"They dumbed down nautilus. What Nautilus needs is tabbing and splitting like konqueror has."
I disagree. Tabbed (or split) windows can be helpful, but they don't really accomplish anything that multiple windows don't. With a web browser, tabs make sense: you might have 8-10 windows open at once. With a filebrowser, however, I think that that is pretty rare. If you're the kind of person that opens that many windows, you probably prefer the command line anyway.
I hate to break it to you, but *you* are *not* the target audience for GNOME. GNOME2 was *never* intended for "linux geeks". You complain that GNOME is too "dumbed down", that you need to "see the filesystem".
I have news to you: 99% of computer users *don't* care about the filesystem, they don't want to customize their desktop, they don't know what a kernel is.
GNOME is changing what Linux is. Yes, you may not like it. You're not supposed to. You may complain that GNOME is "polluting" other projects. That's a necessity. There is no interoperability without cooperation.
GNOME is simpler. It has less options. It has less features. It's built around the idea that "less is more". If you're the type of person that needs to tweak everything, then by all means, use KDE! But most users don't care about tweaking. For them, computers should be "transparent". They don't care how their word processor works, how their desktop looks (so long as it's not super-ugly), or how many virtual desktops there are. They don't care about kernels or Xfree or window managers.
So you see, your complaints miss the entire point. GNOME was not designed for "linux geeks", it was designed for normal people.
GNOME is simple because that is what it needs to be. It has a consistant set of standards. GNOME is making Linux into a platform that works "out of the box". People don't care what their desktop looks like or how configurable it is: they simply want to get their work done with as little interruption as possible. That is the goal of the GNOME project: to replace every Windows desktop with a GNOME desktop. And the're a lot more likely to succeed than KDE.
WHAT WAR? There never was a war. This isn't commercial software we're talking about, it's open-source.
KDE is going in the WRONG direction for non-technical users. GNOME is going in the right direction.
KDE gets more complicated, more feature laden, and harder to use with every release. Yes, it does *everything*, but at a price. My mom has no trouble with GNOME and Epiphany. KDE, on the other hand, makes her head spin.
"Printing? I hope Gnome fixed that. Printing from Konqueror is a snap, from Galeon, gads, I hope you can figure it out."
I have no trouble printing from Epiphany or GTK2-based-Galeon. I have no idea about GTK1-based Galeon.
"Half the Gnome 2 apps seem to totally ignore Gnome Config settings."
Not in my experience.
If you have specific complaints about anything being "broken", POST A BUG REPORT! Complaining about how "bad" GNOME is on Slashdot helps no one.
"It just seems to me that the U.S. is on a slippery slope downhill. I think whatever your political viewpoint is, it's all downhill..."
I think that the US will survive this current slump. Ashcroft and Bush have certainly detracted strongly from the freedoms of the US, as has the DMCA and PATRIOT act. But we saw the same thing happen during the "Red Scare". Eventually, people will wise up and the country will pull through. Are we going downhill? Definately. But we are still far better off than we were in the 70s. Now, that doesn't mean that we should be complacent, but we still enjoy more freedoms than much of the world.
Everyone likes to dump on the big guy. Microsoft, Intel, the US Government. But, frankly, life isn't so bad here. US corporations cannot kill open source.
Outsourcing is a normal part of the economy. Labor moves to where it is the cheapest. But this is not unique to the US. It is happening in every developed country. Even Mexico now faces problems as factories move to China, where they enjoy even cheaper labor.
Where will we be in 20 years? I don't know. But it's likely that the rest of the world will be in the same position. The EU has problems with lobbying and special interest groups. They already have created a DMCA-equivelent law, and they will likely allow software patents.
I only hope that the US government is not the same in 2005. Thankfully, our political system allows this. Remember, the best way to avoid a bleak future is not to move - it is to change the government. Just remember, vote for anyone but Bush.
You are the kind of male that bugs me. You fall into the stereotype set by society and thus reinforce the idea that all that men are interested in is violence and sex. It's unfortunate that an entire gender is thought of in those terms.
