It seems to me that everyone I know has a pirated copy of windows: the few people people that have legal copies have them because they were bundled with the computer they bought. When was the last time someone actually went out specifically to bought a copy?
Your average "Joe Sixpack" home user will probably be running a pirated copy of Windows. Their computer may have come with a legal OEM license once upon a time... But they probably lost the discs somewhere along the way, and their OEM key probably didn't work with the discs their buddy found when they had to reload their computer to get rid of the viruses, so they wound up with a cracked copy of Windows. And then they heard about the shiny new Vista thing and their buddy hooked them up with a cracked copy of that, too.
Mot IT-ish folks I know have legal copies - frequently acquired using some kind of student discount or corporate volume licensing program. They aren't paying retail, but frequently don't trust the cracked copies available.
Most of the gamer folks I know have legal copies, but they're usually buying the OS with a pile of new hardware and get some kind of OEM version, so they aren't paying retail.
The big businesses will be on some kind of software maintenance plan with Microsoft. They'll be able to download and install whatever flavor of Windows they feel like. So they won't be paying retail.
The folks who typically wind up paying retail prices, from what I've seen, are the small/medium sized businesses. They don't want to run a cracked copy of Windows for fear of being audited... But they don't need enough licenses to make volume licensing or maintenance plans affordable... So they wind up buying a pile of retail boxes. And it can be expensive. Sometimes it is actually cheaper just to replace their computers entirely, and get the new version of Windows pre-installed on the machine.
I must be behind the times. $1,000 doesn't seem like a lot to build a high-end gaming machine. I usually spend closer to $2,000.
The $1,000 is for the Core i7 CPU itself. Typically you'll then spend another $1,000+ on GPUs, several hundred on RAM, another couple hundred on a motherboard...
When I worked at EB I'd see people spend $5,000 on a gaming system without even blinking. If you're already shelling out that kind of cash a couple hundred for the OS doesn't seem like much. And if you're going through some place like NewEgg you can typically get an OEM version that won't cost as much as retail.
They've got a captive audience consisting mainly of new PC buyers and existing corporate seats.
Exactly.
If you buy a new computer, it'll come with Windows 7. You'll wind up paying for it whether you want it or not.
And if you're a corporate client with one of their maintenance/upgrade/support plans you're already paying a yearly fee to use their software - so they're getting your money regardless of whether you upgrade(?) to Windows 7 or not.
That's the problem with Windows these days, there really is no competition. Microsoft's got a steady stream of cash and they don't really have to be better than anyone else.
Never saw ANY of the benefits/Ultimate Content that was promised.
The "Ultimate" content is available, you have to download it through Windows Update. But I really don't feel it is worth price difference. All you get are a few animated wallpapers and some half-assed security/encryption/backup features.
How does MS think this pricing is competitive in the least? Snow Leopard is going to be sold for $30 for upgrades while 7 costs $120?!!?!
Keep in mind that OS X is, to a certain degree, subsidized by the fact that it will only run on official Apple hardware. Apple doesn't need to charge as much for the OS, because you've given them additional money for the hardware it runs on.
I'm not claiming this is the only reason their OS is cheaper. Nor even that it is a major reason why their OS is cheaper. But it is something to keep in mind.
From the article (yeah I know, Slashdot, not supposed to, etc)
If Nazi engineers had had more time, would this jet have ultimately changed the outcome of the war?
IIRC the United States developed something called Atomic Bombs that would have counteracted any advantage Germany would have gained from stealth jets.
Maybe, maybe not.
Obviously this is all speculation, and doesn't matter much when you're comparing it to a real timeline... Yes, the United States developed an atomic bomb... But the Germans were also working on one. So if you extend the timeline to allow the Germans to develop this stealth jet, would they have had time to develop their own atomic bomb as well?
Anyway... Just because you've got an atomic bomb doesn't mean you win the war. You have to be able to actually deliver your payload. Stealth jets could make this more difficult. Stealth jets might be able to strike more effectively at your airbases and reduce your ability to launch a mission carrying an atomic bomb. Or they might be better able to intercept such a mission.
And if these things were used against the UK they might have been very effective. The British would have had a very hard time launching fighters to intercept these things. The German bombing runs would have been more effective. Effective enough, perhaps, to lay claim to the UK. Would we than have dropped atomic bombs on London to clear out the Nazis?
Well, first of all, I'm neither a doctor nor an economist. So you're going to have to take most of what I say with a grain of salt.
Second, I don't know how they do it, but plenty of nations manage national healthcare without falling apart. Take a look at Canada for an example, or France. They both managed to pull it off somehow. I'd assume we can do something similar...
I'm also not certain that a shortage of doctors would be any worse than what we have now. What we have now is a very uneven system in which millions of people go without any healthcare because they cannot afford it. If we instead had a system in which millions of people went without any healthcare because there weren't enough doctors I'd say we're at about the same point, not worse-off.
Supply and demand generally seems to take care of itself... Yes, there are various shortages here and there, but you don't see the world falling apart because there's some terrible dearth of postal workers. There's plenty of people flipping burgers... Plenty of people going to school for years only to get crap jobs in IT... I'm not convinced that all our doctors would suddenly disappear just because they didn't get paid as much.
But how's this for a solution: Free medical school.
Let anyone who passes the entrance exams go through medical school for free. Upon graduation they have to work for the state, at state-set prices/pay, for several years. Then they can go into practice for themselves.
Now you've got universal healthcare provided by the folks who're working off their tuition. And you've got plenty of doctors flooding the market because tuition is no longer a barrier to entry, only intelligence/capability. And after they've paid off their tuition they can still go into private practice and earn the big paychecks that they want - assuming they're providing something better than the universal healthcare that everyone can get for free.
Or you could do something similar with the state medical board certifications. You want to be certified to practice medicine in the state, you have to work for the state for a few years. Again you get rid of one of the barriers to entry... Again you retain the ability for doctors to make those fat paychecks you think are so important... And again you come up with free universal healthcare for the rest of us.
And no one likes being told their job that they spend years studying for should be shared with everyone for little recompense.
Nobody is proposing that we let everybody become a doctor without having to go to medical school for years... We're talking about who has access to healthcare, not who gets to work in healthcare.
Or are you talking about folks who went through years of medical school with the sole goal of getting a big paycheck, who might be upset to have a smaller paycheck? They can deal with it just like all the IT guys who lived through the.com crash... And all the auto employees who are suddenly wondering about their next paycheck... And all the auto dealerships who've suddenly discovered they're out of luck... Or anyone else who suddenly finds themselves un(der)employed.
Nobody is entitled to a paycheck. You have to earn your keep in a dynamic and ever-changing market. This goes for everyone - doctors too. If they don't like what happens to the healthcare market they can get a different job, just like anyone else.
