The US demanded that the Russians make "piracy" a crime as a condition of entering the WIPO. Pretending that the convictions, under laws we insisted they install at economic gunpoint, has nothing to do with us is a farce. And Gates is a flaming jackass for washing his hands with that argument. He wanted that law, he got that law. And he showed a complete lack of humanity when he wouldn't grant a little mercy when he was asked personally by Gorbachev to let woman have her life. Proportionality is the problem. He's the richest man in the world refusing to show mercy to a *schooteacher*, in *Russia*, for having copies of Windows on her classroom's PCs. An act of illegal copying that merely would have sown the seeds of another generation of people locked into Windows!
Um, the USSR was the only power tha was magically equal to the US. Why did the Russians suddenly lose what pride they have fold into the US government asking them to so something? Its the Russians fault. They could have said. Nope. This is Russia not the US we don't want your laws. Did they? Nope.
Bill Gates isn't the US President or dictator as hard as that it for the slashdot community to believe. Bill Gates may have liked the law, or remotely benefited from it. Bill Gates didn't have the US government pressure other countries for that law. I was a community of RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and other orgs that lobbied for it. Sure, Bill benefited, but it wasn't his job to stop random lobbists from screwing up the US government or the Russian government. Heck, it's the Russian government that is enforcing its law. Well, they made the law, they could repel the law. MS and Gates didn't lobby the Russian law makers to put it in and enforce it against that person. The Russians chose to do that and chose that individual to enforce it against. Will Putin ask Steve Jobs to forgive someone if itunes is on their computer and they were using a P2P program to pirate music and Apple didn't ask the Russians to do anything or was really aware of it? I'm sorry, but I don't think it's Bill Gate's job to fix every freaking thing wrong in the world. I also don't think every stupid decision that's IT related was lobbied by MS and/or Gates.
It's a commodity mindset -- "I go, I buy the product, I plug it in like a TV, and I never think about how it operates". Consumers haven't yet fully understood that they might need to take steps to secure such things, or that it poses a risk. All they know is they click the right button and they download the internet.:-P
Um, why should they? Um, they don't worry about securing their TV, radio, cable box, cell phone, oven, toastor, land line phone, or lamps. How why should they have to actually think and do extra magic undocumented steps to setup this computerish piece of equipment? You don't have to worry about your TV, DVD, or cable box being hacked through your over the air broad casts, DVDs, or VHS tapes. You don't have to worry that your radio will start being illegal if you tune it to the wrong station or that if you tune it to the wrong station some one could take over your radio or even your car through your radio. Cell phones are starting to be hackable and virus ridden so that's a bad one to put in there. You don't have to worry about your oven, toaster, or lamps being magically hacked by plugging them into your electrical outlet. (There are ways and means to send data over power lines so it could one day be possible.) I'm sorry computer security should be like land line security or better. I don't have to worry about a telemarketter calling me and them magically taking control of my phone and using it to call others with.
Why do we have these freaking problems with computers? Because us slashdotters are too stupid to build and design computers that can be used and can't be hacked by outsiders. Every other freaking slashdot response is that it is the stupid users fault for not securing his stuff. I call massive CS BS. The CS priests are emperors without any clothes. We don't have any security and can't offer them any. The OLPC seems to atleast try to properly lockdown their laptops according to the last slashdot article about their security. That's how both Linux and MS should be trying to lockdown the desktop. Yes, it would be highly annoying to develop on a locked down box. Yes, "trusted" "verified" computing is anti-open source evil anti-slashdot, but that's what we need. Grr. Slash can complain all it wants, but it should just fix the problem rather than complain. Oh, but we can't have Linux, OSS, or MS totally lock down "our" desktop so virii, worms or outside programs can attack. IF you can't work in a locked down environment or are pushing default locked down states for every computer tech, then you are part of the problem.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said: "Catching someone just because he bought a computer and threatening him with prison - that's crap."
It's kinda of funny that it's the Russians that are causing this problem. MS didn't have any lawsuits or anything against the guy. So it's more along the lines of MS doesn't care, but the Russian government can't prove/or isn't satisfied that the school's software was properly licensed. Therefore they were going to throw their own Russian book at the guy and ship him off. MS wasn't pushing this; it was entirely a Russian internal matter. You'd think that if Putin wanted to the guy released or the heat slacked off that he'd have called the Russian officals that were giving the guy a hard time since it wasn't even MS doing anything.
What next Russian officals sending folks to Siberia for not following the GPL?
Unless the vote occures during a scheduled downtime, they^W we aren't voting either
Hmm, that could be a future way to stop the other side from making to the poles. Just make sure that you sign up the party that you don't want voting for WOW! On a side note, the company running WOW, could have a "scheduled downtime" only for those of the party it wants to get out to vote. It's a prefect plan... You just need to control Blizzard and have a vague idea of which WOW players that you'd like to be off line for one day. I wonder if Blizzard has ever thought of trying to mold the elections in South Korea to see if this could work for them. I don't know if WOW is as big as StarCraft over there though.
Now a related question... Do you think consumer demand or competition with each other is causing the rapid advancement in chip design and architecture.
My Girl is just finished selling Girl Scout Cookies. It's competition with other girls and not demand for the cookies. There isn't any demand until you start deliverying and then some one wants a box right then. The GSC are all the same product though troops sell boxs at different prices. If you want cookies, it's cheaper to go to Walmart and buy almost anyother cookie other than GSC. (The GSC cost.8 a box to make and the rest is "profit" for the GS organization.)
