I need drop-down Domain/Local. They got rid of this in the name of "security". I'm told this might be back in SP1. Domain/user works fine though.
Security Suite 2 (Ghost 10 or 11, I lose count). GhostCast running via some boot-disk-emulation over a PXE boot menu. Average deployment time of an image with XP + Office + all the usual (Flash, Quicktime, Shockwave, Realplayer, Adobe Reader, an unzip util etc.) in an admittedly highly-compressed image - 3:30. I'm used to larger images on a 100 mbps network. I don't doubt that you could get that kind of performance on a closed all-gigabit network. If course, it really doesn't matter to me if Ghost is faster if I spend all my time building images (which is what I did when I used Ghost for these tasks).
http://www.symantec.com/business/products/overview.jsp?pcid=2260&pvid=865_1 As I said, this is not Binary Research Ghost. Symantec bought both Ghost and DriveImage, discontinued Ghost, and renamed DriveImage to Ghost because it had a better reputation. The last "real" Ghost was 7.5, after that the development team changed and DriveImage code started getting in and introducing bugs. Most of the problems weren't corrected until Symantec Ghost 11. By then I had already moved on.
I don't. MSI deployment over Active Directory. Already in place. Wait, this makes no sense. Are you telling me that when you create new MSI packages you DON'T update your images? So does this mean that your users spend hours installing updates after their systems are imaged?
Granted, an advantage, but the worst I have to do is build a Windows image a year for the new cycle of machines Most organizations have a much greater diversity of hardware than yours seems to. I can tell you that the model of buying hundreds of fixed-configuration PCs which are deployed in a single big batch, with no one-offs, is near non-existent in most companies. You have to be a very large company to get Dell to guarantee you consistent hardware. I know that in most of the companies I've worked in (that includes many Fortune 500 companies) didn't get this kind of deal and Dell (HP, etc.) wouldn't guarantee that we would receive exactly identical hardware after a few months.
In case I'm not being clear: Order 100 new laptops for users in Jan 2007, by March 2007 5 of those laptops have broken and have been replaced with laptops with different hardware, by June 2007 5 more break with still different hardware: How do you avoid having to make multiple images? Are you buying white-box PCs? If so, who is your vendor that they make these kinds of guarantees?
BTW, What do you do with the OLD computers?
I'd like to point out this issue of "imaging vs. slipstream install" is completely separate from Vista. There are good third-party tools for slipstreaming XP installs and generally I consider them superior to imaging for the reasons I've stated. Maintaining multiple images is just too much of a PITA.
* We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
Google considers USE of it's services to be consent. It's one of those things you supposedly agreed to when you signed up for GMail. Read it fine print.
Also, what THEY consider "sensitive personal information" is data like your CCN or SSN, not whether you watch "Lost" or not. They are willing to say to advertisers that "User1284567" in "Somewhere, USA" watches "Lost".
Elections still pending, so you have to wait a bit before making up your mind. Which elections are you talking about? I'm talking about the 2004 elections in Russia and Chechnya. Both were pretty obviously rigged.
Have you got any proof ? Besides articles in BBC News, I mean... I'll take the BBC over Putin's WORD any day. Alexander Litvinenko was obviously assassinated, in a brazen manner, by the Russian government. Putin refuses to extradite the poisoner.. Officials in his government have claimed that Litvinenko "deserved" to be killed.
The last one, which began with the Chechens attacking Dagestan when Putin was not yet in charge, was at least as clean and at least as humane as the wars more "civilized" countries waged during the last century Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because the Nazis built concentration camps doesn't mean it's okay for anyone else to do it.
Should he let them do it ? Obviously, yes. They have the same right to independence that all the former Soviet republic had/have. The Soviet Union was illegitimate and all claims based on the Soviet territory are void.
Each flush costs a few mWh's of electricity and a pint of disinfectant. Plus the wear and tear on the expensive equipment. Frankly, it seems a little excessive to me as well. I'm just repeating what I've heard from airline staff.
If the airlines didn't want you to flush, then why on earth do they serve free beverages? Because if they didn't offer beverages people would complain bitterly. Some might even suffer injury due to dehydration. There is now a hard limit on the number of beverages they will serve on most airlines, I think 2 per person for short flights and 3 per person for long flights.