"most guys don't want to be caught playing something like Mario Golf or Mario Party"
In my experience this is not true. Some men may be like you, but most just don't care. In the student center at the local unviersity, they have a room set up with an XBox, PS2, and GameCube. The Gamecube gets the most action - simply because it's more fun. Yes, Halo can be fun, but, frankly, there are a lot of FPS games out there. Nintendo games are refreshing and original and bright - something that most games can't match.
For example, Halo vs. Super Smash Bros.
Halo is fun for a while (especially vehicles), but I always find myself wishing I had a keyboard and mouse. Halo seems out of place with a controller. It feels clumsy. And, after a while, it gets boring.
Super Smash Bros was designed to be played on a console, and therefore it is far smoother and easier to play.
When Microsoft funds a study that makes their platform look cheaper, we all laugh and write it off as "bogus". Even the editors are jeering at the results.
Yet when Apple funds a study that makes their G5 look really fast, Slashdot cheers. The savior is here! The headline isn't "Apple Claims G5 is World's Fastest PC", it's "G5 Is World's Fastest PC".
Sheesh. Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field indeed.
There's no property involved. Copywritten material is not property. Copyright holders do not 'own' their ideas; the are simply given a limited monopoly over coping that idea.
If copyrights were property, then they would last forever, like an other property. They do not. Disney is trying to change this; unfortunately they have been quite successful so far.
Nowhere in US copright, patent or trademark law is the idea, invention, or trademark regarded as 'property'.
Copyright grants a temporary monopoly over the right to make copies of the copywritten material. It does not give a monopoly over the distribution of that material; if it did, the record companies would be able to prevent you from selling a CD.
With filesharing, it is not the distribution that is illegal but the copying. When you download a copywritten track, you are making an unauthorized track and are guilty of copyright infringement.
No property is involved at all, and therefore there can be no theft.
Copywritten material is not propety; neither are patents or trademarks. Thus, the phrase "Intellectual Property" is a misnomer. The RIAA wants you to think that ideas can be property. They use words like "steal" and "theft" and "intellectual property" to reinforce that idea. But ideas are *not* property.
Downloading tracks off the 'net illegally is copyright infringement, not theft.
"Oh yeas, I forget the U.S. Is 5-10 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to mobiles. Most people use predictive text, but kids nowadays toch-type on their mobiles at 30wpm plus.
Want to check/send lots of emails on the go? You can get full keyboard phones, not as nice as a decent handheld keyboard, but not too bad."
Lets, see, 5-10 years behind, yet we have true 3G CDMA technology widely deployed (Sprint and Verizon) as well as GSM and GPRS technology deployed widely (AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular).
Oh, and T9 is so outdated. I had that on my AT&T phone (TDMA/CDPD) in 1997. Now I use the device which has *the best* thumbkeyboard setup. The Danger Hiptop. And it's only available in the US. Ironic, isn't it?
danger.com
So, our industry is 5-10 years behind, yet we have the same GSM/GPRS technology Europe does. Hmmm. So you're saying that Europe is also 5-10 years behind? Oh, and we have 3G CDMA (144kbps and low latency - far superior to GPRS, roughly equivelent to EDGE). If you've ever seen Colorado, it's about the size of Italy, but with less than 6 million people. I live in a town of 80,000 that covers the same area as a European city of 1,000,000 (about 14km by 14km). And, yes, we have GPRS service here. CDMA too. And all the coffee shops have 802.11b. Oh, and I get 3mbit cable internet and digital phone service (from the same coax). Oh, and I get 180 channels of TV through the satellite dish on the back of my house. And six high-definition channels (1920x1080 resolution).
Oh, and I'm typing this on my phone. My Java-Powered color screen phone with a killer microbrowser, AIM, and a thumbkeyboard that kicks the ass of any other thumbkeyboard on the planet. We get the same GSM phones you do, but we also get CDMA phones, and the Danger Hiptop.
1: 30 frames per second is simply not enough. It's fine for movies and TV, but that is only because TV shows and movies are designed around the limits of the medium. Ever notice how TV shows and movies don't have a lot of quick, jerky movements? Those movements lead to motion sickness on TV and in movies, and they are the exact movements in 3D games. 30fps makes me sick, I can tolerate 60fps.