Although there are alots of niches that would love increased CPU speed, your average consumer isn't "demanding" it. That average guy wants Vista to run fast on their new Dell and his tech guy friend has told him that Vista will run slowly on a $3-4K computer so that consumer is holding off until a $.5-$1.5K computer can comfortably run Vista. However long that may be. What I'd like is 4GB of ram standard in bottom tier $500 Walmart HP desktops and soon not just in 2017.
Anyone want to guess how long before "qubit" gets compressed to "quit" (as "bigit" became "bit" in the last century)? Anyone want to guess how long before hillbillies start asking "How many quberts you got in that there system?"
I think qubert rolls of the tongue easier than qubit. Let's push qubert as the new way of saying qubit!
If that's the case, I think they are terribly misguided. Canadians have always had a low tolerance to being stepped on by the elephant that is the US. We have a chip on our shoulders. In fact, one of the defining principles of being a Canadian is that "We aren't American". For some people, that's their only definition of being Canadian.
I hate the term American myself. I've always hated the term. I dislike being labeled "an American." I'm an Arkansan. (I have neighbors that are Texans.) I live in the US, but there is a freaking North, Central, and South America! All those countries and people are all as much Americans as anyone in the US is! Sorry, that's just a personal pet peeve of mine. Canadans have just as much right being American as anyone in the US. Now, the US government and media have ruined the term American that no one wants to use the label except in a negative manner.
And more to the point: Why does the American government allow corporations to dictate foreign policy?
Well, generally because the corporations have a better long term vision for foreign policy than the current government leaders. Corporations generally want peace and a rule set that benefits them and their shareholders. This is slightly better than the Bush let's invade two countries foreign policy. I kinda of view mulitnational corporations as the force that will unify the human race into atleast following a similiar rule set even if we never quite make it to a global government.
When I downloaded this thing yesterday, I was really confused about it. I mean, I know Nintendo is known for being quirky, but this is just odd, you know? What possible purpose could there be in a Wii polling application? Once I played a little with it though, I saw the genius behind this thing. This is to say nothing of the sheer treasure trove of demographic data Nintendo is getting out of this.
My first thought: Nintendo is building a better Family Feud. Really, though this could be great for just asking random survey questions with a handful of answers. I'd be curious if they just asked: do you believe in global warming? And also would you support any public policy changes because of global climate change? I'm curious about how they'll use this tech, but it could be very useful.
RRRRRight. So let's say you see a guy get robbed in the street and can identify the robber. The police find out you witnessed the robbery and subpeona you to appear as a witness. Are you evil for giving up the identity of the robber?
But, I can't ID anyone else because RFID tagging isn't mainstream and cheap yet!
If you want political treatment, write a sim where you're an arms contractor and you need to pay off your local congresspeople in a legal or at least hidden way. Or, write a sim where you get send to a base in Cuba with no hope for escape, rescue or legal representation. There's plenty of dirt to really dig into without making up crap about spec.ops. vs. spec.ops.
Nah, by writing the spec.ops. vs. spec.ops. the general public gets paranoid and thinks of that movie Enemy of the State. When they look for that, they don't find it. All the issues that you state, make a boring game so they won't play that or blow those issues off as they know that the government only engages in spec.ops. vs. spec.ops warfare with itself and that's obviously not going on so everything is perfectly normal except for those few crazies. Sort of makies you think of MegaTokyo and how Largo views all the scifi stuff going on in the background while to Piro and almost every other major character its just a normal day. We don't see the government acting badly out in public so those that scream at the top of their lungs that some thing is wrong that Miho is the zombie queen are looked at like absolutely crazy people and ignored.
I think what would make a great game would be to start off with something like SimCity or the Sims as a backdrop and everything is normal except for your team of either magic users, super heroes, scifi hightech good guys, or covert gov. looking out for the bad guys. You raid random Sim's home for evidence that they are an "evil" doer however you define "evil" be it drinking, drugs, alien contacts, terrorist contacts, unlicensed magical use, being a general villian, or just being someone our team doesn't like today. I guess some one could make Police Sate the game and see how people like playing as Nazis or KGB agents. Nah, that's predictable. Police State the game with legit terror, disease, alien, and anti-government targets to search out and destory. Don't ask why that guy was a terrorist or bad guy, you are just in the swat team and taking his whole family out and take it as a given that he was a bad guy.
We have DNA, fingerprintes, footprints, retina scans, facial thermal imaging scans, picture photos, and voice scans.
Well, that's one hella unwieldy composite primary key, and still not guaranteed to be 100% unique! Actually, that would apply were it not for DNA, which I think probably is primary key-like in humans.
I thought I was fairly complete with what I could think of off the top of my head of what were fairly good ID methods. I'd say voice scans and pictures wouldn't be that good, but all the others are supposed to be very, very good. The thing is 5 sec. after an RFID system becomses used it'll become hacked. It'd be trival to copy someone else's id number. Screw twins or triplets, think of thousands walking around with the same ID code. It starts becoming useless than doesn't it? I could see "famous" people's RFID tag being copied and millions of their fans using their ID code. It'd be like masked famous person committing random crime. At any given moment, it would be hard for the government to narrow which of those RFID tags were good and which were copies. There would be no way of protecting yourself from having your ID tag copied since readers would be every where. I think that I like using DNA or body parts to tag people because atleast than you only have to worry about a handful of copies at the most rather than a large number of copies. That assumes we don't figure cloning out and go into it in a big way. DNA would be a useless ID method if everyone had the same DNA.