Nope, but my USERS (remember them) sometimes log in locally (for very particular and good reasons). You DO know you can change the login dialog for Vista back to the old dialog that lets to select the Domain, just like in XP, don't you? You can even set this as a Group Policy.
Whoops, I'm sorry, I'll just throw away those things that mean I can rebuild a full PC in five minutes (absolute maximum) from scratch Please tell me which imaging system allows you to push down a 4GB image over PIIX boot in less than 5 minutes. Ghost, Acronis True Image, and ImageCast don't work anywhere near this fast. I've found that Unattended (which slipstreams XP installs) is always faster for XP, and I've never used Ghost for Vista images (because you're not supposed to).
Granted, you end up doing a bit of RIS-like things in making net-boot menus to run some installation scripts but in the end it's quicker to use established, backwards-compatible software (Ghost) and some batch files/shell scripts (that, incidentally, have worked for several years) to do the job for you. Ghost is a shitty way to deploy Windows. Period. Back in the NT4/2000 days you had few other options, but in the intervening 8 years the deployment tools have improved dramatically. Your refusal to use them is not a fault in Vista.
No, it won't work with multi-boot. If you have to have lots of multi-boot images you're doing something weird, like hardware testing. I find it difficult to believe the admins and sales guys have multi-boot images.
BTW, Ghost was discontinued years ago. Symantec Ghost is actually rebranded ImageCast and, unsurprisingly, it's not compatible with old Ghost images.
Too little, too late and any decent shop has had their equivalents since NT4 or before. You simply don't know what you're talking about. Do you understand how these tools are even used? You do realize that you NEVER have to make custom images again?
You put a 15GB full Vista install on you image server, use the GUI tool to set the options for the Vista install, decide what apps you want in the image and write little config files that auto-install the apps. You do the same thing with drivers.
This means that you don't have to reimage every time you want to update an app. This means you can use the same image with new hardware simply by adding the drivers. Since you've already "packaged" the apps for your image you can push those updates down to clients so you don't have to re-image just to update an app.
But Vista did bring a whole new set of administrative templates (the format of which, by the way, has been extended and changed). That means major admin-template upgrades on every server. That means EXTENSIVE testing of all currently deployed OS's. Jesus man, put the Vista hosts in their own container. It's not hard.
And, as usual, there's still glaring holes in the amount of options available... 800 bloody settings to spot, read up on, check impact, incorporate into policies, test and deploy! Again, which is it? Are there not enough options or too many?
Vista with the same GP as an XP machine works entirely differently. Can you give some examples of this? I tested this very functionality extensively and I can't think of any examples.
The liquids ban has nothing to do with security. Basically, they don't want you pissing during the flights. Each flush of the onboard toilet costs the airlines around $500. A friend reported to me that China Air now bans liquids on flights, PERIOD. Can't bring anything on the plane, can't buy anything on the plane.
The Pope is a position granted by adherents of the Catholic Church. You can try to minimize its importance all you want but your declaration is irrelevant and immature.... [The Church is] monolithic and essentially eternal. Actually, it's not. Do you know why the don't number the Popes anymore? It's because they can't determine how man "legitimate" Popes there were. There is no "unbroken line for Peter". Right now, several dozen people claim the title of Roman Catholic Pontiff, most have been excommunicated but virtually ALL have their followers. The organization that calls itself the "Catholic Church" is really just another schism.
The Pope of modern days must first respect his fellow Catholics and that means staying the course with little deviation. Catholics, as a group, use birth control, are pro-choice, and support artifical insemination. They completely reject Benedict's positions. Benedict represents a certain hard-line segment within the larger Roman Catholic Church, not Catholics in general.
The mission of the Church for some time has been directed to preserving the dignity of man. The mission of the Church is LITERALLY the exact opposite, degrading the dignity of man. No other religion attempts to drown their followers in as much guilt, insults them, and teaches that ALL people, including small children, are inherently evil and corrupt. The church goes out of it's way to denigrate our status as the "paragon of animals" and, ironically, human thought and reasoning in general. If it was up to to Benedict Jews, Muslims, and other nonbelievers would be tortured in concentration camps.
