> Do you honestly think a half dozen audio codecs, and another half dozen video codecs would make for a "small" DLL?
Yes of course I do! There are loads of media players which come with dozens of codecs, and the whole installation only comes to less than 10mb (eg VLC). My quicktime installation on a newish computer is 80MB! The codecs within that installation are only 20MB, but even those seem to be massively bloated files. Why is quicktime's H264 codec 3.5MB when you can get an H264 codec that's only 200K?
I've never been so angry about a Slashdot story submission before! The article is saying how WELL the windows 7 installation went and the article summary is pretty much a total misquote!
I hated Vista, but Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system and a massive improvement over either Vista or XP and and stupid articles like this just make Slashdot itself look stupid - not Microsoft. I've heard almost no complaints about Win 7 from anyone (not even in the press and very little even on slashdot!) and it's clear that MS have put a hell of a lot of effort into ensuring Windows 7 really does do what people want it to do.
It also highlights how stupid some people are if they think that installing an OS of a totally different version over the top of an old installation is a good idea. Only a complete newbie idiot with minimal knowledge of computers would actually think this is a good idea. That goes for all OSs - not just Windows.
You posted that like you thought QuickTime is decoding engine, which it's actually an awful cheap media player from the early 90s. An encoding engine is a small DLL - not an entire media player application. There is no NEED for Apple to require QuickTime to be installed, but like much of Apple's software.
iTunes is one of the most badly written awful pieces of software in mass usage today. It's no wonder Windows needs it to be out of the way while it's installing - it does a LOT of horrible things to your system including installing all sorts of pointless services and modifying many critical bluetooth settings.
> Why would I have to purchase the game multiple times to be able to play it on different platforms in the first place?
For all the obvious reasons... Why would Nintendo sell you the Xbox version? Why (and how!) would the Apple App Store send you the PC version? How would Steam send you the iPhone version? It's pretty obvious really and i'm not sure quite why you asked...
I think this is a bit like driving... It would be nice if the road systems allowed equal rights to everyone, but in practice it's better if you limit road usage to people who've passed a driving test. I don't really see a problem with this and I've often gone into an article and found that some illiterate teenager has attempted to insert some recent news into an article, even though their spelling and grammar is so bad you can barely tell what that paragraph says.
The problem with gliders is that they like to fly extremely close to each other in thermals. If you fitted any kind of collision avoidance system, it would be going off permanently.
It seems to me that a better solution than hidden partitions would be a hard drive which had a hardware self-destruct feature. Something like a tilt-switch which detonated a small block of thermite embedded inside the drive. If anyone steals your computer, your drive is screwed. Just make sure your backups are well hidden so they can never be found.
Isn't that exactly what truecrypt provides? The whole point of the hidden volume mode is to do exactly what you're asking for. I think that's why it was suggested to you. Have a look at their website under the plausible deniability section
The authorities only ever decrypt a bit-wise COPY of the original data on a new drive, so there's little point to having another key which "overwrites the contents with random data.". They will never allow a drive to boot up or execute code and often enable the read-only mode of the drive where one exists. If the key you give them fails to work and appears to sabotage their copy of your data, they will still hassle you for the real key.
The problem is, in the real world there's no such thing as "soap". You have to buy a retail product and they contain perfumes, colours, moisturisers, anti-bacterial additives etc... Which ruin your glasses.
I've taken to using a microfibre cloth which somehow seems to suck everything off without needing any liquids. It works quite well, but a good one is hard to find.
> Copying (downloading) music for personal purposes is considered fair use
There's a massive difference between copying music you already have on CD to an MP3 player (fair use) and downloading music you've never bought in the first place (theft). In this case, the defendant didn't own the music he downloaded or was sharing, so in no way could it be considered "fair use" which is probably why it was immediately dismissed.
In many countries (UK?) downloading something you have bought on CD is also theft. It's like stealing a second CD from a music shop because you've damaged the copy you originally purchased. It doesn't matter that you've already bought it, if you need a new copy you need to pay for it like you would if you lost/damaged any other product (car, phone, house etc). A "fair use" copy has to be a copy you made of the actual item you originally owned - not a new copy taken from another source.
