People get their panties in a bunch over the idea of in-program ads in TV shows (rather than between them), or ads in books, or wherever they aren't already, but a lot of the old shows from the beginning of broadcast television had actors or their characters do amusing and sometimes even witty product placements.
Such placements can really date the show if the company concerned has changed their branding radically or ceased to exist.
Usually placebo, just a sugar pill. If it was actually something harmful, people would shit a fucking brick and this nonsense would be violently outlawed.
If it was something like KCN they probably wouldn't be shitting anything. In the case of fake Viagra there might be a Darwin Award nomination involved.
That's pathetic. I've seen stores stay open during 24 hour POWER FAILURES! Any manager who does not teach their employees how to manually do credit card transactions (yes you can do them by paper!) should never have been hired in the first place.
When we lose power around here (once every 6 months or so), the stores stay open. They simply don't accept debit cards (which require a connection to the bank) until the power comes back on.
In other words it happens frequently enough that there is a procedure to handle it. But not frequently enough for the stores to use a UPS and generator to cope with unreliable power. Not even given the loss of refrigerated/frozen stock.
True, but isn't strange that they're going to ditch the entire OS because of a 3rd party software failure?
Maybe the root of the problem is with the OS. Also since the suppliers of the OS appear to be quite closely involved with the application development it's hardly "3rd party".
That would translate as: "there aren't alternatives to this software on this OS, therefore we're ditching the OS as well", which makes perfectly sense until one realizes we're talking about financial software... on Windows!
I can't see what attributes Windows has which would make it especially suited for "financial software" whatever that might mean. Anyway the actual requirement here appears to be to operate a busy stock exchange.
I would expect Linux to offer stabler alternatives, or simply more alternatives, in network software, programming tools or the embedded market, surely not in financial applications.
Another post mentioned special keyboards. What wasn't mentioned was a WIMP GUI being important. Possibly "embedded" together with "networking" is actually what's going on here.
No, and they were particularly not fired for threatening to buy !MS, sot that MS would come back with better pricing.
Which dosn't help that much if the actual problem is that Windows isn't the right tool for the job. It would be a bit like someone in Florida congratulating themselves on being able to buy snowcats at low prices:)
we don't know that the production is actually consensual in every case. We do hear about those who supposedly enjoy about it, but we often only hear about those who don't after they commit suicide or OD or end up afraid to leave the house or something.
These sorts of things also happen to people involved in other parts of the entertainments industry. Wikipedia lists 249 (regular) actors who have committed suicide, but only 12 porn actors. As well as 98 popular musicians.
What is wrong with it being for sexual arousal and lacking plot?
Which is more value than a movie which has no plot and dosn't result in sexual arousal when viewed by anyone remotely "normal"...
I understand it may be disgusting but if no one was hurt this should be covered by freedom of speech.
There are plenty of things which evoke disgust which have nothing to do with sex. Ironically plenty of people repressive attitudes (and laws) towards sex to be highly disgusting.
I have no doubt that the porn they were distributing could well have been "degrading" women by portraying them in a "vile and depraved manner",
The thing the prosecutors appear to have missed is that video porn is acting. There's plenty of degrading scenes in non porn (including big budget) movies. But you don't see these people going after Hollywood...
I'm sure my imagination is a little better than yours Mary Beth, being that many pornographic movies serve exactly that purpose..
Considering that quite a few "family values" types have turned out to be perverts and/or rapists you never know:)
If we are only concerned about tracking the mileage, there is already nice tool that does just this, couldn't it be used to also display how much it costs us in real time ?;-)))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taximeter
There's also the odometer. Car's typically have at least two. One which records the total distance the car has travelled and a "trip odometer" which can be reset by the driver.
True, but there's often a balance between having machines locked down and having them usable. This is where Windows often struggles, some software just doesn't behave in a locked down environment.
If the "supported" method is to give the user(s) admin privs then it is likely to be a challenge to find out if it's really just an issue of a few files/registry keys which need permissions changing.
Instead of spending $2 million to *fix* virus issues, why not hire smarter people to *prevent* virus issues? I'm sure doing so would be much cheaper.
It most likely comes down to political will. Hiring people to make sure things run smoothly often tends to be seen as an excessive cost. If they are doing their jobs "nothing" will happen. Whereas fixing when things go badly wrong is an "emergency" where cost is not an issue. Even if the result is to rebuild a "house of cards" for more than it would cost to replace it with something more substantial.
This is not a hidden cost of Windows, but a hidden cost of having ignorant admins and/or management.
They are somewhat linked in that Windows was sold of the premise of not needing "expensive admins". Thus you typically end up with a complete mess.
