Yes. It tossed the last one in becuase it looks like a college paper done to dazzle a prof and using lots of technospeak. The actual facts could have been presented in a much better format. I just thought it was funny that he was trying to refute the other articles self feedback at resonance by using a double negative to say it is something else which turns out to be the same thing. A few Slashdotters noticed it and this is the biggest feedback on the entire post.
the most effective solution would involve a GPS receiver.
Not always. Most of the places I use my laptop has no reception (I am an avid GPS user). When on the road in the back country using Back Roads Explorer topographic map software (runs fine in WINE) there is no network connection. GPS data would be useless for any live tracking. Tracking my ISP subscriber connection on the other hand would be useful.
I would argue that the cost of any tracking solutions is bound to be more
For Linux, cron is included free. Set up an auto backup as a cron job. When it phones home to sync files on your server, capture their IP address and pay a visit to their ISP with your logs. It helps to have a policeman in tow when visiting the ISP and subscribers home. A search warrent is also useful at this time. This detail is what OJ forgot.
My Linux Thinkpad does wireless fine, though, so no help there...
Mine does wireless fine also, but without the administration password, the difficulty of changing the SSID and WEP key will keep them off their home lan. The only place it would work is on a LAN using your SSID and WEP key. The non-admin accounts do not have privilages to change that. (Net Manager and the wraper you use may enable that. You milage may vary.)
I've been the victim of a stolen vehicle before... and I know police really don't give a diddly squat about stolen vehicles.
That is one of the reasons I drive the car that I do. It would need towed to swipe. Without the chipped key, the fly by wire throttle, transmission, engine, etc is dead. Short of a computer replacement or theft of keys, there isn't any real way to start and drive off in a prius that doesn't use the wireless fob. The car doesn't have a 12 volt starter. It doesn't have any mechanical shift linkage on the transmission. With a dead computer, the fly by wire operation is non-functional.
If you install only linux on the laptop, the thief will be so confused, he'll return you your computer. Now that's what I call sneaky.
Even if the thief doesn't know how to log-in, if there is a net connection a simple cron job to sync with your server would provide IP addresses as it phoned home as part of the daily routine. Trace the route and get a court order to find the subscriber of the ISP.
Part of the cron job could be to look for tasks to run. When the laptop is gone, have cron start the keylogger and collect the keystrokes on the guest account you left open for him. Then send him an e-mail from himself requesting it back. If that doesn't work, make a withdrawl from his bank account to cover the cost of your loss. Watch the fireworks..
Does anyone really believe that one in five dollars spent goes to something "fake"?
I think they are counting lost sales based on any fake would have been a real sale. Just considering my daughters 30 gig Zen would lead to that conclusion. The Zen has 2,200 files on it (I know from making a backup). With the back-up copy also being a pirated copy, that at a dollar per song is about 5K dollars worth of pirated stuff. That counts just my daughters Zen, not my son's iPod. In the last year using those figures, they have collected together over 15% of my income for the year. I think this is the figures they are running with.
What they are failing to figure, is if all that music was paid for for each copy, is they could pocket that money. This is simply wrong. That money isn't there. At full retail with piracy eliminated the reality would be that neither kid would have any use for an iPod or Zen and they would be exposed to less music and would have bought far fewer CD's than they actualy did. With the portable music players and a large exposuere, they have become avid fans of some bands and buy CD's and go to concerts. Without the exposure, this would not have happend.
I grew up in the 1970s. Through those years, I didn't go to any concerts. The local AM station played country. In high school the next town over got a couple FM stations, one was rock. Piracy was mostly non-existant, but so was my involvement with any music industry product.
When I went into the Navy and spent time in the barracs, I was exposed to lots of neat music. I invested heavily in a very good stereo system including a linear tracking turntable and 2 cassette decks. I pirated a bunch of stuff and also bought a bunch of stuff. That was my peak music buying years. If Piracy didn't exist, I would have had little reason to get into stereo and invest in quality duplication decks in a big way. This is seldom figured in any anti-piracy study. For the new generation, the cassette decks has been replaced by PC hard drives and portable music players. The cost of duplication has gone down, the quality of copies has gone up and the media compainies still have way overpriced products.
The biggest roadblock to stopping piracy at the moment is simply overpriced product. This has not changed since I was in the Navy. I would have bought a lot more of my favorite music if it didn't cost so stinking much. I'm glad to see Nine Inch Nails make an issue of that. They are dead right.