You've put "Copying (downloading)" - implying they're always the same thing, which they're quite obviously not in this case.
Then you must be rich. I did some cost comparisions and found S3 to be about the most expensive way of getting data stored online that I could find. Saving money compared to what?
Well as it's solid fuel, can't they have an alternative emergency nozzle somewhere near the top of the SRB, that could be ignited for the purpose of simply throwing the SRB off-course for a few seconds while the capsule has a chance to get a few hundred meters away? Even a couple of percent thrust at the top of the SRB at 90 degrees to the direction of motion would throw it miles off course after only a few seconds - then when you detect it's turned at least 50 degrees or so on the gyros, you just blow it up. Simples:)
> One good solar flare and no GPS and VHF for a while. Did you realise that?
That's only in your head. You're talking absolute rubbish. Perhaps one particular time one GPS didn't work for a few minutes, but NEVER EVER has the whole GPS network been unusable for "several days" - that's just something you made up. The GPS signals are very strong and very easy to read. That's why a GPS antenna is only a couple of cubic centimeters but a TV signal requires upwards of a 40cm parabolic dish. What you're talking about has never happened and most likely never will.
Do you know how infrequent major solar storms are? There hasn't been a big one capabable of disrupting any major in over 100 years. Even if it happened right now, aircraft can navigate using internal navigation and beacons and it would be the massive problem that the ignorant press sometimes portrey to be.
> I've known too many people drive around London for ages because they were in an urban canyon
Perhaps 5-10 years ago. No modern GPS has any significant problems getting a lock in London these days. It doesn't even have skyscrapers. New York City perhaps, but not London.
I'm almost thinking of taking UPS out of the loop here. They cause nearly all the downtime we have. It would be better to just let the machines power off rather than allowing the UPSs to CAUSE the machines to be taken offline. At least if the UPS isn't in circuit, the machines power back up again when the power comes back, but if there's a fault with the UPS or it's batteries, then the machines stay offline until the batteries have been replaced.
Why the hell the idiots that design UPSs seem to think it's a good idea to prevent them turning on if they sense a problem with the batteries is beyond me. Why not let the machines power back up but just make a loud beeping noise until the batteries are fixed. Don't they realise that most of the time the UPS will only properly test the batteries when there's an actual power cut? On APC units (and most others) the periodic self test function uses your SERVERS as the test load! So if the batteries can't deliver the current, your servers get turned off just due to a routine TEST! Why can't they fit an internal dummy load like a small ceramic heater or something - it's only on about 5 seconds so it won't even get hot.
Yes, APC, I'm talking to you. I've even switched suppliers thinking it must only affect APC units, but it seems all others I've tried have the same issues.
> I have decided that only my data is worth saving
Then forget about RAID. RAID is designed to protect the integrity of the underlying volume - NOT the data that's on it.
> Of course, such a setup should secure my data; should a drive crash,
Then forget about RAID. RAID will only secure your data under some very specific cases of hardware failure of the drive. It does absolutely nothing towards preventing data loss due to (say) a corrupt file allocation table, virus, accidental deletion, or corruption.
> Even more importantly, I want any drive and its data to be as safe and portable as possible
Then use proper backups - not RAID. Preferably off-site backup. I use Carbonite which backs up to the 'cloud' at minimal cost.
By all means use RAID to protect you from hard disk failure, but don't under any circumstances assume it stops you losing your data. For backups, I always use the rule that at any given point in time, assume that the next time you walk back into your house/office, that NOTHING in that building is still there. Do you have a copy of everything you care about somewhere else?
I'm still amazed by people that carry 12 months of work around on a single floppy disk/USB stick/laptop, then cry when they go to the helpdesk asking what "sector not found reading drive A:" means, or perhaps "A USB device attached to the system is not functioning".
Get your data in as many places as possible - preferably three. A drive which is mounted one inch above the main one is *NOT* a valid second place!
Your entire rant reads like you think this is for *home* users. It's primarily targetted at business users. Probably those that have bought everyone Blackberrys and then find they don't work in basement etc.
> Why would I PAY Verizon to basically expand their own coverage area?
