist is so precious that you and your family should give up your lives so that he won't have to, well, good luck with that. The gene pool will be better off without you.
The best solution, as mentionned previously, is to have good neighbours and not expose your belongings.
Again, you're living in a dream world. Your neighbors can move and sell their house, then what do you do? I guess you can spend your entire life moving from place to place, but I don't believe that should be necessary.
And "don't expose your belongings"? HAH! I had a car that was broken into four times in three months, all in different areas. In no case was there anything of value in the car, and nothing was taken. These worthless little streat punks cost me over a thousand dollars in broken windows just so that they could take a peek inside to see if there was anything of value. People are mugged and killed often when their total possessions are worth less than $20. For someone of such esteemed education, you seem to have very little dealings in reality.
Steve
I'd go even farther, I'd pull out the flash ROM and replace it with a non-flashable ROM. : )
steve
Ultimately isn't it better to just stop rewarding stupidity?
Oh, it is! The problem is that the stupid people (those who reward stupidity, either knowingly or unknowingly) greatly outnumber those who see things more clearly. "A person is smart, people are dumb."
steve
In this particular case, I don't really think it's a "let's catch up with Linux" thing. I think it's just Microsoft trying to put on an air of security, and saying "What can we do to make people think that we are more secure than anyone else?"
How does the old adage go? Something like "Never attribute to malice what can be chalked up to stupidity."
steve
At places where the security section really does take things seriously, doing something like that would have an "IT security" guy and a couple of "escort-you-out-of-the-building" security guys at your desk pretty soon.
steve
Oh, of course they're standard practice. And, of course, some companies may lock their cases in order to keep you from clearing the BIOS. Many of them forget that very simple software routines can happily clear the BIOS for you.
Yes, I've worked in an environment where things were "locked down" (notice the quotation marks). In fact, they actually did a better job of it than most places do. But those of us who really wanted to get stuff out, did. Now all I took out were personal documents that really had little or nothing to do with the company, but I could have just as easily gotten out with material that would have (a) been very damaging to the company, and hence, (b) would have been worth a LOT to their competitors.
Oddly enough, the job I had where privacy/security was MOST critical was the one where grabbing/stealing data would have been the easiest.
steve
You can do that, but then what happens to the people with a USB mouse or a USB printer? Woops! :)
steve
You're assuming that the computer in question is connected to the Internet: Or that it is connected to *any* network at all. You're also assuming that your computer doesn't have a lock on it to prevent you from opening it up.
95% of the situations where things like this are (attempted to be) enforced are usually places where they don't need to be enforced. But there are environments where things really do need to be enforced, and people take more than just a passing interest in enforcing them.
When millions of dollars (or more) are on the line, you don't just hand out a standard Dell PC and hope that your employee is honest. Of course, when that much is on the line, you don't depend on Longhorn to protect it, either!
steve
How is an iPod or a USB flash drive any different than a floppy disk? Or a ZIP disk? or CD-RW?
Easy... you can give your workers a computer without a floppy, zip, or CD-RW drive. Then they can't take things home. With USB storage, you can't do that without removing the USB ports - which, unfortunately, means you will be removing the ability to use many mice and printers.
There are some situations in which keeping your data secure is, indeed, important. And I've worked in such situations. And, from experience, I can tell you that trying to enforce those limitations in software simply will not work on those with true intent.
All locking out these devices does it make it inconvenient for people to do their job. No more storing that Powerpoint presentation on a USB drive and plugging it into the meeting room projector, you'll have to bring the whole computer.
You're thinking of the wrong type of environment. I could also say "All that (passwords|firewalls|encryption) does is to make it harder for people to do their work." I'd be just as wrong.
And if someone REALLY wanted to steal corporate data, they'd remove the hard drive, take it home, copy it, and bring it back.
Not if the case is physically locked, or even better, permanently sealed. True, they could circumvent the lock or sealing, but that leaves tell-tale evidence of their tampering. When that's noticed, inquiries/firings/lawsuits entail.
Yes, I know, in the end, someone with sufficient intent, time, and resources will probably be able to beat just about anything you can come up with. But just like you don't use the password "password" on your root account, there are situations where you need to take reasonable precautions to prevent misuse of your data and facilities. And to what extent you want to go depends on how much you stand to lose, and how much of a pain-in-the-neck you're willing to put up with along the way.