So if any of these people or these people need a liver transplant, they should be front and center in line to get a brand new liver, well ahead of a supportive member of society that regularly pays his contribution to society? That's 2 counties out of 3140 in the US and those are people arrested on a Friday night.
I wouldn't say they should be ahead of anyone else... But they shouldn't be put to the end of the line or excluded just because they happened to be arrested. What, you do something stupid and you're not allowed to live?
Socialized medicine in the US will never work as it's intended because the gap between the haves and the have nots and the gap between the dos and the do nots will widen contributing to an apathetic society.
Look around the world at the countries that have nationwide, universal healthcare. They don't seem to be doing too bad...
The do nots will get the care ahead of the dos and drain the system and the haves will get the better care that the have nots will complain about.
So... If the government is paying for it the healthcare will automatically go to the poor first? I don't recall seeing that in any of the plans... Most of the time you've got a waiting list for organ transplants - organized by how close to death someone is, and then by how long they've been on the list - I certainly hope finances doesn't enter into it...
The people that will end up getting screwed will be the average Joe wanting this "everyone's covered" plan that does his contribution to society.
Right. Because the average Joe is doing so well under the current system...
What's the point of being a 'do' if the 'do nots' get all the same benefits?
It is certainly true that benefits enters into the decision making process... If I've got my choice of two jobs, and one of them has better benefits, I'll probably take that one. But it isn't like I'm going to switch careers just for the benefits. Nor am I going to put up with a horrible job just for the benefits. Nor would I be sitting on my ass in poverty just because I had healthcare. People do for a variety of reasons.
If you want to be a doctor to treat the 'haves' but the law states that you have to treat the 'have nots', what's the point of becoming a doctor?
One would assume that you could still specialize and have some choice in the kind of medicine you practice... If you really wanted to be a gynecologist you probably wouldn't be forced into proctology. Or did you mean you just wanted to discriminate against your patients? Only treat the wealthy? Only treat whites? Only treat beautiful women?
Doctors will not get paid competitively in a monopolized payment structure.
I guess I'd rather my doctor was doing it for some reason other than pure money. I'd like to think that my doctor wanted to make people healthy... Or enjoyed the work... Or something like that... I know that in IT the folks who are passionate about their work are usually superior to those who're just showing up for a paycheck.
If you're going to grow a vegetable garden for yourself, you need to prepare a method for dealing with rabbits. (If I have to explain that, you will never get it)
No, you don't need to explain. Your views are more clear, perhaps, than you realize. You've just cast anyone who is not able to afford their own healthcare as nothing more than vermin - to be dealt with accordingly.
But when such a society treats the most despised better than they treat the most valued, what does that say about how they understand value? There are millions of disenfranchised working poor who cannot get medical treatment that prisoners in jail get simply by being incarcerated. If you can advance the constitutional rights of criminals, why is it that such arguments are not made for those who are financially imprisoned?
There is no conundrum here, you just aren't following things through to their logical conclusion.
The fact of the matter is that we value the working poor less than those who are imprisoned for their crimes.
The attitude seems to be that if you're imprisoned you have no choice in the matter. You cannot care for yourself. You cannot get your own healtchare. And someone has to take care of you. We feel obligated to those we've robbed of their ability to take care of themselves.
But if you're out of prison, and just plain poor, it's your own damn fault. You need to get a better job or invent something cool so you earn enough money to pay for your own healthcare. And if you can't manage that? Well, that's nobody's fault but your own...
The imprisoned might very well be valuable members of society as soon as we let them. The poor, obviously, aren't valuable members of society because they wouldn't be poor if they were.
We provide technical support to a number of clients... Most of them in the 20-30 workstation range... Some with more, some with less. And what we typically sell them is Panda.
Obviously it isn't perfect. Even the best antivirus is only going to catch what it knows about most of the time. Sandboxing and heuristics and whatnot only go so far in protecting you from new stuff. And viruses learn how to disable your protection or hide or whatever. So I'm not going to tell you that Panda will catch everything, every time.
But Panda has one hell of an administration console. You can manage absolutely everything from one central location. I've worked with Symmantec's, Kasperskys, and BitDefender's administration consoles... They've got nothing on Panda.
You can roll out antivirus protection to an entire network with just a couple clicks of the mouse. Can quickly see which computers are up-to-date and functioning, and which ones need to be looked at. Viruses are reported back to the administration server. You can configure it to send you email alerts. You can configure all of its assorted settings from one place. Much, much better than any of the competing products I've used.
Again, it isn't perfect. But I'll tell you we get fewer calls from the folks running Panda than those running Kaspersky or Symmantec.
The biggest issue I have is that it doesn't do anything against those rogue anti-malware scanners - things like "Super AntiSpyware 2009" and their ilk. Doesn't detect them, doesn't disinfect them, nothing. From what I've seen the competition (Symmantec, Kaspersky, McAfee, NOD32) don't do much either. Any time we have one of those beasties crop up we're having to grab some tools specifically designed for dealing with the rogue anti-malware crap. Does anyone know of a good centrally-managed solution that actually protects/prevents/disinfects those rogue anti-malware scanners?
If their policy is to make sure playback of display software was working, surely they have a test suite of known good files in their posession that they test against?
Or are you saying that as a policy, it's okay to go rummaging around in directories looking for stuff because you "needed test documents"?
What bullshit.
Some formats are very easy to test.
You want to make sure flash is working? Hit YouTube.
You want to make sure it can read PDFs? Google can come up with dozens of them for you.
Want to make sure you can load up GIFs, JPEGs? Again, google can supply plenty.
Word documents? Excel? No problem coming up with plenty of test files around the shop.
But when you get into various audio and video formats things get a little more eccentric. I've personally got some files that use DivX... And some OGGs... And a few.MKVs... And I've got no idea what codec in particular some of those files are using.
If I were to drop my computer off somewhere to have them install media software they might very well test some common stuff like AVIs, MPEGs, and WMVs... They might very well have some test files sitting on a drive somewhere... But I certainly don't expect them to have every media format imaginable.
And if they do have every format available for testing, do they have every codec?
And then what do they do, just test every single file and install every single codec?
So, some guy drops off a computer at my shop for work. We install VLC or something for him. We test it with some MPEGs and AVIs... Everything works great. We carefully avoid looking in My Documents for fear of violating his privacy. Then he gets the computer home and some.MKV he had sitting in My Documents doesn't work...he calls up to complain, wants to know why we didn't test it.
So what do I tell him? "Gee, sorry sir. We didn't want to violate your privacy so we never checked to see what kind of files you actually have or to make sure you could use the software you just paid us to install."
It would be very surprising if mechanics asked to check a car would ignore a dead body in a truck.
