MS Windows doesn't run on the ARM processor - that is the real reason that you can't put MS Windows on it. Linux has been ported to the ARM - so making an ARM based Linux laptop is a doddle.
This would be great - better battery life, I can't wait.
The next step is to start using ARM processors in the big data centers - that will save huge $$ on electricity and cooling. Is this the start of the end of Intel's reign ?
That will not be released. MS has already taken a patent on this, but by delaying it's release we will not hear of it for several years. When the patent does surface many other vendors will find that they have been infringing this submarine patent.
In a critical environment like a nuclear sub it is imperative that they have the best support available on the planet -- where else could they get that other than MS? Also: if, quite unbelievably, something goes wrong with the computer and, say, they toast China - they will be able to use that great advantage of using proprietary s/ware: sue the vendor - and Bill is rich enough to pay to repair the damage.
If they had used Linux: who do they sue ? Linus isn't that rich.
Just like all this wire tapping, surveillance, air port searches,... they don't really stop the criminals - they just get up everyone's nose and provide an excuse for those who ''investigate'' us with excuses to abuse our privacy.
Look at the people who blew up the hotels in Bombay (Mumbai these days) - just a few men in boats with guns -- sophisticated protection can't stop them every time. We might as well give up and spend the money on something useful.
Brilliant! Did you also spot that the main actor playing Sam Tylor was John Simm (fantastic) who also played the Dr's nemesis (the Master) at the end of the previous series - so a time traveler in both series.
Planting spyware on suspect machines. With some operating systems this might be easy when remote, others they could do it if they can get undetected physical access.
Tweaks to the 'patch Tuesday' downloads. Quite possible, no one can verify against the sources since they can't see them. The does seem to be circumstantial evidence that MS has done this before; I wonder what their reward was?
Tweaks to the.deb/.rpm files for my favourite OS. Not possible you say ? Does that mean that no FLOSS maintainer can ever be bought ? I would hope not, but...
The report is partly bluff or just rubbish.
Given recent government activities I know that they would like to do this, but I just hope that they can't. If this is serious -- back to compiling everything from trusted sources.
In the telecom immunity challenge, the government argues that the telecoms should not be punished, or suffer the threat of punishment, for a surveillance program that the Bush administration claims was designed only to fight terrorism.
You must not allow the telecoms to hide behind ''We were only doing what Bush asked us to, we thought that he knew the law better than we did''. If you do, when a future government tries a similar stunt the telecoms/whoever will simply roll over and accept the cash for doing the evil deeds.
Future companies need to question what they are asked to do, they are the first line of defense of your freedoms. If the telecoms pay large fines there will be good motivation for companies in the future of making the government justify what they ask for.
Freedoms need to be fought for, they need to be protected.
This would be an excellent use of FLOSS. Large chunks of the software must be the same between one Olympics and the next - so why not reuse it ? This is the sort of field in which FLOSS would work well.
Probably won't happen - the Olympics is about money, lots of it; also about puffing politicians pride - the sports stars are a means to an end but not the most important people.
No, not a slashdotter comment but unless they are how do you know that they are not under control of Dr_Evil/megalomaniac_president/... programmed to act morally until they have control and then hand over control to the guy who has owns/programmed it.
If these things are to have great powers then we need to have great trust in them. If it is closed source then how do we know what they will do ?
Oh, you say: this will only be used on battle fields far away, but how long before they decide that we need a moral police force ?
OK: I from what I know of the military they will keep it highly secret... not good prospects.
Take the troops from the world's bully off the streets.
All that we need to do now is to persuade all the world's other bullies to do likewise, beat each other up in cyber space and leave the rest of us in peace.
Presumably: for this to work the PC will need to download new virus signature files, etc, every day. A natural part of this would be to send up the license number -- so that the MS servers know what new signatures have arrived since it last connected.
A side effect of this will be that MS will be able to readily identify where license numbers are being used more than once. If they take the opportunity to remotely shut down ''illegal'' PCs, the whole exercise might make them money.
I wonder if they will do an Apple and disable s/ware that they don't like (pronounce as malware) -- because it competes with some MS s/ware.
What they seem to suggest is that there is an ability to control the rate of mutations. Presumably in times of stress an organism might allow the rate of mutations to rise which would allow the organism to adapt to the stress.
The above is the summary for the main stream press, dig a bit deeper and the story is subtly different. The headline could be taken to mean that an organism can control the direction of evolution, this is false: it is the rate of evolution that may be controlled.
This is akin to controlling the accelerator (gas pedal for those in the USA) not the steering wheel.
The ''choice'' on direction (good or bad mutation) will only ever be determined by how many grandchildren an organism has. If the mutation is helpful to survival then the greater number of grand kids will preserve the organism; if the mutation is not helpful then there will be fewer grand kids than for the helpful organism and thus the unhelpful mutation will be out competed by the helpful ones and so eventually drop out of the gene pool.
For many years evolutionists have known that mutation increases in times of stress. They have, however, thought that this was because stress leads to smaller populations in which (beneficial) mutations can propagate more quickly. It is this point that the Princeton paper is all about.
The trouble with discussion on evolution is that there are subtle arguments for which we do not have concise words to convey, we thus tend to use approximate short cuts but these short cuts bring along a baggage of undesirable implication.
