The funniest part is "prestigious non-accredited universities." They're already spamming, why not lie? Are they going to get in any more trouble if they leave out the part about being non-accredited?
Some of these services are already available online depending on what state you live in. Things like registering your kid for school, registering your car, and paying tax (not Federal of course) are all done on a state level here, which is the way it should be. One of the principles our country is founded on is the belief that many things are best done on the state and local levels. Putting these services online at a federal government level just wouldn't make much sense, and it would clearly take power away from state governments, to do things in a way that is best for their specific residents.
Here in Massachusetts, we can already do most of the stuff you mentioned online. You can renew your driver's license, car registration, etc. online at the RMV's web site. You can also pay your state taxes online or by phone. People in the US can electronically file with the IRS, too.
We are a country based on decentralized government. Centralizing web services that should be run at a state level just doesn't make sense.
XBox emulating PS2? It's not happening.. Try getting your P3 733 desktop to emulate a 128-bit cpu plus two co-processors. Systems emulating other systems is a great idea though. With its standard PC-type hardware, The XBox is sure to get a MAME port as well as emulators for some of the older consoles, such as SNES. PSX emulation isn't out of the question, remember Bleem ran on less.
No, OnStar is NOT going to deliver in-car spam. If you read the article, you'd read that 'OnStar, by far the biggest service with 1.5 million users, says it makes note of a car's location only in an emergency or when a driver makes contact with the service.' 'OnStar seems more interested in advertising that is tied to content.' The title of this story is blatantly incorrect, and the write-up is very misleading.
Onstar is considering putting ads that are related to their content, such as ads for a brokerage if you're getting stock quotes. That's pretty far from 'in-car spam' based on tracking your location.
The only thing in the article that resembles this is the 'gas station locator' by Wingcast, a service which hasn't even been launched yet. It would notify you when your car runs low on gas, and give you directions to gas stations. It's a useful feature, and I'm sure you'll have to sign up for it before they send you gas station ads.
Personally I'd object to ads mixed in with a service that I paid good money for, even if they're not based on your location. For a few hundred dollars a year, I expect a service that's free of annoyances. A gas station locator isn't an annoyance, it's a feature.
Re:oi vey! your stupidity is painful
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 2
you even quoted the part where i explain what i meant.
Was that the part where you said
there are currently no games which i could see benefitting from this on any console, nor any in the future.
Your subtlety amazes me. I guess by saying "nor any in the future," you meant "lots of games in the future." It's clear that I'm dealing with a superior thinker here, so I'll try my best to stay on your good side.
ZIP code 12345 is a special ZIP code belonging to GE in Schenectady, NY.
Re:your statements don't work
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 2
an ethernet connection on a console isn't some gaming messiah. there are currently no games which i could see benefitting from this on any console, nor any in the future. same with having a hard drive. great, it'd lead to faster and more saved games. dandy. personally i don't run out of space on my memory cards, but that's me. this by itself is not a reason to buy a console.
Let me guess. A few years ago you were saying that nobody would buy a console with a CD-ROM drive.. 3d is a fad.. 16-bit is a buzzword.. nobody needs a controller with more than 2 buttons. Innovation happens. There are PC games that benefit from a broadband connection or a hard drive. Why not on a console?
It doesn't look like the same company, but there is a company that makes this kind of device for TV watching. What it does is it monitors the closed caption signal and bleeps out words that could be considered offensive. I think you can set it to display replacement words on screen, like darn instead of damn.
It's made by a Christian company so in addition to curses, you can filter stuff like using God's name in vain. Personally I think it's a decent idea. If it's a choice between devices like this, and lobbying congress to censor our music, tv, and movies I'll take the devices. Of course you still run into the same problems with internet censorware - some parents will inevitably see this as a replacement for actual supervision, and they won't be aware of what their children are viewing.
In my opinion, it's a lot worse to not supervise your kids, than to have them hear a curse or two..
I read this book
on
God's Debris
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· Score: 1, Funny
I liked it.. but I read the whole thing and there was no fucking Dogbert! What the hell..