There is a big difference between seeing drugs on the back seat, or a dead body inside the car, and reporting that, and reporting on drugs found under the carpet in the trunk or in the glovebox if the car was brought in for an oil change...
The mechanic would have had no reasonable need to have searched those two areas to perform the job he was hired to do. Same with a PC tech, if someone brings in a PC to have a CD-ROM drive replaced, there is absolutely NO REASON for the tech to need to search the browser cache or the images directory...
Now, I know, it's a rite of passage thing. We've ALL done it, looked at a customer's PC to see what pr0n he has.. In my case I was permanently cured of that the first time I found GAY pr0n, not the good kind, ie: girl on girl, the OTHER kind:)
But still, I shouldn't have done that then, and techs hired to replace a bad CD drive shouldn't be doing that NOW.
I know nothing about the case. I don't know what they found or where it was hidden. I don't know if they had to brute-force decrypt some huge stash of pornography, or if they just tripped over it. So I'm not defending anyone at this point.
But there's a big difference between whether they should have been snooping in the first place, and whether what they found should be admissible in court.
If someone breaks into my house planning to rob me blind, but finds I've got several dead people stashed in my basement, should that be admissible? Should he be able to go to the police and say "hey, this guy's got corpses in his basement!" And if he does so, should that be admissible in a court case against me? Or should that all be thrown out because he shouldn't have been in my house in the first place?
I'd say it's more like the mechanic would rip open the door or dashboard to find drugs, when he was supposed to replace the brakepads.
Dead guy in the trunk is like putting child porn as the desktop wallpaper.
I know nothing about the case. I know even less about car repair. However...
The fine summary is a little vague on the work that was actually done. It says they were "installing a DVD player."
If they were simply installing a piece of software to play DVDs, they probably wouldn't need to go snooping through his HDD to test it. But lots of media playback software tries to do friendly things like scanning your drive for media it can play. So the DVD player software might very well have done just that, and come up with the movie in question.
If they were installing a more general-purpose piece of software for playing back all sorts of media - VLC for example - they might very well have gone looking for a movie on his HDD to test. Depending on the hardware/software used to create a movie it can be in all sorts of different formats... And I've had clients come back and complain because we didn't associate the right filetype for their specific videos. So I always make a point of taking a quick look in My Documents to make sure everything is associated correctly.
If they were installing hardware, like a DVD drive, then they might very well have tested its burning capabilities. I'll routinely do that here at work. I've got a CD-R/W and a DVD-R/W that I carry around for just that purpose. I'll pop the disc in, grab something random off the desktop or My Documents, and try to burn it. Again, a good opportunity to stumble across something unsettling.
Again, I don't know anything about this case. Maybe the guy was just snooping. But maybe he wasn't. I know I've stumbled across some images on client drives that I wish I hadn't... Nothing illegal, that I noticed, but some stuff I really didn't need to see.
You can say that about many professions, from mechanics to plumbers to technical supporters to software engineers.
Any profession that has special knowledge their customer can't even possibly have unless he's a professional in the field as well is prone to abusing this power.
Very true. I've seen some very bad stuff done by some of my own co-workers. And I know a few mechanics I'll never go back to.
How often did you tell your boss it takes 2 hours even though you knew it would take 2 minutes so you can slack off?
I usually over-estimate how long something is going to take... And then pad that estimate... But not because I want to slack off. If you tell someone their server will be down for 2 hours they expect to be up and working in 121 minutes. If anything goes wrong and slows down that process you're going to have some unhappy people on your hands. If, however, you tell them it'll take 4 hours, and you get it back up and running after 2.5 hours, they'll be thrilled.
Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems? Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Linux has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?
First up, you've got some incorrect assumptions/information about Windows.
Windows has not had just NTFS for years. Windows has gone through several different flavors of FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, VFAT).
As far as NTFS goes... You dismiss the various versions, but then you're counting revisions to the various filesystems in Linux. NTFS has gone through four or five major revisions. Microsoft doesn't really advertise those revisions... They just keep calling it NTFS. But those revisions have added features and fixed bugs and basically changed the way the filesystem operates. Those revisions are no more or less significant than the changes from EXT3 to EXT4.
Windows also offers a couple special-purpose filesystems... Like EFS and DFS...
Windows can also handle NFS shares.
You can also install support for other filesystems (EXT, HFS) in Windows.
So, ultimately, Windows has at least 15ish filesystems going on... And that's just right off the top of my head, without doing any research at all.
Now, as for why Linux has so many different filesystems available, it's simply because no single filesystem is perfect for everything. One filesystem might be good if you've got tons of tiny files... Another filesystem might be better if you've got tons of huge files... Another filesystem might be better if you need extensive journaling and reliability... Another filesystem might be better if you just need raw speed...
I grew up in a fairly rural setting... The nearest town was a good 15-20 minute drive, and it wasn't a very big town. We used to be able to see the stars pretty well. I used to love lying out in the back yard and just staring up at the sky.
I've never been a big astronomy guy, so I have no idea what I was looking at, but it was pretty.
That's where my love for science fiction started... Looking up at that sky and wondering what was out there. Wondering who might be looking up from those distant points of light and seeing our sun. Wondering what it might be like to travel across those vast expanses.
These days I'm lucky if I can pick out a few dozen bright spots in the sky... And I have to assume at least some of them are man-made.
We've got street lights all over the place... Brightly light store signs... And the stores themselves have lights on all night long... Cars driving by with their headlights... More light from the houses nearby...
Just thinking about the local geography, I'm really not sure how far we'd have to go to see a sky like I remember from my childhood. There's towns of varying sizes in all directions. We'd probably have to drive a couple hours to see any improvement at all.
Sure but there *are* other jobs, sure, it might mean taking a job in something that isn't your specialty, taking a job thats "lower than you", etc. But if you really are/that/ stressed about your job, even a job at McDonalds might be better even if that means you can't afford that 50 inch plasma.
Spoken like someone who hasn't had to deal with the job market in quite some time.
The economy right now is in rough shape. My son has been looking for a job for six months now with no luck. He isn't looking for anything amazing - just retail, labor, or food service, or something basic like that. Folks aren't hiring.
And your typical McDonalds job isn't going to cut it these days. Most food service/retail positions will be minimum wage, which doesn't go very far. They'll also be hourly, not salaried, so you're screwed if you get injured or sick. They'll also be part-time - your schedule will change from one week to the next so you'll not have reliable income, and there'll be absolutely no benefits.
We're not talking about whether or not you can afford a 50" plasma. We're talking about whether or not you can keep your house and/or car. Whether you'll be able to afford to feed your family. Whether you'll be able to pay the assorted bills.