For the exact same reason you PAY to have broadband, cable or phone lines installed in your house: Because you want to USE IT perhaps?! By paying them to install broadband in your house you're "paying them to extend their network" as you call it. I really don't get what your point is... if you don't want the service, then simply don't buy it - it's OPTIONAL remember. You're not paying them to expand their network, you're paying them to get enhanced coverage inside your office/conference center/show/station etc.
> The ability for ANY Verizon phone within range..[to].place the calls across your Internet connection
With Vodafone's femtocell you can "register the mobile numbers you want to have linked into the service and no one else will be able to pinch your bandwidth." source
> In the UK it seems, not only will you pay to increase their service coverage, but monthly as well
No, not "as well" - instead of. You can EITHER buy it, OR get it free and pay a monthly contract as it says in your quoted text.
That's your problem right there! Why do you want to meet another geek? Do you really have such a low opinion of yourself that you think you'd only get on with someone with identical interests to you? Do you really just want to find a female version of yourself? Why not entertain the idea that a new person can cause you to develop NEW (gasp) interests rather than just tech related ones. I doubt many geeks have partners who are also geeks. Female geeks are actually pretty rare, and those I've met so far have been a bit "tom boy" (as we say in the UK) - ie, unfeminine.
> You are not stealing any energy from the car at all. This argument is ludicrous.
For the plates to produce energy, they must move. For them to move, something else must excert energy on them. That energy comes from the car. If the car drove over a flat horizontal plate which doesn't move, minimal energy is required. For a car to drive up a raised plate in order to push it down, far more energy is used, which is produced by burning fuel in the car's engine. Gravity is not energy, but the plates can take energy from a car 'falling' or pushing down on plates which have been previously raised. The car had to use extra energy to drive up the raised plates. Energy HAS to come from somewhere - they teach you this at age 10-15 depending on your school, so you're either younger than that, or you didn't take physics, or you were daydreaming:)
> Combustion engines are inherently inefficient to begin with.
Which is precisely why this whole idea is so stupid. They're powering their store with electricity by burning petrol just outside gleamed from thousands of different cars entering their car park. Thousands of extra gallons of fuel will be burnt each yeah (spread over millions of cars) just to produce a few kilowatts of electricity. It's a total joke and damaging to the environment.
The trend is only down because all your numbers are wrong (Or perhaps you got them from a dodgy source). If you use the ACTUAL profits these films made then there is no downwards trend at all.
Wall-E and Nemo made far more profit than are shown in your figures - just Google it. Cars was apparently Pixar's least profitable film, yet your numbers show it as having made more money than Wall-E which is wrong.
Of course they do. If they don't want them, why are they now buying them in droves? The best selling cars these days are the ones with good fuel economy.
Please quote your source, because it really sounds like you just made that up.
Why do we need luck? In the UK we already have plenty of cars that achieving that. My car regularly does 55mpg and I've got 66mpg out of it when driving carefully on a long journey. Some smaller cars in the UK are advertising 65 or 75mpg as their standard combined figure.
When I used to work in a computer workshop, someone rang me about a problem opening some Word documents, so I told her she'd have to bring it in. She said, "do I need to bring in the whole computer?" and I said "no - we have all the peripherals here in the lab - just bring in the computer itself". She drove the 15 miles to our workshop and turned up with just the *monitor* (a 17" CRT she was struggling to carry). When questionned, it seemed that she thought the important bit was the screen because that where she could see all the icons and files. She geniunely didn't seems to realise that all her stuff was in the "box" and thought that was just another perhiperal (I think she called it the "CD drive").
A few months later, the woman brought back her boss's computer (the right bit this time) with a different problem. This time, her boss had said, "I'm out of space on my hard drive, can you please free up some disk space so the error message goes away". What she'd done (by her own admission) is to "delete everything off the C drive". The machine obviously didn't boot, and apart from a few files which would have been locked, the hard disk was completely empty and it took me hours to recover their data and rebuild the machine from scratch. They lost a lot of important stuff! It was around that time I decided I didn't want a customer-facing support role and left the job... I don't have the patience!
Slashdot Mirror
> Do you honestly think a half dozen audio codecs, and another half dozen video codecs would make for a "small" DLL?