Most machines in most places of business maintain the same software day-in and day-out. Those machines should either be booting via write-protected remote images or using something like SteadyState to keep everything running perfectly. The servers should have correctly created permissions and security which make viral infections nearly impossible. The rest of the machines should be locked down with policies, limited privilege accounts, and software providing protection from infections. They should also be regularly imaged (as in nightly to a SAN/NAS/etc).
This is so radically different from the way that Windows is typically used that replacing Windows with something else probably wouldn't be any more shocking for the users (and management).
And when something does happen, it can be very difficult to fix. A single event can require a complete reinstall of the OS.
Which may well not solve whatever the actual fault is thus needing to be repeated.
It now requires a significant infrastructure to keep MS machines a production. The best case scenario is to treat each machine as a RAID, keeping data off the machine, and using a standard HD disk images.
Which requires both time and additional software to manage. Probably another thing which might not make it to a TCO "study".
Of course, if open source solutions like Linux became truly popular, then the folks that spend their hours writing viruses for Microsoft would simply turn their attention to Linux. It's the cost of being successful.
Assuming that it is equally easy to write malware for Linux as it is for Windows. Something which does not appear to be the case due to various factors including security models (as actually implemented) and "Linux" is a far more diverse target than "Windows". Even when Microsoft software is in the minority, such as IIS, it still appears to be a popular target for malware.
Because he was a former head of Nasdaq. He was one of the rule makers. You do not expect the head of the major exchange to be a Ponzi schemer. Just like a head of police is very unlikely to be a drug dealer.
Next you'll be telling me that politicians are unlikely to be dishonest. "High" criminals most certainly do exist. One thing that makes them especially dangerous is that they tend to be more able to conceal their activities.
BMI is just stupid. It is based on the chest size of the 1800's Scottish army and the height of an average French conscript.
If you are a Scotsman who was drafted into the French army, it might just apply to you, though.
The biggest problem with gaseous combustion fuels is the limited storage capacity, and compressed air is much worse than any of them.
Refueling is also likely to be more complex (and dangerous) than with liquid fuels. There is an explosion risk with a gas bottle just from the pressure involved.
This reminds me so much of a zombie movie... where somebody has cut off the zombie's head, but it doesn't know it's dead yet, and stumbles around causing damage and killing people for a couple of years before it falls over for good.
I didn't realise this was another story about SCO:)
AGW is based on a hypothesis. Models have been built on that same hypothesis. All predictions based on those same models have failed. If the models are closely coupled to the hypothesis, proper use of the scientific method forces us to discard the hypothesis and formulate one that has a better fit to observed data.
This may involve "tweaking" the hypothesis or it may involve coming up with a radically different one. Trying to somehow make the data fit with a hypothesis is more an act of faith.
The reason that's not currently being made is purely political.
It's impossible to keep politics out of science, since it is performed by humans. However full time politicians often appear to be people of strong faith in something or other.
While I agree in general - a lot of recycling is more energy-expensive than not recycling - the problem with paper is that the bacterial breakdown of paper releases methane (not just carbon dioxide) which is a more serious greenhouse gas.
It's also a useful fuel. So the alternative, to letting it into the air, is to collect it and either use it or put it into the already existing distribution system.
Sure, pollution in the environment is bad. No shit.
Putting tons of hybrid cars on the ground (with the included extra huge batteries and short life spans such batteries dictate) is not the answer.
Since the end result of doing this is likely to be more rather than less pollution. Even without taking account of scrapping existing cars.
I think the anti-environment group is being too extreme - nobody wants to live in 19th century London, ok? Everything covered in soot, the water toxic, etc. This is bad.
On the other hand, the pro-environment groups are just as bad. Sorry guys, but if you expend more coal-driven energy on being green than you would otherwise, you're just hurting yourself.
Is there a way to generate electricity which is acceptable to the "greenies"?
At some point the debate moved away from a rational discussion of limiting clearly hazardous pollutants. We stopped talking about mercury, PM2.5, smog, PCBs, etc and we started to focus very obsessively on CO2.
Not carbon dioxide instead we have the likes of "carbon footprints". (As though people have been trying to change photocopier toner with bare feet...)
Just asking... How about a "None of the above" vote.. That can win.
If none of the above wins - the current office holder stays but a new vote is taken with new candidates. The process continues until someone is voted in.
That makes "none of the above" more or less equivalent to voting for the incumbent. Better would be to whatever is done if the post holder resigns or drops dead. There's also a difference between a strong "none of the above" which dosn't allow the candidates to restand and a weak one which does...
And as a Canadian let me say that the reason that "voter turnout in our most recent election was the worst on record" was because THE CANDIDATES SUCKED.
The candidates, together with their diversity of views is probably the major factor. If "turnout" is really an important issue then it might make more sense to look at the nomination rules. The other option is to put all the candidates on a "reality show" which also uses a "last man standing" method of voting.
