You're absolutely wrong, and clearly didn't read the article:
No, I just don't see the article as the end of the world. Two points:
1) They sent him an invoice. Big deal - I could send him an invoice
too, it would mean as much. When they sue, we'll have a bit
more to talk about.
2) Bob Jacobsen wrote that program because he needed it; he released it
because it could benefit others; he took credit for it because he didn't
see the harm and hey, free personal PR. Had he skipped the last point
and released it anonymously, he wouldn't now have a problem.
So, to repeat myself, no big deal. Commercial use of OSS will
suffer if too many companies start playing patent-bingo, and
individual use will change only slightly. As one of those slight
changes, far more of it will end up anonymously released. No
biggie.
This is something that should have been nipped in the bud,
as Perens says, a decade ago.
I agree completely, but I don't hold my breath for unrealistic
ideals... Who (specifically - "everyone" does not count as a
pocket-lining answer) would protecting open source directly
benefit? Unless you can answer "Senator X's son", it won't
happen, so you might as well save your energy for a more winnable
battle.
A coordinated patent attack by a few companies, or
even one large company, could completely destroy Open
Source in the United States and cripple it in other nations.
No. Absolutely wrong.
Such a coordinated attack would cripple commercial uses
of open source software.
We mere guys-in-the-trenches would carry on writing and using
itas though nothing had changed.
And yes, before someone says it - That might well make us
"criminals"... In the same way speeding, copying CDs,
"experimenting" with weed in college, and getting a BJ in
Georgia does.
We all count as criminals for something already...
One more nail in the government's coffin won't make much
difference.
Almost all of the government's manpower and budget is
expended on the things you dismiss as "bread and circuses"
No, the majority of the government's manpower and budget goes to
imperialistic conquest, which currently means pissing around in
a desert 7000 miles away. Now, while I could see that as
part of "circuses", I'd have to say it costs far too much (purely
in terms of money, since our leaders have never given two
squirts of a rat's ass over body counts, beyond their poor PR
value) for the return in entertainment value to write off as a
mere distraction to the public.
I suggest a mild dose of Occam's Razor might be in order here.
I agree. In this case, however, "a group of well-educated alpha-primates
acting in their own self-interest" strikes me as the far more plausible
option over "300 million well-informed Modern Enlightened Humans all acted
together to select the thousand or so best fellow Modern Enlightened
Humans to efficiently run the country with wisdom and compassion and
not a hint of self-interest."
Of course, I consider one other alternative even more likely...
"We", by which I mean a population of ignorant fools more interested
in what NBC has on Thursday nights than in our foreign policy, chose
completely incompetant members of our de facto aristocracy based
entirely on looks and soundbites, and those "leaders" then treat the
task like a union job - Do as little as possible to keep it, and take
a nice fat kickback whenever possible.
And that sentence pretty much sums up my actual world-view.
Why do we have a space program? Because grown up little boys like
rockets. Why do we have agricultural research? Because if everyone
starves to death, our leaders lose their jobs. Why do we have
highways? Because it takes 45 minutes to drive from Portland Jetport to
Walker's Point, and over half and hour from MacGregor Executive to
Crawford.
Just bought the basic 802.11-enabled Hawking model...
In an unusual turn for them, the networking part of it actually works
great... Setting it up goes exactly as they describe it in the manual,
and (unlike every other Hawking product I've used), it doesn't shit the
bed and require a manual reset after even a momentary loss of connectivity.
The image quality and convenience of getting snaps from it - Ugh. Without some
work, you have no choice but to use either a browser and their built-in
Java app, or their very custom (and all but useless) software.
With a bit of work (read: You need NetCat and something like dd that can extract
byte ranges from the raw crap it send to nc), you can convince it to send you
snapshots, but you get very low quality images (as in, under 20k for a
640x480 still).
And for something in the $100 range, you might think it would include at
least basic autofocus or even a cheap 18"-to-infinity lens - Nope. Turn the
stupid little ring on the lens, and pray your subject doesn't move outside
a certain magic box.
Someone should make something like this...
for "resigning" from AOL
Sorry, but that requires a serious act of
contrition.
Much like how baby rapists can't just say "oops,
sorry, won't do it again", the same applies to
AOL users. They need to prove they've
learned their lesson, and truly repented of their
old ways.
If by "pretty fucking stupid" you mean "right on the money", I
agree.
A government has whatever power it is given, by whatever
agreement or coercion it used to get it
No. A government has whatever power it can get away with
up until its citizens revolt. Consider, as a trivial example,
the NSA spying program. Blatantly illegal, yet since we haven't
revolted, not only don't we see thousands of executive branch
employees (as well as complicit corporate partners) going to the
federal pen - We see a push to legalize such activity in one of
the most blatant guttings of the 4th amendment in US history.
Furthermore, you have a missing modifier on "given" - Who has given
that right? We all speed (and many would go even faster than
they do if not for the legal risk), yet the government seems to believe
it has the right to limit how fast we can drive. Over half the US
considers current drug laws far too draconian, yet we still have an
inmate population made up primarily of nonviolent drug offenders. We
all recognize that our election system has more flaws than
any so-called "democratic" system can bear, yet rather than fix it,
we just switch to less auditable polling mechanisms.
Spit out the Kool-Ade and open your eyes.
Where does the Apollo program fit into this "criminal" idea?
The "circuses" part of "bread and circuses". Keep the plebes entertained,
and they'll bear far more before rising up.
Research grants for improving crop yield?
The "bread" part of "bread and circuses". A starving population
recognizes that it has little to lose by risking death a few weeks
sooner than would happen otherwise.
What about the interstate highway system?
You do know why Hitler commissioned the Autobahn, right?
And why Eisenhower copied it? However convenient the rest of us
might find it in times of peace, it exists for the purpose of
facilitating military deployments - Between existing military
bases, to points of foreign attack, and, if necessary, to the
location of any potential insurrection.
The post office? [...] The DARPA work that created the Internet?
If you don't see the need for a tyrranical regime to have efficient
lines of communication, I don't have the words to explain it to you.
I guess you could twist each of them into the "criminal"
idea, but I really think you'd be kidding yourself.
Well, at least one of us would kid themselves, but consider
the cost of error... Incorrectly distrusting the government has
basically no cost. Incorrectly trusting them - Well, Arbeit
Macht Frei, right?
Now, before you dismiss me as a complete loony - I don't think the
US has gone too far quite yet. The current Megalomaniac-in-chief
has certainly pushed us closer to the edge than anyone since Lincoln
(including Nixon - You'll notice that when he got caught
with his hand in the cookie-jar, he had the decency to step down. Even
Reagan at least still had the humility to lie about his actions). But
we can still turn things around if we can wake up enough of the zombies.
