Why would you buy UMD movies? Rip your DVDs to MP4, and save them on your memory stick. (If you're opposed to Sony's memory stick, there are third party devices that will allow you to use virtually any other compact storage medium (CF/SD/etc).)
I use PSP Movie Creator, which allows you to adjust your quality settings based on your available storage. It rips at roughly 2.5x normal viewing speed, and produces excellent results.
I wasn't aware the dead pixel issue still existed. I figured that was an early production problem that had been sorted out.
I bought my PSP from that first run, and I've been very pleased with it. No dead pixels, and no issues with button response.
It's really not even in the same category as the DS though. The PSP, while an exceptional game machine, is so versatile. It's great for watching movies. It's a decent portable web browser (so long as you don't have to do any text entry).
My only complaints would be the relatively low number of available game titles (which seems to be improving of late), and the lack of internal storage.
I suspect that when the second generation PSP hits the streets, it'll address the storage issue, and it'll likely play all of the legacy titles.
If something happened to mine, I'd definately be willing to pay to replace it. Likewise, I'll buy the nextgen PSP whenever it comes out.
How clever of you to intentionally obfuscate the meaning of my words as a means of invalidating my argument...
And at the risk of feeding the troll, the Africans that arranged the sale of their brethren to the slave traders seemed to have a fine grasp on the economics of such an arrangement. Oh, wait! I guess bringing that up makes me a Racist!
If you want to talk about it, sign in, and let's go.
Ice-Cube is a member of a protected class, and as a result, he is completely exempt from a number of social conventions.
Further, as an unintended consequence, many people that are not members of protected classes to whom it never would have occurred to harbor any racist feelings or tendencies, are resentful of Ice-Cube because he is permitted a full range of public expression that they are not permitted. Political Correctness and attempting to ensure Equality of Outcome via Legislation actually do more to preserve racial injustice than they do to prevent it. Ironic, isn't it?
Just like it's racism to lower college admission standards to favor protected classes, at the exclusion of more qualified applicants that happen to be white males.
More directly relevant to this discussion: Is there a shortage of other minorities in the IT field? The entire Asian continent seems to be pretty well represented, especially Chinese and Indians.
Is it because they are "less black," or is it because there are a lot of Asians in the IT field that have both the education and the technical skills necessary to be attractive candidates for employment?
Any honest assessment suggests the latter.
Does racism still exist? Of course it does, and until the entire population is comprised of people that are all subtle shades of brown, there always will be. I think it's far less pervasive in the IT field, but that's only my assessment. I've been supporting myself in this industry for 16 years now, and if I had to put a number on it, I'd say that 35-40% of my co-workers over the years have been non-white.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Blacks make up 12.9% of the United States population. So if you work in an office of 10 people, 1 of them should be black. If 2 of them are black, then they are statistically over-represented.
Looking down the hallway, our Network Support Team is an office of 7 people. 3 are black, 3 are white, and 1 is Asian. Again, the CIA World Factbook says that 81.7% of the US population is white. Should I be screaming racism because white people are severely underrepresented on our Network Support Team? Isn't this evidence of racism? Haven't quotas and racial preferences produced an artificial result in our own hiring practices?
I freely admit to my own bigotry, not without a sense of pride. I refuse to hire stupid people for any position, especially in IT roles. I couldn't care less what color your skin is. If you're bright, reliable, and you can make me money, you're hired. Fail me in any of those categories, and I'll replace you with someone better.
The free market is the only tool that can bring about racial justice without causing more problems than it solves. Attempts to rig "the system" to ensure a specific outcome breeds resentment, and ultimately, greater disharmony. Any company that fails to hire the best candidates at the lowest possible price is yielding an advantage to the competition, and will ultimately suffer at the hands of the marketplace.
I'm sorry that those results can take so long to manifest, but they are inevitable.
I don't think it's an optimistic stance on the human race... There are, after all, people that understand each and every bit of the things that make up our existence.
It's also been said that the sum total of human knowledge doubles every four or five years, depending of which study you review. In either case, it's unreasonable to expect people to know a little bit of everything, because the number of subjects has multiplied out of control.
