Aaah, but you forger one thing: you are an informed customer. (Just as I am, I knew 100% what I was getting) Computers and IT is most probably your job (just as it is mine) and we simply have to know these things. However, Joe Sixpack doesn't have these advantages.
It's sometimes very hard to think as someone not in our trade. Also, it was very unclear (at the point when those computers were sold) what target version would actually run.
Oh, and for the record: I have never see "Vista Ready" stickers. Do they even exist? I peel the stickers from my computers upon purchase. I don't understand why people what those ugly stickers on their machines. Yuck....
Well, that's just shows that the problem is their version policy, isn't it? The fact that "Vista" is an encompassing brandname for a whole bunch of different OSes with different capabilities makes it extremely hard to say what "Vista" is. As anyone, I'd expect it to meet the requirements to run "Vista Ultimate" with everything on, because it's "Vista".
Okay, so it is slightly under-handed to make people expect Aero when they're going to get core Vista, but that's just marketing.
It's not "just marketing", it is plainly misleading... that's the whole problem. I run Linux on mine anyway, and that was the reason I bought it. The sticker to me meant, "Cheap computer where I can run Linux on".;-)
Do people really expect a $500 desktop or laptop to run Windows Vista Ultimate at the same performance as a high-end gaming machine?
No, but they do expect to be able to use all features. My laptop is Vista Capable (bought it because of the sticker, but not for the reasons you might think), but it cannot run Aero. Hence, it cannot run Vista Ultimate with all features on, hence you can't really call it "Vista Capable".
I have one of these "Vista Capable" computers. To be honest, I bought it because I knew what the sticker meant. Of course my intention was to run Linux (which it does, thank you very much). I mean, it was extremely cheap and that was the sole reason to buy it.
That's not why I posted this. The box did came with fine print (added later as a sticker), and I am still pissed that I didn't copy the whole text because it really basically said: "Don't run Vista on me".
Actually, most modern games do Limited Mode just fine. For all the others, you just need to set rights in the Registry (simply with regedit.exe) to "Full Control" for the "Users" group for the tree sections that the game installer created. You often also need to set the folder of the game to "Full Control" for the "Users" group, mainly if the savegames reside. This can be achieved with "cacls.exe" (a command line tool) on a XP Home machine and with the Security tab when you have XP Pro.
Doing this will allow them to hose the game, but not the system. A drawkback with which I can live.
"Power User" on Windows, is by the way not required anymore. They have way too many rights. Limited user (simply the "Users" group) with correct installation policies and finding out what the game requires make it a complete non-issue for any slashdotter. For other people, okay, they are out of luck...
You don't seem to understand how a dictionary attack works. The simple version is indeed: take a list of words, try it, if one matches you win. However, that's the most simple attack. In reality, you will use variations including combinations of words, capitalization, insertion of numbers, insertions of years, etc... Sure it take a bit longer, but the odds finding something is greater. The time it takes is still orders of a magnitude smaller than a real brute force.
Instead of brute forcing letters/numbers/signs (a "real" brute force), you change your "alphabet" to common patterns which we define as "words in a dictionary".
A small example: your lists consists of three words "spaghetti", "pizza" and "pasta". The simple dictionary attack will just try those three and stop. The more advanced dictionary attack will test: spaghetti, Spaghetti, SPaghetti,.... sPaghetti,.... SPAGHETTI, then repeat it for "pizza" and "pasta", when that's done it will try "spaghettipizza" and start from scratch with capitalization variations, after trying all two "word" combinations it will try all possible three word combinations.
Sure, you won't get the password in a mere 2 seconds, but you'll get it eventually. I'd say: just write one yourself and see how mindbogglingly fast a computer churns out patterns you'd have though to be impossible to guess. Do also realize that your own implementation is probably a quite naive one that can be optimized in several ways. You can also bet that any good dictionary contains strings like "qezc" or "poiuytrewq".
Could someone make a dictionary with every possible geometric and shift combination? Maybe, but at that point they might as well just brute force.
I allow my daughter (12) to access the internet, but not to do IM or join 'social' sites. I also maintain the admin account on her computer (OS X).