Sadly, I consider that unlikely, but at least still possible.
the BSA checks all installed software. It wouldn't matter what kinda of
software that you had improper licenses for if they find out you'll be paying.
Now, I'll agree completely that the BSA lives in its own little delusional world.
But, just for a minute, I want you to imagine the BSA trying to prove that someone
violated a shareware license...
"So, you have WinZip on 2,600 PCs..."
"Uh-huh - We decided to try it out last week, and can't say this raid has
given us a very positive impression of the product".
"This machine says you installed WinZip in 1994".
"Yeah, and so does this one... Oh, and this one shows 1982 - D'you know when IBM
released the first PC? Hint - 1983. You can change the clock on a computer."
"But you use a network time server!"
"You can change its clock as well - In fact, we had a glitch on
ours just last week, right around the same time we decided to install
WinZip - Hey, I see your point - WinZip broke our time server! You
bastards!".
"Umm... Okay, moving on, how many XP/2k3 CALs do you have?"
You can't do anything with the fonts in the document, other than use them for viewing that document
Sure you can. Granted,
it doesn't happen "automagically", but any coder worth their salt can fully automate the process with about
half-an-hour of one-time work.
I have never heard of ANYBODY building a gun on their own.
You jest, right?
Check Google for "zip gun" (74.5k hits). "potato cannon" or "spud gun"
(100k hits combined). Or just the obvious one, "homemade guns" (32k
hits).
Really, basic gunmaking does not take a brain surgeon (again, not
talking about "safe" or "accurate", just "functional"). You just need a way
to generate a high-pressure area separated from a low pressure (or 1atm) by
a moveable barrier.
Hell, in my youth, probably half my friends made working potato cannons - Hard
to fail, really, when in its most crude form, a length of PVC pipe closed at one
end (except for the touchhole) with a spud half way and a charge of frickin'
hairspray will work (kids, don't try this at home - Of course, you
will anyway, but do at least a bit more research than trying to build exactly
what I just wrote, please). Of course, I'll brag a tad here and say that,
of the ones I've seen in person, only mine had a rifled barrel, 2L chamber
calibrated to take 60ml of butane, a pushbutton electric trigger, and could get a
half pound (~232g) spud to clear the treeline over half a kilometer away. Though,
I've seen some online that make mine look like a wooden spear compared to an
apache helicopter.
gun crime in the UK is lower than even in those three states
you quote.
True - The UK has a gun crime rate (source quoted below) of 6.2 per 100k people - And
remember, that includes more than just homicides, so don't go cherry-picking that nice juicy
0.12-per-100k number you've probably heard oft-quoted. For comparison, VT has a rate
of 12.8/100k, NH has 23.3/100k and ME has 7.46/100k. All higher.
Before you get all excited by those numbers, however, consider this - Since
the UK banned personal firearms in 1997, the gun crime rate went (care to take a
guess?) - UP by 40%, according
to the Beeb.
So, what do we make of all these numbers? Take it as you will, but I have
just one last factoid to throw out: The five safest (by violent crime rates
per capita) states in the US (the Dakotas and Northern New England) have
some of the weakest gun laws in the country (according to the Brady report,
which gives those all a D or D-). Now, correlation doesn't prove
causation, but it doesn't take a genius-monkey to notice that when the
bonobo two cages down presses the blue button, he gets a cookie every time.
Gee, you think this may also have something to do with the very different
populations and demographics between these states?
Hey, if you want to make the race-based argument, go right ahead.
I'll pass on stirring up that bee's nest for the moment.
I would point out, though, that no one race holds a strong majority in Boston...
According to NorthEastern's
CURP, whites come in at 49.5%, blacks second at 23.8%, hispanics third at 14.4%, and
asians 4th at 7.5%. So although Boston certainly has far greater racial diversity than,
say, Portland ME at a whopping 98% white, I still don't think you can blame "them"
(whichever "them" you prefer to blame).
And why did I mention Portland ME, you might ask? Because, at the same time MA has
decided to blame ME for easy availability of guns, nearly all the high-profile
crimes in Portland in the past few years involve (mostly white) criminals from
Boston coming North to find new markets for selling drugs. Perhaps Romney and
Menino should clean up their own overflowing toilets before they start pointing
fingers at their neighbors' blinking VCR clocks (wow - that analogy came out so bad,
I'll leave it just for the humor value!).
The best way to prevent accidental firing of a gun is to outlaw them
completely, like here in the UK. Many Americans cite the first ammendment
and their right to defend themselves, and sure people should have a right
to defend themselves. If it's hard for just anyone to get a gun though,
then you're less likely to be defending yourself against a gun. Whatever
happened to "putting up your dukes".
Let me tell you a little story currently taking place in the US...
A few years ago, Boston all-but-banned guns, and the whole state of
Massachusetts has extremely restrictive gun laws in general.
Since then, the level of gun crime there has gone UP, drastically.
Now, MA has three neighbors to the North - VT, NH, and ME, all of which
have a healthy tradition of personal gun ownership, largely for hunting purposes.
All three of those states have very low rates of gun crime.
So how does Boston respond to this glaringly obvious trend?
A PR campaign trying to get its Northern neighbors (and a few other
random states) to all but ban guns as well.
As a resident of one of those states, I have to laugh at how
absurd they sound - Not only for ignoring the obvious fact
that gun control increases gun crimes, but also that,
at least with current attituteds, even if the federal
government banned guns, the Northern New England states would
most likely secede rather than comply.
If it's hard for just anyone to get a gun though,
then you're less likely to be defending yourself against a gun.
Do you have any idea of the level of tech required to build a
basic firearm? Not talking about a "safe to use" firearm, or an
extremely accurate one, but a device capable of accelerating a small
projectile in a specific direction (more or less) to sufficient
velocity to penetrate a human body?
Pretty freakin' low. If you actually have modern mass-produced
cartridges, you can literally do it with the contents of a typical
desk drawer. Without that, it takes a $20 trip to the hardware
store.
Whatever happened to "putting up your dukes".
Ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?
Or on a more serious note - An oppressive government doesn't
fight fair. They don't line up mano-a-mano and whichever
side wins gets to lead like some cheesy 1950's Western. And
while a 9mm might not do much when the tanks start rolling over
students a la Tiennamen Square, a fully armed populace
means that, at least in theory, an oppressive government would
need to kill every man, woman, and reasonably-old-enough child
to keep control over... Over a population of corpses.