2: Remember, FPS is the *average* framerate. It may dip well below that mark. My goal is not to have the most FPS but to have a reasonably high resolution with FSAA and AF on, all the detail settings to full, and to never have the game dip below my monitor's refresh rate (75Hz).
"For those who would compare his antics to breaking into your home, but not stealing anything, it's a poor analogy. Why? Because your house is your personal meatspace. And if he went inside, he would see many things personal to you, such as family pictures, your kid's toys, or if he was REALLY unlucky, your fat, naked ass sitting in a Lazy Boy with a bowl of chips balanced on your ponderous belly, flipping through the channels."
But, wait, isn't that what crackers do? Even the crackers who don't steal personal information and trash the system will invariably run into confidential data. There may not have been "family pictures", but there were certainly names and addresses and credit card numbers.
If you don't trust the government with your private data, why would you trust some kid with it?
"The fans are variable speed and spin up faster as the machine gets hotter... I was looking at a demo 1.6ghz unit in the store (at a micro center in one of their tech rooms) and it was pretty silent"
I assumed that, but still, 9? I have three fans in my case, and I have a 67W processor, hot video card, and 3 hard drives.
35dba? That's not that impressive. My Panaflos are rated at 22dba, and I certainly wouldn't call them "silent". Quiet, perhaps, but not "silent". In my book, silent means "quieter than the HDD". I wish I had a db meter so that I could actually measure my computer.
My office has a bunch of Evos (P4 2.0Ghz, 7200rpm HDD), and they have fans that are quieter than the HDD. They use a 2 fan design (1 case/cpu, 1 psu).
"Actually, the larger dishes for DSS produce a weaker signal because they use an almost identical surface area to bounce signals from three satellites instead of one. (Note that the small dishes with two satellites are probably worse than the large dishes with three, but I don't see many of those around."
You're thinking of the multi-sat eliptical dishes, and yes, they do produce a weaker signal. The grandparent was describing a 30" round dish (which are available, you just have to look), which focuses signal from one satellite, and provides ~2.8 times more surface area than an 18" round dish.
I have a 20" eliptical dish (probably the worst dish to have), mounted directly into five studs with bolts (the dish is screwed into the wood and also screwed through two metal bars that screw into three more studs), but it does fine except for when it gets too much snow on it. Ice will also mess up the signal.
The spot beam satellites don't seem to drop out as easily, so during "rain fade" I normally just watch locals. It's a bummer when you're recording something, though, or when you can't acquire APG because your TiVo rebooted (hack gone wrong, usually).
As a user of XP RC2, Microsoft's release canidates are extremely close to their actual product. From XP RC2 to XP 2600, I found no changes (except for the build number and "Evaulation Use Only" missing from the desktop).
I know that the fans are supposed to be "super silent", but I would have expected more from Apple. My Athlon XP 2000+ (Palamino, 67W), GeForce4 Ti4200, 3xRAID 7200rpm desktop is cooled by only 3 Panaflo L1a fans (24cfm, 1900rpm). There's a Zalman on the GPU, so no fan there, an Alpha 8045 with a Panaflo on the CPU, a modded PSU with a Panaflo L1a, and a Panaflo L1a case fan. Even with all the fans on full blast, it's quiet, and when I use my motherboards thermal control function, it's nearly silent (the HDDs, which are Samsung SpinPoint P40s - quiet, are quite a bit louder than the fans).
One might wonder why Apple, a company known for industrial design, didn't design a 0 fan or at least 1 fan chassis. Imagine a system where both processors, as well as the PSU, are cooled by a single fan. If anyone can do it, it's either Zalman or Apple.
First, 1: How quiet, exactly, is this 9 fan setup? Is it quieter than the HDDs? If anyone has a G5, could they respond. 2: How quiet is it under load? When you are playing a 3D game or rendering video, does it sound like a jet engine or does it remain quiet and civil. 3: Why exactly did Apple elect a 9-fan setup? Fans are likely the fist part to fail on the computer. Also, as fans age, they get noisier. Do the fans in the G5 stop when they aren't needed or do they continue at a low RPM?
Re:Hey! I know these people!