We are now a species of specialization.
Unfortunately, some people tend to specialize in nothing.
The book you'd like to write has already been written. It's called How Computers Work, and it's in it's 8th Edition. (There's also a companion book called "How the Internet Works (6th Edition)".)
The real problem isn't that the information you'd like to convey to these laypeople has never been put into an easily readable, accessible format. The problem is that most people really don't give a damn about how things work.
Remember that most people never bother to even learn the full capabilities of the devices they come into every day contact with, like cell phones. Do you think that people who can't program their VCRs are really interested in the science involved in storing and retrieving data from a magnetic tape?
I'm not trying to harsh your mellow, but you need to face the facts. Most people are content to believe that the underlying technologies that make their lives so easy are simply "magical," and leave it at that.
Forgetting, of course, that it's essentially a multiprocessor machine now, where even a single processor was more capable that the previous incarnation.
I thought that the attraction of Apple hardware was that it was cleverly and thoughtfully designed, aesthetically pleasing, and used premium materials and components. Even the Apple "Fanboys" have always hoped for a more capable processor.
You've got the best of all possible worlds now: Hardware that's now both fast, AND cool, and a dead sexy OS that traditional Intel machines cannot take advantage of. (And before long, you'll be able to triple-boot, and have literally every concievable software application under the sun running natively on your laptop.)
I didn't mean to suggest that I don't think it should be categorized as high/critical priority by Microsoft... I'm only relaying the reasons they've provided for why it isn't.
Actually, the reason there's no attack vector is because while the same vulnerability on older versions of Windows, older versions of Windows don't have the Microsoft Picture and Fax Viewer configured as the default file handler for.wmf files.
Ironic, as the older operating systems come from a time when that format may have been relevant. It's kind of funny that only after the Windows Metafile became obsolete did MS choose to create a default program association.
- someone who has bought cisco equipment cannot open a TAC case. he has to do this via his supplier. imagine a Windows user get his patches via the shop where he bought it? that is insane.
This is completely untrue. Typically, you buy SMARTNET maintenance on Cisco equipment, even when buying through a reseller. You can call TAC directly... In fact, it's not uncommon for the TAC to provide assistance even if your maintenance agreement has expired. If your problem is configuration related, they'll help you out. If it's a hardware or software problem, you may have to renew your maintenance, but they'll help you...
- the naming and content of the feature sets is changing. they seem to be unable to consistently refer to a feature set on their website. when a new version has a different feature set naming, it is unclear what features your existing contract exactly entitles you to.
You are right about this... There are far fewer Feature sets in more recent code (12.4 in particular). This is in direct response you your complaint. Cisco is pairing down the number of feature sets to alleviate some of this confusion.
However, even before the consolidation, you could have just used the Feature Navigator to determine which version of software you needed. You simply feed it the features you need, and it will tell you the minimum feature set that meets all of your requirements.
- the fact that the kernel is monolytic (as the Linux kernel is as well) does not mean you have to distribute your entire software as one image. Cisco is distributing software as if Linux software would exclusively be distributed as Knoppix CDs. For every fix in kernel or some application you would have to download a new CD and hope that besides fixing your problem no other stuff is broken or needs attention because the details have changed.
As I mentioned, the IOS XR software fixes this... With XR, if you have a bug in OSPF, you can upgrade just the OSPF code module. The same can be said for any other portion of code running on the platform. (Further, you can do this without a reboot... You can upgrade OSPF, and restart the OSPF process, leaving everything else intact.)
When I install a newer version it introduces new problems every time. Every time. I have not had a single upgrade that went smoothly without breaking something that worked OK before.
Look, I'm not trying to bust your chops, but it sounds like you have a broken process. Do you have a lab? Do you do any testing of new code prior to deployment? Do you look at the release caveats or do a bug scrub prior to selecting the new code you're about to deploy?
The problems and issues you describe don't occur very often in a mature IT organization. There's a process that includes testing and validation prior to making changes to the production environment... If you're doing your due diligence, when it comes time to make the changes in production, it should go well. If you continue to get bitten, then chances are you're doing something wrong. Maybe you aren't testing at all... Maybe your test environment doesn't accurately represent your production environment. Maybe you don't have a means of testing your applications in the testbed.