So, in the end, I don't disagree at all with the idea of disallowing removable media in certain environments. But I certainly don't think that any software methods (particularly those created by Microsoft) will be capable of achieving that goal.
steve
Those things are DANGEROUS!
Didn't anybody see The Recruit?
(obligatory smily omitted)
Current desktop AMD chips draw less power than current desktop Intel chips.
The Pentium M's might be a bit better on the juice, but that's alright - Via and Transmeta make chips that make the Pentium-M look like a power-hungry pig.
steve
Instead of the latest Prescott-cored P4, use one of the Epia/Eden/etc. machines, where the entire machine uses 20 watts. And what does a 15" flat panel run, another 20 watts?
And there's an upshot to that: You can fit many of those boards with a power supply that runs from 12V DC current, so no inverter needed.
Is it really all that hard?
steve
I had the pleasure of taking my human physiology class from a lady named Marjorie Billeter. She'd just finished up her masters in reproductive endocrinology, and she loved physiology. Really. She'd show up for class wide-eyed and excited about it. It was almost comical! And as she taught the class, she'd get more and more excited about physiology, until by the end, she was talking so fast that it was like trying to decipher a movie on fast-forward. She was honestly like a little kid on Christmas afternoon telling you about all the cool toys she just got. And with her masters, boy, you should have seen what she was like teaching about the phiology of reproduction.
Even better, if you had a question, she took a great personal interest in helping you understand the subject matter. She really, really, loved to teach.
Our university, each year, gave out one award for teaching excellence from the faculty, and one from the student popular vote. The one year that she taught, she won both awards - and it was the first time that had ever happened. This lady taught, and she taught well.
So, what happened to her? The tenured professor that she had been inteded to replace decided not to retire after all, so she got the boot. So long, good riddence. One of the best, if not THE best teacher the biology department had ever seen, and she was just dumped along the way. I can think of at least five of the tenured professers that weren't one-quarter of the teacher she was.
steve
Either he went to a pretty odd school, or he just never managed to walk outside of the English department.
Essays that I wrote in school weren't just about things like symbolism in Dickins, they were intended to give the student the choice about where he wanted to go with his paper. They were on a wide range of topics, anything from the career of your choice to what economic methods you favored. I only recall one teacher that gave out essays on virtually pre-decided topics, and I recall hearing about one or two others.
I even wrote a paper once on why monkeys should rule the world - and gave enough convincing arguments that I ended up getting a few bonus points, putting me at something like 104 of 100.
Even in English class, we were sometimes given room to really explore what we wanted. One year in high school, while our textbook served for the grammer and rhetoric assignments, the great bulk of our actual literature reading was up to us: We could read just about whatever we wanted, but we had to read at least something like 1,000 or 2,000 pages per quarter, and we had to talk to the class about what we read, and what we saw in it. Some of the romance novels that the girls were reading were enough to make the teacher pretty uncomfortable in discussing in front of a high-school class, but he still allowed it.
Even in grade school, you were assigned days on which you had to bring in a couple of newspaper stories on current events, and had to talk about them. Because nobody wanted to have a "repeat" of the news story before them, everybody tried to stay away from just the easy, front-page stories.
The part that astounds me is that I didn't go to any great school - it was just a small school in a small hick-town. While I haven't exactly tried to turn this into a well-written essay, even what I thought was a very poor essay on my part on with my college admissions got me into the class where you pass it, and your English and writing requirements are completely satisfied.
What?
It came in first in several benchmarks, and only "lost" (came in last) in some of the others.
It's the benchmark in terms of what you get. I happen to be using the SoundStorm, and I can tell you that it's an incredibly nice sound solution. I honestly don't know what I'll do when I upgrade my motherboard, anything comparable is likely to cost an extra $100 or more.
steve
here
You'll be able to buy a 4-way Opteron system, use it for a while, then tie it into another 4-way Opteron later. And another, and another, up to 8 boxes with 4 CPU's each, or 64 CPUs if you're using the upcoming dual-core chips.
