No, I'm not. The backend box is really a glorified file server running Samba. Nothing more than a metric ass-ton of storage space and a way to get to it from elsewhere. DVD and audio CDs are never really played at all, only ripped to the server and played/streamed remotely.
Really? I've never had that issue with Linux, with the exception of:
Sometimes having to recompile a kernel to add support for the obscure on-board sound chip; #!@*&!(@# wireless cards.
And I've edited so many xfree86.conf and xorg.conf files by hand to add "ZAxisMap 4 5" I can do it in my sleep.
I do thoroughly check out the compatibility docs before buying a printer, scanner or digital camera, though. The camera *must* have the ability to save to an external card and/or show up as USB Mass Storage or I won't buy it. [NO, I DO NOT WANT TO INSTALL YOUR DAMN IMAGE PROCESSING SOFTWARE!] With printers and scanners I don't really buy them a lot but am asked for recommendations. I really like the Epson stuff because it works so well. I've been burned by Lexmark and a couple others before. Visioneer is another one on my blacklist.
Could you elaborate on your hardware setup? My EPIA M10000 has a very noisy 40mm CPU fan (been meaning to replace that) and the case has a pair of noisy 40mm fans that I haven't had the balls to remove/undervolt yet.:-)
The cute little box that serves as my MythTV front-end is real quiet because there is no:
a) Hard drive
b) Fan
c) Optical drive
It *does* have a GbE connection to a noisier box in a closet. This one has room for lots of large hard drives and a DVD-RW. The little box boots via PXE (only because I wanted the experience), but has a 1 Gb USB 2.0 thumb drive for "local" storage or caching, just in case.
The down side? The little box is almost useless without the network connection to the big box. This can be fixed by booting from the USB flash drive, if you want.
The up side? I have over 300 DVDs and 100 CDs all ripped to the big box. Movies, recorded TV and music is all available at any PC in the house. I have room for a couple hundred more movies and CDs before having to buy more hard drives. It is super-silent since there are no moving parts.
[Note to the MPAA/RIAA: I have the originals of ALL of those DVDs and CDs boxed away nicely, in storage, to avoid scratches and deterioration.]
...authors are still allowed to read other books, musicians are still allowed to listen to other songs, screenwriters are still allowed to watch other movies,...
All of those examples have led to lawsuits where a subsequent work looked too much like a "parent" work to some minds, and they sued. Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) is currently being sued in Britain because of this very thing. I believe the word is "derivative", and what I was alluding to.
I'm leaning more and more towards Shakespeare's idea...
Funny because there is exactly that on the side of the people/organizations using OpenBSD/OpenSSH, you can get it for free, use it, sell it, etc and not even have to distribute source code or anything. The funny thing is business not trusting Theo with their money, but trusting his project with their critical infrastructure.
Finances are audited and use of computers are not, in most cases. It is not uncommon for rooms of very expensive equipment to sit around and sometimes disappear without a sound, but God help everyone if $0.50 disappears from the coffee fund...
More specifically, fiduciary responsibility is a big buzzword, regulated and watched closely.
How many Fortune 500 companies have IT techs that don't have a degree and were pulled in from engineering or elsewhere because "they knew something about computers"? I've met more than a few.
How many have controllers or accountants WITHOUT and MBA and/or were pulled in just because "they knew something about money"? This is where calculus can be used to describe a graph of a curve rapidly approaching zero.
You're right, it is stupid but that is the way it is.
Downloading source is great, but not if looking at said source "contaminates" you. They call the GPL viral, but what if in the networking code for this "shared source" game they have all sorts of stuff that would help the SAMBA team? Can they use it? Hell, can they even look at it and still be able to contribute to SAMBA?
Heck, what about WINE? Is this something they should grab, or treat like free chocolate coated leprosy tablets?
Theo notes there that "software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia."
While their "Project Goals" page claims that development strives to be free of politics and based on merit alone. Politics there must only refer to internal, I take it.
Holy crap! They're up to 5 already? Slow down guys. Nobody wants to upgrade systems they use for actual work that often. There's something to be said for stability.
The initial idea was Fedora was the testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise and that for actual work, you'd use RHEL and not Fedora. By its very design Fedora is supposed to be a fast-moving, cutting edge distro.