We try very hard to live well within our means. We've got a very affordable mortgage on our house. We bought a used car a few years back and paid for it in full, with cash. We don't have a lot of expensive hobbies. We don't have a pile of debt. But if I lost my job we'd be pretty much screwed.
The odds of me being able to find reliable employment before our savings ran out aren't good. Like I said, folks around here aren't hiring. We could sell the house, if necessary, but I don't know that anyone would buy it. There are plenty of "for sale" signs around town and I don't see them disappearing very quickly. There aren't a whole lot of luxuries we could cut back.
It's a very scary situation to be in, and we aren't even under a pile of debt. I can't imagine what it's like for some of the folks out there.
Because it's trivial? I preferred it didn't ask. But that's my opinion.
Perhaps a slider with 3 setting for automatic updates: Auto install, Download but install manually, and Anal retentive future botnet. Oh wait, they have that already.
You do understand what is being discussed, right?
We're not talking about automatically updating Microsoft's software. There are indeed several different options. You can tell it to install automatically, or ask you, or never update. But that isn't what we're talking about.
We're talking about downloading an update for Microsoft's software, and having it install a component for Firefox that is then difficult to remove.
If I choose to let Microsoft automatically update their software without prompting me, I can probably assume that Microsoft will update Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Windows Media Player... Things like that. I would not assume that Microsoft would be installing updates to Firefox, or Left 4 Dead, or other random pieces of software on my computer.
And If I chose to install an update for the.Net framework I would probably assume that it would update the.Net framework - not Firefox.
I understand the argument....Net shows up on web pages, Firefox is used to view web pages, folks might like Firefox to be able to work with.Net stuff. I get it. But that doesn't mean I actually want to install.Net support in Firefox any more than it means I want to install Flash or Java in Firefox. I should be allowed to choose what I install. And if I choose to install a generic Windows update for.Net I do not necessarily want anything installed in Firefox.
Instead of installing it and letting you uninstall it if you don't want it, how about they don't install it and make it an optional thing you can choose to install?
That'd be the best solution... When IE8 gets downloaded and queued for installation you're asked if you really want to install it. You can choose not to. And then the updates continue on their merry way.
Why not have the update ask for user input before installing this component?
A true nerd looks at this card the way an off-roader looks at an H2: It's bigger than it needs to be, costs more than it should, and is at best no better at what it's supposed to be good at then something a third the price. Oh, and only rich posers actually own one.
It's not tech for the sake of tech. It's tech because you can do something cool with it that makes you a nerd. And there's not really much you can do with this that you can't do just as well while spending less money.
A nerd can get his computer, with half as much RAM and less processor power, to do everything this card can do. And do it better.
Sort of... But not really.
I mean, I understand where you're going with this, and I generally agree. I usually buy a $100 video card and put the extra money into RAM and CPU. Generally that works out pretty well for me. But my needs are relatively low...
I play things like WoW and EVE on at 1280x1024. I don't have a ginormous monitor, and I don't play a whole lot of visually-impressive high-speed games. If I had a big ol' monitor and wanted to play something like Crysis at 2560x1600 it just wouldn't happen. I'd get a slideshow at best. And that's without even pondering whether I'd turn on anything fancy like HDR or whatever.
No, you probably don't need a card like this. And you can probably get away with something less expensive. But it isn't like they just stuck a bunch of gold and diamonds on the card to jack up the price... It does actually do more than my budget card.
What happens when steam goes bust? And don't give me the "we will patch authentication out if we go under" crap. If they are going under they will not be releasing patches to strip the authentication as noone will be getting paid to perfom such a job.
DRM is always evil.
I do agree that DRM is always evil. No doubts about it.
But, if I am going to get saddled with DRM (and these days, I am) I'd rather get saddles with something like Steam. Yeah, the DRM-y bits suck... But there's also some value added. Unlike other DRM schemes that just suck completely, and don't add anything at all.
As for your question...
Well, there have been several occasions in the pas where failing companies have released patches to remove DRM or have open-sourced their codebase. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility completely. However, Steam is more of a distribution platform... And I don't think Valve could really release patches for other people's games. That'd be more up to the individual publishers to do... And I doubt if there'd be a terribly concerted movement to remove the DRM. It'd more likely be a concerted movement to make people re-purchase their games some other way, with a different DRM scheme installed.
However, Steam isn't all that hard to bypass. Most games released on Steam have a crack available within a week. So, should Steam go belly-up, I doubt if it would have much impact. Folks could very easily crack their games, burn backups, and call it done. They'll be no worse-off than if they'd purchased a retail disc with some sort of on-disc DRM that they didn't like.
Battery life is going to be a big one. Netbooks have better battery life than, say, full-size laptops... But it still isn't much compared to your average cell phone. Especially since you're going to have to keep the thing powered up at all times. No sleep, no hibernate, nada. And wireless connectivity typically drains the battery faster.
You'll want some kind of headset/earpiece/whatever... Unless you're just going to do the speakerphone thing all the time. If you go with bluetooth that will be another wirless connection, which will drain your battery faster.
Dialing 911 will be an issue. I don't know what you plan on using to terminate your end of the call... Skype? Some generic SIP provider? But you'll want to make sure they've got some way of handling 911 calls.
Also, depending on who's terminating your end of the call, voicemail and whatnot could be an issue. If you wander out of coverage, or run out of batteries, or drop your netbook down a flight of stairs what'll happen? Will people get voicemail? Or will it just ring forever?
And that raises the question of coverage... You indicate that there's city-wide WiMAX now... But cell phones can roam nation-wide. If you travel much this could be a real issue.
Or you could just hide the message inside the picture with one of a number of different techniques
Or you could do both. Or you could do neither. Or you could put a decoy message inside the picture with shoddy obfuscation, and the real message in the TCP stream. Or you could use the message in the TCP stream to decrypt the message in the picture. Or you could completely bypass the Internet entirely and use a telephone, or radio, or written letter, or whatever else.
It's another option. Nothing more, nothing less.
and get you more data transfer capacity for the buck.
I'm not sure this is really necessary. The summary indicates that 1 in 1000 packets are normally corrupted... Which lets you put about 1KB data in a 1MB transmission... How many KB does it take to send a meaningful message? And just how much data do you want to risk if a single transmission is compromised?
Assuming you don't want others to see your message, you can't put more than a bit or two per retrans request, and even your message would require quite a lot of retrans requests, such that statistical techniques would reveal the existence (if not the content) of the message
Again, they're talking about duplicating what normally occurs - about 1 retransmission per 1000 packets. Which would not show up as anything terribly unusual statistically.
unless it was hidden in an absolutely huge transmission.
Again, just how much data do you need to transmit?