I believe the RIAA's position is that they will never fully eliminate copyright infringement, so they should recoup the 'losses' through a royalty on blank CDs. At the same time, you're still not allowed to copy that CD. That's still piracy. I agree with you. You can't have it both ways. This kind of thinking happens elsewhere - Globalscape CuteFTP used to be a good program, until they made it ad-ware AND cripple-ware. If it's showing ads it shouldn't bug me about registering, and it shouldn't expire. If I pay a surcharge on a blank CD, I better be able to put any damn music on it that I choose.
The other problem is that the figures have never shown that 'music piracy' impacts industry profits. This is the fallacy of groups like the RIAA and BSA - you'll hear ridiculous figures, in the billions of dollars, of money that they 'lost' to 'piracy'. Back to reality, there's no way that college student is going out and buying the 800 albums that contain each of the MP3 singles in their Morpheus share. There's no way that company in Hong Kong is buying thousands of copies of Windows.
Screw it. Be more like K5. If someone posts a goatse.cx ascii art (I know, probably old, but I haven't checked what the latest troll nonsense is in a while), bitchslap them. It's not fair? Who cares- we all hate each other here anyway.
Gnutella, although it's horribly inefficient, is just what you mentioned: Morpheus-like software that uses no central indexing server that can be shut down. The protocol is freely available and many open source clients exist.
The RIAA's approach to Gnutella thus far has been actively discovering copyright offenders and sending DMCA complaints to their ISP. The problem with Gnutella is that by design, everyone knows your IP.
What we really need, is a distributed storage network such as FreeNet. If I share my songs, the don't come from my computer - various parts of them are propagated to Bill's computer in Texas, Alice's computer in Canada, and Charlie's computer in Norway.. The RIAA is already having nightmares about this technology maturing. If software like this can become as efficient as Morpheus currently is, the RIAA's only hope would be SSSCA-type legislation that bans software such as FreeNet.
Well that would require prying my ass off the sofa, which goes against everything that TV stands for! Although a set top box would be nice.. choose between cable porn and internet porn.. hmm..
Hear, hear.. AT&T's digital box and guide are simply the WORST interfaces to TV viewing I've seen. I'm guessing you have the general instruments DCT box like me.. it's a slow and outdated platform. Changing channels (even analog) takes at least 3 seconds, and it's covered with ads (don't we pay for this service?). I called too, there is no other box available. I asked what type of digital system it was, so I could purchase a replacement box.. the rep told me that was illegal. I told her it wasn't, I had a right to own my equipment, but she wouldn't tell me anything more.
the software industry hires anyone, and lets them get on with whatever they do, with no real management or oversight or planning.
The software industry doesn't hire anyone. Software companies hire people, and a company that behaves like you described won't be around for long if software is their main source of revenue.
Also, management != good software engineering. Planning != good software engineering. These are all factors that go into a good software project but people shouldn't think that if they draw class diagrams before they start coding, they're suddenly software engineering.
On the other hand, you need to look at what's best for the project - it isn't always a large, formal approach to software, especially for small projects. Being too rigid can be as bad as being too loose with your design. I've seen projects design themselves into a corner before the first line of code is even written.
is not enabled by default, at least on my machine. I don't know though, since I have two NICs it couldn't complete the automatic network setup wizard.. maybe that wizard enables remote desktop. you may be thinking of the remote assistance function where you can invite a friend or MS tech support to control your computer.. that has to be initiated by you though.
There's a great solution to problems like this: outsource your IT support to a company that knows what they are doing. As other posters have mentioned, IT is probably not the core of your business, it exists to enhance whatever your real business is. Because of that, it's a prime candidate for outsourcing. Other companies can probably do it better than your homegrown IT dept.
I'm making some assumptions here:
1. You're in a relatively small company ( 500 employees). Large companies probably need full in-house support.
2. You're not an in-house IT person. This question was from a developer, and we're already operating under the assumption that there are draconian IT policies in place that need to change.
A good model is having a small support staff on-site, supplemented by the services of an IT consulting firm. Of course you don't want to call the firm every time someone forgot their password, but likewise you don't want in-house IT setting up your new active directory.
The advantage of outsourcing is simple: your company wants to pay as little as possible, so your in-house contact will educate users about not polluting their PC with Webshots instead of implementing some total lockdown policy. Hopefully your consultant will understand the balance between controlling a system and user freedom. But because your company wants to pay as little as possible for support, they will actively work to prevent problems from happening.