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Cracking GSM
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"GSM has frequency hopping too."
Yes, but the way I understand it, GSM doesn't hop nearly as fast or as randomly as CDMA technologies do. With CDMA, everybody is effectively on the same "channel" all the time, they just hop frequencies in a pseudo-random order. CDMA has a "soft" cell size limit - as more users are added, the noise floor increases (because there is a greater chance for a frequency collision) and eventually the data becomes unreadable.
The best analogy I heard was a room full of converstaions. In GSM, everyone talks in short blips, and no one transmits at the same time to the same person. With CDMA, everyone talks all the time, but they are all speeking different languages.
Re:no privacy on mobile phones
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Cracking GSM
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The US has had encrypted GSM since 1994. We've had CDMA, which is somewhat secure, since 1995.
The first GSM rollout in Europe was in 1992.
So, please, don't give me this "run-down" bullshit. Heck, we already have widely deployed 3G data services from two providers (1xRTT from Sprint and Verizon). Not to mention three GSM carriers, one of which offers unlimited GPRS for $20 a month.
CDMA has (Compared to 2.5G GSM): - Bigger Cell Sizes (GSM has a 16km hard limit) - 2x More Calls per Cell - Better voice quality - Faster data service with lower latency
Oh, and it copes with interference better, too.
Re:Hey! I know these people!
on
Cracking GSM
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· Score: 1
"CDMA"
CDMA actually does have a form of encryption. CDMA operates on the principle that your frequency changes continuously based on a seeded pseudo-random number generator. Thus, if an attacker does not have the seed, it is difficult for them to capture even one packet from your phone.
In practice, I do not know how secure this is, but it's better than nothing.
"Will memory be segmented in such a way that someone who is logged on as Administrator can't use a memory scanner on the open document, as it's instantiated in Word?"
Likely, yes. DRM applications will run in a protected memory space that no user has access to.
"What happens to this DRM scheme if someone dual boots to an older version of Windows, or runs inside a virtual machine?"
That's where TCPA (Palladium) comes in. It ensures that:
1) The hardware you are running is "trusted". This rules out the possibility of VMWare running Windows in "trusted" mode, without "trusted" mode, DRM applications will not decrypt "protected" data. 2) Your OS is also "trusted". This means digitally signed, hashed drivers and OS components. Flipping a few bits in your video driver won't work. 3) The DRM-enabled application is "trusted". This means that simple hacks to Windows Media Player simply won't work.
"What happens if pieces of the physical hardware of the machine in question are replaced by custom IC's designed by first world threat nations, or other parties specifically to circumvent?"
Again, trusted hardware, trusted software, trusted OS, trusted drivers. The entire system is designed to resist this kind of attack.
Now, no DRM system is impervious. DRM is impossible, because at some point in the chain the data must be decrypted. But Microsoft's inititive is clearly the strongest DRM to date. Microsoft may hope for nothing more than a constant race with the hackers - ala DirecTV. DirecTV's DRM works because they change access cards faster than the hackers can keep up (with the exception of their third generation card, which was hacked quickly due to leaked trade secrets). You may not agree with DirecTV's strong-arm tactics (I don't), but you have to admit that their DRM system is one of the most transparent yet effective systems available.
1: You use Windows Media Encoder/Player, and it works fine 2: You come to Slashdot asking for a free (as in beer) alternative.
Huh? You already have a free (beer) solution, so long as the server and client are running Windows (as they most likely already are). Now you want to find a free (beer) solution that's different? Why? Want better quality? Cross-platform support? Just hate Microsoft? These are important details overlooked in your post.
BTW: With 802.11g, you can get around 5mbits/sec of actual throughput. That's enough for near-DVD quality video if you use a smart codec.
Slashdot Mirror
"They dumbed down nautilus. What Nautilus needs is tabbing and splitting like konqueror has."
I disagree. Tabbed (or split) windows can be helpful, but they don't really accomplish anything that multiple windows don't. With a web browser, tabs make sense: you might have 8-10 windows open at once. With a filebrowser, however, I think that that is pretty rare. If you're the kind of person that opens that many windows, you probably prefer the command line anyway.