If you were to employ this technique on a website like DeviantArt or flickr you'd have plenty of data being transmitted... Plenty of room to hide a message or two.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that everyone I know has a pirated copy of windows: the few people people that have legal copies have them because they were bundled with the computer they bought. When was the last time someone actually went out specifically to bought a copy?
Your average "Joe Sixpack" home user will probably be running a pirated copy of Windows. Their computer may have come with a legal OEM license once upon a time... But they probably lost the discs somewhere along the way, and their OEM key probably didn't work with the discs their buddy found when they had to reload their computer to get rid of the viruses, so they wound up with a cracked copy of Windows. And then they heard about the shiny new Vista thing and their buddy hooked them up with a cracked copy of that, too.
Mot IT-ish folks I know have legal copies - frequently acquired using some kind of student discount or corporate volume licensing program. They aren't paying retail, but frequently don't trust the cracked copies available.
Most of the gamer folks I know have legal copies, but they're usually buying the OS with a pile of new hardware and get some kind of OEM version, so they aren't paying retail.
The big businesses will be on some kind of software maintenance plan with Microsoft. They'll be able to download and install whatever flavor of Windows they feel like. So they won't be paying retail.
The folks who typically wind up paying retail prices, from what I've seen, are the small/medium sized businesses. They don't want to run a cracked copy of Windows for fear of being audited... But they don't need enough licenses to make volume licensing or maintenance plans affordable... So they wind up buying a pile of retail boxes. And it can be expensive. Sometimes it is actually cheaper just to replace their computers entirely, and get the new version of Windows pre-installed on the machine.
I must be behind the times. $1,000 doesn't seem like a lot to build a high-end gaming machine. I usually spend closer to $2,000.
The $1,000 is for the Core i7 CPU itself. Typically you'll then spend another $1,000+ on GPUs, several hundred on RAM, another couple hundred on a motherboard...
When I worked at EB I'd see people spend $5,000 on a gaming system without even blinking. If you're already shelling out that kind of cash a couple hundred for the OS doesn't seem like much. And if you're going through some place like NewEgg you can typically get an OEM version that won't cost as much as retail.
They've got a captive audience consisting mainly of new PC buyers and existing corporate seats.
Exactly.
If you buy a new computer, it'll come with Windows 7. You'll wind up paying for it whether you want it or not.
And if you're a corporate client with one of their maintenance/upgrade/support plans you're already paying a yearly fee to use their software - so they're getting your money regardless of whether you upgrade(?) to Windows 7 or not.
That's the problem with Windows these days, there really is no competition. Microsoft's got a steady stream of cash and they don't really have to be better than anyone else.
Never saw ANY of the benefits/Ultimate Content that was promised.
The "Ultimate" content is available, you have to download it through Windows Update. But I really don't feel it is worth price difference. All you get are a few animated wallpapers and some half-assed security/encryption/backup features.
How does MS think this pricing is competitive in the least? Snow Leopard is going to be sold for $30 for upgrades while 7 costs $120?!!?!
Keep in mind that OS X is, to a certain degree, subsidized by the fact that it will only run on official Apple hardware. Apple doesn't need to charge as much for the OS, because you've given them additional money for the hardware it runs on.
I'm not claiming this is the only reason their OS is cheaper. Nor even that it is a major reason why their OS is cheaper. But it is something to keep in mind.
Snow Leopard is going to be sold for $30 [...]
...If you already have 10.5.
I do believe that is what upgrade means.
From the article (yeah I know, Slashdot, not supposed to, etc)
IIRC the United States developed something called Atomic Bombs that would have counteracted any advantage Germany would have gained from stealth jets.
Maybe, maybe not.
Obviously this is all speculation, and doesn't matter much when you're comparing it to a real timeline... Yes, the United States developed an atomic bomb... But the Germans were also working on one. So if you extend the timeline to allow the Germans to develop this stealth jet, would they have had time to develop their own atomic bomb as well?
Anyway... Just because you've got an atomic bomb doesn't mean you win the war. You have to be able to actually deliver your payload. Stealth jets could make this more difficult. Stealth jets might be able to strike more effectively at your airbases and reduce your ability to launch a mission carrying an atomic bomb. Or they might be better able to intercept such a mission.
And if these things were used against the UK they might have been very effective. The British would have had a very hard time launching fighters to intercept these things. The German bombing runs would have been more effective. Effective enough, perhaps, to lay claim to the UK. Would we than have dropped atomic bombs on London to clear out the Nazis?
Well, first of all, I'm neither a doctor nor an economist. So you're going to have to take most of what I say with a grain of salt.
Second, I don't know how they do it, but plenty of nations manage national healthcare without falling apart. Take a look at Canada for an example, or France. They both managed to pull it off somehow. I'd assume we can do something similar...
I'm also not certain that a shortage of doctors would be any worse than what we have now. What we have now is a very uneven system in which millions of people go without any healthcare because they cannot afford it. If we instead had a system in which millions of people went without any healthcare because there weren't enough doctors I'd say we're at about the same point, not worse-off.
Supply and demand generally seems to take care of itself... Yes, there are various shortages here and there, but you don't see the world falling apart because there's some terrible dearth of postal workers. There's plenty of people flipping burgers... Plenty of people going to school for years only to get crap jobs in IT... I'm not convinced that all our doctors would suddenly disappear just because they didn't get paid as much.
But how's this for a solution: Free medical school.
Let anyone who passes the entrance exams go through medical school for free. Upon graduation they have to work for the state, at state-set prices/pay, for several years. Then they can go into practice for themselves.
Now you've got universal healthcare provided by the folks who're working off their tuition. And you've got plenty of doctors flooding the market because tuition is no longer a barrier to entry, only intelligence/capability. And after they've paid off their tuition they can still go into private practice and earn the big paychecks that they want - assuming they're providing something better than the universal healthcare that everyone can get for free.
Or you could do something similar with the state medical board certifications. You want to be certified to practice medicine in the state, you have to work for the state for a few years. Again you get rid of one of the barriers to entry... Again you retain the ability for doctors to make those fat paychecks you think are so important... And again you come up with free universal healthcare for the rest of us.
And no one likes being told their job that they spend years studying for should be shared with everyone for little recompense.
Nobody is proposing that we let everybody become a doctor without having to go to medical school for years... We're talking about who has access to healthcare, not who gets to work in healthcare.
Or are you talking about folks who went through years of medical school with the sole goal of getting a big paycheck, who might be upset to have a smaller paycheck? They can deal with it just like all the IT guys who lived through the .com crash... And all the auto employees who are suddenly wondering about their next paycheck... And all the auto dealerships who've suddenly discovered they're out of luck... Or anyone else who suddenly finds themselves un(der)employed.
Nobody is entitled to a paycheck. You have to earn your keep in a dynamic and ever-changing market. This goes for everyone - doctors too. If they don't like what happens to the healthcare market they can get a different job, just like anyone else.