Which in some ways is even more closed then Windows is. "Some ways"? The biggest complaint I have about Apple is that they favor extremely proprietary solutions whenever possible. Interoperability and compatibility sucks in general. The secret of Apple is that everything works great as long as you stay in their sandbox. And their sandbox is pretty small. Don't get me started on iTunes, which I believe is the single worst piece of software ever written. It makes Lotus Notes look user-friendly and robust in comparison. Maybe it works better on MacOS, but on Windows it's a piece of shit.
Yea OSS is getting a few new converts but overall F/OSS comunity has really dropped the ball. This is a key insight. The real enemy of Linux isn't Microsoft, it's Apple. It's Apple and Linux that are fighting over the "Windows alternative" desktop. Linux is only competing directly with Windows in the server space (LAMP vs. IIS).
I bought an Apple TV, and I couldn't be happier. Sure, it doesn't record live TV, but for $9.00/month I get an HD DVR from my cable company. Windows Media Center has no guide costs. As far as I'm aware, this is unique.
I put all my DVDs, music, and photos on the Apple TV, and it is easily navigated with a simple remote. You're stuck in the Apple ecosystem. An Apple TV is a frontend for a Mac desktop, even with the recent upgrade. This is the same model Windows Media Center follows, a Media Center PC with a TV tuner and recording capabilities on the back end (you can get tuners for your iMac or Mac Pro) and a Windows Media Extender on the front end, most commonly an XBOX 360 which has an optional media remote.
Windows Media Center can also handle a vast variety of formats, which is a capability I need.
Stick it in a domain-networked environment Incompetent Windows admins like you really piss off those of us who ARE competent.
like, e.g. log in locally once a PC is connected to a domain without having to know the PC's EXACT name. You're trying to tell me that you could connect to Windows XP hosts without knowing the hostname or IP address? That's a neat trick. How did you do that? Are you trying to say browsing doesn't work with Vista hosts? If that's the case, your network is fucked up. It works just fine in my domains.
Invest in more disk space because every PC image now takes 15Gb of useless crap before you start compared to about 4-5 on XP - servers with large pre-build images love this one, you just multiplied the size of some of their largest single files by 3. This is because Vista images now include ALL versions of the OS, that's how you can do an in-place upgrade. You're not supposed to be using images anymore anyway. You're supposed to slipstream Vista installs. MS helpfully provided lots of tools to do this. And how is it you have large pre-built images for Vista SERVERS, which don't exist?
Now you have done all the "technical bits", wait and see how much legacy software that is mostly out of your control just stops working, or requires workarounds, or slows down (despite the computer upgrades). Ever heard of "testing"? If a critical app didn't work under Vista you shouldn't have widely deployed it. That's common fucking sense.
the fact that virtually everything you were running on XP runs with no difference or gets worse and that you have nothing really "new" to show for all that hard work and hassle. Except for the mountain of new manageability features that come with Vista. Just because you don't know about WinRE, WinPE, ImageX, RDP 6, WinRM, robocopy, etc. doesn't mean they aren't there.
Oh, and to turn off all the whizzy new features to stop your users playing with them, you're really talking about waiting for Server 2008 with all the upgrade costs that involves. Are these the same features that didn't exist in the last sentence? GPO didn't magically stop working in Vista. A COMPETENT Windows admin could turn off the "whizzy new features" remotely.
You could use anything from MythTV to Windows Vista, Windows ME to MacOS. You glossed over the biggest reason for home users to upgrade to Vista, improvements in the Windows Media Center. Having used a vast variety of PVRs and media centers, I strongly prefer the Microsoft product. You COULD use anything, but IMHO MythTV, Freevo, and Apple TV are all inferior to WMC. The only competitor that comes close is XBMC, which I use extensively.
Take Samba, for instance. It's a great piece of software! But for what? For implementing a proprietary file sharing protocol, that is so flawed that it has to be changed with every major version of Microsoft's OS, many times with incompatibilities with previous versions.... But, overall, isn't it a waste for these very talented guys to lose all this time coding this crappy protocol, when they could in fact be putting their effort on something other than following what Microsoft is doing? So name the better protocol. Samba is big largely because NFS sucks hard. What else is out there? Netware?