I hate to break it to you, but *you* are *not* the target audience for GNOME. GNOME2 was *never* intended for "linux geeks". You complain that GNOME is too "dumbed down", that you need to "see the filesystem".
I have news to you: 99% of computer users *don't* care about the filesystem, they don't want to customize their desktop, they don't know what a kernel is.
GNOME is changing what Linux is. Yes, you may not like it. You're not supposed to. You may complain that GNOME is "polluting" other projects. That's a necessity. There is no interoperability without cooperation.
GNOME is simpler. It has less options. It has less features. It's built around the idea that "less is more". If you're the type of person that needs to tweak everything, then by all means, use KDE! But most users don't care about tweaking. For them, computers should be "transparent". They don't care how their word processor works, how their desktop looks (so long as it's not super-ugly), or how many virtual desktops there are. They don't care about kernels or Xfree or window managers.
So you see, your complaints miss the entire point. GNOME was not designed for "linux geeks", it was designed for normal people.
GNOME is simple because that is what it needs to be. It has a consistant set of standards. GNOME is making Linux into a platform that works "out of the box". People don't care what their desktop looks like or how configurable it is: they simply want to get their work done with as little interruption as possible. That is the goal of the GNOME project: to replace every Windows desktop with a GNOME desktop. And the're a lot more likely to succeed than KDE.
"For all practical purposes, KDE3 won the war."
WHAT WAR? There never was a war. This isn't commercial software we're talking about, it's open-source.
KDE is going in the WRONG direction for non-technical users. GNOME is going in the right direction.
KDE gets more complicated, more feature laden, and harder to use with every release. Yes, it does *everything*, but at a price. My mom has no trouble with GNOME and Epiphany. KDE, on the other hand, makes her head spin.
"Printing? I hope Gnome fixed that. Printing from Konqueror is a snap, from Galeon, gads, I hope you can figure it out."
I have no trouble printing from Epiphany or GTK2-based-Galeon. I have no idea about GTK1-based Galeon.
"Half the Gnome 2 apps seem to totally ignore Gnome Config settings."
Not in my experience.
If you have specific complaints about anything being "broken", POST A BUG REPORT! Complaining about how "bad" GNOME is on Slashdot helps no one.
Microsoft Exchange
What... why is everyone looking at me like that?
"It just seems to me that the U.S. is on a slippery slope downhill. I think whatever your political viewpoint is, it's all downhill..."
I think that the US will survive this current slump. Ashcroft and Bush have certainly detracted strongly from the freedoms of the US, as has the DMCA and PATRIOT act. But we saw the same thing happen during the "Red Scare". Eventually, people will wise up and the country will pull through. Are we going downhill? Definately. But we are still far better off than we were in the 70s. Now, that doesn't mean that we should be complacent, but we still enjoy more freedoms than much of the world.
Everyone likes to dump on the big guy. Microsoft, Intel, the US Government. But, frankly, life isn't so bad here. US corporations cannot kill open source.
Outsourcing is a normal part of the economy. Labor moves to where it is the cheapest. But this is not unique to the US. It is happening in every developed country. Even Mexico now faces problems as factories move to China, where they enjoy even cheaper labor.
Where will we be in 20 years? I don't know. But it's likely that the rest of the world will be in the same position. The EU has problems with lobbying and special interest groups. They already have created a DMCA-equivelent law, and they will likely allow software patents.
I only hope that the US government is not the same in 2005. Thankfully, our political system allows this. Remember, the best way to avoid a bleak future is not to move - it is to change the government. Just remember, vote for anyone but Bush.
"action, fighting, and girls"
You are the kind of male that bugs me. You fall into the stereotype set by society and thus reinforce the idea that all that men are interested in is violence and sex. It's unfortunate that an entire gender is thought of in those terms.
"most guys don't want to be caught playing something like Mario Golf or Mario Party"
In my experience this is not true. Some men may be like you, but most just don't care. In the student center at the local unviersity, they have a room set up with an XBox, PS2, and GameCube. The Gamecube gets the most action - simply because it's more fun. Yes, Halo can be fun, but, frankly, there are a lot of FPS games out there. Nintendo games are refreshing and original and bright - something that most games can't match.