...is that there is no corporate entity at all. You make checks out to "Theo de Raadt", which *isn't* going to happen from any really large company with deep pockets. There is zero tracability and zero accountability.
When the U.S. DoD was funding them, the disbursements were handled thru a University or some such.
They need to grow up as an organization. Find a sympathetic accountant to donate his time/effort to establish a tax-free (and tax deductable) non-profit in Canada and an arm in the U.S. Hell, maybe one in the EU and one down under as well.
This will make them infinitely more appealing to corporations who have deep pockets and MAJOR qualms about writing big checks out to individuals.
What the article mentions is not really a big problem, since that is more or less what would happen if someone guessed the root password (then they could tamper with anything, including the logs).
Not quite. The idea is to set it so root can't log in remotely, and that sudo requires the ROOT password and not the USER password.
This way a hacker would have to obtain BOTH the user password and the root password.
For even more fun, restrict SSH to not allow keyboard-interactive logins and require anyone who needs to SSH into a box remotely to use a certificate. That way a hacker would need the certificate, the passphrase to unlock it, and the root password. To top it off you can't just "guess" a certificate like you can a password.
On June 28, 2004, VirginMega filed a complaint with the French Competition Council against Apple regarding its refusal to license Fairplay to VirginMega for use in their own online music commerce store.
My mistake, it was never a 10-song limit. It was (and is) a 100 song limit, regardless of how much memory you have. AND no purchasing music thru Motorola or over the air, you MUST use iTunes. AND 30 seconds to transfer 4 Mb file, which means uploading 100 songs takes almost AND HOUR. Of course, you can just drag them to the SD using a reader on your PC, which is a nice workaround.
Oh, yeah. No major carrier agreed to sell the Rokr because of the one-sided deal with Apple. Cingular finally gave in, but isn't subsidizing the phone like they do with damn near every other phone. ($199 regardless of contract.)
Apple only licensed to Motorola under draconian terms that no one else would think of accepting. A max of 10 songs in the Rokr phone wasn't a hardware limitation, it was Steve Jobs telling Motorola he was going to stick it where the sun doesn't shine and they better smile when it happens or no deal. The "new" Rokr w/a 100 song limit only happened when Motorola realized they were NOT going to get a license to FairPlay -- they had to license iTunes as well. No creating their own music store, period. Oh, yeah, and AAC is the ONLY DRM format they can use. No supporting WMA as well.
Real had the same thing to offer as everyone else -- a licensing fee. Apple does not want the competition for their online music store and isn't interested in helping anyone else make music players.
As for Microsoft not asking, that doesn't surprise me. MS has a history of licensing only little bits of technology. The rest is either in-house or they have to buy the company outright.
Apple is playing serious hardball, make no mistake about it. Good for them. It is about time someone with a superior product gets the chance, instead of someone with a shit product and mega-marketing muscle forcing the situation.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not iTunes or iPod that are refusing to 'use' music from other music services, it's the other music services themselves that protect their music files and thus make them incompatible.
Okay, you're wrong.
Apple refuses to license the FairPlay DRM to anyone else (i.e. -- Microsoft or Real) and Apple themselves doesn't sell non-DRM protected MP3s.
Apple is the #1 player in portable music device market and the #1 player in online music sales. The iPod is the #1 selling device. By not licensing the DRM and NOT WORKING WITH OTHER DRM, they are doing their damnest to lock up the market.
(Many) Musicians want to go with Apple because they are #1, so they get the most exposure. (Many) Musicians ALSO refuse to release non-DRM music, therefore if they want to work on iPod (the #1 player) they have no choice but to go with Apple.
Now, I applaud Apple for their success. They did all this NOT by competing unfairly, but by producing a better product and marketing it better than anyone else. They are, by no stretch of the imagination, a monopoly, so I see nothing wrong with what they are doing.
But the "Oh, iPods play unencumbered MP3s so what are you all screaming about" argument is pure fanboy bullshit.
Oh, come on. If every Muslim in the world is guilty of that, then every Christian is guilty of "justifying, excusing, aiding, abetting, and harbouring" Timothy McVeigh and the abortion-clinic bombers.
Timothy McVeigh was publicly reviled, not celebrated. He was captured, tried and executed. Abortion clinic bombers are not celebrated, and are also pursued, tried and punished. Eric Rudolph lived in hiding, living off of other people's trash for how long? He got no help, no public sympathy and eventually was captured.