A 32- or 64-way system, with 32 128-bit DDR400 memory controllers (total aggregate memory bandwidth: 102 GB/s) with hardware partitioning, hot-plug connect/disconnect between systems, and even up to 64 megs of RDC cache between each link.
And, even better than the current offerings: If you think you might need 32 chips in a machine from one of the big names, then you buy a 32-way chassis/backplane to start with. These let you buy only what you need.
There are still some features that are found in the true "big iron" that aren't found in this platform, and some that will never be found in the Opteron platform. But with this level of advancement, you just can't tell me that the Opterons aren't eating in to the "high-end" server market.
steve
This is sort of a chicken-and-egg dilemna. Even with digital cable, in my area, you can only get two HDTV feeds - one is an ESPN channel, one is a nature channel. And DVD's don't currently take full advantage of an HDTV screen.
So, will many people buy an HDTV? No. And so prices will stay high as well, keeping more people (like me(*)) from buying one.
Because nobody has one, will anyone pony up content? Not really. They don't want to invest the money until sets are more prevalent.
So, what are you going to do? Sooner or later, somebody's got to give in and put forth an investment in the technology by delivering content. Then the rest will happen.
(*) I'd really like to buy a good HDTV. But I won't buy one until I can get a decent widescreen HDTV for a price that makes it attractive to me. And because I don't watch ESPN, that means that I'd be buying the TV to watch a nature channel. I'll hold off until there's more content, then I'll blow a pile of cash on a good model.
steve
If I buy a product (software) I CANNOT return it when it doesn';t work for ANY reason. cause I already opened it. Cause I broke the seal to read the agreement that was stuffed inside that says if you can read this, it is yours. Software companies only insure the MEDIA. Not the content. This is what I have issues with.
That's why I believe that all software is shareware. I try it out, see if it's worth keeping. If it is, I buy it. ; )
steve
Ummmm. Opteron does well in the high-end workstation market. Maybe the high-end gamer market. In terms of server technology it's still a bit of a joke. The biggest boxes at 4-ways.
Sun has promised to make 8-way and larger opteron systems, but don't expect them for a couple years.
AMD has done some leaning on the manufacturers, and you should see 8-way Opterons by the end of this year.
None of them support hardware partitioning, most don't even do chip-kill memory.
For every server sold that does have those, a hundred thousand are sold which don't.
Opterons don't really compete with Itanium, they compete with Xeon
AMD sold more Opterons in the first year of launch than Intel sold Itaniums in the several years since then. Opterons are outselling Itaniums left and right, and there are quite a few shops buying Opterons instead of Itaniums.
In the real server world Itanium is trying to break into the territory of sparc, power, pa-risc, and alpha. Opteron doesn't even exist in that space.
Funny, Opterons seem to be eating into the smaller Sparc boxes pretty well. Sun has certainly seen that. You're right, you won't see a hardware-partitioned 128-way Opteron any time soon. But it's certainly starting to eat into the server market. If you went back in time four years, and someone told you that you'd be able to buy an 8-way, 64-bit, embedded memory controller, high-bandwidth interconnect server as a commodity product, you'd think that they were insane.
steve
So end users want someone to hold their hand Step-by-Step (sometimes baby steps)
I once started a restore procedure for a guy which would format his hard drive, and restore it to the factory software packages. I told him it would take an hour or two, then reboot, and everything would be fine. He asked if I could stay on the line for that time. I politely told him that I couldn't but that everything would work out. He kept getting more and more insistant that I stay on the line. I asked him why, and he replied "I'm kinda scared to be alone with this computer." I asked him why he was scared to be alone with it. He responded "It... it... it's been doing strange things on me lately."
For example: You wouldn't believe how many people don't know where the # key is
Or how many people don't know where their "enter" key is. I can't tell you how many times I told people "Press the ENTER key on your keyboard." When they'd say "I don't see the enter key", I'd say "It's on your keyboard." They'd respond "I don't see the enter button on my screen." "No, it's NOT ON YOUR SCREEN! THE ENTER KEY IS ON YOUR KEYBOARD!!!!!!"
you'll tell them it's below the 9 or it looks like a tic-tac-toe symbol)
How do you get a computer-illiterate woman to find the CPU heat sink every time? Tell them to look for the hair brush. I mean it. I never had it fail.
steve