How complicated is your environment that EVERY TIME you've tried to upgrade your networking code, something has gone horribly awry? Are these issues that could be resolved with better design, or are you content to simply blame the code every time?
Out of curiousity, what's the bug you have that hasn't been resolved in two years? Is it really a bug, or are you trying to make the code do something that a specification says it shouldn't?
If you can't figure out that you're running a 3845, with Version 12.3(8T), and the Advanced IP Services feature set, then that's really more your problem than it is Cisco's. (And if you open a TAC case, you can send them the output of 'sh ver,' and they'll happily tell you precisely what file you need to download.)
Cisco traditionally has used a monolithic kernel, which Linux guys poo-poo, but when you control all of the hardware, and you know all of the possible modular components that can be installed in that hardware, why not? The new IOS XR software (runs on the CRS, and GSRs, two routers you'll never see if you can't figure out which code to run at your office) is modular. Eventually, I believe that their entire hardware catalog will utilize the XR code, but that won't occur for years.
But we're not talking about Cisco in this thread... We're discussing Microsoft. We're talking about a the largest software company in the world refusing to release a critical security update as quickly as possible. We're talking about a conscious decision to leave millions of systems vulnerable to a known exploit in the wild, so that no one gets left behind.
I've come to a conclusion: Their policy is a load of crap!
I realize that it might appear as favoritism if MS were to release a patch to the English speaking world, and it it followed a few days later for coutries in Europe, and then Asia a couple days after that...
Let's be realistic. Right now 100% of the Windows using world has a tremendous exposure. If you can knock off 25% today, and catch the rest a few days later, then you should. You're talking about potentially billions of dollars in post infection cleanup that could be averted.
Every patched system today means a lower rate of infection in the days to come, and huge potential savings in cleanup costs, and lost productivity.
They're sitting on a patch right now, but we have to wait another week so they can write the patch documentation in Cambodian and Zulu, and ensure that it doesn't mess up the Korean character set? (With no offense intended to Cambodians, Zulus, or Koreans... I hope your patch is ready soon too.)
This is absurd.
(Fortunately, I'm not paid to give a shit about Windows. I'm a Cisco guy...)
The amount of work required to jump to 64 bit addressing or 128 bit addressing is identical. Since you're going to have to re-write everything anyway, you may as well figure in a ridiculously large address space, because not doing so saves you nothing.
Additionally, the routing table saving offered cannot be understated. With huge swaths of continguous address space, you can (hypothetically) represent an entire continent as a single aggregated routing entry (The more granular routing information would only be seen locally.), and the number of unique addresses within that range would be virtually inexhaustable.
Overkill is a good thing when it doesn't cost you anything.
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I use PSP Movie Creator, which allows you to adjust your quality settings based on your available storage. It rips at roughly 2.5x normal viewing speed, and produces excellent results.
UMD is teh suck.
I bought my PSP from that first run, and I've been very pleased with it. No dead pixels, and no issues with button response.
It's really not even in the same category as the DS though. The PSP, while an exceptional game machine, is so versatile. It's great for watching movies. It's a decent portable web browser (so long as you don't have to do any text entry).
My only complaints would be the relatively low number of available game titles (which seems to be improving of late), and the lack of internal storage.
I suspect that when the second generation PSP hits the streets, it'll address the storage issue, and it'll likely play all of the legacy titles.
If something happened to mine, I'd definately be willing to pay to replace it. Likewise, I'll buy the nextgen PSP whenever it comes out.
Speaking on behalf of White America (as I am empowered to do, by virtue of my skin color), I completely agree.
And at the risk of feeding the troll, the Africans that arranged the sale of their brethren to the slave traders seemed to have a fine grasp on the economics of such an arrangement. Oh, wait! I guess bringing that up makes me a Racist!
If you want to talk about it, sign in, and let's go.
Ice-Cube is a member of a protected class, and as a result, he is completely exempt from a number of social conventions.