Looks like shortly academics and scientists will have their own open access journal if their work is paid by a federal agency that pays out more than $100 million a year in grants. The problem is that I didn't even know this existed 5 minutes ago. Apparently, the bill allows each agency to make their own central deposit of info. I can see why they did that to get less anti-lobbying against the bill from those organizations, but as an average citizen, I'd love one federal research site that I could go to and have easy access to all federally sponsered research. That'll kill some sections of wikipedia when it really hits full steam. Wikipedia won't die. It has a place mainly in cataloging pop culture and things that would otherwise drop below academics radars.
That would be so trivial to defeat that I don't see the point. You just stash the watch in the place where you are supposed to be and you are free. You think about bio-monitoring? Just elect a watch nanny who will put on the watches for the others while they go out. Each person in the gang take its turn as the watch nanny.
Yeah, watch is trival to defeat if they know that its tracking them. That's why some folks would like to chip their kids. It's damn hard for the kids to remove a chip. Not that its impossible, just that most kids won't go to the effort required. Now, if you gave your kid a fancy watch that they like, it just happens to have the GPS thing in there. Would they wear it?
Another really scary thing would be an ad. campign of some agency just giving out watches and tracking people and only telling them in the fine print. How soon do you think that your CES swag will start being tracked?
Why would you do this to yourself, and perhaps more importantly why would you invest millions in R&D?
Um, a unique ID chip that can communicate via RF to a reader is really useless to me. Now, if they were able to thrown in 4-8 GB storage, GPS tracking, and lots of medical monitoring then I might think about it. (Actually, you are right that bracelets or maybe watches would be better. It's far easier to change though also to loose.) I have a routine of when I get home taking my watch, wallet, and a few other things off and putting them all in the same spot. I only take my glasses off just before bed. If I needed some medical device to monitor me 24/7 an implantable and removable chip makes sense. I'm curious when the first GPS tracking watches/braclets for kids are out with a web tool that easily lets parents know where their kids have been/are. That'll sell.
People aren't lining up around the block to have uniquely identifiable bits of technology inserted into 'em? How come?
Cause God beat the government to it.;) We don't need another unique identifier. We have DNA, fingerprintes, footprints, retina scans, facial thermal imaging scans, picture photos, and voice scans. We've used race, sex, hair color, eye color, height, and wieght when searching for criminals or posting limited ID traits on DLs. Do we really need more? I could see family, friends, schools, religions, employeers, and community clubs (Greenpeace or NRA) wanting to track "their" members, employees, family, or those involved with that religion. I think it's funny. We don't know if God exists so we are going to build a system that can tell where everyone is at any given time because that's one of the things only God was suppposed to be able to do and then worship it. I have no religious reason to object to anyone trying to track or control others that's the fundamental thing that God, governments, and humans generally try to do (control those that don't have the power to stop them.) I'm fairly certain that privacy will become a myth within my lifetime and most people won't even notice its gone.
I work for a public library, and this is exactly what we do now. Every day when school gets out, we're inundated with junior high kids coming in to monopolize our computers for their daily MySpace, RuneScape, and AIM fix. The solution that we've come up with is to reserve one third of our computers for "non recreational use." Specifically, this means no social networking sites, recreational IM, MMORPGs, or games of any kind. Basically, it's at the discretion of the staff to determine when this policy is being violated, and to discus it with the patron.
I hate to ask, but before these internet connected computers were in a public library would any of those kids even come into the library for 5 min after school?
C, Ruby, Javascript, Actionscript/Flash are what I'd push now.
Kindergarten may be a bit early, but certainly by third grade, I think all students should be required to program as an integral part of all the curricula. An emphasis should be placed not on just computer languages, but on robust and secure software design methods.
Dude, that's a bit over board. What you need to do is push Logo. Heck, each time that I check out the latest Logos I'm more and more surprised by the programming skill set being taught by it. What you just need to do is get secure programming as simple for kids to play around with as legos or other building blocks. Kids love to build towers, walls, or forts with blocks and knock them down. They should be able to easily/safely do the same on the computer (and not just in games like SimCity.)
I've found somethings that you asked for, but not all. I did don't know how to string them all together. ClamWin, and SpyBot, both say that they'll run from a bootCD. I didn't find any easy to follow admin install instructions for them. Mainly everything else is some reg files. I didn't find anything on keyboard or mouse ports of earlier versions of windows. I also didn't find anything about how to shock users. In the spirit of open sourceness, I expect someone else to actually do the real work of building a self installing zip file of ClamWin & Spybot, setting your fav. reg. settings, and having all of them autorun after a shutdown -r. I know that "it should possible." I don't know enough windows scripting in order to do it.
net stop wuauserv
Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc -> Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations. They hid it well but it's there:^)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Policies\Explorer NoDevMgrUpdate value to 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ WindowsFirewall
Set these to "not configured"
* Windows Firewall: Protect all network connections
* Windows Firewall: Do not allow exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Define program exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow local program exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow remote administration exception
* Windows Firewall: Allow file and printer sharing exception
* Windows Firewall: Allow ICMP exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow Remote Desktop exception
* Windows Firewall: Allow UPnP framework exception
* Windows Firewall: Prohibit notifications
* Windows Firewall: Allow logging
* Windows Firewall: Prohibit unicast response to multicast or broadcast requests
* Windows Firewall: Define port exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow local port exceptions
Start by installing the latest version of ClamWin, and download the latest virus definitions. See the ClamWin manual for full details on how to do this. Note that, if you are going to create a CD, you will not be able to update the virus definitions without creating a new CD, since a CD is read-only. Copy Folders
Create a working folder in a convenient location to hold the files that are to be copied onto CD/USB, eg C:\ClamWin-CD. In the working folder, create a folder named ClamWin. Copy the contents of the ClamWin program folder into C:\ClamWin-CD\ClamWin. By default, the ClamWin program folder is installed to C:\Program Files\ClamWin Create folders named log, db and quara
Reduced costs from the Pixar end. I would think that even if Pixar didn't write the game, whatever properly licensed publisher couuld try to obtain the computer models straight from Pixar for use in the game. This means that one guy copies/pastes/scalee from Pixar into the game companies format. If a game company did its own IP from ground up, of course they'd have more work to do.