Remember, the Midwest cares about the coasts just as much as the coasts
care about it. Which is to say, "Not much at all."
So, when do you start that job in Boston or LA?;-)
And while I mean the above humorously - Seriously, last time I needed to find a new
job and even wanted to relocate, I found plenty of listings on the coasts.
I could, however, count on one hand the number of tech-oriented jobs I found in a
non-ocean-bordering state (and half of those came from Arizona alone, for
some odd reason).
the company has taken numerous steps in the past year
to make sure such a breach is never made public again.
And you call yourself a cynic?
As the scariest part about the original phrasing, I
think Carol DiBattiste really means it... As in,
she seriously has such a poor grasp of technology that
she doesn't recognize "never happens again" as an
impossibility.
Any network security novice could tell her that it
will happen again. They can take steps to contain
such leaks; to minimize what a single attack can reveal;
to speed detection of a intrusion; To improve the ability to
catch and prosecute the perpetrator. But "never happens
again" means they have done none of the above, instead
trusting spoooooky technology X about which Ms. DiBattiste has
absolutely no grasp.
Even bad publicity is not really a problem for them since
the people they hurt have no say in whether or not to do
business with them.
I think you've hit on the bigger issue here... Not that they had
a problem, not that they've dealt inadequately with that problem, but
that the even exist! Worthless parasites like ChoicePoint
shouldn't get even one strike - When the real nature of
businesses like this come to light, they should summarily suffer
the corporate death penalty along with complete dissolution of all
assets INCLUDING personal assets of anyone ethically challenged
enough to fund such anti-human ventures. No mercy, put these
leeches down.
You (and a number of other posters on this topic) have described
what we look for - Geeks who want to get the most out of
their systems with the least expense. If I could get killer
performance with a RAID0 of tiny but fast drives (think Raptors,
or even Cheetahs if you don't mind dealing with SCSI), while still
having the capacity of a cheap 400GB IDE drive - Of course
I'd have such a setup (and in fact, many of us already do, we just
manually transfer things to/from the big-n'-slow).
Most people, however, do not want this. For starters, most
people don't even need the huge drives they already have - If you
gave them just the pair of RAID0 36GBs, they'd never use even half
that the capacity, so no need for ever moving files to the slow
storage. Then failing that, the members of the Sixpack family that
manage to store hundreds of GB only fill it with downloaded porn,
music, and movies - Uses that really don't need fast drives, just
tons of space.
So while it sounds useful in theory - in practice, such a setup
would just add cost and complexity without providing any tangible
benefit to most users. I suspect even most Geek users would rarely
notice the difference (aside from OS load times), and would only
make such a setup for bragging rights.
Surely it depends on your definition of success and not everyone works towards the same goals in life.
Yes and no...
Talking about "nontraditional" happy people - People who (could) make quite enough to
compete favorably in the rat race but choose to only work 20 hours a weeks
and live in a double-wide so they can afford frequent vacations. Those people validate
your point, but come few and far between.
Talking about the ever-growing masses of n'th generation welfare families, you have
it absolutely wrong. When you need to live on the dole to survive, you should NOT have
kids. But those people seem to have the most kides - Look at a cross section of the US
in terms of income (or education) vs average number of children, and you have a VERY
strong inverse correlation. The poor breed, the wealthy breed (but don't suffer for
it or exist in large enough numbers to sway the above-mentioned correlation), the middle
class have to choose between lifestyle and kids.
I heard a story on NPR the other day, about TN cutting back on their socialized
healthcare system. They portrayed this as a real sob story, a poor victimized crippled
woman who had to choose only five prescription drugs per month to fill.
Mind you, this woman already got $600/mo just for existing! For breathing and eating
the government cheese, she gets paid. Then she gets five prescriptions per month...
Not one or two, but five. They went on to tell a tale about how, when she got an infection,
she had to pick which drug to temporarily live without. And of course, after rent and
food and basic bills, she only had $9 out of her free $600 remaining per month.
Do you know how many free prescriptions I get? ZERO! Do you know how much I have
left each month from my government pay-me-to-exist check? ZERO, because I don't get one!
And $600 wouldn't even pay all of my rent, because I don't qualify for section-8
vouchers. Can ya hear the goddamned violins? Can you???
But back to the NPR story... The next generation no doubt did better, right? Her kids can
help... Nope. Her kids also live as white trash, getting their own little slice of government
cheese, and can't afford to help Mom because their own kids have huge regular medical
bills (apparently also over the five-script limit? The story didn't make that part clear).
This story absolutely infuriated me - This woman needs to take just one last prescription -
for the lead pill; and her progeny need to stop spreading their legs until they can
afford to feed themselves! End-of-fucking-story. I didn't just describe a situation
of "differently happy" - I described a case of hereditary poverty largely through
their own acceptance of that situation.
all languages can express all concepts through circumlocutions.
So you don't subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Fair enough,
you can certainly poke it quite full of holes - Though somehow, the
shreds remain basically intact.
For example, even though the Pirahã (and others) have no words for
numbers over two and resultingly cannot grasp even basic arithmatic
you could probably form some extended sentence to express
"one and one and one". From that "circumlocution", someone already
familiar with the concept of "successor of two" would grasp your
intended meaning. Would a native speaker? And does the distinction
matter?
Latin is vital for two things, one being able to read Roman literature
or works in fields influenced by Latin-speaking culture
...Or to gain a deeper understanding of any writings in a language
derived frm it - Including English (though it has too much from
the Germanic side of the family, with a Greek uncle sneaking in
the mix somewhere along the way, to count as a proper Romance language).
the simple solution to problems akin to MySpace is proper parenting.
Not at all - The simple solution to 99% of MySpace problems rests in recognizing
that the "problems" don't exist in the first place. With the exception of the
twits threatening to extort MySpace and posting about it thereupon, every
other "problem" involved some busybody 3rd party authority-figure overstepping
their bounds and panicking over harmless boasting and dick-waving.
So Little Jimmy posed with a bottle of Jack - Can you prove he drank it and that it
contained actual whiskey, rather than drinking cherry kool-aid out of a previously
empty bottle? Can you even prove the punk in the poor-quality overly-compressed
picture, wearing the same style of clothes and hair as every other 14YO male in
the country, as the same Jimmy?
So Susie has a list of people she hates and wants dead. We all
(at least mentally) kept lists of people we hated and wanted dead. We just didn't
act on them. Nor would Susie - Her "enemies" stand a better chance of dying in a
freak accident involving snakes on a plane, than of her snapping one day and reenacting
Doom down her school's corridors.