For example, Halo vs. Super Smash Bros.
Halo is fun for a while (especially vehicles), but I always find myself wishing I had a keyboard and mouse. Halo seems out of place with a controller. It feels clumsy. And, after a while, it gets boring.
Super Smash Bros was designed to be played on a console, and therefore it is far smoother and easier to play.
Insetad of worrying about the spelling and grammar on Slashdot, why don't you go post something constructive?
When Microsoft funds a study that makes their platform look cheaper, we all laugh and write it off as "bogus". Even the editors are jeering at the results.
Yet when Apple funds a study that makes their G5 look really fast, Slashdot cheers. The savior is here! The headline isn't "Apple Claims G5 is World's Fastest PC", it's "G5 Is World's Fastest PC".
Sheesh. Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field indeed.
Good point, but one problem:
There's no property involved. Copywritten material is not property. Copyright holders do not 'own' their ideas; the are simply given a limited monopoly over coping that idea.
If copyrights were property, then they would last forever, like an other property. They do not. Disney is trying to change this; unfortunately they have been quite successful so far.
Nowhere in US copright, patent or trademark law is the idea, invention, or trademark regarded as 'property'.
Copyright grants a temporary monopoly over the right to make copies of the copywritten material. It does not give a monopoly over the distribution of that material; if it did, the record companies would be able to prevent you from selling a CD.
With filesharing, it is not the distribution that is illegal but the copying. When you download a copywritten track, you are making an unauthorized track and are guilty of copyright infringement.
No property is involved at all, and therefore there can be no theft.
Copywritten material is not propety; neither are patents or trademarks. Thus, the phrase "Intellectual Property" is a misnomer. The RIAA wants you to think that ideas can be property. They use words like "steal" and "theft" and "intellectual property" to reinforce that idea. But ideas are *not* property.
Downloading tracks off the 'net illegally is copyright infringement, not theft.
"You weren't using it very much is what you are saying, right?"
I used it for 180 days, the length of my evaluation period. Then I purchased XP 2600. Virtually no difference.
"A very very sick US software industry that is on life support, with very little innovation."
Microsoft and Apple are "on life support"? The two most popular operating systems on the desktop (Windows and OS X) are "on life support"?
Apple and Microsoft show "very little innovation"?
40 billion dollars in the bank is quite far from "governmental life support".
"Oh yeas, I forget the U.S. Is 5-10 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to mobiles. Most people use predictive text, but kids nowadays toch-type on their mobiles at 30wpm plus.
Want to check/send lots of emails on the go? You can get full keyboard phones, not as nice as a decent handheld keyboard, but not too bad."
Lets, see, 5-10 years behind, yet we have true 3G CDMA technology widely deployed (Sprint and Verizon) as well as GSM and GPRS technology deployed widely (AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular).
Oh, and T9 is so outdated. I had that on my AT&T phone (TDMA/CDPD) in 1997. Now I use the device which has *the best* thumbkeyboard setup. The Danger Hiptop. And it's only available in the US. Ironic, isn't it?
danger.com
So, our industry is 5-10 years behind, yet we have the same GSM/GPRS technology Europe does. Hmmm. So you're saying that Europe is also 5-10 years behind? Oh, and we have 3G CDMA (144kbps and low latency - far superior to GPRS, roughly equivelent to EDGE).
If you've ever seen Colorado, it's about the size of Italy, but with less than 6 million people. I live in a town of 80,000 that covers the same area as a European city of 1,000,000 (about 14km by 14km). And, yes, we have GPRS service here. CDMA too. And all the coffee shops have 802.11b. Oh, and I get 3mbit cable internet and digital phone service (from the same coax). Oh, and I get 180 channels of TV through the satellite dish on the back of my house. And six high-definition channels (1920x1080 resolution).
Oh, and I'm typing this on my phone. My Java-Powered color screen phone with a killer microbrowser, AIM, and a thumbkeyboard that kicks the ass of any other thumbkeyboard on the planet. We get the same GSM phones you do, but we also get CDMA phones, and the Danger Hiptop.