Yes of course I do! There are loads of media players which come with dozens of codecs, and the whole installation only comes to less than 10mb (eg VLC). My quicktime installation on a newish computer is 80MB! The codecs within that installation are only 20MB, but even those seem to be massively bloated files. Why is quicktime's H264 codec 3.5MB when you can get an H264 codec that's only 200K?
I've never been so angry about a Slashdot story submission before! The article is saying how WELL the windows 7 installation went and the article summary is pretty much a total misquote!
I hated Vista, but Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system and a massive improvement over either Vista or XP and and stupid articles like this just make Slashdot itself look stupid - not Microsoft. I've heard almost no complaints about Win 7 from anyone (not even in the press and very little even on slashdot!) and it's clear that MS have put a hell of a lot of effort into ensuring Windows 7 really does do what people want it to do.
It also highlights how stupid some people are if they think that installing an OS of a totally different version over the top of an old installation is a good idea. Only a complete newbie idiot with minimal knowledge of computers would actually think this is a good idea. That goes for all OSs - not just Windows.
You posted that like you thought QuickTime is decoding engine, which it's actually an awful cheap media player from the early 90s. An encoding engine is a small DLL - not an entire media player application. There is no NEED for Apple to require QuickTime to be installed, but like much of Apple's software.
iTunes is one of the most badly written awful pieces of software in mass usage today. It's no wonder Windows needs it to be out of the way while it's installing - it does a LOT of horrible things to your system including installing all sorts of pointless services and modifying many critical bluetooth settings.
> Why would I have to purchase the game multiple times to be able to play it on different platforms in the first place?
For all the obvious reasons... Why would Nintendo sell you the Xbox version? Why (and how!) would the Apple App Store send you the PC version? How would Steam send you the iPhone version? It's pretty obvious really and i'm not sure quite why you asked...
Yeah... Wire cutters. :)
People that open exe attachments on hospital computers shouldn't be allowed on the Internet.
I think this is a bit like driving... It would be nice if the road systems allowed equal rights to everyone, but in practice it's better if you limit road usage to people who've passed a driving test. I don't really see a problem with this and I've often gone into an article and found that some illiterate teenager has attempted to insert some recent news into an article, even though their spelling and grammar is so bad you can barely tell what that paragraph says.
The problem with gliders is that they like to fly extremely close to each other in thermals. If you fitted any kind of collision avoidance system, it would be going off permanently.
It seems to me that a better solution than hidden partitions would be a hard drive which had a hardware self-destruct feature. Something like a tilt-switch which detonated a small block of thermite embedded inside the drive. If anyone steals your computer, your drive is screwed. Just make sure your backups are well hidden so they can never be found.
Isn't that exactly what truecrypt provides? The whole point of the hidden volume mode is to do exactly what you're asking for. I think that's why it was suggested to you. Have a look at their website under the plausible deniability section
The authorities only ever decrypt a bit-wise COPY of the original data on a new drive, so there's little point to having another key which "overwrites the contents with random data.". They will never allow a drive to boot up or execute code and often enable the read-only mode of the drive where one exists. If the key you give them fails to work and appears to sabotage their copy of your data, they will still hassle you for the real key.
> Use soap and water only.
The problem is, in the real world there's no such thing as "soap". You have to buy a retail product and they contain perfumes, colours, moisturisers, anti-bacterial additives etc... Which ruin your glasses.
I've taken to using a microfibre cloth which somehow seems to suck everything off without needing any liquids. It works quite well, but a good one is hard to find.
> Copying (downloading) music for personal purposes is considered fair use
There's a massive difference between copying music you already have on CD to an MP3 player (fair use) and downloading music you've never bought in the first place (theft). In this case, the defendant didn't own the music he downloaded or was sharing, so in no way could it be considered "fair use" which is probably why it was immediately dismissed.
In many countries (UK?) downloading something you have bought on CD is also theft. It's like stealing a second CD from a music shop because you've damaged the copy you originally purchased. It doesn't matter that you've already bought it, if you need a new copy you need to pay for it like you would if you lost/damaged any other product (car, phone, house etc). A "fair use" copy has to be a copy you made of the actual item you originally owned - not a new copy taken from another source.
You've put "Copying (downloading)" - implying they're always the same thing, which they're quite obviously not in this case.