So if any of these people or these people need a liver transplant, they should be front and center in line to get a brand new liver, well ahead of a supportive member of society that regularly pays his contribution to society? That's 2 counties out of 3140 in the US and those are people arrested on a Friday night.
I wouldn't say they should be ahead of anyone else... But they shouldn't be put to the end of the line or excluded just because they happened to be arrested. What, you do something stupid and you're not allowed to live?
Socialized medicine in the US will never work as it's intended because the gap between the haves and the have nots and the gap between the dos and the do nots will widen contributing to an apathetic society.
Look around the world at the countries that have nationwide, universal healthcare. They don't seem to be doing too bad...
The do nots will get the care ahead of the dos and drain the system and the haves will get the better care that the have nots will complain about.
So... If the government is paying for it the healthcare will automatically go to the poor first? I don't recall seeing that in any of the plans... Most of the time you've got a waiting list for organ transplants - organized by how close to death someone is, and then by how long they've been on the list - I certainly hope finances doesn't enter into it...
The people that will end up getting screwed will be the average Joe wanting this "everyone's covered" plan that does his contribution to society.
Right. Because the average Joe is doing so well under the current system...
What's the point of being a 'do' if the 'do nots' get all the same benefits?
It is certainly true that benefits enters into the decision making process... If I've got my choice of two jobs, and one of them has better benefits, I'll probably take that one. But it isn't like I'm going to switch careers just for the benefits. Nor am I going to put up with a horrible job just for the benefits. Nor would I be sitting on my ass in poverty just because I had healthcare. People do for a variety of reasons.
If you want to be a doctor to treat the 'haves' but the law states that you have to treat the 'have nots', what's the point of becoming a doctor?
One would assume that you could still specialize and have some choice in the kind of medicine you practice... If you really wanted to be a gynecologist you probably wouldn't be forced into proctology. Or did you mean you just wanted to discriminate against your patients? Only treat the wealthy? Only treat whites? Only treat beautiful women?
Doctors will not get paid competitively in a monopolized payment structure.
I guess I'd rather my doctor was doing it for some reason other than pure money. I'd like to think that my doctor wanted to make people healthy... Or enjoyed the work... Or something like that... I know that in IT the folks who are passionate about their work are usually superior to those who're just showing up for a paycheck.
If you're going to grow a vegetable garden for yourself, you need to prepare a method for dealing with rabbits. (If I have to explain that, you will never get it)
No, you don't need to explain. Your views are more clear, perhaps, than you realize. You've just cast anyone who is not able to afford their own healthcare as nothing more than vermin - to be dealt with accordingly.
But when such a society treats the most despised better than they treat the most valued, what does that say about how they understand value? There are millions of disenfranchised working poor who cannot get medical treatment that prisoners in jail get simply by being incarcerated. If you can advance the constitutional rights of criminals, why is it that such arguments are not made for those who are financially imprisoned?
There is no conundrum here, you just aren't following things through to their logical conclusion.
The fact of the matter is that we value the working poor less than those who are imprisoned for their crimes.
The attitude seems to be that if you're imprisoned you have no choice in the matter. You cannot care for yourself. You cannot get your own healtchare. And someone has to take care of you. We feel obligated to those we've robbed of their ability to take care of themselves.
But if you're out of prison, and just plain poor, it's your own damn fault. You need to get a better job or invent something cool so you earn enough money to pay for your own healthcare. And if you can't manage that? Well, that's nobody's fault but your own...
The imprisoned might very well be valuable members of society as soon as we let them. The poor, obviously, aren't valuable members of society because they wouldn't be poor if they were.
We provide technical support to a number of clients... Most of them in the 20-30 workstation range... Some with more, some with less. And what we typically sell them is Panda.
Obviously it isn't perfect. Even the best antivirus is only going to catch what it knows about most of the time. Sandboxing and heuristics and whatnot only go so far in protecting you from new stuff. And viruses learn how to disable your protection or hide or whatever. So I'm not going to tell you that Panda will catch everything, every time.
But Panda has one hell of an administration console. You can manage absolutely everything from one central location. I've worked with Symmantec's, Kasperskys, and BitDefender's administration consoles... They've got nothing on Panda.
You can roll out antivirus protection to an entire network with just a couple clicks of the mouse. Can quickly see which computers are up-to-date and functioning, and which ones need to be looked at. Viruses are reported back to the administration server. You can configure it to send you email alerts. You can configure all of its assorted settings from one place. Much, much better than any of the competing products I've used.
Again, it isn't perfect. But I'll tell you we get fewer calls from the folks running Panda than those running Kaspersky or Symmantec.
The biggest issue I have is that it doesn't do anything against those rogue anti-malware scanners - things like "Super AntiSpyware 2009" and their ilk. Doesn't detect them, doesn't disinfect them, nothing. From what I've seen the competition (Symmantec, Kaspersky, McAfee, NOD32) don't do much either. Any time we have one of those beasties crop up we're having to grab some tools specifically designed for dealing with the rogue anti-malware crap. Does anyone know of a good centrally-managed solution that actually protects/prevents/disinfects those rogue anti-malware scanners?
Seems fairly reasonable to me.
But it's not.
Come on, have a little common sense.
If their policy is to make sure playback of display software was working, surely they have a test suite of known good files in their posession that they test against?
Or are you saying that as a policy, it's okay to go rummaging around in directories looking for stuff because you "needed test documents"?
What bullshit.
Some formats are very easy to test.
You want to make sure flash is working? Hit YouTube.
You want to make sure it can read PDFs? Google can come up with dozens of them for you.
Want to make sure you can load up GIFs, JPEGs? Again, google can supply plenty.
Word documents? Excel? No problem coming up with plenty of test files around the shop.
But when you get into various audio and video formats things get a little more eccentric. I've personally got some files that use DivX... And some OGGs... And a few .MKVs... And I've got no idea what codec in particular some of those files are using.
If I were to drop my computer off somewhere to have them install media software they might very well test some common stuff like AVIs, MPEGs, and WMVs... They might very well have some test files sitting on a drive somewhere... But I certainly don't expect them to have every media format imaginable.
And if they do have every format available for testing, do they have every codec?
And then what do they do, just test every single file and install every single codec?
So, some guy drops off a computer at my shop for work. We install VLC or something for him. We test it with some MPEGs and AVIs... Everything works great. We carefully avoid looking in My Documents for fear of violating his privacy. Then he gets the computer home and some .MKV he had sitting in My Documents doesn't work...he calls up to complain, wants to know why we didn't test it.
So what do I tell him? "Gee, sorry sir. We didn't want to violate your privacy so we never checked to see what kind of files you actually have or to make sure you could use the software you just paid us to install."