Actually, when I think of casual games I think of the games that my wife plays: JewelQuest, solitare, and mine sweeper. I wouldn't class a "Pixar Cars" game as a casual game. It may be a kid game, but it that still doesn't mean that it can't be difficult for the casual adult gamer. (Heck, I played one of my kids Sponge Bob's game to try to get them past a level to the next save stop and I was surprised that it was hard. It had limitless lives, but the task (racing course) was difficult for even me, which startled me.) I like that "hard-core" gamers will always be around. They will be those that instead of buying 5 games for family/friends during Christams or combined through out the year, will buy 5 games every few weeks. They will always have publishers that target them. They'll always rail against the mainstream for purchasing games like JewelQuest, Dr. Mario, or Tetris as being cheap to develop and raking in far more money than they should. I wonder how many "hard core" gamers have disappeared into WOW or similiar games.
What I'm saying is that people need to either get off their asses and really learn climate science (very very unlikely) or admit that they don't know enough to debate the issue themselves and instead just figure out whose opinions to trust. It's a lot like going to the doctor. It's only an idiot who refuses to get surgery when their doctor tells them they have a malignant growth because they read some article in newsweek. A smart individual gets a second or third opinion and asks doctors they trust whether it really is a tumor and then takes action based on the expert advice. All I'm saying is we should do the same with the climate as we would do with our own bodies.
That'd me what I do as well, but you forgot about those that don't trust most doctors and would go to a faith healer or alt. medicine doctor and trust them. Or would rather just go without any medical treatment because they'll die whenever God wills it. My mother-in-law will get 4-5 opinions for various doctors and won't trust or believe any of them. The doctors will say somehting like "its all in your head" and she'll get really ticked and find another doctor. The problem with the global climate is that "its all in their head" as long as they can't explain it to the average person. I'm sorry, but I've not seen enough material that really would force me to change my behavior. It's all been PR rants from various groups. That's the problem. The actual climate scientists get drowned out. I want to listen to their abstract and if I don't want to take their advice then I'll go about my business. Problem is that you have several sides that will throw up or popularize alot of abstracts so its not really worth it any more to pay attention. I have several fields that I keep an eye towards; its just far too much effort filtering the BS out from the climate debate so I ignore all of it.
He disregarded a subpoena from a court. Be a good citizen. Show up to court when called. It's no different than standard etiquette and social grace. If you're invited to a large party of important people, even if you disagree with them, at least show up and have a few hors d'oevres.
I think that, as usual, the US attorney is being a knob because he can--because his social connections and political backing give him power over a standard citizen. At the same time: Hey, Josh! When a federal court sends you a subpoena that means "Show up or else!"
Disregarding a subpoena is a gesture of disrespect and impunity. Jailing a citizen for disregarding a subpoena is just standard procedure (afaik).
This is why I don't like our legal system and esp. judges and lawyers. Judges act like little tin gods. With this kind of power, they can get away with it 9 times out of 10 and be legal. If your boss tells you that you need to show up for his fancy party for some VIPs, you can ignore him and maybe have to find another job. You can't ignore this judges that have run amok. The only ones that know and reliaze the kind of power judges have are lawyers and considering that lawyers bcome either judges, politicans, or lobbiests, well you see why I don't have faith in that class of worker.
I think we'd collectively be more concerned with, you know, people dropping like flies in huge numbers than we would about telecommuting or browsing YouTube, or at least I like to think that we would.
Seriously, the health and safety of my loved ones and society as a whole would be paramount in my mind, and everything else would be a distant second. This story reminds me of those Starbucks managers selling water to injured and shocked people and the idiots quoting SLAs while the World Trade Center's twin towers were falling.
You kinda of are missing the point. I could keep my wife and kids at home, but my job would require me to "go to work." I'm the general computer guy at a police department. I could be the point source of potential infection for my family. Kids can be homeschooled. My wife could try googling businesses that delivery in my area. What if there isn't? Well, we'd end up making one big trip to Sams a month or two rather than lots of smaller trips to Walmart. We'd stock up for as long as possible to ride this through. I don't have broadband at home, but I'd get it if I thought that my family really needed it. What would people be doing while they are couped up together? My family only has one PC. I have myself, my wife, and two kids. How are we two share that resource? During school hours one of the kids gets to use the computer? I'll admit that it could be workable for those that have a PC/laptop for most family members or that already have broadband or work from home. For everyone else though, it'd be very difficult.
I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.
Um, sure everyone "can" decalre themselves the winner, but no one will listen to them though. I'm too lazy to read the article. I'm wondering how this even got outside of some marketting/PR guy's office/e-mail system. I mean come on, can't they have atleast bribed a few consumer electronics mag reporters to write a few articles declaring them the winner? I mean come on if you are going to declare yourself the winner; then you need to do it in a manner people will somewhat listen to and believe it.