Unless she can only access the Internet at your home, I can assure you that she has already joined social sites and does IM. So, by not allowing it, you already have lost control. What she does on computers outside your home cannot be monitored, what she does on computers inside your home *can* be monitored. Think about it....
Hell, I wish now that I had waited a few years to have sex and I'm a guy. Of course, back then I hopped to it as quick as I could. It kinda colored my relationships with women for a while.
Hmmmm, I'll give you the other side: I actually waited a while (even though getting a chance) and I frankly wished I hadn't waited. It also coloured my relationships with women.... Just to illustrate that you statement says absolutely nothing.
Yup, you simply don't own the car until the debt has been paid of. (That's why it is "backed up") Debt is debt, regardless if it's better to have debt than what an investment might bring. You use money that isn't yours.
This happens before voting, not when you have voted. So, your political regional group will find out dirt about you, they will blackmail you, and you will vote for them to avoid tarnishing your image. Also, you underestimate the hypocrisy of the average American. God-fearing and praying Christian at day and Donkey fucker at night.... If everyone was honest about what they did, the world would be a much different place. I myself have had the case where I got expelled from an online group because I posted a picture that was "a bit rough on the edges". One person claimed he could get fired for accessing such a picture from work. Everyone turned against me (at least the Americans). The question was more: why the hell was he surfing at work on a (clearly) personal site. That's "hypocrisy" for you. It's just an example.
Finally, you said "responsible" government. That's an oxymoron. Just that you know.
In your Utopia, it would work well, but in reality human nature is much more complex. Anonymous voting is there to protect us from human nature. They can blackmail you all you want, it might succeed (and then that's your problem) but in the end they simply cannot check what you voted. In your Utopia, one could, with all abuses coming forth from it.
Actually, anonymous voting is pretty much the equivalent from "innocent until proven guilty", where of course (because of anonymity you cannot be proved "guilty" (e.g. having voter for a certain party).
People are not willing to sacrifice their careers, properties and toys since they have worked so hard (evidenced by college debt, car debt, mortgages, credit card debt) for those.
have worked so hard versus (3x)debt. You do realise that something you got on debt is something you haven't actually worked for yet, don't you?
There are things that cost no money: "We know you like $UNSUAL_SEXUAL_FETISH, unless you vote for us, we'll tell $EMPLOYER, $WIFE, $FILL_IN_ENTITY_OF_YOUR_CHOICE".
I do understand that, but it doesn't make a difference because those 600$ saved have to be... paid back by the new car and that takes a very very long time. Getting a more fuel efficient car only makes sense if you want to buy a new car anyway. My main point is: if you have a car, are happy with it, the "lower mileage" reason is not enough. So, if your car costs too much in maintenance, or if you don't like its handling anymore, or there are too many stains on the seat and you wanted a new car anyway, then, yes, a fuel efficient car is a good consideration. Merely switching because you think you're going to "save money on gas" is very misleading. You're overall spending more money to spend less on gas. That's a negative saving, which is oddly enough known as "expense".
After 8 years and a good 140000km on the counter, it isn't very surprising. To get an estimate, I went to an online second hand car market for my country. I typed in the stats (it's an Audi TT 225HP) and the typical resale value is 16000€ for that car, but all those listed had sub-100000km on the counter. So, I slashed another 6000€ because of the mileage.
Also, do realise that if you want to have a good resale value, you need to sell your car after 3 or 4 years. After that it's downhill fast. For people like me, who buy a car to run it down to the ground, resale value isn't exactly a thing you look at when buying a car. I'd probably be better of with a Mercedes of a BMW, for resale. However, I don't *like* BMW or Mercedes, so, no...
Oh, and if you just looked at the dollar value you should realise that's todays rate. In 2000, the dollar was pretty much on par with the euro.
Only if you're a beancounter, The depreciation doesn't mean a thing if it's your car and you cannot write it off. A 200$ car that transports you still transports you. So, keeping your old car always makes sense until the repairs to keep it exceed the worth of a new car.
I did, but in an indirect way. The new cars costs will rise proportionally... So, yes, it might be 5 years after break even, but after 5 years, I'll still need a new car. A car that will probably consume even less. As such, it's a non-issue.