The Tacoma Narrows bridge apparently was not designed not to collapse - the designer failed to factor in the high wind speeds in the Tacoma Narrows and the resulting resonant effect on the structure into the bridge design.
Before you re-write history, check the news reports of the day. It wasn't a very windy day. The bridge was stable at much higher winds. The moderate wind and the direction was just right to produce a resonant feedback. It wasn't high winds that too the bridge down. It was steady mild wind that kept putting more motion into a resonant system.
References;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.html
At the time it opened for traffic in 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the third longest suspension bridge in the world. It was promptly nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," due to its behavior in wind. Not only did the deck sway sideways, but vertical undulations also appeared in quite moderate winds. Drivers of cars reported that vehicles ahead of them would completely disappear and reappear from view several times as they crossed the bridge. Attempts were made to stabilize the structure with cables and hydraulic buffers, but they were unsuccessful. On November 7, 1940, only four months after it opened, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a wind of 42 mph--even though the structure was designed to withstand winds of up to 120 mph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge The wind-induced collapse occurred on November 7, 1940 at 11:00 AM(Pacific time), due partially to a physical phenomenon known as mechanical resonance. [4]
And for sake of balance here is a modern study stating it wasn't resonance but instead a negative feedback; http://www.ketchum.org/wind.html " . . . in many undergraduate physics texts the (1940 Tacoma Narrows bridge) disaster is presented as an example of elementary forced resonance . . . Engineers, on the other hand, have studied the phenomenon . . . and their current understanding differs fundamentally from the viewpoint expressed in most physics texts. In the present article the engineers' viewpoint is presented . . . It is then demonstrated that the ultimate failure of the bridge was in fact related to an aerodynamically induced condition of self-excitation or "negative damping" . . . This paper emphasizes the fact that. physically as well as mathematically, forced resonance and self- excitation are fundamentally different phenomena.
The one common thread in all the above is it was not a high wind that took the bridge down. It was the feedback pumping energy into the motion.
It's a specious argument - blaming the OS for not supporting 'idiot hardware'.
I blame the manufacture for putting out a retail product and failing to mention anywhere on the packaging that it has reduced functionality under Windows and drivers now and in the future will never be provided to fix it.
The incompatiblity showed up after I bought it. Needless to say, it was quite a letdown to go from 24K colors to 8 on the new high performance 3D gaming graphics card.
The upgrade blues has put me off many upgrades until the bugs are worked out and known. I am cautious of any new hardware and software as upgrading one and not the other is likely to cause problems. That is the primary reason I never upgrade Windows machines anymore. They either die with the original OS or get Linux as an upgrade. I can find out what doesn't work without spending several hundred dollars only to find I then need a hardware upgrade also.
This is incorrect. "Switch user" in Windows XP leaves inactive users' processes running.
If that is true, then my Wife's Dell arrived broken. Switch user has always saved the intermediate step of log out when switching users. That is why I made the comment. I noticed I was still logged in with applications open and running on Ubuntu unlike XP. This nice suprise was welcome.
Can anyone else let me know how their XP switches users? Maybe what I am getting is simply because one account is an administrator and the other is a user account and one is logged out to change privilage levels.
I just don't understand your issue of getting desktops out of 640x480 8 - there never was an issue with supported video chips/cards (i.e. almost all by Win95).
Try Windows 95 with any AGP card. I found out the hard way, Windows 95 doesn't do AGP video. My fancy expensive 3D mega ram video card only ran 640x480x8 on Windows 95. I fixed it by buying a new PCI video card. It was much cheaper than a retail version of the new Windows 98.
Boy do I remember those days. Installing Windows 95 on a machine with an AGP card with mega ram and only getting 640x480x8.. I could not believe it when someone told me it was because Windows 95 did not support USB. I swore off AGP cards as trouble from then on.
Good point. That is why I retired Windows 2000. I got tired of it searching for a driver whenever someone handed me a USB thumb drive with their presentation on it. I had the option to either Spend $$$$ for XP which is to be obsolete in a year, Spend $$$$ for Vista which won't run on the older hardware, buy new hardware, or try to recycle the hardware for free by installing Ubuntu.
I agree Ubuntu is way ahead of where Win2k was in 2000 or 2001 which is exactly why it was such a great upgrade!