Slashdot Mirror
The US demanded that the Russians make "piracy" a crime as a condition of entering the WIPO. Pretending that the convictions, under laws we insisted they install at economic gunpoint, has nothing to do with us is a farce. And Gates is a flaming jackass for washing his hands with that argument. He wanted that law, he got that law. And he showed a complete lack of humanity when he wouldn't grant a little mercy when he was asked personally by Gorbachev to let woman have her life. Proportionality is the problem. He's the richest man in the world refusing to show mercy to a *schooteacher*, in *Russia*, for having copies of Windows on her classroom's PCs. An act of illegal copying that merely would have sown the seeds of another generation of people locked into Windows!
Um, the USSR was the only power tha was magically equal to the US. Why did the Russians suddenly lose what pride they have fold into the US government asking them to so something? Its the Russians fault. They could have said. Nope. This is Russia not the US we don't want your laws. Did they? Nope.
Bill Gates isn't the US President or dictator as hard as that it for the slashdot community to believe. Bill Gates may have liked the law, or remotely benefited from it. Bill Gates didn't have the US government pressure other countries for that law. I was a community of RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and other orgs that lobbied for it. Sure, Bill benefited, but it wasn't his job to stop random lobbists from screwing up the US government or the Russian government. Heck, it's the Russian government that is enforcing its law. Well, they made the law, they could repel the law. MS and Gates didn't lobby the Russian law makers to put it in and enforce it against that person. The Russians chose to do that and chose that individual to enforce it against. Will Putin ask Steve Jobs to forgive someone if itunes is on their computer and they were using a P2P program to pirate music and Apple didn't ask the Russians to do anything or was really aware of it? I'm sorry, but I don't think it's Bill Gate's job to fix every freaking thing wrong in the world. I also don't think every stupid decision that's IT related was lobbied by MS and/or Gates.
It's a commodity mindset -- "I go, I buy the product, I plug it in like a TV, and I never think about how it operates". Consumers haven't yet fully understood that they might need to take steps to secure such things, or that it poses a risk. All they know is they click the right button and they download the internet. :-P
Um, why should they? Um, they don't worry about securing their TV, radio, cable box, cell phone, oven, toastor, land line phone, or lamps. How why should they have to actually think and do extra magic undocumented steps to setup this computerish piece of equipment? You don't have to worry about your TV, DVD, or cable box being hacked through your over the air broad casts, DVDs, or VHS tapes. You don't have to worry that your radio will start being illegal if you tune it to the wrong station or that if you tune it to the wrong station some one could take over your radio or even your car through your radio. Cell phones are starting to be hackable and virus ridden so that's a bad one to put in there. You don't have to worry about your oven, toaster, or lamps being magically hacked by plugging them into your electrical outlet. (There are ways and means to send data over power lines so it could one day be possible.) I'm sorry computer security should be like land line security or better. I don't have to worry about a telemarketter calling me and them magically taking control of my phone and using it to call others with.
Why do we have these freaking problems with computers? Because us slashdotters are too stupid to build and design computers that can be used and can't be hacked by outsiders. Every other freaking slashdot response is that it is the stupid users fault for not securing his stuff. I call massive CS BS. The CS priests are emperors without any clothes. We don't have any security and can't offer them any. The OLPC seems to atleast try to properly lockdown their laptops according to the last slashdot article about their security. That's how both Linux and MS should be trying to lockdown the desktop. Yes, it would be highly annoying to develop on a locked down box. Yes, "trusted" "verified" computing is anti-open source evil anti-slashdot, but that's what we need. Grr. Slash can complain all it wants, but it should just fix the problem rather than complain. Oh, but we can't have Linux, OSS, or MS totally lock down "our" desktop so virii, worms or outside programs can attack. IF you can't work in a locked down environment or are pushing default locked down states for every computer tech, then you are part of the problem.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said: "Catching someone just because he bought a computer and threatening him with prison - that's crap."
It's kinda of funny that it's the Russians that are causing this problem. MS didn't have any lawsuits or anything against the guy. So it's more along the lines of MS doesn't care, but the Russian government can't prove/or isn't satisfied that the school's software was properly licensed. Therefore they were going to throw their own Russian book at the guy and ship him off. MS wasn't pushing this; it was entirely a Russian internal matter. You'd think that if Putin wanted to the guy released or the heat slacked off that he'd have called the Russian officals that were giving the guy a hard time since it wasn't even MS doing anything.
What next Russian officals sending folks to Siberia for not following the GPL?
Unless the vote occures during a scheduled downtime, they^W we aren't voting either
Hmm, that could be a future way to stop the other side from making to the poles. Just make sure that you sign up the party that you don't want voting for WOW! On a side note, the company running WOW, could have a "scheduled downtime" only for those of the party it wants to get out to vote. It's a prefect plan... You just need to control Blizzard and have a vague idea of which WOW players that you'd like to be off line for one day. I wonder if Blizzard has ever thought of trying to mold the elections in South Korea to see if this could work for them. I don't know if WOW is as big as StarCraft over there though.
Now a related question... Do you think consumer demand or competition with each other is causing the rapid advancement in chip design and architecture.
.8 a box to make and the rest is "profit" for the GS organization.)
My Girl is just finished selling Girl Scout Cookies. It's competition with other girls and not demand for the cookies. There isn't any demand until you start deliverying and then some one wants a box right then. The GSC are all the same product though troops sell boxs at different prices. If you want cookies, it's cheaper to go to Walmart and buy almost anyother cookie other than GSC. (The GSC cost
Although there are alots of niches that would love increased CPU speed, your average consumer isn't "demanding" it. That average guy wants Vista to run fast on their new Dell and his tech guy friend has told him that Vista will run slowly on a $3-4K computer so that consumer is holding off until a $.5-$1.5K computer can comfortably run Vista. However long that may be. What I'd like is 4GB of ram standard in bottom tier $500 Walmart HP desktops and soon not just in 2017.