Skype falls back to http and https if you don't open the ports it "needs". Close http and https. That's it.... Of course, if you do that, you cannot use Skype anymore;-) Nor the rest of the web.;-) It also supports UPnP, but that's a security hole in itself. UPnP is a way for devices to make holes in a firewall on a by-demand basis.
Gas currently costs 1.2€/l (6.66USD/gallon). While one car uses less gas, the prices will soar in the same way and as such the evolution of said price doesn't really matter. It shortens the final calculation, which I admit.
One gas tank in both cars is 50l (13.2gallon). Coupled with the above information, one gas tank costs 60€ (88$)
Now look what happens: I sell my car for 10000€, and buy a new fuel efficient one for 23000€. I now have 13000€ spend, that I have to justify with future gas savings. That's the equivalent of 13000/60 = 217 fill ups! The equivalent of 217*50 = 10850 litres, which means I can drive 108500km with my old car, or 217000km with my new car. That's the equivalent of a bit more than 7 years for the old car and 14 years for the new car. Now look at those figures! In 7 years, my car will be 15 years old and have no value (10 years later it will be a vintage car though) That's a very long time to recoup costs.
Anyone saying the buy a new car "because it has better mileage" should first do this small calculation. If the cost is not recouped in a short time (which means you drive a lot), then it simply is not worth it. Sure, you might have other reasons, but "saving money" is not a valid one.
Because the motherboards for these systems generally don't support large amounts of memory (2 gigs in the server), high speed DDR2 memory, SATA, USB2.
Whoa! We're talking home servers here as far as I understood. 2Gigs for a home server? I've got one of those, it's an AMD Athlon 2800+, 2 Gigs of RAM (DDR1 that is). It's running OpenBSD/amd64. I think you want to see "top -n | head -n4":
It uses way more memory, but look at the cache, at the buffers.... It's a Duron 800MHz/256Meg RAM, recovered from the dumpster.
2Gig for a home server? Overkill! I have two Gig and run sendmail, dhcpd, named, ntpd, imapd, apache, and many others.... Sure for a select amount of users.... I agree, but my wife would probably be extremely happy if the server didn't have two fans.
As for: "high speed DDR2 memory, SATA, USB2". You do realise that DDR has significant lower latency than DD2 or DDR3? As for SATA? My AMD64 supports SATA, and my parents server is full-SCSI, but SATA-PCI cards can be had for 25$. USB2? My server has USB2. My parents server too, using a PCI card I bought back in the day. 15$, if I remember correctly. It's useful for backing up to our external USB Harddisk.
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Aaah, but you forger one thing: you are an informed customer. (Just as I am, I knew 100% what I was getting) Computers and IT is most probably your job (just as it is mine) and we simply have to know these things. However, Joe Sixpack doesn't have these advantages.
It's sometimes very hard to think as someone not in our trade. Also, it was very unclear (at the point when those computers were sold) what target version would actually run.
Oh, and for the record: I have never see "Vista Ready" stickers. Do they even exist? I peel the stickers from my computers upon purchase. I don't understand why people what those ugly stickers on their machines. Yuck....
Well, that's just shows that the problem is their version policy, isn't it? The fact that "Vista" is an encompassing brandname for a whole bunch of different OSes with different capabilities makes it extremely hard to say what "Vista" is. As anyone, I'd expect it to meet the requirements to run "Vista Ultimate" with everything on, because it's "Vista".
It's not "just marketing", it is plainly misleading... that's the whole problem. I run Linux on mine anyway, and that was the reason I bought it. The sticker to me meant, "Cheap computer where I can run Linux on". ;-)
Well, you can preorder them at amazon.de.
No, but they do expect to be able to use all features. My laptop is Vista Capable (bought it because of the sticker, but not for the reasons you might think), but it cannot run Aero. Hence, it cannot run Vista Ultimate with all features on, hence you can't really call it "Vista Capable".
I have one of these "Vista Capable" computers. To be honest, I bought it because I knew what the sticker meant. Of course my intention was to run Linux (which it does, thank you very much). I mean, it was extremely cheap and that was the sole reason to buy it.