I now never need a driver for a thumb drive. All my hardware works without using any driver disk. I can now rip DVD's to hard drive, burn ISO's from the filesystem, and many other neat tricks that took expensive 3rd party applications in the past. As a bonus it comes bundled with a SIP phone. Installing support for DVD playback, Creative portable music players, iPods and such was not difficult. Most digital cameras are truly plug an play.
The only bug I haven't fixed yet is the test page it sends to my antique Laserjet 3 is formatted for A4 paper regardless of what paper size I tell it the printer contains. I don't have an A4 paper tray, so the printer just sits waiting and prompting for me to load the A4 tray. Regular print jobs print just fine.
If your computer play DVDs out of the box, it means that the system integrator installed DVD player software and codecs for you. You paid for it, separate from Windows.
Very true, most often it comes bundled with the DVD drive. Let's get a campaign going to get DVD drive manufactures to provide DVD drivers/codecs for several non-MS operating systems.
The question that I have, are these things that a user can overcome?
That was the problem with his review. He reviewed the product without understanding any of the policies regarding free to distribute software. His gripes included not playing DVD's (Licensing issue) MP3 playback (same) and some issues with dead sound after a hibernate (valid bug) and the touch pad sensitivity (hardware driver vendor issue).
If you evaluate Ubuntu and know up front that the stuff requiring an extra royalty to package with the product (MP3) or the vendor won't provide a license (DVD Consortium, Apple iPod, MS MTP & MJB, and vendors who don't permit bundling but want the end user to download for free includes items such as Adobe flash, Sun Java, and other 3rd party software.
Once you understand what is not in the package, but can be easly added, (some may be illegal in your country such as DVD playback of CSS protected region coded content) and evaluate the OS instead of the bundled applications not included, you will find Ubuntu stable and full of features with lots of bundled software that cost a bunch extra on Windows. The reviewer didn't address the number of BSOD's he got or the number of executible jpegs that the system couldn't run by default.
He didn't cover multi-user advantages. In Windows for example, switch user logs me out and dumps my download so someone else can jump on and do a quick check of email. On Ubuntu, switch user leaves everything running while someone else can log in and check their email. My download, DVD rip, raytrace render, or video transcode job continues to run while they are logged in checking their email.
He somehow pointed out the glass half empty pointing out that propritory 3rd party codecs and plug-in's are not included in the package. He does have a point as Dell is big enough to pay the MP3 codec lisence as a manufacture and include it in the build just like Apple and Microsoft. Naturally the EULA should point out the non-free codec is included with the laptop purchase and may not be duplicated.
It should come with 2 recovery disks. On is the free software and the other is the EULA wrapped restricted use software to include codecs, flash, MTP and MJB libraries, DVD playback, and such.
End user education is a big part of promoting Open Source Software. A line between the OS and 3rd party restrictions should be part of every commercial Linux install. The included OSS applications included without extra charge should be pointed out such as the scanner utility, photo editor, web server, office suite, etc.
There are ways to spend money instead of reducing productivity (like installing dedicated phones between offices that don't link to the POTS network), but losing money is hardly better than losing time.
I worked in one place that had a secure internal only phone system. As a joke, an employee called from in the building and stated he was going to be about 20 minutes late to work because he has a flat and needs to change it. After the phone call, the desk realised what phone the call came in on. The phone system was powered down while they investigated how an outside call rang a secure internal phone. When he did come upstatirs into the office, he admitted the prank. It was pretty funny and rattled the telcom guys pretty bad.
Actually I bet the NSA is doing everything you name, except for the 256bit thing. I'm sure they're using at least 4096 bit encryption (assuming RS). Maybe biometrics instead of the fancy passwords.
But you can be sure that the rooms are faraday cages; even the CIA does that.;-)
(The CIA also has double walls between which they pump white noise so that people can't read the vibrations of the glass with laser meters. The building is magnetically shielded so people can't "read" the monitors of people remotely.)
The CIA isn't the only orginization to completely hide operations. I worked one place where any type of recorder was forbidden, including paper and electronic toys such as a furby.
I'm no stranger to vents with accoustic dampers (fancy muffler) with speakers feeding noise into the ductwork. The dampers worked well. We couldn't hear the speakers inside. Outside any leakage was well masked. Full farady cage was the norm to sensitive spaces including full finger gasket on the copper pannel on the door.