Anyone want to guess how long before "qubit" gets compressed to "quit" (as "bigit" became "bit" in the last century)?
Anyone want to guess how long before hillbillies start asking "How many quberts you got in that there system?"
I think qubert rolls of the tongue easier than qubit. Let's push qubert as the new way of saying qubit!
If that's the case, I think they are terribly misguided. Canadians have always had a low tolerance to being stepped on by the elephant that is the US. We have a chip on our shoulders. In fact, one of the defining principles of being a Canadian is that "We aren't American". For some people, that's their only definition of being Canadian.
I hate the term American myself. I've always hated the term. I dislike being labeled "an American." I'm an Arkansan. (I have neighbors that are Texans.) I live in the US, but there is a freaking North, Central, and South America! All those countries and people are all as much Americans as anyone in the US is! Sorry, that's just a personal pet peeve of mine. Canadans have just as much right being American as anyone in the US. Now, the US government and media have ruined the term American that no one wants to use the label except in a negative manner.
And more to the point: Why does the American government allow corporations to dictate foreign policy?
Well, generally because the corporations have a better long term vision for foreign policy than the current government leaders. Corporations generally want peace and a rule set that benefits them and their shareholders. This is slightly better than the Bush let's invade two countries foreign policy. I kinda of view mulitnational corporations as the force that will unify the human race into atleast following a similiar rule set even if we never quite make it to a global government.
It's not just about the raw numbers... Myspacers are spotty teenagers who can't vote, and Facebookers are hippie students who won't vote!
What about WOW then?
When I downloaded this thing yesterday, I was really confused about it. I mean, I know Nintendo is known for being quirky, but this is just odd, you know? What possible purpose could there be in a Wii polling application? Once I played a little with it though, I saw the genius behind this thing. This is to say nothing of the sheer treasure trove of demographic data Nintendo is getting out of this.
My first thought: Nintendo is building a better Family Feud. Really, though this could be great for just asking random survey questions with a handful of answers. I'd be curious if they just asked: do you believe in global warming? And also would you support any public policy changes because of global climate change? I'm curious about how they'll use this tech, but it could be very useful.
RRRRRight. So let's say you see a guy get robbed in the street and can identify the robber. The police find out you witnessed the robbery and subpeona you to appear as a witness. Are you evil for giving up the identity of the robber?
But, I can't ID anyone else because RFID tagging isn't mainstream and cheap yet!
If you want political treatment, write a sim where you're an arms contractor and you need to pay off your local congresspeople in a legal or at least hidden way. Or, write a sim where you get send to a base in Cuba with no hope for escape, rescue or legal representation. There's plenty of dirt to really dig into without making up crap about spec.ops. vs. spec.ops.
Nah, by writing the spec.ops. vs. spec.ops. the general public gets paranoid and thinks of that movie Enemy of the State. When they look for that, they don't find it. All the issues that you state, make a boring game so they won't play that or blow those issues off as they know that the government only engages in spec.ops. vs. spec.ops warfare with itself and that's obviously not going on so everything is perfectly normal except for those few crazies. Sort of makies you think of MegaTokyo and how Largo views all the scifi stuff going on in the background while to Piro and almost every other major character its just a normal day. We don't see the government acting badly out in public so those that scream at the top of their lungs that some thing is wrong that Miho is the zombie queen are looked at like absolutely crazy people and ignored.
I think what would make a great game would be to start off with something like SimCity or the Sims as a backdrop and everything is normal except for your team of either magic users, super heroes, scifi hightech good guys, or covert gov. looking out for the bad guys. You raid random Sim's home for evidence that they are an "evil" doer however you define "evil" be it drinking, drugs, alien contacts, terrorist contacts, unlicensed magical use, being a general villian, or just being someone our team doesn't like today. I guess some one could make Police Sate the game and see how people like playing as Nazis or KGB agents. Nah, that's predictable. Police State the game with legit terror, disease, alien, and anti-government targets to search out and destory. Don't ask why that guy was a terrorist or bad guy, you are just in the swat team and taking his whole family out and take it as a given that he was a bad guy.
We have DNA, fingerprintes, footprints, retina scans, facial thermal imaging scans, picture photos, and voice scans.
Well, that's one hella unwieldy composite primary key, and still not guaranteed to be 100% unique! Actually, that would apply were it not for DNA, which I think probably is primary key-like in humans.
I thought I was fairly complete with what I could think of off the top of my head of what were fairly good ID methods. I'd say voice scans and pictures wouldn't be that good, but all the others are supposed to be very, very good. The thing is 5 sec. after an RFID system becomses used it'll become hacked. It'd be trival to copy someone else's id number. Screw twins or triplets, think of thousands walking around with the same ID code. It starts becoming useless than doesn't it? I could see "famous" people's RFID tag being copied and millions of their fans using their ID code. It'd be like masked famous person committing random crime. At any given moment, it would be hard for the government to narrow which of those RFID tags were good and which were copies. There would be no way of protecting yourself from having your ID tag copied since readers would be every where. I think that I like using DNA or body parts to tag people because atleast than you only have to worry about a handful of copies at the most rather than a large number of copies. That assumes we don't figure cloning out and go into it in a big way. DNA would be a useless ID method if everyone had the same DNA.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-0 2-06.htm#frpaa
http://pkp.sfu.ca/
http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/issue/view/1
Looks like shortly academics and scientists will have their own open access journal if their work is paid by a federal agency that pays out more than $100 million a year in grants. The problem is that I didn't even know this existed 5 minutes ago. Apparently, the bill allows each agency to make their own central deposit of info. I can see why they did that to get less anti-lobbying against the bill from those organizations, but as an average citizen, I'd love one federal research site that I could go to and have easy access to all federally sponsered research. That'll kill some sections of wikipedia when it really hits full steam. Wikipedia won't die. It has a place mainly in cataloging pop culture and things that would otherwise drop below academics radars.