Besides, you also need to keep in mind that more bombings and deaths by bombings occur in the Middle East IN ONE DAY than abortion clinic bombings in the entire HISTORY of the U.S. Public outrage is one big reason why this type of violence is not effective in the U.S. -- public condemnation.
Yeah, because we all know how good ASCII-art CAD files are, much less ASCII Visio and ASCII Project.
Those are the biggies because they are the manufacturing industry's crown jewels -- how to make it, what is the work flow, and what is our production schedule.
There is a big difference between 1.44 Mb and 1 Gb.
How do you know that any sizable portion of that 1.3 billion poeple support terrorism. Most of these 1.3 billions are busy trying to make their ends meet and mind their own business. Only a small portion of these people are radicals, and even smaller number actually doing the violence.
And the tens of thousands that have been demonstrating, firebombing embassies, and creating general havoc over a SET OF CARTOONS? Specifically, a set of cartoons PUBLISHED ALMOST 6 MONTHS AGO. Still, even tens of thousands are a small portion of 1.3 billion and I get the strong feeling that many of the lesser-educated poor are being manipulated by political powers-that-be in this issue.
I *would* call those that perpetrated the Holocaust barbarians, just as I would call those who invaded Jerusalem under the banner of righteousness (aka Crusaders) barbarians. Barbarism isn't limited to any one culture or people. [Amusingly enough, many of the more radical Muslims don't acknowledge the Holocaust at all or claim it is vastly overstated.]
The U.S. has had its fair share of radicals, from Neo-Nazis to the KKK. However, they've been marginalized by the civilized majority and the worst we get now is the occasional church burning. And when that happens, there is NO public celebration and the criminals are pursued and tried.
My point is from the Holocaust to the KKK the West does its best do deal with their radicals. The 1.3 billion Muslims who "...are busy trying to make their ends meet and mind their own business." need to deal with the radicals themselves before someone else does it for them.
Those radical few live, work and worship among the rest everyday. While I'm not advocating turning your neighbor in for not trimming his lawn once a week, if I knew of some guy building bombs in his basement I'd have the authorities over there soonest.
I understand there are millions of very civilized, hard working Muslims who are abhorred by the violence perpetrated in the name of their religion. I'm just saying they need to have a louder voice, because they are getting shouted down by the rest.
Unfortunately a few political extremists are sullying the name of approximately 1.3 billion people on Earth, and many westerners are lapping it up eagerly.
Actually, the big issue many people in the West have is that 1.3 billion people on Earth justify, excuse, aid, abet and harbor those few political extremists. Those extremists don't operate in a vacuum and would be stopped in a heartbeat if those they live among didn't tolerate their hate and violence. How about when one of those "political extremists" publicly calls for the MURDER of an author, playwright or cartoonist simply because of SOMETHING THEY SAID OR WROTE those 1.3 billion people stand up and say "sit down, shut up and ignore those idiots -- they will go away".
Until such time, ponder the quote "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
What, like ending up with leaders who claim that God told them to go to War with other countries?
Yes, but in the United States we can vote him out because a U.S. President is limited to two four-year terms. Contrast that with those in power in most of the Middle East and Africa, not to mention several places in Asia, Cuba and S. America. How long was Saddam in power? How many countries in Asia, the M.E. and Africa have had peaceful transitions of governments?
At least with G.W. Bush you know he'll be gone after 2008.
LOL, Great Point, I can see it now "Symantec Client Security Has Detected A Serious Vulnerability On Your Computer Click OK to Uninstall..... Microsoft Office":D
You were modded funny, only because "prophetic" isn't a legitimate mod. Actually, McAfee beat them to it. Their virus update sigs on Friday, March 10th classified MS Excel as a virus.
Also interestingly: What happens if MS refuse to pay? I can't imagine there being much chance of them refusing, but would the EU have powers to strongarm MS's bank to pay up on behalf of Microsoft?
The same thing that would happen if YOU lost a lawsuit and refused to pay. You assets would be seized to pay off the debt.
This would result in two things: a surge in non-Microsoft tools (Wordperfect, Lotus, OpenOffice, etc.) and a large grey-market where copies are "illegally" imported from other venues.