You're assuming that my current desktop and my current laptop are the only two PCs I've ever used or supported.. In truth I've supported hundreds of Windows and Linux PCs, servers with countless operating systems, and yes I've been in the business for quite a few years now. This isn't a job application though, I don't feel the need to list my experience just to qualify my posts.
I agree with you that scientific evidence is more useful, but anecdotal evidence is not totally useless. The fact is there's no way to scientifically measure real world stability in a controlled way - there are just too many outside variables to account for. People install and uninstall software randomly, users disrespect their computers and run unauthorized software, get virii, etc.
You can set up identical PCs in a controlled environment, but that's not measuring real-world reliability.
BTW my laptop and desktop are still running crash free:)
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you're the guy at the office who everybody really hates, but they need you because you hacked a bunch of systems together and you're the only one who knows how it works. You grudgingly support Windows but whenever you start preaching Linux this, Linux that, everyone leaves the room.
Users avoid you because they're afraid you'll go off on them if they ask the wrong thing. You're not going to get fired, but you're sure as hell not getting promoted. You sit around patting yourself on the back for keeping such a 'tight ship'.
Do you call your co-workers retards? Have you ever worked with mentally retarded people? I'm sure you know someone who has a child with disabilities. Would you say 'retard' in front of them?
I know your type. If I met you in real life I'm sure you'd be perfectly nice to me when you realized that I know my stuff too. I'm sure you're mostly nice to people in real life, but when you get on Slashdot you can just let loose!
Let me tell you something. I have seen a lot of your type online, and met a lot of people like you in real life. People who act totally different online and in real life have a problem relating to others, and I'd really prefer not to deal with people like you in either world.
Slashdot Mirror
SQL Server is a database engine. Apache is a web server. Replacing one with the other wouldn't do you much good..
The funniest part is "prestigious non-accredited universities." They're already spamming, why not lie? Are they going to get in any more trouble if they leave out the part about being non-accredited?
Xbox controllers ARE USB, actually. I'm sure you could plug in your own stuff.
Some of these services are already available online depending on what state you live in. Things like registering your kid for school, registering your car, and paying tax (not Federal of course) are all done on a state level here, which is the way it should be. One of the principles our country is founded on is the belief that many things are best done on the state and local levels. Putting these services online at a federal government level just wouldn't make much sense, and it would clearly take power away from state governments, to do things in a way that is best for their specific residents.
Here in Massachusetts, we can already do most of the stuff you mentioned online. You can renew your driver's license, car registration, etc. online at the RMV's web site. You can also pay your state taxes online or by phone. People in the US can electronically file with the IRS, too.
We are a country based on decentralized government. Centralizing web services that should be run at a state level just doesn't make sense.
XBox emulating PS2? It's not happening.. Try getting your P3 733 desktop to emulate a 128-bit cpu plus two co-processors. Systems emulating other systems is a great idea though. With its standard PC-type hardware, The XBox is sure to get a MAME port as well as emulators for some of the older consoles, such as SNES. PSX emulation isn't out of the question, remember Bleem ran on less.
No, OnStar is NOT going to deliver in-car spam. If you read the article, you'd read that 'OnStar, by far the biggest service with 1.5 million users, says it makes note of a car's location only in an emergency or when a driver makes contact with the service.' 'OnStar seems more interested in advertising that is tied to content.' The title of this story is blatantly incorrect, and the write-up is very misleading.
Onstar is considering putting ads that are related to their content, such as ads for a brokerage if you're getting stock quotes. That's pretty far from 'in-car spam' based on tracking your location.
The only thing in the article that resembles this is the 'gas station locator' by Wingcast, a service which hasn't even been launched yet. It would notify you when your car runs low on gas, and give you directions to gas stations. It's a useful feature, and I'm sure you'll have to sign up for it before they send you gas station ads.
Personally I'd object to ads mixed in with a service that I paid good money for, even if they're not based on your location. For a few hundred dollars a year, I expect a service that's free of annoyances. A gas station locator isn't an annoyance, it's a feature.
you even quoted the part where i explain what i meant.