So a 40 year old guy has a MySpace page saying he likes cartoons. Ever met a Disney
employee? They really do act like that, no hidden pedophile motives involved.
And if he admits to playing with Legos - My god! Call the swat team, we might just...
gasp... have an engineer on our hands!
That MySpace should make a concerted effort to work with parents to ensure their children's safety
Sure - Just as soon as those parents start paying MySpace to act as babysitters.
Seriously - We have a basic issue of "responsibility" here, specifically, who
bears it. Parents have a responsibility to raise their kids. MySpace does
not, regardless of how many "tweens" use it.
MySpace represents the modern equivalent of playground gossip and note-passing. And,
like it or not, the swingset doesn't censor its occupants, nor does the pencil refuse
to write down obscenities.
What you do on the Internet has RL consequences and vice versa.
No - What you stupidly do on the 'net under your own name has consequences.
Not that, if really motivated, you couldn't figure out my RL identity - I've
probably given more than enough info without you even needing to leave Slashdot to
track me down. But you can't just type in my real name in Google and see 183 reasons
to fire me, 26 reasons to arrest me, and four reasons to execute me for treason (hey, don't
forget that nontrivial crypto used to count as "munitions"). If these stupid kids would figure
out the same thing, and do just a teensy bit to obscure their identities (no
real names, blur faces and obvious location-signs in photos), we would all-but-stop-hearing
about the evils of MySpace.
I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas.
Might I suggest going to, say,
their web site
and reading the plain-English
ByLaws page?
In particular, "ARTICLE 3 - PURPOSE", which contains a bulleted
list of, well, what they do.
but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal
and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't
there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
Follow the money... Who benefits by driving down the cost of
competant IT work? Hint - not "everybody but IT workers",
because when we have money, we spend it as though the apocalypse
will happen tomorrow.
As for whether or not companies really engage in such reprehensible
hiring practices, you need look no further than the employment section
of your local paper. See the tiny, unappealing buzzword-laden ads
for experienced coders, paying a third the going rate in your area?
Those companies will not get responses from anyone but interns. They
can then claim they couldn't find anyone to take the job despite
"honestly" trying, and can then hire H1Bs.
Regardless of your opinion of outsourced labor, I don't think
anyone would consider such transparent tactics as
anything but a legal farce.
wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
While IT people may have extremely well-organized personal
lives (social and desktop notwithstanding), we don't tend to
organize into larger bodies. The "I" in "INTP/INTJ" doesn't
stand for "I likes large crowds".
I did qualify that with "IMO", something I rarely do.
Most of them are far quieter than 3.5" drives
Quiter... Perhaps, perhaps not - I can't say I've personally measured
the sound levels from one. But the specific sounds they
make really quite annoy me. My home file-server has five 3.5"
drives in it, and I can work with it a few feet from my head.
For (personal) comparison, I worked near an open passively-cooled mini-ITX
system with a 2.5" drive for about 20 minutes just yesterday, and literally
had to turn it off the noise bothered me so much.
and the lower heat production means that there is less heat
to get rid of, meaning fans can be quieter.
"Can" as the operative word. I grant your point holds theoretically
true, but has no relevance to the real world.
The above-mentioned home file server has a total of three low-RPM
120mm fans in it, and nothing inside except the CPU, NB, GPU, and
RAM ever gets warm to the touch. Most systems with 2.5" drives,
OTOH, have high-speed 40-60mm fans that make a constant high-pitched
whine. Yes, you could mount a low-speed 120mm in front of a bank
of 2.5" drives, and probably keep them cooler than a comparable
bank of 3.5-inchers. Does anyone do so in practice? Not that
I've ever seen.
But at the end of the day, when you talk about any system with
more than two drives in it, people build with a criteria of (in
varying order) capacity, performance, and price-per-GB. And on
all three measures, 2.5" drives come in dead last. No
one builds a raid for its thermal properties, beyond the basic "it
won't melt or cause a fire".
The FP says MA wanted info "that could help ease the transition
from a Microsoft Office based environment" (bolding mine).
What motivation did Microsoft have to cooperate at all?
"I would like you to give me information on the best time and place
to kick you in the balls".
Same as they did with DOJ, same as they are doing with the EU.
Again... "We have decided to go on a witch hunt, and you look like a witch...
Please provide evidence that would allow us to burn you and confiscate your
property, so we don't have to settle for just drowning you". I don't
really see the motivation on MS's part there...
The average cost for the drive under review
is around $200, which isn't bad.
Compared to what exactly? You can get the same capacity,
and much better performance, in a 3.5" form factor for under $50.
What I think is interesting is the cost behind setting up, say,
a 4 Element SRAID system with these.
Why? For the same price, you could get four 500GB drives and have
2TB rather than 640GB... For a less than half the price, you could go
with 320GB drives and have twice the space. For the same price as
one 2.5" drive you could get the same 4-drive RAID as 3.5"
drives.
Could heat be a problem here?
Heat (and relatedly, the somewhat lower power consumption) counts
as the only advantage to using 2.5" drives. They cost more,
hold less, and have shorter lifespans (They also make a more... "annoying"
noise, IMO, though I don't know if I can fairly call them "louder").
Except for the niche markets of laptops and SFF/embedded, no one should
ever even consider a 2.5" drive unless some design contstraint
absolutely precludes the use of a 3.5".
Microsoft has a problem - We hate them, and they fear us.
We have the techology to pirate their products, the motivation to
do so even if we don't like using them, and the influence to
convince others to either switch to Linux or use the pirated
copies we give them rather than buying.
You'll notice that this only works in the two most recent versions
of Office. Why, do you suppose, they chose not to include it in
all of them? It has nothing to do with XML - All the older Office-native
formats have the ability to store metadata (as various companies and
governments occasionally discover when someone accidentally starts a
"new" document by opening "supersecretespionageplan.doc", deleting
everything they see, then saving and releasing the new "happyfunPRcampaign.doc"
to the world.
No, they only use the new versions because they want us to
update. And they want us to update to a far more restrictive version,
that includes at least some smidgeon of DRM, whether online activation
or Genuine (dis)Advantage or what-have-you.
Personally, on my machines that run Windows, I have Office 97. Not enough
has changed to make cracking a new version worth the effort, and - Did you
know, you don't need to install it? Nope - You can literally just
copy the CD to your HDD, find "winword.exe" and the rest, and run them
without corrupting the rest of your system (including, critically, the
ability to do this as a non-admin user!). It will warn you (just once, not
even as annoying as most shareware) that it needs repair every time you run
it, but I have yet to find a feature actually broken from never bothering to
formally install it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have a 2003 server, just flip on Windows SharePoint Services.