Deny tech support to companies/users in Europe. Please do. And please advertise it in advance. Is there anyone in Europe who could help me migrate over there and set up a Microsoft tech support office? Of course, I'm quite positive many enterprizing Europeans will be salivating at the idea of doing that themselves.
Backlash? No support? Are you kidding me? Microsoft, if they were insane enough to do that, would face the real threat of Europe NOT LETTING THEM BACK IN when they realized how bad they screwed up. Can you imagine what that would do to their market share? The word "plummet" comes to mind.
It isn't laziness and I organize my inbox religiously, but my point is that 90% of the data I receive comes in via e-mail, so why should I move it elsewhere to have it index when the Inbox does just that, and keeps it in historical context?
I can't access my home directory remotely without a PITA VPN, whereas remote access to e-mail is a no-brainer with OWA using an SSL/TLS link.
For the record, 100 Mb of e-mail to me represents about 60 days and I would like a full year. Back beyond that I have yet to reference info, other than what I've entered into the company knowledgebase.
E-mail *IS* my work interface, and every time I step out of it I am being slowed down. I am almost never in my home folder and it is empty. Even if I did put stuff there I'd need to be switching back and forth into e-mail constantly so why bother? I work much more efficiently if I can stick to the three programs I use for work: Firefox, Outlook & our CRM app.
[Note: Static documents that are constantly sent out to clients are stored in a shared location, not in e-mail. HOWEVER, they can also be accessed via "Public Folders" in e-mail.]
It isn't speed or really cost, it is durability. I don't trust SATA for 24x7 heavy usage (or 14x6, which is more reasonable. I've had issues with the drives not living very long when running them like that.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm not. The backend box is really a glorified file server running Samba. Nothing more than a metric ass-ton of storage space and a way to get to it from elsewhere. DVD and audio CDs are never really played at all, only ripped to the server and played/streamed remotely.
Really? I've never had that issue with Linux, with the exception of:
Sometimes having to recompile a kernel to add support for the obscure on-board sound chip;
#!@*&!(@# wireless cards.
And I've edited so many xfree86.conf and xorg.conf files by hand to add "ZAxisMap 4 5" I can do it in my sleep.
I do thoroughly check out the compatibility docs before buying a printer, scanner or digital camera, though. The camera *must* have the ability to save to an external card and/or show up as USB Mass Storage or I won't buy it. [NO, I DO NOT WANT TO INSTALL YOUR DAMN IMAGE PROCESSING SOFTWARE!] With printers and scanners I don't really buy them a lot but am asked for recommendations. I really like the Epson stuff because it works so well. I've been burned by Lexmark and a couple others before. Visioneer is another one on my blacklist.
Could you elaborate on your hardware setup? My EPIA M10000 has a very noisy 40mm CPU fan (been meaning to replace that) and the case has a pair of noisy 40mm fans that I haven't had the balls to remove/undervolt yet. :-)
. html?id=CfDcrzuT
H -MCE.
Via's fans are cheap and loud. If you replace those with something decent, like from Zalman or Nexus and you'll be much happier. http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/cpucomparison
Personally, I'm using a modified (hard drive removed) Hush PC http://www.mini-itx.com/store/product.asp?sid=HUS
Now that you can actually buy Via's NanoITX boards, my next project is going to be with one of those.
Bingo. This is what I have set up in my house.
The cute little box that serves as my MythTV front-end is real quiet because there is no:
a) Hard drive
b) Fan
c) Optical drive
It *does* have a GbE connection to a noisier box in a closet. This one has room for lots of large hard drives and a DVD-RW. The little box boots via PXE (only because I wanted the experience), but has a 1 Gb USB 2.0 thumb drive for "local" storage or caching, just in case.
The down side? The little box is almost useless without the network connection to the big box. This can be fixed by booting from the USB flash drive, if you want.
The up side? I have over 300 DVDs and 100 CDs all ripped to the big box. Movies, recorded TV and music is all available at any PC in the house. I have room for a couple hundred more movies and CDs before having to buy more hard drives. It is super-silent since there are no moving parts.
[Note to the MPAA/RIAA: I have the originals of ALL of those DVDs and CDs boxed away nicely, in storage, to avoid scratches and deterioration.]