Nobody buys a Mac Pro simply to play games. This is more of a limitation of MacOS than the Mac Pro's abilities. Aside from it's crappy video card, a Mac Pro is adequate to play 3D games. It is just not optimized to do so. Which is why I think it's unfair it's 3D gaming capabilities to the Alienware.
In fact, the vast majority of computer owners never play any games. The vast majority of computer users play video games on those computers. This is true across all operating systems. The majority of computer users do not use them to play "high-end" 3D games.
The Alienware might score better in games (I doubt it will if you make up the grand difference by upgrading the Mac Pro's graphics card) but that doesn't mean it is overall the most powerful machine. The SLI graphics cards supported by the Alienware are not an option for the Mac Pro. That plus other limitations (like drivers) means that you CAN'T upgrade the graphics card to the level of the Alienware. The Mac Pro will never be as good in games.
"fairly comparable?" I just priced one with 2x 3GHz, 2GB, 500GB and stock graphics for $5,922. A similar Mac Pro retails for $3,699, making the HP 60% more expensive! The memory and the hard drives are faster, so it's not directly comparable. If you use components as similar as possible the HP is about $500 more.
The point is: you *still* have not shown me a more powerful machine, or one that has the same performance for less money. The HP WAS more powerful if you maxed out the specs. It offered faster CPUs, a faster motherboard, faster memory, and faster hard drives. Of course, that system will cost over $10,000, but it's faster.
I wonder why this is "trollish" when Congress is working on bipartisan legislation to raise the fines on file copying to $1.5 million and create a new "copyright enforcement agency". Congress is clearly following the RIAA line.
If everyone refuses to pay for big label music, both older music (where they make a lot of their money) and pop music, the big labels will eventually go out of business. This is a GOOD thing. The big labels crush their competition through unfair business practices. For example, Payola from the big labels is why you hear only the same handful of songs played over and over again on the radio.
Funnily enough, the Alienware costs over a grand more, for a less powerful machine. The claim was: "And if you have some serious dough, there is nothing that matches the Mac Pro's power available from anyone off the shelf."
Cost was not a factor.
Can you show me a link to an Alienware that "stops all over the Mac Pro"? I just configured what seems to be their top of the range "Area-51 ALX CrossFire" similar to a Mac Pro. (both 2GB, 2x500GB, Mac Pro with 2x quad 3.0 and NVidea 8800GT, Alien with ATI 3870) The "stock" video card on the "Area-51 ALX CrossFire" is TWO GeForce® 8800 GTX cards, which is better that the BEST gaming card for the Mac Pro, the GeForce 880GT. The ATI 3780 isn't an option for either system.
The Alienware has 4 cores less, though a slightly higher CPU speed, but the Mac has XEON CPUs which are faster GHz for GHz. I recon the Mac will blow it away and it has the better video card. (just) Xeon CPUs are not faster GHz for Ghz, read some reviews. Due to limitations in the current chipsets the very expensive Core 2 Extreme processors are actually faster and have more cache but are less reliable for certain tasks. Games don't take great advantage of multiple CPUs.
The Alienware is optimized for games, not workstation tasks like the Mac Pro is, so the comparison is a bit unfair (to the Mac Pro). A better comparison would be the HP xw8600 Workstation, which is priced fairly comparable to the Mac Pro.
The point is: The Mac Pro is hardly the most powerful "off the shelf" PC you can buy.
And that Congress declares the RIAA as racketeering bunch of a-holes....(under RICO). This won't happen. The big labels have been operating this way for decades and Congress hasn't done shit. Noe that the big labels are actually suffering and weakening it's even more unlikely that Congress with step in. Congress is going to march lockstep with the RIAA for the foreseeable future.
My recommendation stands. Never, ever, ever BUY music if you can possibly avoid it. Even if you're buying a hand-pressed CD at a concert, ASCAP or similar fees are probably involved. ALWAYS get it off filesharing, copy your friend's CDs, etc. ESPECIALLY encourage your young friends into pop music (Britney Spears, etc.) to do this. If everyone does it the big labels will collapse, which is best for everyone (even the big labels!) in the long term.
For those wondering why the RIAA dropped this case, it's largely because they wanted to avoid any case law on this motion which asked the Plaintiff to actually provide a detailed listing of the infringing songs AND (this is very important) a breakdown of "infringement expenses" for each individual song. The record companies don't HAVE this information, they pull the numbers out of their ass. If they're forced to actually PROVE losses, they have no case and they know it.