1: 30 frames per second is simply not enough. It's fine for movies and TV, but that is only because TV shows and movies are designed around the limits of the medium. Ever notice how TV shows and movies don't have a lot of quick, jerky movements? Those movements lead to motion sickness on TV and in movies, and they are the exact movements in 3D games. 30fps makes me sick, I can tolerate 60fps.
2: Remember, FPS is the *average* framerate. It may dip well below that mark. My goal is not to have the most FPS but to have a reasonably high resolution with FSAA and AF on, all the detail settings to full, and to never have the game dip below my monitor's refresh rate (75Hz).
"For those who would compare his antics to breaking into your home, but not stealing anything, it's a poor analogy. Why? Because your house is your personal meatspace. And if he went inside, he would see many things personal to you, such as family pictures, your kid's toys, or if he was REALLY unlucky, your fat, naked ass sitting in a Lazy Boy with a bowl of chips balanced on your ponderous belly, flipping through the channels."
But, wait, isn't that what crackers do? Even the crackers who don't steal personal information and trash the system will invariably run into confidential data. There may not have been "family pictures", but there were certainly names and addresses and credit card numbers.
If you don't trust the government with your private data, why would you trust some kid with it?
Alltheweb is run by Overture, a company that built it's business model around selling search placements on popular search engines (except Google).
"It's true that Most of these units are flash upgradable, but consumer-level network gear's support lifecycle tends to be pretty damned short."
Not with Linksys, at least. The Firewall/NAT box I purchased four years ago (BEFSR11) is still being sold, and I still get firmware upgrades for it.
"The fans are variable speed and spin up faster as the machine gets hotter... I was looking at a demo 1.6ghz unit in the store (at a micro center in one of their tech rooms) and it was pretty silent"
I assumed that, but still, 9? I have three fans in my case, and I have a 67W processor, hot video card, and 3 hard drives.
35dba? That's not that impressive. My Panaflos are rated at 22dba, and I certainly wouldn't call them "silent". Quiet, perhaps, but not "silent". In my book, silent means "quieter than the HDD". I wish I had a db meter so that I could actually measure my computer.
My office has a bunch of Evos (P4 2.0Ghz, 7200rpm HDD), and they have fans that are quieter than the HDD. They use a 2 fan design (1 case/cpu, 1 psu).
"Actually, the larger dishes for DSS produce a weaker signal because they use an almost identical surface area to bounce signals from three satellites instead of one. (Note that the small dishes with two satellites are probably worse than the large dishes with three, but I don't see many of those around."
You're thinking of the multi-sat eliptical dishes, and yes, they do produce a weaker signal. The grandparent was describing a 30" round dish (which are available, you just have to look), which focuses signal from one satellite, and provides ~2.8 times more surface area than an 18" round dish.
I have a 20" eliptical dish (probably the worst dish to have), mounted directly into five studs with bolts (the dish is screwed into the wood and also screwed through two metal bars that screw into three more studs), but it does fine except for when it gets too much snow on it. Ice will also mess up the signal.
The spot beam satellites don't seem to drop out as easily, so during "rain fade" I normally just watch locals. It's a bummer when you're recording something, though, or when you can't acquire APG because your TiVo rebooted (hack gone wrong, usually).
As a user of XP RC2, Microsoft's release canidates are extremely close to their actual product. From XP RC2 to XP 2600, I found no changes (except for the build number and "Evaulation Use Only" missing from the desktop).
I know that the fans are supposed to be "super silent", but I would have expected more from Apple. My Athlon XP 2000+ (Palamino, 67W), GeForce4 Ti4200, 3xRAID 7200rpm desktop is cooled by only 3 Panaflo L1a fans (24cfm, 1900rpm). There's a Zalman on the GPU, so no fan there, an Alpha 8045 with a Panaflo on the CPU, a modded PSU with a Panaflo L1a, and a Panaflo L1a case fan. Even with all the fans on full blast, it's quiet, and when I use my motherboards thermal control function, it's nearly silent (the HDDs, which are Samsung SpinPoint P40s - quiet, are quite a bit louder than the fans).
One might wonder why Apple, a company known for industrial design, didn't design a 0 fan or at least 1 fan chassis. Imagine a system where both processors, as well as the PSU, are cooled by a single fan. If anyone can do it, it's either Zalman or Apple.