"Universal Offers iPod-Resistant MP3s" to "Universal Offers iPod-Resistant Music"
The article is slanted against Apple. The proper title should be ""Universal Offers iPod-Resistant MP3s" to "Universal Offers Microsoft's proprietary Plays for Sure format Music"
Then in the article they could cover the fact the music is on a digital subscription leash (if it is) and will only work on Plays for Sure devices such as the Creative Zen, RCA Lyra, and is incompatible with plain PM3 players and other DRM format players such as the Microsoft Zune, Sony AC3, players and the popular Apple line of iPod music players.
The article got this WRONG. It is not a MP3 format that targets Apple. It is a DRM format that is incompatible with many very popular portable music players.
Well, you won't see any of the sites I host then, since I use DirectNIC as well.
Darn-it. I was hoping they had their own netblock to handle all the download traffic. It's the pits they went with a hosted site. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on sites that are now null-routed. So far, I haven't run into any, but I haven't been on long. I hope the mole can keep us informed on the domain names they use so we can keep our hosts files up to date.
An interesting detail has emerged. Files from SpiralFrog are digitally protected and can be played on mp3 players, but cannot be burned to CDs. There is another minor detail, though -- the files cannot be played on Apple's wildly popular iPod MP3 players.
I would think any MP3 player would not be able to play these unless the format was something other than MP3 such as WMA or the old SONY DRM format. If this is true, then the article missed the point entirely. It would be incompatible with one of the lines of the Microsoft standard line players such as either the Zune of one of the many protected WMA players such as the Creative Zen series, RCA Lyra and others. Since it can't be burned to CD.. It's probably incompatible with all DVD players that play MP3 CD and DVD MP3 formats.
I am thinking the article should really be about incompatible DRM is used, not that the iPod can't play some or other DRM format they decided to use.
Slashdot Mirror
Pushing ones and zeros are safer than pushing dope. No wonder organized crime has delved into the digital world.
Does that mean my local dealer is going away?
Wouldn't "negative damping" be positive feedback?
Yes. It tossed the last one in becuase it looks like a college paper done to dazzle a prof and using lots of technospeak. The actual facts could have been presented in a much better format. I just thought it was funny that he was trying to refute the other articles self feedback at resonance by using a double negative to say it is something else which turns out to be the same thing. A few Slashdotters noticed it and this is the biggest feedback on the entire post.
At least they went from these with just a couple billion bytes storage (Gig);
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH3380A.html
to something like these with a little more room;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144701
That should save a little on the light bill.
the most effective solution would involve a GPS receiver.
Not always. Most of the places I use my laptop has no reception (I am an avid GPS user). When on the road in the back country using Back Roads Explorer topographic map software (runs fine in WINE) there is no network connection. GPS data would be useless for any live tracking. Tracking my ISP subscriber connection on the other hand would be useful.
I would argue that the cost of any tracking solutions is bound to be more
For Linux, cron is included free. Set up an auto backup as a cron job. When it phones home to sync files on your server, capture their IP address and pay a visit to their ISP with your logs. It helps to have a policeman in tow when visiting the ISP and subscribers home. A search warrent is also useful at this time. This detail is what OJ forgot.
My Linux Thinkpad does wireless fine, though, so no help there...
Mine does wireless fine also, but without the administration password, the difficulty of changing the SSID and WEP key will keep them off their home lan. The only place it would work is on a LAN using your SSID and WEP key. The non-admin accounts do not have privilages to change that. (Net Manager and the wraper you use may enable that. You milage may vary.)
I've been the victim of a stolen vehicle before... and I know police really don't give a diddly squat about stolen vehicles.
That is one of the reasons I drive the car that I do. It would need towed to swipe. Without the chipped key, the fly by wire throttle, transmission, engine, etc is dead. Short of a computer replacement or theft of keys, there isn't any real way to start and drive off in a prius that doesn't use the wireless fob. The car doesn't have a 12 volt starter. It doesn't have any mechanical shift linkage on the transmission. With a dead computer, the fly by wire operation is non-functional.
If you install only linux on the laptop, the thief will be so confused, he'll return you your computer. Now that's what I call sneaky.
Even if the thief doesn't know how to log-in, if there is a net connection a simple cron job to sync with your server would provide IP addresses as it phoned home as part of the daily routine. Trace the route and get a court order to find the subscriber of the ISP.