One of the criticisms I keep hearing about "killer robots" is the notion that they won't be used because the risk of friendly fire is too great. This has never stopped the US military before. Here's a quick list of indiscriminate weapons the US military uses:
nuclear weapons cluster bombs and artillery flechette bombs and artillery phosphorus defoliants "fuel air" bombs land mines shrapnel grenades poison gas tear gas rubber bullets and bombs biowarfare exploding dolphins (really)
and of course
automatic weapons
The notion that the military won't use a weapon because it will accidentally kill lots of civilians or a few soldiers is pretty silly. They'd use suicide bombers if they could get away with it.
1) Vista removed support for horizontal or vertical span modes with a multi-monitor setup. (well, more of they changed things up so that it's impossible for drivers supporting that to be written) Blame NVIDIA/Hollywood. ATI managed to get this working but it's not easy.
2) The 64-bit version of Vista removes backwards compatability for 16-bit applications. I dunno about you, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the games I grew up with... and some of those games are good enough that horrible dated graphics don't matter. It's called "stability. If you want you run 16bit apps, run a VMWare or VirtualPC session with Windows 3.1 in it. DOSBox is a good emulator for DOS. This worked better than keeping the 16-bit subsystem.
3) The 64-bit version of Vista requires you to specify EVERY TIME YOU BOOT that you want to use unsigned drivers. You need to read some documentation.
You can either:
A) Attach a kernel debugger (free) B) Hit F8 every time you boot (free) C) Sign the test drivers yourself (technically, also free)
it wouldn't surprise me if Ebay provided a convenient backdoor in the code They haven't. Doing so would require reimplementing SSL (they haven't) or simply not encrypting the traffic at all (they are encrypting it). Key exchange is client-to-client in Skype, and they are not silently redirecting the keys to a third party. Though Skype is ostensibly proprietary, the specs are widely available and outside security experts have tested Skype.
I don't know why I feel compelled to respond to this crap, but...
If you compare them like-for-like on specs and build quality - instead of just "what's the cheapest I can get" - Macs actually come out quite favorably and since the Intel switch they consistently get higher marks for performance than their Wintel counterparts. And if you have some serious dough, there is nothing that matches the Mac Pro's power available from anyone off the shelf. This is simply not true. Apple laptops and desktops (in particular the laptops) are built by the same OEMs that build Dell laptops, often on the same assembly line. The build quality is the same. Apple laptops have better industrial design, but that's not the same thing. Macs of comparable performance are significantly more expensive than their Dell and HP counterparts. It's just a fact.
Also, there is the implication that Apple is the only "boutique" PC vendor. There are plenty of other vendors, like Alienware,that cater to this market and their products are comparable (in terms of industrial design) to Apple products. In terms of performance, powerful computers from Alienware, Falcon, etc. stop all over the Mac Pro.
Or a faster all-in-one or similarly specced mini-tower at the price of an iMac,... Now if only they would put something with the specs of the iMac into a small tower and sell it for a good price, that would be nice. iMacs are a HUGE ripoff. You get an all-in-one with a relatively slow CPU, a slow hard drive, (here's the important bit) an incredibly crappy video card, and a double-price LCD screen (it's a nice screen though). You can't upgrade anything except the memory. This sucks. You can generally buy a SUPERIOR PC (it will actually have a decent video card and hard drive) for 60% of the price from Dell or HP.
iMacs were a scam foisted on Mac users to force them to upgrade their monitors at the same time as their desktop PC (the monitors usually outlast the desktop) to make Steve Jobs more money. That's why you'll never see the mini-tower you want. The mini-tower ALL Mac users want. Steve knows that such a product would quickly kill the more profitable iMac.
Proof that Putin was involved in the Estonia attacks or proof that Putin plots against and assassinates his opponents?
Given Putin's other sneaky behavior, it seems reasonable to infer that Putin's government may be involved. And even if he's "innocent", who cares? Russia deserves serious sanctions for Putin's other atrocities, so if this is what gets him, GREAT.