That's not why I posted this. The box did came with fine print (added later as a sticker), and I am still pissed that I didn't copy the whole text because it really basically said: "Don't run Vista on me".
Except, only one part of that statement is true....
Actually, most modern games do Limited Mode just fine. For all the others, you just need to set rights in the Registry (simply with regedit.exe) to "Full Control" for the "Users" group for the tree sections that the game installer created. You often also need to set the folder of the game to "Full Control" for the "Users" group, mainly if the savegames reside. This can be achieved with "cacls.exe" (a command line tool) on a XP Home machine and with the Security tab when you have XP Pro.
Doing this will allow them to hose the game, but not the system. A drawkback with which I can live.
"Power User" on Windows, is by the way not required anymore. They have way too many rights. Limited user (simply the "Users" group) with correct installation policies and finding out what the game requires make it a complete non-issue for any slashdotter. For other people, okay, they are out of luck...
You don't seem to understand how a dictionary attack works. The simple version is indeed: take a list of words, try it, if one matches you win. However, that's the most simple attack. In reality, you will use variations including combinations of words, capitalization, insertion of numbers, insertions of years, etc... Sure it take a bit longer, but the odds finding something is greater. The time it takes is still orders of a magnitude smaller than a real brute force.
Instead of brute forcing letters/numbers/signs (a "real" brute force), you change your "alphabet" to common patterns which we define as "words in a dictionary".
A small example: your lists consists of three words "spaghetti", "pizza" and "pasta". The simple dictionary attack will just try those three and stop. The more advanced dictionary attack will test: spaghetti, Spaghetti, SPaghetti, .... sPaghetti, .... SPAGHETTI, then repeat it for "pizza" and "pasta", when that's done it will try "spaghettipizza" and start from scratch with capitalization variations, after trying all two "word" combinations it will try all possible three word combinations.
Sure, you won't get the password in a mere 2 seconds, but you'll get it eventually. I'd say: just write one yourself and see how mindbogglingly fast a computer churns out patterns you'd have though to be impossible to guess. Do also realize that your own implementation is probably a quite naive one that can be optimized in several ways. You can also bet that any good dictionary contains strings like "qezc" or "poiuytrewq".
Someone already did. It's better than a brute force because you're doing a space-time tradeoff.
Unless she can only access the Internet at your home, I can assure you that she has already joined social sites and does IM. So, by not allowing it, you already have lost control. What she does on computers outside your home cannot be monitored, what she does on computers inside your home *can* be monitored. Think about it....
Hmmmm, I'll give you the other side: I actually waited a while (even though getting a chance) and I frankly wished I hadn't waited. It also coloured my relationships with women.... Just to illustrate that you statement says absolutely nothing.
No, I don't remember that, especially because "mph" is a velocity and not an acceleration.
Similar to my passwords.... However, I know my insults by heart and don't need post-its.
Yup, you simply don't own the car until the debt has been paid of. (That's why it is "backed up") Debt is debt, regardless if it's better to have debt than what an investment might bring. You use money that isn't yours.
Finally, you said "responsible" government. That's an oxymoron. Just that you know.
In your Utopia, it would work well, but in reality human nature is much more complex. Anonymous voting is there to protect us from human nature. They can blackmail you all you want, it might succeed (and then that's your problem) but in the end they simply cannot check what you voted. In your Utopia, one could, with all abuses coming forth from it.
Actually, anonymous voting is pretty much the equivalent from "innocent until proven guilty", where of course (because of anonymity you cannot be proved "guilty" (e.g. having voter for a certain party).
have worked so hard versus (3x)debt. You do realise that something you got on debt is something you haven't actually worked for yet, don't you?
Wouldn't the Terminator series be more on topic than The Matrix?
There are things that cost no money: "We know you like $UNSUAL_SEXUAL_FETISH, unless you vote for us, we'll tell $EMPLOYER, $WIFE, $FILL_IN_ENTITY_OF_YOUR_CHOICE".
Just saying....