Part of the cron job could be to look for tasks to run. When the laptop is gone, have cron start the keylogger and collect the keystrokes on the guest account you left open for him. Then send him an e-mail from himself requesting it back. If that doesn't work, make a withdrawl from his bank account to cover the cost of your loss. Watch the fireworks..
Does anyone really believe that one in five dollars spent goes to something "fake"?
I think they are counting lost sales based on any fake would have been a real sale. Just considering my daughters 30 gig Zen would lead to that conclusion. The Zen has 2,200 files on it (I know from making a backup). With the back-up copy also being a pirated copy, that at a dollar per song is about 5K dollars worth of pirated stuff. That counts just my daughters Zen, not my son's iPod. In the last year using those figures, they have collected together over 15% of my income for the year. I think this is the figures they are running with.
What they are failing to figure, is if all that music was paid for for each copy, is they could pocket that money. This is simply wrong. That money isn't there. At full retail with piracy eliminated the reality would be that neither kid would have any use for an iPod or Zen and they would be exposed to less music and would have bought far fewer CD's than they actualy did. With the portable music players and a large exposuere, they have become avid fans of some bands and buy CD's and go to concerts. Without the exposure, this would not have happend.
I grew up in the 1970s. Through those years, I didn't go to any concerts. The local AM station played country. In high school the next town over got a couple FM stations, one was rock. Piracy was mostly non-existant, but so was my involvement with any music industry product.
When I went into the Navy and spent time in the barracs, I was exposed to lots of neat music. I invested heavily in a very good stereo system including a linear tracking turntable and 2 cassette decks. I pirated a bunch of stuff and also bought a bunch of stuff. That was my peak music buying years. If Piracy didn't exist, I would have had little reason to get into stereo and invest in quality duplication decks in a big way. This is seldom figured in any anti-piracy study. For the new generation, the cassette decks has been replaced by PC hard drives and portable music players. The cost of duplication has gone down, the quality of copies has gone up and the media compainies still have way overpriced products.
The biggest roadblock to stopping piracy at the moment is simply overpriced product. This has not changed since I was in the Navy. I would have bought a lot more of my favorite music if it didn't cost so stinking much. I'm glad to see Nine Inch Nails make an issue of that. They are dead right.
You mean positive feedback, not negative. Negative feedback acts to damp the driving source, positive acts to amplify it.
That is exactly what I thought when I read the article. I read it twice and it is using the inverse of positive feedback. It states Negative Damping.
The Tacoma Narrows bridge apparently was not designed not to collapse - the designer failed to factor in the high wind speeds in the Tacoma Narrows and the resulting resonant effect on the structure into the bridge design.
Before you re-write history, check the news reports of the day. It wasn't a very windy day. The bridge was stable at much higher winds. The moderate wind and the direction was just right to produce a resonant feedback. It wasn't high winds that too the bridge down. It was steady mild wind that kept putting more motion into a resonant system.
References;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.html
At the time it opened for traffic in 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the third longest suspension bridge in the world. It was promptly nicknamed "Galloping Gertie," due to its behavior in wind. Not only did the deck sway sideways, but vertical undulations also appeared in quite moderate winds. Drivers of cars reported that vehicles ahead of them would completely disappear and reappear from view several times as they crossed the bridge. Attempts were made to stabilize the structure with cables and hydraulic buffers, but they were unsuccessful. On November 7, 1940, only four months after it opened, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a wind of 42 mph--even though the structure was designed to withstand winds of up to 120 mph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge
The wind-induced collapse occurred on November 7, 1940 at 11:00 AM(Pacific time), due partially to a physical phenomenon known as mechanical resonance. [4]
And for sake of balance here is a modern study stating it wasn't resonance but instead a negative feedback;
http://www.ketchum.org/wind.html
" . . . in many undergraduate physics texts the (1940 Tacoma Narrows bridge) disaster is presented as an example of elementary forced resonance . . . Engineers, on the other hand, have studied the phenomenon . . . and their current understanding differs fundamentally from the viewpoint expressed in most physics texts. In the present article the engineers' viewpoint is presented . . . It is then demonstrated that the ultimate failure of the bridge was in fact related to an aerodynamically induced condition of self-excitation or "negative damping" . . . This paper emphasizes the fact that. physically as well as mathematically, forced resonance and self- excitation are fundamentally different phenomena.
The one common thread in all the above is it was not a high wind that took the bridge down. It was the feedback pumping energy into the motion.
It's a specious argument - blaming the OS for not supporting 'idiot hardware'.