What???
Either I totally misunderstood the question, or your answer has nothing to do with it.
Additionally, the FP clearly states "it cannot be a web-based application".
So - Chance to redeem yourself here - Whatchoo talkin' bout, Willis?
You're absolutely wrong, and clearly didn't read the article:
No, I just don't see the article as the end of the world. Two points:
1) They sent him an invoice. Big deal - I could send him an invoice too, it would mean as much. When they sue, we'll have a bit more to talk about.
2) Bob Jacobsen wrote that program because he needed it; he released it because it could benefit others; he took credit for it because he didn't see the harm and hey, free personal PR. Had he skipped the last point and released it anonymously, he wouldn't now have a problem.
So, to repeat myself, no big deal. Commercial use of OSS will suffer if too many companies start playing patent-bingo, and individual use will change only slightly. As one of those slight changes, far more of it will end up anonymously released. No biggie.
This is something that should have been nipped in the bud, as Perens says, a decade ago.
I agree completely, but I don't hold my breath for unrealistic ideals... Who (specifically - "everyone" does not count as a pocket-lining answer) would protecting open source directly benefit? Unless you can answer "Senator X's son", it won't happen, so you might as well save your energy for a more winnable battle.
A coordinated patent attack by a few companies, or even one large company, could completely destroy Open Source in the United States and cripple it in other nations.
No. Absolutely wrong.
Such a coordinated attack would cripple commercial uses of open source software.
We mere guys-in-the-trenches would carry on writing and using itas though nothing had changed.
And yes, before someone says it - That might well make us "criminals"... In the same way speeding, copying CDs, "experimenting" with weed in college, and getting a BJ in Georgia does.
We all count as criminals for something already... One more nail in the government's coffin won't make much difference.
Would someone kindly translate the FP's title for those of us not intimate (in the Biblical sense) with Java's current political environment?
Almost all of the government's manpower and budget is expended on the things you dismiss as "bread and circuses"
No, the majority of the government's manpower and budget goes to imperialistic conquest, which currently means pissing around in a desert 7000 miles away. Now, while I could see that as part of "circuses", I'd have to say it costs far too much (purely in terms of money, since our leaders have never given two squirts of a rat's ass over body counts, beyond their poor PR value) for the return in entertainment value to write off as a mere distraction to the public.
I suggest a mild dose of Occam's Razor might be in order here.
I agree. In this case, however, "a group of well-educated alpha-primates acting in their own self-interest" strikes me as the far more plausible option over "300 million well-informed Modern Enlightened Humans all acted together to select the thousand or so best fellow Modern Enlightened Humans to efficiently run the country with wisdom and compassion and not a hint of self-interest."
Of course, I consider one other alternative even more likely...
"We", by which I mean a population of ignorant fools more interested in what NBC has on Thursday nights than in our foreign policy, chose completely incompetant members of our de facto aristocracy based entirely on looks and soundbites, and those "leaders" then treat the task like a union job - Do as little as possible to keep it, and take a nice fat kickback whenever possible.
And that sentence pretty much sums up my actual world-view. Why do we have a space program? Because grown up little boys like rockets. Why do we have agricultural research? Because if everyone starves to death, our leaders lose their jobs. Why do we have highways? Because it takes 45 minutes to drive from Portland Jetport to Walker's Point, and over half and hour from MacGregor Executive to Crawford.
Just bought the basic 802.11-enabled Hawking model...
In an unusual turn for them, the networking part of it actually works great... Setting it up goes exactly as they describe it in the manual, and (unlike every other Hawking product I've used), it doesn't shit the bed and require a manual reset after even a momentary loss of connectivity.
The image quality and convenience of getting snaps from it - Ugh. Without some work, you have no choice but to use either a browser and their built-in Java app, or their very custom (and all but useless) software.
With a bit of work (read: You need NetCat and something like dd that can extract byte ranges from the raw crap it send to nc), you can convince it to send you snapshots, but you get very low quality images (as in, under 20k for a 640x480 still).
And for something in the $100 range, you might think it would include at least basic autofocus or even a cheap 18"-to-infinity lens - Nope. Turn the stupid little ring on the lens, and pray your subject doesn't move outside a certain magic box.
and we had fewer internets on the web
;-)
So, uh...
How many internets do we have on the web now?
Someone should make something like this... for "resigning" from AOL
Sorry, but that requires a serious act of contrition.
Much like how baby rapists can't just say "oops, sorry, won't do it again", the same applies to AOL users. They need to prove they've learned their lesson, and truly repented of their old ways.
This is a pretty fucking stupid thing to say.
If by "pretty fucking stupid" you mean "right on the money", I agree.
A government has whatever power it is given, by whatever agreement or coercion it used to get it
No. A government has whatever power it can get away with up until its citizens revolt. Consider, as a trivial example, the NSA spying program. Blatantly illegal, yet since we haven't revolted, not only don't we see thousands of executive branch employees (as well as complicit corporate partners) going to the federal pen - We see a push to legalize such activity in one of the most blatant guttings of the 4th amendment in US history.
Furthermore, you have a missing modifier on "given" - Who has given that right? We all speed (and many would go even faster than they do if not for the legal risk), yet the government seems to believe it has the right to limit how fast we can drive. Over half the US considers current drug laws far too draconian, yet we still have an inmate population made up primarily of nonviolent drug offenders. We all recognize that our election system has more flaws than any so-called "democratic" system can bear, yet rather than fix it, we just switch to less auditable polling mechanisms.
Spit out the Kool-Ade and open your eyes.
Where does the Apollo program fit into this "criminal" idea?
The "circuses" part of "bread and circuses". Keep the plebes entertained, and they'll bear far more before rising up.
Research grants for improving crop yield?
The "bread" part of "bread and circuses". A starving population recognizes that it has little to lose by risking death a few weeks sooner than would happen otherwise.
What about the interstate highway system?
You do know why Hitler commissioned the Autobahn, right? And why Eisenhower copied it? However convenient the rest of us might find it in times of peace, it exists for the purpose of facilitating military deployments - Between existing military bases, to points of foreign attack, and, if necessary, to the location of any potential insurrection.
The post office? [...] The DARPA work that created the Internet?
If you don't see the need for a tyrranical regime to have efficient lines of communication, I don't have the words to explain it to you.
I guess you could twist each of them into the "criminal" idea, but I really think you'd be kidding yourself.