Alternate solution:
.iso (http://shop.cheapbytes.com/cgi-bin/cart/007001102 5.html)
1) Pick any formfactor x86 PC you want, from small to "I have this obnoxious beige box hanging around";
2) Install a tuner -- USB, firewire or PCI
3) KnoppMyth (http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html)
3a) $4.99 from CheapBytes if you don't want to download and burn an
4) Set up your universal remote
Done.
...authors are still allowed to read other books, musicians are still allowed to listen to other songs, screenwriters are still allowed to watch other movies,...
All of those examples have led to lawsuits where a subsequent work looked too much like a "parent" work to some minds, and they sued. Dan Brown (The DaVinci Code) is currently being sued in Britain because of this very thing. I believe the word is "derivative", and what I was alluding to.
I'm leaning more and more towards Shakespeare's idea...
Funny because there is exactly that on the side of the people/organizations using OpenBSD/OpenSSH, you can get it for free, use it, sell it, etc and not even have to distribute source code or anything. The funny thing is business not trusting Theo with their money, but trusting his project with their critical infrastructure.
Finances are audited and use of computers are not, in most cases. It is not uncommon for rooms of very expensive equipment to sit around and sometimes disappear without a sound, but God help everyone if $0.50 disappears from the coffee fund...
More specifically, fiduciary responsibility is a big buzzword, regulated and watched closely.
How many Fortune 500 companies have IT techs that don't have a degree and were pulled in from engineering or elsewhere because "they knew something about computers"? I've met more than a few.
How many have controllers or accountants WITHOUT and MBA and/or were pulled in just because "they knew something about money"? This is where calculus can be used to describe a graph of a curve rapidly approaching zero.
You're right, it is stupid but that is the way it is.
-Charles
Downloading source is great, but not if looking at said source "contaminates" you. They call the GPL viral, but what if in the networking code for this "shared source" game they have all sorts of stuff that would help the SAMBA team? Can they use it? Hell, can they even look at it and still be able to contribute to SAMBA?
Heck, what about WINE? Is this something they should grab, or treat like free chocolate coated leprosy tablets?
-Charles
Theo notes there that "software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia."
While their "Project Goals" page claims that development strives to be free of politics and based on merit alone. Politics there must only refer to internal, I take it.
Holy crap! They're up to 5 already? Slow down guys. Nobody wants to upgrade systems they use for actual work that often. There's something to be said for stability.
The initial idea was Fedora was the testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise and that for actual work, you'd use RHEL and not Fedora. By its very design Fedora is supposed to be a fast-moving, cutting edge distro.
-Charles
...is that there is no corporate entity at all. You make checks out to "Theo de Raadt", which *isn't* going to happen from any really large company with deep pockets. There is zero tracability and zero accountability.
When the U.S. DoD was funding them, the disbursements were handled thru a University or some such.
They need to grow up as an organization. Find a sympathetic accountant to donate his time/effort to establish a tax-free (and tax deductable) non-profit in Canada and an arm in the U.S. Hell, maybe one in the EU and one down under as well.
This will make them infinitely more appealing to corporations who have deep pockets and MAJOR qualms about writing big checks out to individuals.
-Charles
What the article mentions is not really a big problem, since that is more or less what would happen if someone guessed the root password (then they could tamper with anything, including the logs).
Not quite. The idea is to set it so root can't log in remotely, and that sudo requires the ROOT password and not the USER password.
This way a hacker would have to obtain BOTH the user password and the root password.
For even more fun, restrict SSH to not allow keyboard-interactive logins and require anyone who needs to SSH into a box remotely to use a certificate. That way a hacker would need the certificate, the passphrase to unlock it, and the root password. To top it off you can't just "guess" a certificate like you can a password.
-Charles
Paranoia -- everyone has to have a hobby
On June 28, 2004, VirginMega filed a complaint with the French Competition Council against Apple regarding its refusal to license Fairplay to VirginMega for use in their own online music commerce store.
. html
Or this take on the Rokr:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/phone_pr
My mistake, it was never a 10-song limit. It was (and is) a 100 song limit, regardless of how much memory you have. AND no purchasing music thru Motorola or over the air, you MUST use iTunes. AND 30 seconds to transfer 4 Mb file, which means uploading 100 songs takes almost AND HOUR. Of course, you can just drag them to the SD using a reader on your PC, which is a nice workaround.