So, the old and "stupid should not be allowed to vote? What's your position on Jews and Catholics being allowed to vote? No, PEOPLE (old, stupid, or otherwise) shouldn't prevent OTHER PEOPLE from voting. It's better to disenfranchise a small number of people rather than risk the integrity of the entire vote. You're arguing for a solution that makes the system integrity lower and less reliable in general to accommodate a handful of stupid people.
You seem to think that our Chicago ballots are like those #2 pencil answer sheets we used in school. If you look at http://chicagoelections.com/docs/ballots/387d.pdf you will see that our ballot has the names already on it. The voter completes the arrow pointing to their choice. This paper is then pushed into the scanner, and drops into a sealed box. I have used similar equipment extensively. This is EXACTLY this type of equipment I was talking about.
The paper ballots and the scanner memory chip are returned to the collection station in sealed packages after the polls close. The memory chip is a "black box". There is no way to know what it's actually recording without using elaborate test equipment that won't be available 99.9% of the time.
We get the convenience of rapid results from a perfectly hand-verifiable paper record. Except this never happens. In practice, recounts amount to "rescans" wherein the same ballots are scanned again. IN PRACTICE, they are never hand read. Removing the OPTION of machine counting is the only way to insure hand counting actually takes place.
You might ask why we need the scanner. Some of our elections have 96 different names on the ballot, when you add in judicial elections and other races. Hand counting would take all night, So what? People don't take office the next day. As numerous other posters have pointed out, most other industrialized countries use handcounted ballots and the delay doesn't seem to cause any significant problems.
and far more liable to fakery. All evidence seems to support the idea that hand counts in front of multiparty observers is the method LEAST susceptible to undetectable tampering.
there is still no evidence that any electronic votes have been tampered with. Bullshit. Pretty much without exception handcounts of receipts generated by touchscreen machines have revealed massive discrepancies. This is why state after state is tossing out touchscreen machines. There is strong evidence that some of this was deliberate tampering. Nobody has gone to jail yet, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened.
There are a number of cases of optical scan systems being tampered with. People HAVE gone to jail for this.
Of course, there are a lot more cases of people tampering with hand marked ballots (both domestically and internationally).
If you're smart, this should tell you something about how easy it is to detect tampering in different systems.
Just consider the unusual viciousness of civil wars, e.g. the American Civil War, the Terror in post-Revolutionary France, the Thirty Years War within Germany, or the Russian Civil War.... The wound from a brother is always more painful, more like to anger. I think you're singling out the particularly bad civil wars. The Civil War WAS a cultural conflict, the Terror and the Russian Civil War followed centuries of oppression. The breakup of the Soviet Union, for example, did not see so much acrimony. And where their was conflict, it was clearly ethnic.
If we're talking about NUMBER OF PEOPLE KILLED, the conflicts you cite don't hold a candle to even ancient examples of ethnic cleansing, like the Roman destruction of Egypt and Judea.
But in truth I suspect the causes of unusual hideousness in warfare are far too complex to be reduced to any simple formula. On the small scale, I think you're right. On the large scale, it seems pretty clear to me that ethnic conflicts are worse.
All of these quaint efforts overlook the fact that war is, by definition, the breakdown of any shred of mutual trust and willingness to compromise. War is about killing people, and when you get to that stage of mutual rage and madness, no piece of paper full of high-minded sentiment is going to stop you from doing what you think you must to win (or not lose). I can't think of any historical exceptions. Can you? The short answer is: yes. There have been rules of war that have been closely followed, for centuries, by various groups. There were strict laws of war governed by the Church in the Middle Ages. Imperial Japan followed rules of war, right into WWII (you might not agree with those rules, but they existed). The Roman Army followed strict rules. The idea of soldiers acting in a discipled and humane fashion is nothing new. The big problem is that these rules only tend to be followed in cultural sandboxes: European vs. European, Japanese vs Japanese, etc. When conflicts are cross-cultural the tendency to dehumanize opponents increases and you get much bloodier conflicts: Crusades, Native American wars, Vietnam, etc.