I do understand that, but it doesn't make a difference because those 600$ saved have to be... paid back by the new car and that takes a very very long time. Getting a more fuel efficient car only makes sense if you want to buy a new car anyway. My main point is: if you have a car, are happy with it, the "lower mileage" reason is not enough. So, if your car costs too much in maintenance, or if you don't like its handling anymore, or there are too many stains on the seat and you wanted a new car anyway, then, yes, a fuel efficient car is a good consideration. Merely switching because you think you're going to "save money on gas" is very misleading. You're overall spending more money to spend less on gas. That's a negative saving, which is oddly enough known as "expense".
After 8 years and a good 140000km on the counter, it isn't very surprising. To get an estimate, I went to an online second hand car market for my country. I typed in the stats (it's an Audi TT 225HP) and the typical resale value is 16000€ for that car, but all those listed had sub-100000km on the counter. So, I slashed another 6000€ because of the mileage.
Also, do realise that if you want to have a good resale value, you need to sell your car after 3 or 4 years. After that it's downhill fast. For people like me, who buy a car to run it down to the ground, resale value isn't exactly a thing you look at when buying a car. I'd probably be better of with a Mercedes of a BMW, for resale. However, I don't *like* BMW or Mercedes, so, no...
Oh, and if you just looked at the dollar value you should realise that's todays rate. In 2000, the dollar was pretty much on par with the euro.
Only if you're a beancounter, The depreciation doesn't mean a thing if it's your car and you cannot write it off. A 200$ car that transports you still transports you. So, keeping your old car always makes sense until the repairs to keep it exceed the worth of a new car.
I did, but in an indirect way. The new cars costs will rise proportionally... So, yes, it might be 5 years after break even, but after 5 years, I'll still need a new car. A car that will probably consume even less. As such, it's a non-issue.
Skype falls back to http and https if you don't open the ports it "needs". Close http and https. That's it.... Of course, if you do that, you cannot use Skype anymore ;-) Nor the rest of the web. ;-) It also supports UPnP, but that's a security hole in itself. UPnP is a way for devices to make holes in a firewall on a by-demand basis.
Now look what happens: I sell my car for 10000€, and buy a new fuel efficient one for 23000€. I now have 13000€ spend, that I have to justify with future gas savings. That's the equivalent of 13000/60 = 217 fill ups! The equivalent of 217*50 = 10850 litres, which means I can drive 108500km with my old car, or 217000km with my new car. That's the equivalent of a bit more than 7 years for the old car and 14 years for the new car. Now look at those figures! In 7 years, my car will be 15 years old and have no value (10 years later it will be a vintage car though) That's a very long time to recoup costs.
Anyone saying the buy a new car "because it has better mileage" should first do this small calculation. If the cost is not recouped in a short time (which means you drive a lot), then it simply is not worth it. Sure, you might have other reasons, but "saving money" is not a valid one.
Whoa! We're talking home servers here as far as I understood. 2Gigs for a home server? I've got one of those, it's an AMD Athlon 2800+, 2 Gigs of RAM (DDR1 that is). It's running OpenBSD/amd64. I think you want to see "top -n | head -n4":
Want more? My parents server, which is an actual P-III 800MHz/768Meg RAM running OpenBSD/i386
That machine essentially does the same as the above one, with more users!
I also have a Debian database server at my parents, I guess by now you don't want to know.... I'll give it to you anyway:
It uses way more memory, but look at the cache, at the buffers.... It's a Duron 800MHz/256Meg RAM, recovered from the dumpster.
2Gig for a home server? Overkill! I have two Gig and run sendmail, dhcpd, named, ntpd, imapd, apache, and many others.... Sure for a select amount of users.... I agree, but my wife would probably be extremely happy if the server didn't have two fans.
As for: "high speed DDR2 memory, SATA, USB2". You do realise that DDR has significant lower latency than DD2 or DDR3? As for SATA? My AMD64 supports SATA, and my parents server is full-SCSI, but SATA-PCI cards can be had for 25$. USB2? My server has USB2. My parents server too, using a PCI card I bought back in the day. 15$, if I remember correctly. It's useful for backing up to our external USB Harddisk.