That would be so trivial to defeat that I don't see the point. You just stash the watch in the place where you are supposed to be and you are free. You think about bio-monitoring? Just elect a watch nanny who will put on the watches for the others while they go out. Each person in the gang take its turn as the watch nanny.
Yeah, watch is trival to defeat if they know that its tracking them. That's why some folks would like to chip their kids. It's damn hard for the kids to remove a chip. Not that its impossible, just that most kids won't go to the effort required. Now, if you gave your kid a fancy watch that they like, it just happens to have the GPS thing in there. Would they wear it?
Another really scary thing would be an ad. campign of some agency just giving out watches and tracking people and only telling them in the fine print. How soon do you think that your CES swag will start being tracked?
Why would you do this to yourself, and perhaps more importantly why would you invest millions in R&D?
Um, a unique ID chip that can communicate via RF to a reader is really useless to me. Now, if they were able to thrown in 4-8 GB storage, GPS tracking, and lots of medical monitoring then I might think about it. (Actually, you are right that bracelets or maybe watches would be better. It's far easier to change though also to loose.) I have a routine of when I get home taking my watch, wallet, and a few other things off and putting them all in the same spot. I only take my glasses off just before bed. If I needed some medical device to monitor me 24/7 an implantable and removable chip makes sense. I'm curious when the first GPS tracking watches/braclets for kids are out with a web tool that easily lets parents know where their kids have been/are. That'll sell.
People aren't lining up around the block to have uniquely identifiable bits of technology inserted into 'em? How come?
;) We don't need another unique identifier. We have DNA, fingerprintes, footprints, retina scans, facial thermal imaging scans, picture photos, and voice scans. We've used race, sex, hair color, eye color, height, and wieght when searching for criminals or posting limited ID traits on DLs. Do we really need more? I could see family, friends, schools, religions, employeers, and community clubs (Greenpeace or NRA) wanting to track "their" members, employees, family, or those involved with that religion. I think it's funny. We don't know if God exists so we are going to build a system that can tell where everyone is at any given time because that's one of the things only God was suppposed to be able to do and then worship it. I have no religious reason to object to anyone trying to track or control others that's the fundamental thing that God, governments, and humans generally try to do (control those that don't have the power to stop them.) I'm fairly certain that privacy will become a myth within my lifetime and most people won't even notice its gone.
Cause God beat the government to it.
I work for a public library, and this is exactly what we do now. Every day when school gets out, we're inundated with junior high kids coming in to monopolize our computers for their daily MySpace, RuneScape, and AIM fix. The solution that we've come up with is to reserve one third of our computers for "non recreational use." Specifically, this means no social networking sites, recreational IM, MMORPGs, or games of any kind. Basically, it's at the discretion of the staff to determine when this policy is being violated, and to discus it with the patron.
I hate to ask, but before these internet connected computers were in a public library would any of those kids even come into the library for 5 min after school?
C, Ruby, Javascript, Actionscript/Flash are what I'd push now.
Kindergarten may be a bit early, but certainly by third grade, I think all students should be required to program as an integral part of all the curricula. An emphasis should be placed not on just computer languages, but on robust and secure software design methods.
Dude, that's a bit over board. What you need to do is push Logo. Heck, each time that I check out the latest Logos I'm more and more surprised by the programming skill set being taught by it. What you just need to do is get secure programming as simple for kids to play around with as legos or other building blocks. Kids love to build towers, walls, or forts with blocks and knock them down. They should be able to easily/safely do the same on the computer (and not just in games like SimCity.)
I've found somethings that you asked for, but not all. I did don't know how to string them all together. ClamWin, and SpyBot, both say that they'll run from a bootCD. I didn't find any easy to follow admin install instructions for them. Mainly everything else is some reg files. I didn't find anything on keyboard or mouse ports of earlier versions of windows. I also didn't find anything about how to shock users. In the spirit of open sourceness, I expect someone else to actually do the real work of building a self installing zip file of ClamWin & Spybot, setting your fav. reg. settings, and having all of them autorun after a shutdown -r. I know that "it should possible." I don't know enough windows scripting in order to do it.
:^)
net stop wuauserv
Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc -> Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations. They hid it well but it's there
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Wi ndows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000000
"NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000001
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Policies\Explorer
NoDevMgrUpdate value to 0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Policies \ Microsoft \ WindowsFirewall
Set these to "not configured"
* Windows Firewall: Protect all network connections
* Windows Firewall: Do not allow exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Define program exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow local program exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow remote administration exception
* Windows Firewall: Allow file and printer sharing exception
* Windows Firewall: Allow ICMP exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow Remote Desktop exception
* Windows Firewall: Allow UPnP framework exception
* Windows Firewall: Prohibit notifications
* Windows Firewall: Allow logging
* Windows Firewall: Prohibit unicast response to multicast or broadcast requests
* Windows Firewall: Define port exceptions
* Windows Firewall: Allow local port exceptions
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?doci d=28367&group_id=105508
Preparation
Start by installing the latest version of ClamWin, and download the latest virus definitions. See the ClamWin manual for full details on how to do this. Note that, if you are going to create a CD, you will not be able to update the virus definitions without creating a new CD, since a CD is read-only.