First,
1: How quiet, exactly, is this 9 fan setup? Is it quieter than the HDDs? If anyone has a G5, could they respond.
2: How quiet is it under load? When you are playing a 3D game or rendering video, does it sound like a jet engine or does it remain quiet and civil.
3: Why exactly did Apple elect a 9-fan setup? Fans are likely the fist part to fail on the computer. Also, as fans age, they get noisier. Do the fans in the G5 stop when they aren't needed or do they continue at a low RPM?
"GSM has frequency hopping too."
Yes, but the way I understand it, GSM doesn't hop nearly as fast or as randomly as CDMA technologies do. With CDMA, everybody is effectively on the same "channel" all the time, they just hop frequencies in a pseudo-random order. CDMA has a "soft" cell size limit - as more users are added, the noise floor increases (because there is a greater chance for a frequency collision) and eventually the data becomes unreadable.
The best analogy I heard was a room full of converstaions. In GSM, everyone talks in short blips, and no one transmits at the same time to the same person. With CDMA, everyone talks all the time, but they are all speeking different languages.
The US has had encrypted GSM since 1994. We've had CDMA, which is somewhat secure, since 1995.
The first GSM rollout in Europe was in 1992.
So, please, don't give me this "run-down" bullshit. Heck, we already have widely deployed 3G data services from two providers (1xRTT from Sprint and Verizon). Not to mention three GSM carriers, one of which offers unlimited GPRS for $20 a month.
CDMA has (Compared to 2.5G GSM):
- Bigger Cell Sizes (GSM has a 16km hard limit)
- 2x More Calls per Cell
- Better voice quality
- Faster data service with lower latency
Oh, and it copes with interference better, too.
"CDMA"
CDMA actually does have a form of encryption. CDMA operates on the principle that your frequency changes continuously based on a seeded pseudo-random number generator. Thus, if an attacker does not have the seed, it is difficult for them to capture even one packet from your phone.
In practice, I do not know how secure this is, but it's better than nothing.
"Will memory be segmented in such a way that someone who is logged on as Administrator can't use a memory scanner on the open document, as it's instantiated in Word?"
Likely, yes. DRM applications will run in a protected memory space that no user has access to.
"What happens to this DRM scheme if someone dual boots to an older version of Windows, or runs inside a virtual machine?"
That's where TCPA (Palladium) comes in. It ensures that:
1) The hardware you are running is "trusted". This rules out the possibility of VMWare running Windows in "trusted" mode, without "trusted" mode, DRM applications will not decrypt "protected" data.
2) Your OS is also "trusted". This means digitally signed, hashed drivers and OS components. Flipping a few bits in your video driver won't work.
3) The DRM-enabled application is "trusted". This means that simple hacks to Windows Media Player simply won't work.
"What happens if pieces of the physical hardware of the machine in question are replaced by custom IC's designed by first world threat nations, or other parties specifically to circumvent?"
Again, trusted hardware, trusted software, trusted OS, trusted drivers. The entire system is designed to resist this kind of attack.
Now, no DRM system is impervious. DRM is impossible, because at some point in the chain the data must be decrypted. But Microsoft's inititive is clearly the strongest DRM to date. Microsoft may hope for nothing more than a constant race with the hackers - ala DirecTV. DirecTV's DRM works because they change access cards faster than the hackers can keep up (with the exception of their third generation card, which was hacked quickly due to leaked trade secrets). You may not agree with DirecTV's strong-arm tactics (I don't), but you have to admit that their DRM system is one of the most transparent yet effective systems available.
So, let me get this straight:
1: You use Windows Media Encoder/Player, and it works fine
2: You come to Slashdot asking for a free (as in beer) alternative.
Huh? You already have a free (beer) solution, so long as the server and client are running Windows (as they most likely already are). Now you want to find a free (beer) solution that's different? Why? Want better quality? Cross-platform support? Just hate Microsoft? These are important details overlooked in your post.
BTW: With 802.11g, you can get around 5mbits/sec of actual throughput. That's enough for near-DVD quality video if you use a smart codec.