Then you must be rich. I did some cost comparisions and found S3 to be about the most expensive way of getting data stored online that I could find. Saving money compared to what?
Well as it's solid fuel, can't they have an alternative emergency nozzle somewhere near the top of the SRB, that could be ignited for the purpose of simply throwing the SRB off-course for a few seconds while the capsule has a chance to get a few hundred meters away? Even a couple of percent thrust at the top of the SRB at 90 degrees to the direction of motion would throw it miles off course after only a few seconds - then when you detect it's turned at least 50 degrees or so on the gyros, you just blow it up. Simples :)
> One good solar flare and no GPS and VHF for a while. Did you realise that?
That's only in your head. You're talking absolute rubbish. Perhaps one particular time one GPS didn't work for a few minutes, but NEVER EVER has the whole GPS network been unusable for "several days" - that's just something you made up. The GPS signals are very strong and very easy to read. That's why a GPS antenna is only a couple of cubic centimeters but a TV signal requires upwards of a 40cm parabolic dish. What you're talking about has never happened and most likely never will.
Do you know how infrequent major solar storms are? There hasn't been a big one capabable of disrupting any major in over 100 years. Even if it happened right now, aircraft can navigate using internal navigation and beacons and it would be the massive problem that the ignorant press sometimes portrey to be.
> I've known too many people drive around London for ages because they were in an urban canyon
Perhaps 5-10 years ago. No modern GPS has any significant problems getting a lock in London these days. It doesn't even have skyscrapers. New York City perhaps, but not London.
I'm almost thinking of taking UPS out of the loop here. They cause nearly all the downtime we have. It would be better to just let the machines power off rather than allowing the UPSs to CAUSE the machines to be taken offline. At least if the UPS isn't in circuit, the machines power back up again when the power comes back, but if there's a fault with the UPS or it's batteries, then the machines stay offline until the batteries have been replaced.
Why the hell the idiots that design UPSs seem to think it's a good idea to prevent them turning on if they sense a problem with the batteries is beyond me. Why not let the machines power back up but just make a loud beeping noise until the batteries are fixed. Don't they realise that most of the time the UPS will only properly test the batteries when there's an actual power cut? On APC units (and most others) the periodic self test function uses your SERVERS as the test load! So if the batteries can't deliver the current, your servers get turned off just due to a routine TEST! Why can't they fit an internal dummy load like a small ceramic heater or something - it's only on about 5 seconds so it won't even get hot.
Yes, APC, I'm talking to you. I've even switched suppliers thinking it must only affect APC units, but it seems all others I've tried have the same issues.
> I have decided that only my data is worth saving
Then forget about RAID. RAID is designed to protect the integrity of the underlying volume - NOT the data that's on it.
> Of course, such a setup should secure my data; should a drive crash,
Then forget about RAID. RAID will only secure your data under some very specific cases of hardware failure of the drive. It does absolutely nothing towards preventing data loss due to (say) a corrupt file allocation table, virus, accidental deletion, or corruption.
> Even more importantly, I want any drive and its data to be as safe and portable as possible
Then use proper backups - not RAID. Preferably off-site backup. I use Carbonite which backs up to the 'cloud' at minimal cost.
By all means use RAID to protect you from hard disk failure, but don't under any circumstances assume it stops you losing your data. For backups, I always use the rule that at any given point in time, assume that the next time you walk back into your house/office, that NOTHING in that building is still there. Do you have a copy of everything you care about somewhere else?
I'm still amazed by people that carry 12 months of work around on a single floppy disk/USB stick/laptop, then cry when they go to the helpdesk asking what "sector not found reading drive A:" means, or perhaps "A USB device attached to the system is not functioning".
Get your data in as many places as possible - preferably three. A drive which is mounted one inch above the main one is *NOT* a valid second place!
Your entire rant reads like you think this is for *home* users. It's primarily targetted at business users. Probably those that have bought everyone Blackberrys and then find they don't work in basement etc.
> Why would I PAY Verizon to basically expand their own coverage area?