Slashdot Mirror
People get their panties in a bunch over the idea of in-program ads in TV shows (rather than between them), or ads in books, or wherever they aren't already, but a lot of the old shows from the beginning of broadcast television had actors or their characters do amusing and sometimes even witty product placements.
Such placements can really date the show if the company concerned has changed their branding radically or ceased to exist.
Usually placebo, just a sugar pill. If it was actually something harmful, people would shit a fucking brick and this nonsense would be violently outlawed.
If it was something like KCN they probably wouldn't be shitting anything. In the case of fake Viagra there might be a Darwin Award nomination involved.
That's pathetic. I've seen stores stay open during 24 hour POWER FAILURES! Any manager who does not teach their employees how to manually do credit card transactions (yes you can do them by paper!) should never have been hired in the first place.
When we lose power around here (once every 6 months or so), the stores stay open. They simply don't accept debit cards (which require a connection to the bank) until the power comes back on.
In other words it happens frequently enough that there is a procedure to handle it. But not frequently enough for the stores to use a UPS and generator to cope with unreliable power. Not even given the loss of refrigerated/frozen stock.
Tad excessive? You've never heard of the Rosenbergs, I take it. What country are you from?
Pity they didn't use the same approach with Jonathan Pollard.
True, but isn't strange that they're going to ditch the entire OS because of a 3rd party software failure?
Maybe the root of the problem is with the OS. Also since the suppliers of the OS appear to be quite closely involved with the application development it's hardly "3rd party".
That would translate as: "there aren't alternatives to this software on this OS, therefore we're ditching the OS as well", which makes perfectly sense until one realizes we're talking about financial software... on Windows!
I can't see what attributes Windows has which would make it especially suited for "financial software" whatever that might mean. Anyway the actual requirement here appears to be to operate a busy stock exchange.
I would expect Linux to offer stabler alternatives, or simply more alternatives, in network software, programming tools or the embedded market, surely not in financial applications.
Another post mentioned special keyboards. What wasn't mentioned was a WIMP GUI being important. Possibly "embedded" together with "networking" is actually what's going on here.
No, and they were particularly not fired for threatening to buy !MS, sot that MS would come back with better pricing.
:)
Which dosn't help that much if the actual problem is that Windows isn't the right tool for the job. It would be a bit like someone in Florida congratulating themselves on being able to buy snowcats at low prices
we don't know that the production is actually consensual in every case. We do hear about those who supposedly enjoy about it, but we often only hear about those who don't after they commit suicide or OD or end up afraid to leave the house or something.
These sorts of things also happen to people involved in other parts of the entertainments industry. Wikipedia lists 249 (regular) actors who have committed suicide, but only 12 porn actors. As well as 98 popular musicians.
What is wrong with it being for sexual arousal and lacking plot?
Which is more value than a movie which has no plot and dosn't result in sexual arousal when viewed by anyone remotely "normal"...
I understand it may be disgusting but if no one was hurt this should be covered by freedom of speech.
There are plenty of things which evoke disgust which have nothing to do with sex. Ironically plenty of people repressive attitudes (and laws) towards sex to be highly disgusting.
I have no doubt that the porn they were distributing could well have been "degrading" women by portraying them in a "vile and depraved manner",
:)
The thing the prosecutors appear to have missed is that video porn is acting. There's plenty of degrading scenes in non porn (including big budget) movies. But you don't see these people going after Hollywood...
I'm sure my imagination is a little better than yours Mary Beth, being that many pornographic movies serve exactly that purpose..
Considering that quite a few "family values" types have turned out to be perverts and/or rapists you never know
If we are only concerned about tracking the mileage, there is already nice tool that does just this, couldn't it be used to also display how much it costs us in real time ? ;-)))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taximeter
There's also the odometer. Car's typically have at least two. One which records the total distance the car has travelled and a "trip odometer" which can be reset by the driver.
True, but there's often a balance between having machines locked down and having them usable. This is where Windows often struggles, some software just doesn't behave in a locked down environment.
If the "supported" method is to give the user(s) admin privs then it is likely to be a challenge to find out if it's really just an issue of a few files/registry keys which need permissions changing.
Instead of spending $2 million to *fix* virus issues, why not hire smarter people to *prevent* virus issues? I'm sure doing so would be much cheaper.
It most likely comes down to political will. Hiring people to make sure things run smoothly often tends to be seen as an excessive cost. If they are doing their jobs "nothing" will happen. Whereas fixing when things go badly wrong is an "emergency" where cost is not an issue.
Even if the result is to rebuild a "house of cards" for more than it would cost to replace it with something more substantial.
This is not a hidden cost of Windows, but a hidden cost of having ignorant admins and/or management.
They are somewhat linked in that Windows was sold of the premise of not needing "expensive admins". Thus you typically end up with a complete mess.