Further, as an unintended consequence, many people that are not members of protected classes to whom it never would have occurred to harbor any racist feelings or tendencies, are resentful of Ice-Cube because he is permitted a full range of public expression that they are not permitted. Political Correctness and attempting to ensure Equality of Outcome via Legislation actually do more to preserve racial injustice than they do to prevent it. Ironic, isn't it?
More directly relevant to this discussion: Is there a shortage of other minorities in the IT field? The entire Asian continent seems to be pretty well represented, especially Chinese and Indians.
Is it because they are "less black," or is it because there are a lot of Asians in the IT field that have both the education and the technical skills necessary to be attractive candidates for employment?
Any honest assessment suggests the latter.
Does racism still exist? Of course it does, and until the entire population is comprised of people that are all subtle shades of brown, there always will be. I think it's far less pervasive in the IT field, but that's only my assessment. I've been supporting myself in this industry for 16 years now, and if I had to put a number on it, I'd say that 35-40% of my co-workers over the years have been non-white.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Blacks make up 12.9% of the United States population. So if you work in an office of 10 people, 1 of them should be black. If 2 of them are black, then they are statistically over-represented.
Looking down the hallway, our Network Support Team is an office of 7 people. 3 are black, 3 are white, and 1 is Asian. Again, the CIA World Factbook says that 81.7% of the US population is white. Should I be screaming racism because white people are severely underrepresented on our Network Support Team? Isn't this evidence of racism? Haven't quotas and racial preferences produced an artificial result in our own hiring practices?
I freely admit to my own bigotry, not without a sense of pride. I refuse to hire stupid people for any position, especially in IT roles. I couldn't care less what color your skin is. If you're bright, reliable, and you can make me money, you're hired. Fail me in any of those categories, and I'll replace you with someone better.
The free market is the only tool that can bring about racial justice without causing more problems than it solves. Attempts to rig "the system" to ensure a specific outcome breeds resentment, and ultimately, greater disharmony. Any company that fails to hire the best candidates at the lowest possible price is yielding an advantage to the competition, and will ultimately suffer at the hands of the marketplace.
I'm sorry that those results can take so long to manifest, but they are inevitable.
It's also been said that the sum total of human knowledge doubles every four or five years, depending of which study you review. In either case, it's unreasonable to expect people to know a little bit of everything, because the number of subjects has multiplied out of control.
We are now a species of specialization.
Unfortunately, some people tend to specialize in nothing.
The real problem isn't that the information you'd like to convey to these laypeople has never been put into an easily readable, accessible format. The problem is that most people really don't give a damn about how things work.
Remember that most people never bother to even learn the full capabilities of the devices they come into every day contact with, like cell phones. Do you think that people who can't program their VCRs are really interested in the science involved in storing and retrieving data from a magnetic tape?
I'm not trying to harsh your mellow, but you need to face the facts. Most people are content to believe that the underlying technologies that make their lives so easy are simply "magical," and leave it at that.
Touche
Forgetting, of course, that it's essentially a multiprocessor machine now, where even a single processor was more capable that the previous incarnation.
I thought that the attraction of Apple hardware was that it was cleverly and thoughtfully designed, aesthetically pleasing, and used premium materials and components. Even the Apple "Fanboys" have always hoped for a more capable processor.
You've got the best of all possible worlds now: Hardware that's now both fast, AND cool, and a dead sexy OS that traditional Intel machines cannot take advantage of. (And before long, you'll be able to triple-boot, and have literally every concievable software application under the sun running natively on your laptop.)
You've got issues.
How about McMac (Paddy-whack) for the Emerald Isle?
I don't know if this is still the case, but Dell used to use Samsung manufactured panels in their monitors. Samsung makes the best LCDs on the market.
Dude, I think you're on the wrong site...
I think they're bullshit reasons too.
Ironic, as the older operating systems come from a time when that format may have been relevant. It's kind of funny that only after the Windows Metafile became obsolete did MS choose to create a default program association.
This is completely untrue. Typically, you buy SMARTNET maintenance on Cisco equipment, even when buying through a reseller. You can call TAC directly... In fact, it's not uncommon for the TAC to provide assistance even if your maintenance agreement has expired. If your problem is configuration related, they'll help you out. If it's a hardware or software problem, you may have to renew your maintenance, but they'll help you...