I don't think it's useless to have laws of war. There is no reason to believe they make conflicts worse and every reason to believe that they help reduce civilian casualties, torture, etc. During WW1 gas weapons saw wide deployment, and they were banned not because they were ineffective, but because of the danger they reprsented to all soldiers and civilians. Gas weapons have been used since (notably in the Iran-Iraq war), but widespread use is a thing of the past. Ditto for flamethrowers and flame weapons in general (Phosphor weapons are making a comeback though. Bush apparently thinks burning people alive is fun).
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In case I'm not being clear: Order 100 new laptops for users in Jan 2007, by March 2007 5 of those laptops have broken and have been replaced with laptops with different hardware, by June 2007 5 more break with still different hardware: How do you avoid having to make multiple images? Are you buying white-box PCs? If so, who is your vendor that they make these kinds of guarantees?
BTW, What do you do with the OLD computers?
I'd like to point out this issue of "imaging vs. slipstream install" is completely separate from Vista. There are good third-party tools for slipstreaming XP installs and generally I consider them superior to imaging for the reasons I've stated. Maintaining multiple images is just too much of a PITA.
Here's the key bit:
* We have your consent. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
Google considers USE of it's services to be consent. It's one of those things you supposedly agreed to when you signed up for GMail. Read it fine print.
Also, what THEY consider "sensitive personal information" is data like your CCN or SSN, not whether you watch "Lost" or not. They are willing to say to advertisers that "User1284567" in "Somewhere, USA" watches "Lost".
No, it won't work with multi-boot. If you have to have lots of multi-boot images you're doing something weird, like hardware testing. I find it difficult to believe the admins and sales guys have multi-boot images.
BTW, Ghost was discontinued years ago. Symantec Ghost is actually rebranded ImageCast and, unsurprisingly, it's not compatible with old Ghost images. Too little, too late and any decent shop has had their equivalents since NT4 or before. You simply don't know what you're talking about. Do you understand how these tools are even used? You do realize that you NEVER have to make custom images again?
You put a 15GB full Vista install on you image server, use the GUI tool to set the options for the Vista install, decide what apps you want in the image and write little config files that auto-install the apps. You do the same thing with drivers.
This means that you don't have to reimage every time you want to update an app. This means you can use the same image with new hardware simply by adding the drivers. Since you've already "packaged" the apps for your image you can push those updates down to clients so you don't have to re-image just to update an app. But Vista did bring a whole new set of administrative templates (the format of which, by the way, has been extended and changed). That means major admin-template upgrades on every server. That means EXTENSIVE testing of all currently deployed OS's. Jesus man, put the Vista hosts in their own container. It's not hard. And, as usual, there's still glaring holes in the amount of options available
The liquids ban has nothing to do with security. Basically, they don't want you pissing during the flights. Each flush of the onboard toilet costs the airlines around $500. A friend reported to me that China Air now bans liquids on flights, PERIOD. Can't bring anything on the plane, can't buy anything on the plane.
Windows Media Center can also handle a vast variety of formats, which is a capability I need.
I wonder why this is "trollish" when Congress is working on bipartisan legislation to raise the fines on file copying to $1.5 million and create a new "copyright enforcement agency". Congress is clearly following the RIAA line.
If everyone refuses to pay for big label music, both older music (where they make a lot of their money) and pop music, the big labels will eventually go out of business. This is a GOOD thing. The big labels crush their competition through unfair business practices. For example, Payola from the big labels is why you hear only the same handful of songs played over and over again on the radio.
Rigging elections.
The political assassinations of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko, as well as numerous other journalists and political opponents.
Mass killings, rape, torture, and other atrocities in Chechnya.
Cost was not a factor. Can you show me a link to an Alienware that "stops all over the Mac Pro"? I just configured what seems to be their top of the range "Area-51 ALX CrossFire" similar to a Mac Pro. (both 2GB, 2x500GB, Mac Pro with 2x quad 3.0 and NVidea 8800GT, Alien with ATI 3870) The "stock" video card on the "Area-51 ALX CrossFire" is TWO GeForce® 8800 GTX cards, which is better that the BEST gaming card for the Mac Pro, the GeForce 880GT. The ATI 3780 isn't an option for either system. The Alienware has 4 cores less, though a slightly higher CPU speed, but the Mac has XEON CPUs which are faster GHz for GHz. I recon the Mac will blow it away and it has the better video card. (just) Xeon CPUs are not faster GHz for Ghz, read some reviews. Due to limitations in the current chipsets the very expensive Core 2 Extreme processors are actually faster and have more cache but are less reliable for certain tasks. Games don't take great advantage of multiple CPUs.