Well, at least one of us would kid themselves, but consider the cost of error... Incorrectly distrusting the government has basically no cost. Incorrectly trusting them - Well, Arbeit Macht Frei, right?
Now, before you dismiss me as a complete loony - I don't think the US has gone too far quite yet. The current Megalomaniac-in-chief has certainly pushed us closer to the edge than anyone since Lincoln (including Nixon - You'll notice that when he got caught with his hand in the cookie-jar, he had the decency to step down. Even Reagan at least still had the humility to lie about his actions). But we can still turn things around if we can wake up enough of the zombies. Sadly, I consider that unlikely, but at least still possible.
the BSA checks all installed software. It wouldn't matter what kinda of software that you had improper licenses for if they find out you'll be paying.
Now, I'll agree completely that the BSA lives in its own little delusional world.
But, just for a minute, I want you to imagine the BSA trying to prove that someone violated a shareware license...
"So, you have WinZip on 2,600 PCs..."
"Uh-huh - We decided to try it out last week, and can't say this raid has given us a very positive impression of the product".
"This machine says you installed WinZip in 1994".
"Yeah, and so does this one... Oh, and this one shows 1982 - D'you know when IBM released the first PC? Hint - 1983. You can change the clock on a computer."
"But you use a network time server!"
"You can change its clock as well - In fact, we had a glitch on ours just last week, right around the same time we decided to install WinZip - Hey, I see your point - WinZip broke our time server! You bastards!".
"Umm... Okay, moving on, how many XP/2k3 CALs do you have?"
You can't do anything with the fonts in the document, other than use them for viewing that document
Sure you can. Granted, it doesn't happen "automagically", but any coder worth their salt can fully automate the process with about half-an-hour of one-time work.
I have never heard of ANYBODY building a gun on their own.
You jest, right?
Check Google for "zip gun" (74.5k hits). "potato cannon" or "spud gun" (100k hits combined). Or just the obvious one, "homemade guns" (32k hits).
Really, basic gunmaking does not take a brain surgeon (again, not talking about "safe" or "accurate", just "functional"). You just need a way to generate a high-pressure area separated from a low pressure (or 1atm) by a moveable barrier.
Hell, in my youth, probably half my friends made working potato cannons - Hard to fail, really, when in its most crude form, a length of PVC pipe closed at one end (except for the touchhole) with a spud half way and a charge of frickin' hairspray will work (kids, don't try this at home - Of course, you will anyway, but do at least a bit more research than trying to build exactly what I just wrote, please). Of course, I'll brag a tad here and say that, of the ones I've seen in person, only mine had a rifled barrel, 2L chamber calibrated to take 60ml of butane, a pushbutton electric trigger, and could get a half pound (~232g) spud to clear the treeline over half a kilometer away. Though, I've seen some online that make mine look like a wooden spear compared to an apache helicopter.
gun crime in the UK is lower than even in those three states you quote.
True - The UK has a gun crime rate (source quoted below) of 6.2 per 100k people - And remember, that includes more than just homicides, so don't go cherry-picking that nice juicy 0.12-per-100k number you've probably heard oft-quoted. For comparison, VT has a rate of 12.8/100k, NH has 23.3/100k and ME has 7.46/100k. All higher.
Before you get all excited by those numbers, however, consider this - Since the UK banned personal firearms in 1997, the gun crime rate went (care to take a guess?) - UP by 40%, according to the Beeb.
So, what do we make of all these numbers? Take it as you will, but I have just one last factoid to throw out: The five safest (by violent crime rates per capita) states in the US (the Dakotas and Northern New England) have some of the weakest gun laws in the country (according to the Brady report, which gives those all a D or D-). Now, correlation doesn't prove causation, but it doesn't take a genius-monkey to notice that when the bonobo two cages down presses the blue button, he gets a cookie every time.
Gee, you think this may also have something to do with the very different populations and demographics between these states?
Hey, if you want to make the race-based argument, go right ahead. I'll pass on stirring up that bee's nest for the moment.
I would point out, though, that no one race holds a strong majority in Boston... According to NorthEastern's CURP, whites come in at 49.5%, blacks second at 23.8%, hispanics third at 14.4%, and asians 4th at 7.5%. So although Boston certainly has far greater racial diversity than, say, Portland ME at a whopping 98% white, I still don't think you can blame "them" (whichever "them" you prefer to blame).
And why did I mention Portland ME, you might ask? Because, at the same time MA has decided to blame ME for easy availability of guns, nearly all the high-profile crimes in Portland in the past few years involve (mostly white) criminals from Boston coming North to find new markets for selling drugs. Perhaps Romney and Menino should clean up their own overflowing toilets before they start pointing fingers at their neighbors' blinking VCR clocks (wow - that analogy came out so bad, I'll leave it just for the humor value!).
The best way to prevent accidental firing of a gun is to outlaw them completely, like here in the UK. Many Americans cite the first ammendment and their right to defend themselves, and sure people should have a right to defend themselves. If it's hard for just anyone to get a gun though, then you're less likely to be defending yourself against a gun. Whatever happened to "putting up your dukes".
Let me tell you a little story currently taking place in the US...
A few years ago, Boston all-but-banned guns, and the whole state of Massachusetts has extremely restrictive gun laws in general.
Since then, the level of gun crime there has gone UP, drastically.
Now, MA has three neighbors to the North - VT, NH, and ME, all of which have a healthy tradition of personal gun ownership, largely for hunting purposes.
All three of those states have very low rates of gun crime.
So how does Boston respond to this glaringly obvious trend?
A PR campaign trying to get its Northern neighbors (and a few other random states) to all but ban guns as well.
As a resident of one of those states, I have to laugh at how absurd they sound - Not only for ignoring the obvious fact that gun control increases gun crimes, but also that, at least with current attituteds, even if the federal government banned guns, the Northern New England states would most likely secede rather than comply.
If it's hard for just anyone to get a gun though, then you're less likely to be defending yourself against a gun.
Do you have any idea of the level of tech required to build a basic firearm? Not talking about a "safe to use" firearm, or an extremely accurate one, but a device capable of accelerating a small projectile in a specific direction (more or less) to sufficient velocity to penetrate a human body?
Pretty freakin' low. If you actually have modern mass-produced cartridges, you can literally do it with the contents of a typical desk drawer. Without that, it takes a $20 trip to the hardware store.
Whatever happened to "putting up your dukes".
Ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?