I blame the manufacture for putting out a retail product and failing to mention anywhere on the packaging that it has reduced functionality under Windows and drivers now and in the future will never be provided to fix it.
The incompatiblity showed up after I bought it. Needless to say, it was quite a letdown to go from 24K colors to 8 on the new high performance 3D gaming graphics card.
The upgrade blues has put me off many upgrades until the bugs are worked out and known. I am cautious of any new hardware and software as upgrading one and not the other is likely to cause problems. That is the primary reason I never upgrade Windows machines anymore. They either die with the original OS or get Linux as an upgrade. I can find out what doesn't work without spending several hundred dollars only to find I then need a hardware upgrade also.
This is incorrect. "Switch user" in Windows XP leaves inactive users' processes running.
If that is true, then my Wife's Dell arrived broken. Switch user has always saved the intermediate step of log out when switching users. That is why I made the comment. I noticed I was still logged in with applications open and running on Ubuntu unlike XP. This nice suprise was welcome.
Can anyone else let me know how their XP switches users?
Maybe what I am getting is simply because one account is an administrator and the other is a user account and one is logged out to change privilage levels.
I just don't understand your issue of getting desktops out of 640x480 8 - there never was an issue with supported video chips/cards (i.e. almost all by Win95).
Try Windows 95 with any AGP card. I found out the hard way, Windows 95 doesn't do AGP video. My fancy expensive 3D mega ram video card only ran 640x480x8 on Windows 95. I fixed it by buying a new PCI video card. It was much cheaper than a retail version of the new Windows 98.
trying to get your desktop out of 640x480x8
Boy do I remember those days. Installing Windows 95 on a machine with an AGP card with mega ram and only getting 640x480x8.. I could not believe it when someone told me it was because Windows 95 did not support USB. I swore off AGP cards as trouble from then on.
That's great, but it's 2007 now.
Good point. That is why I retired Windows 2000. I got tired of it searching for a driver whenever someone handed me a USB thumb drive with their presentation on it. I had the option to either Spend $$$$ for XP which is to be obsolete in a year, Spend $$$$ for Vista which won't run on the older hardware, buy new hardware, or try to recycle the hardware for free by installing Ubuntu.
I agree Ubuntu is way ahead of where Win2k was in 2000 or 2001 which is exactly why it was such a great upgrade!
I now never need a driver for a thumb drive. All my hardware works without using any driver disk. I can now rip DVD's to hard drive, burn ISO's from the filesystem, and many other neat tricks that took expensive 3rd party applications in the past. As a bonus it comes bundled with a SIP phone. Installing support for DVD playback, Creative portable music players, iPods and such was not difficult. Most digital cameras are truly plug an play.
The only bug I haven't fixed yet is the test page it sends to my antique Laserjet 3 is formatted for A4 paper regardless of what paper size I tell it the printer contains. I don't have an A4 paper tray, so the printer just sits waiting and prompting for me to load the A4 tray. Regular print jobs print just fine.
If your computer play DVDs out of the box, it means that the system integrator installed DVD player software and codecs for you. You paid for it, separate from Windows.
Very true, most often it comes bundled with the DVD drive. Let's get a campaign going to get DVD drive manufactures to provide DVD drivers/codecs for several non-MS operating systems.
The question that I have, are these things that a user can overcome?
That was the problem with his review. He reviewed the product without understanding any of the policies regarding free to distribute software. His gripes included not playing DVD's (Licensing issue) MP3 playback (same) and some issues with dead sound after a hibernate (valid bug) and the touch pad sensitivity (hardware driver vendor issue).
If you evaluate Ubuntu and know up front that the stuff requiring an extra royalty to package with the product (MP3) or the vendor won't provide a license (DVD Consortium, Apple iPod, MS MTP & MJB, and vendors who don't permit bundling but want the end user to download for free includes items such as Adobe flash, Sun Java, and other 3rd party software.
Once you understand what is not in the package, but can be easly added, (some may be illegal in your country such as DVD playback of CSS protected region coded content) and evaluate the OS instead of the bundled applications not included, you will find Ubuntu stable and full of features with lots of bundled software that cost a bunch extra on Windows. The reviewer didn't address the number of BSOD's he got or the number of executible jpegs that the system couldn't run by default.