Oh, yeah. No major carrier agreed to sell the Rokr because of the one-sided deal with Apple. Cingular finally gave in, but isn't subsidizing the phone like they do with damn near every other phone. ($199 regardless of contract.)
Apple only licensed to Motorola under draconian terms that no one else would think of accepting. A max of 10 songs in the Rokr phone wasn't a hardware limitation, it was Steve Jobs telling Motorola he was going to stick it where the sun doesn't shine and they better smile when it happens or no deal. The "new" Rokr w/a 100 song limit only happened when Motorola realized they were NOT going to get a license to FairPlay -- they had to license iTunes as well. No creating their own music store, period. Oh, yeah, and AAC is the ONLY DRM format they can use. No supporting WMA as well.
Real had the same thing to offer as everyone else -- a licensing fee. Apple does not want the competition for their online music store and isn't interested in helping anyone else make music players.
As for Microsoft not asking, that doesn't surprise me. MS has a history of licensing only little bits of technology. The rest is either in-house or they have to buy the company outright.
Apple is playing serious hardball, make no mistake about it. Good for them. It is about time someone with a superior product gets the chance, instead of someone with a shit product and mega-marketing muscle forcing the situation.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not iTunes or iPod that are refusing to 'use' music from other music services, it's the other music services themselves that protect their music files and thus make them incompatible.
Okay, you're wrong.
Apple refuses to license the FairPlay DRM to anyone else (i.e. -- Microsoft or Real) and Apple themselves doesn't sell non-DRM protected MP3s.
Apple is the #1 player in portable music device market and the #1 player in online music sales. The iPod is the #1 selling device. By not licensing the DRM and NOT WORKING WITH OTHER DRM, they are doing their damnest to lock up the market.
(Many) Musicians want to go with Apple because they are #1, so they get the most exposure. (Many) Musicians ALSO refuse to release non-DRM music, therefore if they want to work on iPod (the #1 player) they have no choice but to go with Apple.
Now, I applaud Apple for their success. They did all this NOT by competing unfairly, but by producing a better product and marketing it better than anyone else. They are, by no stretch of the imagination, a monopoly, so I see nothing wrong with what they are doing.
But the "Oh, iPods play unencumbered MP3s so what are you all screaming about" argument is pure fanboy bullshit.
-Charles
Oh, come on. If every Muslim in the world is guilty of that, then every Christian is guilty of "justifying, excusing, aiding, abetting, and harbouring" Timothy McVeigh and the abortion-clinic bombers.
Timothy McVeigh was publicly reviled, not celebrated. He was captured, tried and executed. Abortion clinic bombers are not celebrated, and are also pursued, tried and punished. Eric Rudolph lived in hiding, living off of other people's trash for how long? He got no help, no public sympathy and eventually was captured.
Besides, you also need to keep in mind that more bombings and deaths by bombings occur in the Middle East IN ONE DAY than abortion clinic bombings in the entire HISTORY of the U.S. Public outrage is one big reason why this type of violence is not effective in the U.S. -- public condemnation.
Yeah, because we all know how good ASCII-art CAD files are, much less ASCII Visio and ASCII Project.
Those are the biggies because they are the manufacturing industry's crown jewels -- how to make it, what is the work flow, and what is our production schedule.
There is a big difference between 1.44 Mb and 1 Gb.
-Charles
How do you know that any sizable portion of that 1.3 billion poeple support terrorism. Most of these 1.3 billions are busy trying to make their ends meet and mind their own business. Only a small portion of these people are radicals, and even smaller number actually doing the violence.
And the tens of thousands that have been demonstrating, firebombing embassies, and creating general havoc over a SET OF CARTOONS? Specifically, a set of cartoons PUBLISHED ALMOST 6 MONTHS AGO. Still, even tens of thousands are a small portion of 1.3 billion and I get the strong feeling that many of the lesser-educated poor are being manipulated by political powers-that-be in this issue.
I *would* call those that perpetrated the Holocaust barbarians, just as I would call those who invaded Jerusalem under the banner of righteousness (aka Crusaders) barbarians. Barbarism isn't limited to any one culture or people. [Amusingly enough, many of the more radical Muslims don't acknowledge the Holocaust at all or claim it is vastly overstated.]
The U.S. has had its fair share of radicals, from Neo-Nazis to the KKK. However, they've been marginalized by the civilized majority and the worst we get now is the occasional church burning. And when that happens, there is NO public celebration and the criminals are pursued and tried.