For the exact same reason you PAY to have broadband, cable or phone lines installed in your house: Because you want to USE IT perhaps?! By paying them to install broadband in your house you're "paying them to extend their network" as you call it. I really don't get what your point is... if you don't want the service, then simply don't buy it - it's OPTIONAL remember. You're not paying them to expand their network, you're paying them to get enhanced coverage inside your office/conference center/show/station etc.
> The ability for ANY Verizon phone within range..[to].place the calls across your Internet connection
With Vodafone's femtocell you can "register the mobile numbers you want to have linked into the service and no one else will be able to pinch your bandwidth." source
> In the UK it seems, not only will you pay to increase their service coverage, but monthly as well
No, not "as well" - instead of. You can EITHER buy it, OR get it free and pay a monthly contract as it says in your quoted text.
> where do you meet fellow geeks
That's your problem right there! Why do you want to meet another geek? Do you really have such a low opinion of yourself that you think you'd only get on with someone with identical interests to you? Do you really just want to find a female version of yourself? Why not entertain the idea that a new person can cause you to develop NEW (gasp) interests rather than just tech related ones. I doubt many geeks have partners who are also geeks. Female geeks are actually pretty rare, and those I've met so far have been a bit "tom boy" (as we say in the UK) - ie, unfeminine.
Expand your horizons a little.
> You are not stealing any energy from the car at all. This argument is ludicrous.
For the plates to produce energy, they must move. For them to move, something else must excert energy on them. That energy comes from the car. If the car drove over a flat horizontal plate which doesn't move, minimal energy is required. For a car to drive up a raised plate in order to push it down, far more energy is used, which is produced by burning fuel in the car's engine. Gravity is not energy, but the plates can take energy from a car 'falling' or pushing down on plates which have been previously raised. The car had to use extra energy to drive up the raised plates. Energy HAS to come from somewhere - they teach you this at age 10-15 depending on your school, so you're either younger than that, or you didn't take physics, or you were daydreaming :)
> Combustion engines are inherently inefficient to begin with.
Which is precisely why this whole idea is so stupid. They're powering their store with electricity by burning petrol just outside gleamed from thousands of different cars entering their car park. Thousands of extra gallons of fuel will be burnt each yeah (spread over millions of cars) just to produce a few kilowatts of electricity. It's a total joke and damaging to the environment.
> See the trend?
The trend is only down because all your numbers are wrong (Or perhaps you got them from a dodgy source).
If you use the ACTUAL profits these films made then there is no downwards trend at all.
Wall-E and Nemo made far more profit than are shown in your figures - just Google it. Cars was apparently Pixar's least profitable film, yet your numbers show it as having made more money than Wall-E which is wrong.
No need to use helium - just use air and then take out all the heavy bits.
Or use a vacuum - that's even lighter than helium and far easier to manufacture by simply removing air from a container.
> People don't want these cars.
Of course they do. If they don't want them, why are they now buying them in droves? The best selling cars these days are the ones with good fuel economy.
Please quote your source, because it really sounds like you just made that up.
Why do we need luck? In the UK we already have plenty of cars that achieving that. My car regularly does 55mpg and I've got 66mpg out of it when driving carefully on a long journey. Some smaller cars in the UK are advertising 65 or 75mpg as their standard combined figure.
When I used to work in a computer workshop, someone rang me about a problem opening some Word documents, so I told her she'd have to bring it in. She said, "do I need to bring in the whole computer?" and I said "no - we have all the peripherals here in the lab - just bring in the computer itself". She drove the 15 miles to our workshop and turned up with just the *monitor* (a 17" CRT she was struggling to carry). When questionned, it seemed that she thought the important bit was the screen because that where she could see all the icons and files. She geniunely didn't seems to realise that all her stuff was in the "box" and thought that was just another perhiperal (I think she called it the "CD drive").
A few months later, the woman brought back her boss's computer (the right bit this time) with a different problem. This time, her boss had said, "I'm out of space on my hard drive, can you please free up some disk space so the error message goes away". What she'd done (by her own admission) is to "delete everything off the C drive". The machine obviously didn't boot, and apart from a few files which would have been locked, the hard disk was completely empty and it took me hours to recover their data and rebuild the machine from scratch. They lost a lot of important stuff! It was around that time I decided I didn't want a customer-facing support role and left the job... I don't have the patience!