He didn't cover multi-user advantages. In Windows for example, switch user logs me out and dumps my download so someone else can jump on and do a quick check of email. On Ubuntu, switch user leaves everything running while someone else can log in and check their email. My download, DVD rip, raytrace render, or video transcode job continues to run while they are logged in checking their email.
He somehow pointed out the glass half empty pointing out that propritory 3rd party codecs and plug-in's are not included in the package. He does have a point as Dell is big enough to pay the MP3 codec lisence as a manufacture and include it in the build just like Apple and Microsoft. Naturally the EULA should point out the non-free codec is included with the laptop purchase and may not be duplicated.
It should come with 2 recovery disks. On is the free software and the other is the EULA wrapped restricted use software to include codecs, flash, MTP and MJB libraries, DVD playback, and such.
End user education is a big part of promoting Open Source Software. A line between the OS and 3rd party restrictions should be part of every commercial Linux install. The included OSS applications included without extra charge should be pointed out such as the scanner utility, photo editor, web server, office suite, etc.
There are ways to spend money instead of reducing productivity (like installing dedicated phones between offices that don't link to the POTS network), but losing money is hardly better than losing time.
I worked in one place that had a secure internal only phone system. As a joke, an employee called from in the building and stated he was going to be about 20 minutes late to work because he has a flat and needs to change it. After the phone call, the desk realised what phone the call came in on. The phone system was powered down while they investigated how an outside call rang a secure internal phone. When he did come upstatirs into the office, he admitted the prank. It was pretty funny and rattled the telcom guys pretty bad.
Actually I bet the NSA is doing everything you name, except for the 256bit thing. I'm sure they're using at least 4096 bit encryption (assuming RS). Maybe biometrics instead of the fancy passwords.
;-)
But you can be sure that the rooms are faraday cages; even the CIA does that.
(The CIA also has double walls between which they pump white noise so that people can't read the vibrations of the glass with laser meters. The building is magnetically shielded so people can't "read" the monitors of people remotely.)
The CIA isn't the only orginization to completely hide operations. I worked one place where any type of recorder was forbidden, including paper and electronic toys such as a furby.
I'm no stranger to vents with accoustic dampers (fancy muffler) with speakers feeding noise into the ductwork. The dampers worked well. We couldn't hear the speakers inside. Outside any leakage was well masked. Full farady cage was the norm to sensitive spaces including full finger gasket on the copper pannel on the door.
Those were interesting days.
I'm wondering if SCO CEO is having any troubles sleeping these days.
I would presume it depends on if he has a good pharmasist.
Of course there's risks involved, such as repairmen being shocked.
Most all parallel connect inverters (co-Gen) are designed to shut down and not island if the grid fails.
"Universal Offers iPod-Resistant MP3s" to "Universal Offers iPod-Resistant Music"
The article is slanted against Apple. The proper title should be ""Universal Offers iPod-Resistant MP3s" to "Universal Offers Microsoft's proprietary Plays for Sure format Music"
Then in the article they could cover the fact the music is on a digital subscription leash (if it is) and will only work on Plays for Sure devices such as the Creative Zen, RCA Lyra, and is incompatible with plain PM3 players and other DRM format players such as the Microsoft Zune, Sony AC3, players and the popular Apple line of iPod music players.
The article got this WRONG. It is not a MP3 format that targets Apple. It is a DRM format that is incompatible with many very popular portable music players.
Well, you won't see any of the sites I host then, since I use DirectNIC as well.
Darn-it. I was hoping they had their own netblock to handle all the download traffic. It's the pits they went with a hosted site. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on sites that are now null-routed. So far, I haven't run into any, but I haven't been on long. I hope the mole can keep us informed on the domain names they use so we can keep our hosts files up to date.
From the article,
An interesting detail has emerged. Files from SpiralFrog are digitally protected and can be played on mp3 players, but cannot be burned to CDs. There is another minor detail, though -- the files cannot be played on Apple's wildly popular iPod MP3 players.
I would think any MP3 player would not be able to play these unless the format was something other than MP3 such as WMA or the old SONY DRM format. If this is true, then the article missed the point entirely. It would be incompatible with one of the lines of the Microsoft standard line players such as either the Zune of one of the many protected WMA players such as the Creative Zen series, RCA Lyra and others. Since it can't be burned to CD.. It's probably incompatible with all DVD players that play MP3 CD and DVD MP3 formats.
I am thinking the article should really be about incompatible DRM is used, not that the iPod can't play some or other DRM format they decided to use.