There is a big difference between seeing drugs on the back seat, or a dead body inside the car, and reporting that, and reporting on drugs found under the carpet in the trunk or in the glovebox if the car was brought in for an oil change...
The mechanic would have had no reasonable need to have searched those two areas to perform the job he was hired to do. Same with a PC tech, if someone brings in a PC to have a CD-ROM drive replaced, there is absolutely NO REASON for the tech to need to search the browser cache or the images directory...
Now, I know, it's a rite of passage thing. We've ALL done it, looked at a customer's PC to see what pr0n he has.. In my case I was permanently cured of that the first time I found GAY pr0n, not the good kind, ie: girl on girl, the OTHER kind :)
But still, I shouldn't have done that then, and techs hired to replace a bad CD drive shouldn't be doing that NOW.
I know nothing about the case. I don't know what they found or where it was hidden. I don't know if they had to brute-force decrypt some huge stash of pornography, or if they just tripped over it. So I'm not defending anyone at this point.
But there's a big difference between whether they should have been snooping in the first place, and whether what they found should be admissible in court.
If someone breaks into my house planning to rob me blind, but finds I've got several dead people stashed in my basement, should that be admissible? Should he be able to go to the police and say "hey, this guy's got corpses in his basement!" And if he does so, should that be admissible in a court case against me? Or should that all be thrown out because he shouldn't have been in my house in the first place?
I'd say it's more like the mechanic would rip open the door or dashboard to find drugs, when he was supposed to replace the brakepads.
Dead guy in the trunk is like putting child porn as the desktop wallpaper.
I know nothing about the case. I know even less about car repair. However...
The fine summary is a little vague on the work that was actually done. It says they were "installing a DVD player."
If they were simply installing a piece of software to play DVDs, they probably wouldn't need to go snooping through his HDD to test it. But lots of media playback software tries to do friendly things like scanning your drive for media it can play. So the DVD player software might very well have done just that, and come up with the movie in question.
If they were installing a more general-purpose piece of software for playing back all sorts of media - VLC for example - they might very well have gone looking for a movie on his HDD to test. Depending on the hardware/software used to create a movie it can be in all sorts of different formats... And I've had clients come back and complain because we didn't associate the right filetype for their specific videos. So I always make a point of taking a quick look in My Documents to make sure everything is associated correctly.
If they were installing hardware, like a DVD drive, then they might very well have tested its burning capabilities. I'll routinely do that here at work. I've got a CD-R/W and a DVD-R/W that I carry around for just that purpose. I'll pop the disc in, grab something random off the desktop or My Documents, and try to burn it. Again, a good opportunity to stumble across something unsettling.
Again, I don't know anything about this case. Maybe the guy was just snooping. But maybe he wasn't. I know I've stumbled across some images on client drives that I wish I hadn't... Nothing illegal, that I noticed, but some stuff I really didn't need to see.
You can say that about many professions, from mechanics to plumbers to technical supporters to software engineers.
Any profession that has special knowledge their customer can't even possibly have unless he's a professional in the field as well is prone to abusing this power.
Very true. I've seen some very bad stuff done by some of my own co-workers. And I know a few mechanics I'll never go back to.
How often did you tell your boss it takes 2 hours even though you knew it would take 2 minutes so you can slack off?
I usually over-estimate how long something is going to take... And then pad that estimate... But not because I want to slack off. If you tell someone their server will be down for 2 hours they expect to be up and working in 121 minutes. If anything goes wrong and slows down that process you're going to have some unhappy people on your hands. If, however, you tell them it'll take 4 hours, and you get it back up and running after 2.5 hours, they'll be thrilled.
Can anyone explain to me why Linux has so many filesystems? Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across), and Linux has, what, 73 or something?! Is it really that hard to get it right?
First up, you've got some incorrect assumptions/information about Windows.
Windows has not had just NTFS for years. Windows has gone through several different flavors of FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT, VFAT).
As far as NTFS goes... You dismiss the various versions, but then you're counting revisions to the various filesystems in Linux. NTFS has gone through four or five major revisions. Microsoft doesn't really advertise those revisions... They just keep calling it NTFS. But those revisions have added features and fixed bugs and basically changed the way the filesystem operates. Those revisions are no more or less significant than the changes from EXT3 to EXT4.
Windows also offers a couple special-purpose filesystems... Like EFS and DFS...
Windows can also handle NFS shares.
You can also install support for other filesystems (EXT, HFS) in Windows.
So, ultimately, Windows has at least 15ish filesystems going on... And that's just right off the top of my head, without doing any research at all.
Now, as for why Linux has so many different filesystems available, it's simply because no single filesystem is perfect for everything. One filesystem might be good if you've got tons of tiny files... Another filesystem might be better if you've got tons of huge files... Another filesystem might be better if you need extensive journaling and reliability... Another filesystem might be better if you just need raw speed...
I grew up in a fairly rural setting... The nearest town was a good 15-20 minute drive, and it wasn't a very big town. We used to be able to see the stars pretty well. I used to love lying out in the back yard and just staring up at the sky.
I've never been a big astronomy guy, so I have no idea what I was looking at, but it was pretty.
That's where my love for science fiction started... Looking up at that sky and wondering what was out there. Wondering who might be looking up from those distant points of light and seeing our sun. Wondering what it might be like to travel across those vast expanses.
These days I'm lucky if I can pick out a few dozen bright spots in the sky... And I have to assume at least some of them are man-made.
We've got street lights all over the place... Brightly light store signs... And the stores themselves have lights on all night long... Cars driving by with their headlights... More light from the houses nearby...
Just thinking about the local geography, I'm really not sure how far we'd have to go to see a sky like I remember from my childhood. There's towns of varying sizes in all directions. We'd probably have to drive a couple hours to see any improvement at all.
Sure but there *are* other jobs, sure, it might mean taking a job in something that isn't your specialty, taking a job thats "lower than you", etc. But if you really are /that/ stressed about your job, even a job at McDonalds might be better even if that means you can't afford that 50 inch plasma.
Spoken like someone who hasn't had to deal with the job market in quite some time.
The economy right now is in rough shape. My son has been looking for a job for six months now with no luck. He isn't looking for anything amazing - just retail, labor, or food service, or something basic like that. Folks aren't hiring.
And your typical McDonalds job isn't going to cut it these days. Most food service/retail positions will be minimum wage, which doesn't go very far. They'll also be hourly, not salaried, so you're screwed if you get injured or sick. They'll also be part-time - your schedule will change from one week to the next so you'll not have reliable income, and there'll be absolutely no benefits.
We're not talking about whether or not you can afford a 50" plasma. We're talking about whether or not you can keep your house and/or car. Whether you'll be able to afford to feed your family. Whether you'll be able to pay the assorted bills.