Was that the part where you said
there are currently no games which i could see benefitting from this on any console, nor any in the future.
Your subtlety amazes me. I guess by saying "nor any in the future," you meant "lots of games in the future." It's clear that I'm dealing with a superior thinker here, so I'll try my best to stay on your good side.
ZIP code 12345 is a special ZIP code belonging to GE in Schenectady, NY.
an ethernet connection on a console isn't some gaming messiah. there are currently no games which i could see benefitting from this on any console, nor any in the future. same with having a hard drive. great, it'd lead to faster and more saved games. dandy. personally i don't run out of space on my memory cards, but that's me. this by itself is not a reason to buy a console.
Let me guess. A few years ago you were saying that nobody would buy a console with a CD-ROM drive.. 3d is a fad.. 16-bit is a buzzword.. nobody needs a controller with more than 2 buttons. Innovation happens. There are PC games that benefit from a broadband connection or a hard drive. Why not on a console?
It doesn't look like the same company, but there is a company that makes this kind of device for TV watching. What it does is it monitors the closed caption signal and bleeps out words that could be considered offensive. I think you can set it to display replacement words on screen, like darn instead of damn.
It's made by a Christian company so in addition to curses, you can filter stuff like using God's name in vain. Personally I think it's a decent idea. If it's a choice between devices like this, and lobbying congress to censor our music, tv, and movies I'll take the devices. Of course you still run into the same problems with internet censorware - some parents will inevitably see this as a replacement for actual supervision, and they won't be aware of what their children are viewing.
In my opinion, it's a lot worse to not supervise your kids, than to have them hear a curse or two..
I liked it.. but I read the whole thing and there was no fucking Dogbert! What the hell..
Neulevel.biz has actually resolved for a few months now. Today, all the other .biz domains went live..
I believe the RIAA's position is that they will never fully eliminate copyright infringement, so they should recoup the 'losses' through a royalty on blank CDs. At the same time, you're still not allowed to copy that CD. That's still piracy. I agree with you. You can't have it both ways. This kind of thinking happens elsewhere - Globalscape CuteFTP used to be a good program, until they made it ad-ware AND cripple-ware. If it's showing ads it shouldn't bug me about registering, and it shouldn't expire. If I pay a surcharge on a blank CD, I better be able to put any damn music on it that I choose.
The other problem is that the figures have never shown that 'music piracy' impacts industry profits. This is the fallacy of groups like the RIAA and BSA - you'll hear ridiculous figures, in the billions of dollars, of money that they 'lost' to 'piracy'. Back to reality, there's no way that college student is going out and buying the 800 albums that contain each of the MP3 singles in their Morpheus share. There's no way that company in Hong Kong is buying thousands of copies of Windows.
Screw it. Be more like K5. If someone posts a goatse.cx ascii art (I know, probably old, but I haven't checked what the latest troll nonsense is in a while), bitchslap them. It's not fair? Who cares- we all hate each other here anyway.
Gnutella, although it's horribly inefficient, is just what you mentioned: Morpheus-like software that uses no central indexing server that can be shut down. The protocol is freely available and many open source clients exist.
The RIAA's approach to Gnutella thus far has been actively discovering copyright offenders and sending DMCA complaints to their ISP. The problem with Gnutella is that by design, everyone knows your IP.
What we really need, is a distributed storage network such as FreeNet. If I share my songs, the don't come from my computer - various parts of them are propagated to Bill's computer in Texas, Alice's computer in Canada, and Charlie's computer in Norway.. The RIAA is already having nightmares about this technology maturing. If software like this can become as efficient as Morpheus currently is, the RIAA's only hope would be SSSCA-type legislation that bans software such as FreeNet.
Well that would require prying my ass off the sofa, which goes against everything that TV stands for! Although a set top box would be nice.. choose between cable porn and internet porn.. hmm..
Hear, hear.. AT&T's digital box and guide are simply the WORST interfaces to TV viewing I've seen. I'm guessing you have the general instruments DCT box like me.. it's a slow and outdated platform. Changing channels (even analog) takes at least 3 seconds, and it's covered with ads (don't we pay for this service?). I called too, there is no other box available. I asked what type of digital system it was, so I could purchase a replacement box.. the rep told me that was illegal. I told her it wasn't, I had a right to own my equipment, but she wouldn't tell me anything more.
the software industry hires anyone, and lets them get on with whatever they do, with no real management or oversight or planning.