Copy Folders
Create a working folder in a convenient location to hold the files that are to be copied onto CD/USB, eg C:\ClamWin-CD.
In the working folder, create a folder named ClamWin.
Copy the contents of the ClamWin program folder into C:\ClamWin-CD\ClamWin. By default, the ClamWin program folder is installed to C:\Program Files\ClamWin
Create folders named log, db and quara
Reduced costs from the Pixar end. I would think that even if Pixar didn't write the game, whatever properly licensed publisher couuld try to obtain the computer models straight from Pixar for use in the game. This means that one guy copies/pastes/scalee from Pixar into the game companies format. If a game company did its own IP from ground up, of course they'd have more work to do.
Actually, when I think of casual games I think of the games that my wife plays: JewelQuest, solitare, and mine sweeper. I wouldn't class a "Pixar Cars" game as a casual game. It may be a kid game, but it that still doesn't mean that it can't be difficult for the casual adult gamer. (Heck, I played one of my kids Sponge Bob's game to try to get them past a level to the next save stop and I was surprised that it was hard. It had limitless lives, but the task (racing course) was difficult for even me, which startled me.) I like that "hard-core" gamers will always be around. They will be those that instead of buying 5 games for family/friends during Christams or combined through out the year, will buy 5 games every few weeks. They will always have publishers that target them. They'll always rail against the mainstream for purchasing games like JewelQuest, Dr. Mario, or Tetris as being cheap to develop and raking in far more money than they should. I wonder how many "hard core" gamers have disappeared into WOW or similiar games.
What I'm saying is that people need to either get off their asses and really learn climate science (very very unlikely) or admit that they don't know enough to debate the issue themselves and instead just figure out whose opinions to trust. It's a lot like going to the doctor. It's only an idiot who refuses to get surgery when their doctor tells them they have a malignant growth because they read some article in newsweek. A smart individual gets a second or third opinion and asks doctors they trust whether it really is a tumor and then takes action based on the expert advice. All I'm saying is we should do the same with the climate as we would do with our own bodies.
That'd me what I do as well, but you forgot about those that don't trust most doctors and would go to a faith healer or alt. medicine doctor and trust them. Or would rather just go without any medical treatment because they'll die whenever God wills it. My mother-in-law will get 4-5 opinions for various doctors and won't trust or believe any of them. The doctors will say somehting like "its all in your head" and she'll get really ticked and find another doctor. The problem with the global climate is that "its all in their head" as long as they can't explain it to the average person. I'm sorry, but I've not seen enough material that really would force me to change my behavior. It's all been PR rants from various groups. That's the problem. The actual climate scientists get drowned out. I want to listen to their abstract and if I don't want to take their advice then I'll go about my business. Problem is that you have several sides that will throw up or popularize alot of abstracts so its not really worth it any more to pay attention. I have several fields that I keep an eye towards; its just far too much effort filtering the BS out from the climate debate so I ignore all of it.
He disregarded a subpoena from a court. Be a good citizen. Show up to court when called. It's no different than standard etiquette and social grace. If you're invited to a large party of important people, even if you disagree with them, at least show up and have a few hors d'oevres.
I think that, as usual, the US attorney is being a knob because he can--because his social connections and political backing give him power over a standard citizen. At the same time: Hey, Josh! When a federal court sends you a subpoena that means "Show up or else!"
Disregarding a subpoena is a gesture of disrespect and impunity. Jailing a citizen for disregarding a subpoena is just standard procedure (afaik).
This is why I don't like our legal system and esp. judges and lawyers. Judges act like little tin gods. With this kind of power, they can get away with it 9 times out of 10 and be legal. If your boss tells you that you need to show up for his fancy party for some VIPs, you can ignore him and maybe have to find another job. You can't ignore this judges that have run amok. The only ones that know and reliaze the kind of power judges have are lawyers and considering that lawyers bcome either judges, politicans, or lobbiests, well you see why I don't have faith in that class of worker.
I think we'd collectively be more concerned with, you know, people dropping like flies in huge numbers than we would about telecommuting or browsing YouTube, or at least I like to think that we would.
Seriously, the health and safety of my loved ones and society as a whole would be paramount in my mind, and everything else would be a distant second. This story reminds me of those Starbucks managers selling water to injured and shocked people and the idiots quoting SLAs while the World Trade Center's twin towers were falling.
You kinda of are missing the point. I could keep my wife and kids at home, but my job would require me to "go to work." I'm the general computer guy at a police department. I could be the point source of potential infection for my family. Kids can be homeschooled. My wife could try googling businesses that delivery in my area. What if there isn't? Well, we'd end up making one big trip to Sams a month or two rather than lots of smaller trips to Walmart. We'd stock up for as long as possible to ride this through. I don't have broadband at home, but I'd get it if I thought that my family really needed it. What would people be doing while they are couped up together? My family only has one PC. I have myself, my wife, and two kids. How are we two share that resource? During school hours one of the kids gets to use the computer? I'll admit that it could be workable for those that have a PC/laptop for most family members or that already have broadband or work from home. For everyone else though, it'd be very difficult.
I'm fairly confident a company can't unilaterally declare themselves the winner in a 6 month old format war. It doesn't work like that.
Um, sure everyone "can" decalre themselves the winner, but no one will listen to them though. I'm too lazy to read the article. I'm wondering how this even got outside of some marketting/PR guy's office/e-mail system. I mean come on, can't they have atleast bribed a few consumer electronics mag reporters to write a few articles declaring them the winner? I mean come on if you are going to declare yourself the winner; then you need to do it in a manner people will somewhat listen to and believe it.