Or on a more serious note - An oppressive government doesn't fight fair. They don't line up mano-a-mano and whichever side wins gets to lead like some cheesy 1950's Western. And while a 9mm might not do much when the tanks start rolling over students a la Tiennamen Square, a fully armed populace means that, at least in theory, an oppressive government would need to kill every man, woman, and reasonably-old-enough child to keep control over... Over a population of corpses.
Remember, the Midwest cares about the coasts just as much as the coasts care about it. Which is to say, "Not much at all."
;-)
So, when do you start that job in Boston or LA?
And while I mean the above humorously - Seriously, last time I needed to find a new job and even wanted to relocate, I found plenty of listings on the coasts. I could, however, count on one hand the number of tech-oriented jobs I found in a non-ocean-bordering state (and half of those came from Arizona alone, for some odd reason).
the company has taken numerous steps in the past year to make sure such a breach is never made public again.
And you call yourself a cynic?
As the scariest part about the original phrasing, I think Carol DiBattiste really means it... As in, she seriously has such a poor grasp of technology that she doesn't recognize "never happens again" as an impossibility.
Any network security novice could tell her that it will happen again. They can take steps to contain such leaks; to minimize what a single attack can reveal; to speed detection of a intrusion; To improve the ability to catch and prosecute the perpetrator. But "never happens again" means they have done none of the above, instead trusting spoooooky technology X about which Ms. DiBattiste has absolutely no grasp.
Even bad publicity is not really a problem for them since the people they hurt have no say in whether or not to do business with them.
I think you've hit on the bigger issue here... Not that they had a problem, not that they've dealt inadequately with that problem, but that the even exist! Worthless parasites like ChoicePoint shouldn't get even one strike - When the real nature of businesses like this come to light, they should summarily suffer the corporate death penalty along with complete dissolution of all assets INCLUDING personal assets of anyone ethically challenged enough to fund such anti-human ventures. No mercy, put these leeches down.
This is exactly what everyone is looking for.
No.
You (and a number of other posters on this topic) have described what we look for - Geeks who want to get the most out of their systems with the least expense. If I could get killer performance with a RAID0 of tiny but fast drives (think Raptors, or even Cheetahs if you don't mind dealing with SCSI), while still having the capacity of a cheap 400GB IDE drive - Of course I'd have such a setup (and in fact, many of us already do, we just manually transfer things to/from the big-n'-slow).
Most people, however, do not want this. For starters, most people don't even need the huge drives they already have - If you gave them just the pair of RAID0 36GBs, they'd never use even half that the capacity, so no need for ever moving files to the slow storage. Then failing that, the members of the Sixpack family that manage to store hundreds of GB only fill it with downloaded porn, music, and movies - Uses that really don't need fast drives, just tons of space.
So while it sounds useful in theory - in practice, such a setup would just add cost and complexity without providing any tangible benefit to most users. I suspect even most Geek users would rarely notice the difference (aside from OS load times), and would only make such a setup for bragging rights.
Surely it depends on your definition of success and not everyone works towards the same goals in life.
Yes and no...
Talking about "nontraditional" happy people - People who (could) make quite enough to compete favorably in the rat race but choose to only work 20 hours a weeks and live in a double-wide so they can afford frequent vacations. Those people validate your point, but come few and far between.
Talking about the ever-growing masses of n'th generation welfare families, you have it absolutely wrong. When you need to live on the dole to survive, you should NOT have kids. But those people seem to have the most kides - Look at a cross section of the US in terms of income (or education) vs average number of children, and you have a VERY strong inverse correlation. The poor breed, the wealthy breed (but don't suffer for it or exist in large enough numbers to sway the above-mentioned correlation), the middle class have to choose between lifestyle and kids.
I heard a story on NPR the other day, about TN cutting back on their socialized healthcare system. They portrayed this as a real sob story, a poor victimized crippled woman who had to choose only five prescription drugs per month to fill.
Mind you, this woman already got $600/mo just for existing! For breathing and eating the government cheese, she gets paid. Then she gets five prescriptions per month... Not one or two, but five. They went on to tell a tale about how, when she got an infection, she had to pick which drug to temporarily live without. And of course, after rent and food and basic bills, she only had $9 out of her free $600 remaining per month.
Do you know how many free prescriptions I get? ZERO! Do you know how much I have left each month from my government pay-me-to-exist check? ZERO, because I don't get one! And $600 wouldn't even pay all of my rent, because I don't qualify for section-8 vouchers. Can ya hear the goddamned violins? Can you???
But back to the NPR story... The next generation no doubt did better, right? Her kids can help... Nope. Her kids also live as white trash, getting their own little slice of government cheese, and can't afford to help Mom because their own kids have huge regular medical bills (apparently also over the five-script limit? The story didn't make that part clear).
This story absolutely infuriated me - This woman needs to take just one last prescription - for the lead pill; and her progeny need to stop spreading their legs until they can afford to feed themselves! End-of-fucking-story. I didn't just describe a situation of "differently happy" - I described a case of hereditary poverty largely through their own acceptance of that situation.
all languages can express all concepts through circumlocutions.
...Or to gain a deeper understanding of any writings in a language
derived frm it - Including English (though it has too much from
the Germanic side of the family, with a Greek uncle sneaking in
the mix somewhere along the way, to count as a proper Romance language).
So you don't subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Fair enough, you can certainly poke it quite full of holes - Though somehow, the shreds remain basically intact.
For example, even though the Pirahã (and others) have no words for numbers over two and resultingly cannot grasp even basic arithmatic you could probably form some extended sentence to express "one and one and one". From that "circumlocution", someone already familiar with the concept of "successor of two" would grasp your intended meaning. Would a native speaker? And does the distinction matter?
Latin is vital for two things, one being able to read Roman literature or works in fields influenced by Latin-speaking culture
the simple solution to problems akin to MySpace is proper parenting.
Not at all - The simple solution to 99% of MySpace problems rests in recognizing that the "problems" don't exist in the first place. With the exception of the twits threatening to extort MySpace and posting about it thereupon, every other "problem" involved some busybody 3rd party authority-figure overstepping their bounds and panicking over harmless boasting and dick-waving.
So Little Jimmy posed with a bottle of Jack - Can you prove he drank it and that it contained actual whiskey, rather than drinking cherry kool-aid out of a previously empty bottle? Can you even prove the punk in the poor-quality overly-compressed picture, wearing the same style of clothes and hair as every other 14YO male in the country, as the same Jimmy?
So Susie has a list of people she hates and wants dead. We all (at least mentally) kept lists of people we hated and wanted dead. We just didn't act on them. Nor would Susie - Her "enemies" stand a better chance of dying in a freak accident involving snakes on a plane, than of her snapping one day and reenacting Doom down her school's corridors.