The Alienware is optimized for games, not workstation tasks like the Mac Pro is, so the comparison is a bit unfair (to the Mac Pro). A better comparison would be the HP xw8600 Workstation, which is priced fairly comparable to the Mac Pro.
The point is: The Mac Pro is hardly the most powerful "off the shelf" PC you can buy.
My recommendation stands. Never, ever, ever BUY music if you can possibly avoid it. Even if you're buying a hand-pressed CD at a concert, ASCAP or similar fees are probably involved. ALWAYS get it off filesharing, copy your friend's CDs, etc. ESPECIALLY encourage your young friends into pop music (Britney Spears, etc.) to do this. If everyone does it the big labels will collapse, which is best for everyone (even the big labels!) in the long term.
For those wondering why the RIAA dropped this case, it's largely because they wanted to avoid any case law on this motion which asked the Plaintiff to actually provide a detailed listing of the infringing songs AND (this is very important) a breakdown of "infringement expenses" for each individual song. The record companies don't HAVE this information, they pull the numbers out of their ass. If they're forced to actually PROVE losses, they have no case and they know it.
One of the criticisms I keep hearing about "killer robots" is the notion that they won't be used because the risk of friendly fire is too great. This has never stopped the US military before. Here's a quick list of indiscriminate weapons the US military uses:
nuclear weapons
cluster bombs and artillery
flechette bombs and artillery
phosphorus
defoliants
"fuel air" bombs
land mines
shrapnel grenades
poison gas
tear gas
rubber bullets and bombs
biowarfare
exploding dolphins (really)
and of course
automatic weapons
The notion that the military won't use a weapon because it will accidentally kill lots of civilians or a few soldiers is pretty silly. They'd use suicide bombers if they could get away with it.
You can either:
A) Attach a kernel debugger (free)
B) Hit F8 every time you boot (free)
C) Sign the test drivers yourself (technically, also free)
Also, there is the implication that Apple is the only "boutique" PC vendor. There are plenty of other vendors, like Alienware,that cater to this market and their products are comparable (in terms of industrial design) to Apple products. In terms of performance, powerful computers from Alienware, Falcon, etc. stop all over the Mac Pro. Or a faster all-in-one or similarly specced mini-tower at the price of an iMac,
iMacs were a scam foisted on Mac users to force them to upgrade their monitors at the same time as their desktop PC (the monitors usually outlast the desktop) to make Steve Jobs more money. That's why you'll never see the mini-tower you want. The mini-tower ALL Mac users want. Steve knows that such a product would quickly kill the more profitable iMac.
Proof that Putin was involved in the Estonia attacks or proof that Putin plots against and assassinates his opponents?
Given Putin's other sneaky behavior, it seems reasonable to infer that Putin's government may be involved. And even if he's "innocent", who cares? Russia deserves serious sanctions for Putin's other atrocities, so if this is what gets him, GREAT.
There are a number of cases of optical scan systems being tampered with. People HAVE gone to jail for this.
Of course, there are a lot more cases of people tampering with hand marked ballots (both domestically and internationally).
If you're smart, this should tell you something about how easy it is to detect tampering in different systems.
If we're talking about NUMBER OF PEOPLE KILLED, the conflicts you cite don't hold a candle to even ancient examples of ethnic cleansing, like the Roman destruction of Egypt and Judea. But in truth I suspect the causes of unusual hideousness in warfare are far too complex to be reduced to any simple formula. On the small scale, I think you're right. On the large scale, it seems pretty clear to me that ethnic conflicts are worse.
I don't think it's useless to have laws of war. There is no reason to believe they make conflicts worse and every reason to believe that they help reduce civilian casualties, torture, etc. During WW1 gas weapons saw wide deployment, and they were banned not because they were ineffective, but because of the danger they reprsented to all soldiers and civilians. Gas weapons have been used since (notably in the Iran-Iraq war), but widespread use is a thing of the past. Ditto for flamethrowers and flame weapons in general (Phosphor weapons are making a comeback though. Bush apparently thinks burning people alive is fun).