My point is from the Holocaust to the KKK the West does its best do deal with their radicals. The 1.3 billion Muslims who "...are busy trying to make their ends meet and mind their own business." need to deal with the radicals themselves before someone else does it for them.
Those radical few live, work and worship among the rest everyday. While I'm not advocating turning your neighbor in for not trimming his lawn once a week, if I knew of some guy building bombs in his basement I'd have the authorities over there soonest.
I understand there are millions of very civilized, hard working Muslims who are abhorred by the violence perpetrated in the name of their religion. I'm just saying they need to have a louder voice, because they are getting shouted down by the rest.
Unfortunately a few political extremists are sullying the name of approximately 1.3 billion people on Earth, and many westerners are lapping it up eagerly.
Actually, the big issue many people in the West have is that 1.3 billion people on Earth justify, excuse, aid, abet and harbor those few political extremists. Those extremists don't operate in a vacuum and would be stopped in a heartbeat if those they live among didn't tolerate their hate and violence. How about when one of those "political extremists" publicly calls for the MURDER of an author, playwright or cartoonist simply because of SOMETHING THEY SAID OR WROTE those 1.3 billion people stand up and say "sit down, shut up and ignore those idiots -- they will go away".
Until such time, ponder the quote "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
-Charles
What, like ending up with leaders who claim that God told them to go to War with other countries?
Yes, but in the United States we can vote him out because a U.S. President is limited to two four-year terms. Contrast that with those in power in most of the Middle East and Africa, not to mention several places in Asia, Cuba and S. America. How long was Saddam in power? How many countries in Asia, the M.E. and Africa have had peaceful transitions of governments?
At least with G.W. Bush you know he'll be gone after 2008.
-Charles
LOL, Great Point, I can see it now "Symantec Client Security Has Detected A Serious Vulnerability On Your Computer Click OK to Uninstall ..... Microsoft Office" :D
You were modded funny, only because "prophetic" isn't a legitimate mod. Actually, McAfee beat them to it. Their virus update sigs on Friday, March 10th classified MS Excel as a virus.
-Charles
Also interestingly: What happens if MS refuse to pay? I can't imagine there being much chance of them refusing, but would the EU have powers to strongarm MS's bank to pay up on behalf of Microsoft?
The same thing that would happen if YOU lost a lawsuit and refused to pay. You assets would be seized to pay off the debt.
-Charles
Stop selling products in Europe.
This would result in two things: a surge in non-Microsoft tools (Wordperfect, Lotus, OpenOffice, etc.) and a large grey-market where copies are "illegally" imported from other venues.
Deny tech support to companies/users in Europe.
Please do. And please advertise it in advance. Is there anyone in Europe who could help me migrate over there and set up a Microsoft tech support office? Of course, I'm quite positive many enterprizing Europeans will be salivating at the idea of doing that themselves.
Backlash? No support? Are you kidding me? Microsoft, if they were insane enough to do that, would face the real threat of Europe NOT LETTING THEM BACK IN when they realized how bad they screwed up. Can you imagine what that would do to their market share? The word "plummet" comes to mind.
-Charles
It isn't laziness and I organize my inbox religiously, but my point is that 90% of the data I receive comes in via e-mail, so why should I move it elsewhere to have it index when the Inbox does just that, and keeps it in historical context?
I can't access my home directory remotely without a PITA VPN, whereas remote access to e-mail is a no-brainer with OWA using an SSL/TLS link.
For the record, 100 Mb of e-mail to me represents about 60 days and I would like a full year. Back beyond that I have yet to reference info, other than what I've entered into the company knowledgebase.
E-mail *IS* my work interface, and every time I step out of it I am being slowed down. I am almost never in my home folder and it is empty. Even if I did put stuff there I'd need to be switching back and forth into e-mail constantly so why bother? I work much more efficiently if I can stick to the three programs I use for work: Firefox, Outlook & our CRM app.
[Note: Static documents that are constantly sent out to clients are stored in a shared location, not in e-mail. HOWEVER, they can also be accessed via "Public Folders" in e-mail.]
-Charles
It isn't speed or really cost, it is durability. I don't trust SATA for 24x7 heavy usage (or 14x6, which is more reasonable. I've had issues with the drives not living very long when running them like that.