For instance ''choice'' - no organism chooses good or bad mutations, if it has a bad mutation then it is more likely to die than a brother that has a good mutation. However we all use the word ''choice'' otherwise discussions on evolution would go on forever.
I work for a law firm and I assure you this stuff is small fry for lawyers
Yes a one off would be small fry, but by the hundred or thousand it is good easy money. Get a senior partner to write a sufficiently blood curdling letter and then a junior legal secretary cut and pastes in the case by case name, address, etc. If there is any correspondence this is paid for by either the ''infringing'' punter or by the game maker.
Whichever way you look at it the legal parasites make money.
Slashdot Mirror
or whichever foreign government owns the code that the FBI has just recruited the bright kids on the Internet to crack :-)
With that sort of attitude I would recommend shopping elsewhere until they treat their staff properly.
They did not mention the toolbox lost the other week !
Forgive me for being a cynic -- I am going to wait until others have really tested & debugged ext4 before I trust it with my own data.
Be that software, video or music -- why should I be prevented from sharing it with world ?
This would be great - better battery life, I can't wait.
The next step is to start using ARM processors in the big data centers - that will save huge $$ on electricity and cooling. Is this the start of the end of Intel's reign ?
That will not be released. MS has already taken a patent on this, but by delaying it's release we will not hear of it for several years. When the patent does surface many other vendors will find that they have been infringing this submarine patent.
If they had used Linux: who do they sue ? Linus isn't that rich.
Look at the people who blew up the hotels in Bombay (Mumbai these days) - just a few men in boats with guns -- sophisticated protection can't stop them every time. We might as well give up and spend the money on something useful.
Brilliant! Did you also spot that the main actor playing Sam Tylor was John Simm (fantastic) who also played the Dr's nemesis (the Master) at the end of the previous series - so a time traveler in both series.
Given recent government activities I know that they would like to do this, but I just hope that they can't. If this is serious -- back to compiling everything from trusted sources.
You must not allow the telecoms to hide behind ''We were only doing what Bush asked us to, we thought that he knew the law better than we did''. If you do, when a future government tries a similar stunt the telecoms/whoever will simply roll over and accept the cash for doing the evil deeds.
Future companies need to question what they are asked to do, they are the first line of defense of your freedoms. If the telecoms pay large fines there will be good motivation for companies in the future of making the government justify what they ask for.
Freedoms need to be fought for, they need to be protected.
Probably won't happen - the Olympics is about money, lots of it; also about puffing politicians pride - the sports stars are a means to an end but not the most important people.
If these things are to have great powers then we need to have great trust in them. If it is closed source then how do we know what they will do ?
Oh, you say: this will only be used on battle fields far away, but how long before they decide that we need a moral police force ?
OK: I from what I know of the military they will keep it highly secret ... not good prospects.
There's a whole other world outside of Slashdot, by the way.
Really? Your kidding me!
Probably the only voices left saying that patents are OK belong to certain ''well funded'' politicians.
Take the troops from the world's bully off the streets. All that we need to do now is to persuade all the world's other bullies to do likewise, beat each other up in cyber space and leave the rest of us in peace.
to my ears it is just noise -- forget comparisons to Bach or Mozart - not even on the same planet.
A side effect of this will be that MS will be able to readily identify where license numbers are being used more than once. If they take the opportunity to remotely shut down ''illegal'' PCs, the whole exercise might make them money.
I wonder if they will do an Apple and disable s/ware that they don't like (pronounce as malware) -- because it competes with some MS s/ware.
Very true -- where are my mod points when I need them ?
The above is the summary for the main stream press, dig a bit deeper and the story is subtly different. The headline could be taken to mean that an organism can control the direction of evolution, this is false: it is the rate of evolution that may be controlled.
This is akin to controlling the accelerator (gas pedal for those in the USA) not the steering wheel.
The ''choice'' on direction (good or bad mutation) will only ever be determined by how many grandchildren an organism has. If the mutation is helpful to survival then the greater number of grand kids will preserve the organism; if the mutation is not helpful then there will be fewer grand kids than for the helpful organism and thus the unhelpful mutation will be out competed by the helpful ones and so eventually drop out of the gene pool.
For many years evolutionists have known that mutation increases in times of stress. They have, however, thought that this was because stress leads to smaller populations in which (beneficial) mutations can propagate more quickly. It is this point that the Princeton paper is all about.
The trouble with discussion on evolution is that there are subtle arguments for which we do not have concise words to convey, we thus tend to use approximate short cuts but these short cuts bring along a baggage of undesirable implication.
For instance ''choice'' - no organism chooses good or bad mutations, if it has a bad mutation then it is more likely to die than a brother that has a good mutation. However we all use the word ''choice'' otherwise discussions on evolution would go on forever.
My only surprise is that they haven't subcontracted it to lawyers in Nigeria ...
I work for a law firm and I assure you this stuff is small fry for lawyers
Yes a one off would be small fry, but by the hundred or thousand it is good easy money. Get a senior partner to write a sufficiently blood curdling letter and then a junior legal secretary cut and pastes in the case by case name, address, etc. If there is any correspondence this is paid for by either the ''infringing'' punter or by the game maker.
Whichever way you look at it the legal parasites make money.
MS will be making a thumping loss on this ... are there are not anti dumping laws to stop this sort of thing ?