The software industry doesn't hire anyone. Software companies hire people, and a company that behaves like you described won't be around for long if software is their main source of revenue.
Also, management != good software engineering. Planning != good software engineering. These are all factors that go into a good software project but people shouldn't think that if they draw class diagrams before they start coding, they're suddenly software engineering.
On the other hand, you need to look at what's best for the project - it isn't always a large, formal approach to software, especially for small projects. Being too rigid can be as bad as being too loose with your design. I've seen projects design themselves into a corner before the first line of code is even written.
is not enabled by default, at least on my machine. I don't know though, since I have two NICs it couldn't complete the automatic network setup wizard.. maybe that wizard enables remote desktop. you may be thinking of the remote assistance function where you can invite a friend or MS tech support to control your computer.. that has to be initiated by you though.
Uh huh... which is the case for the guy who hacked his Aibo. Sony apparently uses memory stick for the Aibo's software, which is protected.
Does the DMCA ban reverse engineering as well
Yes, except for purposes of interoperability.
Is that technicaly constitutional?
Nope. But who knows if the Supreme Court will overturn the DMCA or not? We'll have to wait and see..
There's a great solution to problems like this: outsource your IT support to a company that knows what they are doing. As other posters have mentioned, IT is probably not the core of your business, it exists to enhance whatever your real business is. Because of that, it's a prime candidate for outsourcing. Other companies can probably do it better than your homegrown IT dept.
I'm making some assumptions here:
1. You're in a relatively small company ( 500 employees). Large companies probably need full in-house support.
2. You're not an in-house IT person. This question was from a developer, and we're already operating under the assumption that there are draconian IT policies in place that need to change.
A good model is having a small support staff on-site, supplemented by the services of an IT consulting firm. Of course you don't want to call the firm every time someone forgot their password, but likewise you don't want in-house IT setting up your new active directory.
The advantage of outsourcing is simple: your company wants to pay as little as possible, so your in-house contact will educate users about not polluting their PC with Webshots instead of implementing some total lockdown policy. Hopefully your consultant will understand the balance between controlling a system and user freedom. But because your company wants to pay as little as possible for support, they will actively work to prevent problems from happening.
You're assuming that my current desktop and my current laptop are the only two PCs I've ever used or supported.. In truth I've supported hundreds of Windows and Linux PCs, servers with countless operating systems, and yes I've been in the business for quite a few years now. This isn't a job application though, I don't feel the need to list my experience just to qualify my posts.
:)
I agree with you that scientific evidence is more useful, but anecdotal evidence is not totally useless. The fact is there's no way to scientifically measure real world stability in a controlled way - there are just too many outside variables to account for. People install and uninstall software randomly, users disrespect their computers and run unauthorized software, get virii, etc.
You can set up identical PCs in a controlled environment, but that's not measuring real-world reliability.
BTW my laptop and desktop are still running crash free
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you're the guy at the office who everybody really hates, but they need you because you hacked a bunch of systems together and you're the only one who knows how it works. You grudgingly support Windows but whenever you start preaching Linux this, Linux that, everyone leaves the room.
Users avoid you because they're afraid you'll go off on them if they ask the wrong thing. You're not going to get fired, but you're sure as hell not getting promoted. You sit around patting yourself on the back for keeping such a 'tight ship'.
Do you call your co-workers retards? Have you ever worked with mentally retarded people? I'm sure you know someone who has a child with disabilities. Would you say 'retard' in front of them?
I know your type. If I met you in real life I'm sure you'd be perfectly nice to me when you realized that I know my stuff too. I'm sure you're mostly nice to people in real life, but when you get on Slashdot you can just let loose!
Let me tell you something. I have seen a lot of your type online, and met a lot of people like you in real life. People who act totally different online and in real life have a problem relating to others, and I'd really prefer not to deal with people like you in either world.
I don't know about you, but I really don't require five nines of reliability for my personal machine.. I'm OK with rebooting every once in a while.
Also, didn't you have to patch your box's kernel at all for new features / security updates?