So a 40 year old guy has a MySpace page saying he likes cartoons. Ever met a Disney employee? They really do act like that, no hidden pedophile motives involved. And if he admits to playing with Legos - My god! Call the swat team, we might just... gasp... have an engineer on our hands!
That MySpace should make a concerted effort to work with parents to ensure their children's safety
Sure - Just as soon as those parents start paying MySpace to act as babysitters. Seriously - We have a basic issue of "responsibility" here, specifically, who bears it. Parents have a responsibility to raise their kids. MySpace does not, regardless of how many "tweens" use it.
MySpace represents the modern equivalent of playground gossip and note-passing. And, like it or not, the swingset doesn't censor its occupants, nor does the pencil refuse to write down obscenities.
What you do on the Internet has RL consequences and vice versa.
No - What you stupidly do on the 'net under your own name has consequences. Not that, if really motivated, you couldn't figure out my RL identity - I've probably given more than enough info without you even needing to leave Slashdot to track me down. But you can't just type in my real name in Google and see 183 reasons to fire me, 26 reasons to arrest me, and four reasons to execute me for treason (hey, don't forget that nontrivial crypto used to count as "munitions"). If these stupid kids would figure out the same thing, and do just a teensy bit to obscure their identities (no real names, blur faces and obvious location-signs in photos), we would all-but-stop-hearing about the evils of MySpace.
I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas.
Might I suggest going to, say, their web site and reading the plain-English ByLaws page? In particular, "ARTICLE 3 - PURPOSE", which contains a bulleted list of, well, what they do.
but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
Follow the money... Who benefits by driving down the cost of competant IT work? Hint - not "everybody but IT workers", because when we have money, we spend it as though the apocalypse will happen tomorrow.
As for whether or not companies really engage in such reprehensible hiring practices, you need look no further than the employment section of your local paper. See the tiny, unappealing buzzword-laden ads for experienced coders, paying a third the going rate in your area? Those companies will not get responses from anyone but interns. They can then claim they couldn't find anyone to take the job despite "honestly" trying, and can then hire H1Bs.
Regardless of your opinion of outsourced labor, I don't think anyone would consider such transparent tactics as anything but a legal farce.
wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
While IT people may have extremely well-organized personal lives (social and desktop notwithstanding), we don't tend to organize into larger bodies. The "I" in "INTP/INTJ" doesn't stand for "I likes large crowds".
I disagree with your comment.
I did qualify that with "IMO", something I rarely do.
Most of them are far quieter than 3.5" drives
Quiter... Perhaps, perhaps not - I can't say I've personally measured the sound levels from one. But the specific sounds they make really quite annoy me. My home file-server has five 3.5" drives in it, and I can work with it a few feet from my head. For (personal) comparison, I worked near an open passively-cooled mini-ITX system with a 2.5" drive for about 20 minutes just yesterday, and literally had to turn it off the noise bothered me so much.
and the lower heat production means that there is less heat to get rid of, meaning fans can be quieter.
"Can" as the operative word. I grant your point holds theoretically true, but has no relevance to the real world.
The above-mentioned home file server has a total of three low-RPM 120mm fans in it, and nothing inside except the CPU, NB, GPU, and RAM ever gets warm to the touch. Most systems with 2.5" drives, OTOH, have high-speed 40-60mm fans that make a constant high-pitched whine. Yes, you could mount a low-speed 120mm in front of a bank of 2.5" drives, and probably keep them cooler than a comparable bank of 3.5-inchers. Does anyone do so in practice? Not that I've ever seen.
But at the end of the day, when you talk about any system with more than two drives in it, people build with a criteria of (in varying order) capacity, performance, and price-per-GB. And on all three measures, 2.5" drives come in dead last. No one builds a raid for its thermal properties, beyond the basic "it won't melt or cause a fire".
They did just enough here to appear cooperative.
The FP says MA wanted info "that could help ease the transition from a Microsoft Office based environment" (bolding mine).
What motivation did Microsoft have to cooperate at all? "I would like you to give me information on the best time and place to kick you in the balls".
Same as they did with DOJ, same as they are doing with the EU.
Again... "We have decided to go on a witch hunt, and you look like a witch... Please provide evidence that would allow us to burn you and confiscate your property, so we don't have to settle for just drowning you". I don't really see the motivation on MS's part there...
The average cost for the drive under review is around $200, which isn't bad.
Compared to what exactly? You can get the same capacity, and much better performance, in a 3.5" form factor for under $50.
What I think is interesting is the cost behind setting up, say, a 4 Element SRAID system with these.
Why? For the same price, you could get four 500GB drives and have 2TB rather than 640GB... For a less than half the price, you could go with 320GB drives and have twice the space. For the same price as one 2.5" drive you could get the same 4-drive RAID as 3.5" drives.
Could heat be a problem here?
Heat (and relatedly, the somewhat lower power consumption) counts as the only advantage to using 2.5" drives. They cost more, hold less, and have shorter lifespans (They also make a more... "annoying" noise, IMO, though I don't know if I can fairly call them "louder"). Except for the niche markets of laptops and SFF/embedded, no one should ever even consider a 2.5" drive unless some design contstraint absolutely precludes the use of a 3.5".
What's this "after validation" business?
Microsoft has a problem - We hate them, and they fear us.
We have the techology to pirate their products, the motivation to do so even if we don't like using them, and the influence to convince others to either switch to Linux or use the pirated copies we give them rather than buying.
You'll notice that this only works in the two most recent versions of Office. Why, do you suppose, they chose not to include it in all of them? It has nothing to do with XML - All the older Office-native formats have the ability to store metadata (as various companies and governments occasionally discover when someone accidentally starts a "new" document by opening "supersecretespionageplan.doc", deleting everything they see, then saving and releasing the new "happyfunPRcampaign.doc" to the world.
No, they only use the new versions because they want us to update. And they want us to update to a far more restrictive version, that includes at least some smidgeon of DRM, whether online activation or Genuine (dis)Advantage or what-have-you.
Personally, on my machines that run Windows, I have Office 97. Not enough has changed to make cracking a new version worth the effort, and - Did you know, you don't need to install it? Nope - You can literally just copy the CD to your HDD, find "winword.exe" and the rest, and run them without corrupting the rest of your system (including, critically, the ability to do this as a non-admin user!). It will warn you (just once, not even as annoying as most shareware) that it needs repair every time you run it, but I have yet to find a feature actually broken from never bothering to formally install it.
Hmm, I've drifted a bit. Okay, I'll stop here.