We try very hard to live well within our means. We've got a very affordable mortgage on our house. We bought a used car a few years back and paid for it in full, with cash. We don't have a lot of expensive hobbies. We don't have a pile of debt. But if I lost my job we'd be pretty much screwed.
The odds of me being able to find reliable employment before our savings ran out aren't good. Like I said, folks around here aren't hiring. We could sell the house, if necessary, but I don't know that anyone would buy it. There are plenty of "for sale" signs around town and I don't see them disappearing very quickly. There aren't a whole lot of luxuries we could cut back.
It's a very scary situation to be in, and we aren't even under a pile of debt. I can't imagine what it's like for some of the folks out there.
Because it's trivial? I preferred it didn't ask. But that's my opinion.
Perhaps a slider with 3 setting for automatic updates: Auto install, Download but install manually, and Anal retentive future botnet. Oh wait, they have that already.
You do understand what is being discussed, right?
We're not talking about automatically updating Microsoft's software. There are indeed several different options. You can tell it to install automatically, or ask you, or never update. But that isn't what we're talking about.
We're talking about downloading an update for Microsoft's software, and having it install a component for Firefox that is then difficult to remove.
If I choose to let Microsoft automatically update their software without prompting me, I can probably assume that Microsoft will update Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Windows Media Player... Things like that. I would not assume that Microsoft would be installing updates to Firefox, or Left 4 Dead, or other random pieces of software on my computer.
And If I chose to install an update for the .Net framework I would probably assume that it would update the .Net framework - not Firefox.
I understand the argument... .Net shows up on web pages, Firefox is used to view web pages, folks might like Firefox to be able to work with .Net stuff. I get it. But that doesn't mean I actually want to install .Net support in Firefox any more than it means I want to install Flash or Java in Firefox. I should be allowed to choose what I install. And if I choose to install a generic Windows update for .Net I do not necessarily want anything installed in Firefox.
Instead of installing it and letting you uninstall it if you don't want it, how about they don't install it and make it an optional thing you can choose to install?
That'd be the best solution... When IE8 gets downloaded and queued for installation you're asked if you really want to install it. You can choose not to. And then the updates continue on their merry way.
Why not have the update ask for user input before installing this component?
A true nerd looks at this card the way an off-roader looks at an H2: It's bigger than it needs to be, costs more than it should, and is at best no better at what it's supposed to be good at then something a third the price. Oh, and only rich posers actually own one.
It's not tech for the sake of tech. It's tech because you can do something cool with it that makes you a nerd. And there's not really much you can do with this that you can't do just as well while spending less money.
A nerd can get his computer, with half as much RAM and less processor power, to do everything this card can do. And do it better.
Sort of... But not really.
I mean, I understand where you're going with this, and I generally agree. I usually buy a $100 video card and put the extra money into RAM and CPU. Generally that works out pretty well for me. But my needs are relatively low...
I play things like WoW and EVE on at 1280x1024. I don't have a ginormous monitor, and I don't play a whole lot of visually-impressive high-speed games. If I had a big ol' monitor and wanted to play something like Crysis at 2560x1600 it just wouldn't happen. I'd get a slideshow at best. And that's without even pondering whether I'd turn on anything fancy like HDR or whatever.
No, you probably don't need a card like this. And you can probably get away with something less expensive. But it isn't like they just stuck a bunch of gold and diamonds on the card to jack up the price... It does actually do more than my budget card.
I do agree that DRM is always evil. No doubts about it.
But, if I am going to get saddled with DRM (and these days, I am) I'd rather get saddles with something like Steam. Yeah, the DRM-y bits suck... But there's also some value added. Unlike other DRM schemes that just suck completely, and don't add anything at all.
As for your question...
Well, there have been several occasions in the pas where failing companies have released patches to remove DRM or have open-sourced their codebase. So I wouldn't rule out the possibility completely. However, Steam is more of a distribution platform... And I don't think Valve could really release patches for other people's games. That'd be more up to the individual publishers to do... And I doubt if there'd be a terribly concerted movement to remove the DRM. It'd more likely be a concerted movement to make people re-purchase their games some other way, with a different DRM scheme installed.
However, Steam isn't all that hard to bypass. Most games released on Steam have a crack available within a week. So, should Steam go belly-up, I doubt if it would have much impact. Folks could very easily crack their games, burn backups, and call it done. They'll be no worse-off than if they'd purchased a retail disc with some sort of on-disc DRM that they didn't like.
Are there any obvious problems you would foresee?
Battery life is going to be a big one. Netbooks have better battery life than, say, full-size laptops... But it still isn't much compared to your average cell phone. Especially since you're going to have to keep the thing powered up at all times. No sleep, no hibernate, nada. And wireless connectivity typically drains the battery faster.
You'll want some kind of headset/earpiece/whatever... Unless you're just going to do the speakerphone thing all the time. If you go with bluetooth that will be another wirless connection, which will drain your battery faster.
Dialing 911 will be an issue. I don't know what you plan on using to terminate your end of the call... Skype? Some generic SIP provider? But you'll want to make sure they've got some way of handling 911 calls.
Also, depending on who's terminating your end of the call, voicemail and whatnot could be an issue. If you wander out of coverage, or run out of batteries, or drop your netbook down a flight of stairs what'll happen? Will people get voicemail? Or will it just ring forever?
And that raises the question of coverage... You indicate that there's city-wide WiMAX now... But cell phones can roam nation-wide. If you travel much this could be a real issue.
Or you could just hide the message inside the picture with one of a number of different techniques
Or you could do both. Or you could do neither. Or you could put a decoy message inside the picture with shoddy obfuscation, and the real message in the TCP stream. Or you could use the message in the TCP stream to decrypt the message in the picture. Or you could completely bypass the Internet entirely and use a telephone, or radio, or written letter, or whatever else.
It's another option. Nothing more, nothing less.
and get you more data transfer capacity for the buck.
I'm not sure this is really necessary. The summary indicates that 1 in 1000 packets are normally corrupted... Which lets you put about 1KB data in a 1MB transmission... How many KB does it take to send a meaningful message? And just how much data do you want to risk if a single transmission is compromised?
Assuming you don't want others to see your message, you can't put more than a bit or two per retrans request, and even your message would require quite a lot of retrans requests, such that statistical techniques would reveal the existence (if not the content) of the message
Again, they're talking about duplicating what normally occurs - about 1 retransmission per 1000 packets. Which would not show up as anything terribly unusual statistically.
unless it was hidden in an absolutely huge transmission.
Again, just how much data do you need to transmit?
If you were to employ this technique on a website like DeviantArt or flickr you'd have plenty of data being transmitted... Plenty of room to hide a message or two.