Most machines in most places of business maintain the same software day-in and day-out. Those machines should either be booting via write-protected remote images or using something like SteadyState to keep everything running perfectly. The servers should have correctly created permissions and security which make viral infections nearly impossible. The rest of the machines should be locked down with policies, limited privilege accounts, and software providing protection from infections. They should also be regularly imaged (as in nightly to a SAN/NAS/etc).
This is so radically different from the way that Windows is typically used that replacing Windows with something else probably wouldn't be any more shocking for the users (and management).
And when something does happen, it can be very difficult to fix. A single event can require a complete reinstall of the OS.
Which may well not solve whatever the actual fault is thus needing to be repeated.
It now requires a significant infrastructure to keep MS machines a production. The best case scenario is to treat each machine as a RAID, keeping data off the machine, and using a standard HD disk images.
Which requires both time and additional software to manage. Probably another thing which might not make it to a TCO "study".
Of course, if open source solutions like Linux became truly popular, then the folks that spend their hours writing viruses for Microsoft would simply turn their attention to Linux. It's the cost of being successful.
Assuming that it is equally easy to write malware for Linux as it is for Windows. Something which does not appear to be the case due to various factors including security models (as actually implemented) and "Linux" is a far more diverse target than "Windows".
Even when Microsoft software is in the minority, such as IIS, it still appears to be a popular target for malware.
Because he was a former head of Nasdaq. He was one of the rule makers. You do not expect the head of the major exchange to be a Ponzi schemer. Just like a head of police is very unlikely to be a drug dealer.
Next you'll be telling me that politicians are unlikely to be dishonest. "High" criminals most certainly do exist. One thing that makes them especially dangerous is that they tend to be more able to conceal their activities.
BMI is just stupid. It is based on the chest size of the 1800's Scottish army and the height of an average French conscript.
If you are a Scotsman who was drafted into the French army, it might just apply to you, though.
You might also have to be a time traveller.
The biggest problem with gaseous combustion fuels is the limited storage capacity, and compressed air is much worse than any of them.
Refueling is also likely to be more complex (and dangerous) than with liquid fuels. There is an explosion risk with a gas bottle just from the pressure involved.
This reminds me so much of a zombie movie... where somebody has cut off the zombie's head, but it doesn't know it's dead yet, and stumbles around causing damage and killing people for a couple of years before it falls over for good.
:)
I didn't realise this was another story about SCO
AGW is based on a hypothesis. Models have been built on that same hypothesis. All predictions based on those same models have failed. If the models are closely coupled to the hypothesis, proper use of the scientific method forces us to discard the hypothesis and formulate one that has a better fit to observed data.
This may involve "tweaking" the hypothesis or it may involve coming up with a radically different one.
Trying to somehow make the data fit with a hypothesis is more an act of faith.
The reason that's not currently being made is purely political.
It's impossible to keep politics out of science, since it is performed by humans. However full time politicians often appear to be people of strong faith in something or other.
While I agree in general - a lot of recycling is more energy-expensive than not recycling - the problem with paper is that the bacterial breakdown of paper releases methane (not just carbon dioxide) which is a more serious greenhouse gas.
It's also a useful fuel. So the alternative, to letting it into the air, is to collect it and either use it or put it into the already existing distribution system.
Sure, pollution in the environment is bad. No shit.
Putting tons of hybrid cars on the ground (with the included extra huge batteries and short life spans such batteries dictate) is not the answer.
Since the end result of doing this is likely to be more rather than less pollution. Even without taking account of scrapping existing cars.
I think the anti-environment group is being too extreme - nobody wants to live in 19th century London, ok? Everything covered in soot, the water toxic, etc. This is bad.
On the other hand, the pro-environment groups are just as bad. Sorry guys, but if you expend more coal-driven energy on being green than you would otherwise, you're just hurting yourself.
Is there a way to generate electricity which is acceptable to the "greenies"?
At some point the debate moved away from a rational discussion of limiting clearly hazardous pollutants. We stopped talking about mercury, PM2.5, smog, PCBs, etc and we started to focus very obsessively on CO2.
Not carbon dioxide instead we have the likes of "carbon footprints". (As though people have been trying to change photocopier toner with bare feet...)
Just asking... How about a "None of the above" vote.. That can win.
If none of the above wins - the current office holder stays but a new vote is taken with new candidates. The process continues until someone is voted in.
That makes "none of the above" more or less equivalent to voting for the incumbent. Better would be to whatever is done if the post holder resigns or drops dead. There's also a difference between a strong "none of the above" which dosn't allow the candidates to restand and a weak one which does...
And as a Canadian let me say that the reason that "voter turnout in our most recent election was the worst on record" was because THE CANDIDATES SUCKED.
The candidates, together with their diversity of views is probably the major factor. If "turnout" is really an important issue then it might make more sense to look at the nomination rules.
The other option is to put all the candidates on a "reality show" which also uses a "last man standing" method of voting.