You are right about this... There are far fewer Feature sets in more recent code (12.4 in particular). This is in direct response you your complaint. Cisco is pairing down the number of feature sets to alleviate some of this confusion.
However, even before the consolidation, you could have just used the Feature Navigator to determine which version of software you needed. You simply feed it the features you need, and it will tell you the minimum feature set that meets all of your requirements.
As I mentioned, the IOS XR software fixes this... With XR, if you have a bug in OSPF, you can upgrade just the OSPF code module. The same can be said for any other portion of code running on the platform. (Further, you can do this without a reboot... You can upgrade OSPF, and restart the OSPF process, leaving everything else intact.)
Look, I'm not trying to bust your chops, but it sounds like you have a broken process. Do you have a lab? Do you do any testing of new code prior to deployment? Do you look at the release caveats or do a bug scrub prior to selecting the new code you're about to deploy?
The problems and issues you describe don't occur very often in a mature IT organization. There's a process that includes testing and validation prior to making changes to the production environment... If you're doing your due diligence, when it comes time to make the changes in production, it should go well. If you continue to get bitten, then chances are you're doing something wrong. Maybe you aren't testing at all... Maybe your test environment doesn't accurately represent your production environment. Maybe you don't have a means of testing your applications in the testbed.
How complicated is your environment that EVERY TIME you've tried to upgrade your networking code, something has gone horribly awry? Are these issues that could be resolved with better design, or are you content to simply blame the code every time?
Out of curiousity, what's the bug you have that hasn't been resolved in two years? Is it really a bug, or are you trying to make the code do something that a specification says it shouldn't?
Cisco traditionally has used a monolithic kernel, which Linux guys poo-poo, but when you control all of the hardware, and you know all of the possible modular components that can be installed in that hardware, why not? The new IOS XR software (runs on the CRS, and GSRs, two routers you'll never see if you can't figure out which code to run at your office) is modular. Eventually, I believe that their entire hardware catalog will utilize the XR code, but that won't occur for years.
But we're not talking about Cisco in this thread... We're discussing Microsoft. We're talking about a the largest software company in the world refusing to release a critical security update as quickly as possible. We're talking about a conscious decision to leave millions of systems vulnerable to a known exploit in the wild, so that no one gets left behind.
It's criminal.
I've come to a conclusion: Their policy is a load of crap!
I realize that it might appear as favoritism if MS were to release a patch to the English speaking world, and it it followed a few days later for coutries in Europe, and then Asia a couple days after that...
Let's be realistic. Right now 100% of the Windows using world has a tremendous exposure. If you can knock off 25% today, and catch the rest a few days later, then you should. You're talking about potentially billions of dollars in post infection cleanup that could be averted.
Every patched system today means a lower rate of infection in the days to come, and huge potential savings in cleanup costs, and lost productivity.
They're sitting on a patch right now, but we have to wait another week so they can write the patch documentation in Cambodian and Zulu, and ensure that it doesn't mess up the Korean character set? (With no offense intended to Cambodians, Zulus, or Koreans... I hope your patch is ready soon too.)
This is absurd.
(Fortunately, I'm not paid to give a shit about Windows. I'm a Cisco guy...)
What part of "News for Nerds" didn't you get?
"Look! Smart, wealthy people use Macs, and I want to be one of them!"
You're awesome, and gosh darn it, people like you.
With a /64 subnet, you could start an ISP and never run out of addresses.
The previous poster asked Why 128 bits instead of, say, 64?
The amount of work required to jump to 64 bit addressing or 128 bit addressing is identical. Since you're going to have to re-write everything anyway, you may as well figure in a ridiculously large address space, because not doing so saves you nothing.
Additionally, the routing table saving offered cannot be understated. With huge swaths of continguous address space, you can (hypothetically) represent an entire continent as a single aggregated routing entry (The more granular routing information would only be seen locally.), and the number of unique addresses within that range would be virtually inexhaustable.
Overkill is a good thing when it doesn't cost you anything.
Raw power has an aethestic all it's own.