One reason might be to make sure they always have a web browser that works with their stuff. It wouldn't be beyond Microsoft's tactics for them to suddenly add some "feature" to IE that suddenly makes all of Google's Cool Stuff stop working well.
Also, if Google can promote adoption of Opera as a solid replacement for IE, the result will be that Microsoft's dominance is reduced. This is a Good Thing.
Very few places count as a "high security environment". Most of the sutff here is discussing a typical office environment. Even places that claim to be "high security" usually aren't. I've walked into/through many high security office buildings with no problems at all.
The cleaning, and especially security, people generally have a master key. It all depends on if you have your own cleaners, or a building crew, etc. But the basic point is that you shouldn't assume locked office == security, unless you have 100% full control of access (not just THINK you have control).
Great, so then we can all DDoS coke.com because we like Pepsi better, right?
Or do you think someone should take the time to read/validate/investigate these complaints? If so, by the time some human slogs through all the complaints the spammer would probably have moved on.
I see a lot of "squatters" at Starbucks, Beaners, Panera, etc that will sip a single $2.00 coffee for 3 hours just to sit there and surf the net.
I think a system that worked like the gas-station car wash would be best. With every purchase (or every $8.00 spent) you get a code worth 1 hour of access time.
Sorry that I didn't go into greater detail. BTW, I did RTFA. I was going to comment in my initial post that this thing really looks like a horrible fucking kludge. If it's only using the PCI bus for power then it's a stupid design (or a recycled PCB, see my initial comment). A lot of modern machines have limited PCI slots, and the big-ass card precludes it from being used in most Mini-ITX/epia/really small form factor cases, because a lot of them don't have room for any add-in cards that high or long. If you're just using the PCI slot for power, then put the card in a hard-drive sized form factor, which has a better chance of fitting into a PC, and get the power from a regular drive connector (legacy or SATA).
OR, put the damn SATA ship on the card so you don't need a cable and then it uses the PCI slot it occupies for something more useful.
Instead, they chose the worst of both worlds: rob power from the PCI bus, and the cable over to your SATA card while taking up too much room to do so.
Brilliant! Good thing the first run is limited to 1000 units.
Wow, this thing looks almost EXACTLY like the RAM add-in cards we stuck into ISA slots in the mid/late 80's for our zippy '286 and '386 based machines.
Looks like they dug up an old PCB screen, added a battery backup and changed the connectors to work with modern RAM:)
Among other things, I handle the physical hardware design spec for my companies product (the product is software which is loaded onto a hardware to make an "appliance"). I've received emails from quite a few vendors recently offering this sort of solid-state NV storage. I think this market sector is really starting to creep forward, and these might be the kinds of "disks" we see as the norm in the not-so-distant future.
I think first off, though, these will be like caching drives - holding only the data that is most seek-time sensitive to a particular application.
If DRM of audio and video media comes to my OS, I will find another OS.
Great. You and the other 3 zealots can all get together and throw yourselfs an OS-conversion party.
Because here's the bottom line: OSes are irrelevent now. It's the applications that matter.
Sell Grandma Betsy, or Aunt Shirley on this (or, Bubba Joe) and then get back to me on that statement.
In theory I agree with everything you've said. The problem is that 95% of all Windows users are clueless buffoons with no REAL "Digital Integrity". They don't care that much about DRM or the fact that the content-producers are slowly tightening a noose around their necks. Just keep playing that same stupid Britney song on the radio over and over, and give them another dose of dumb-fuck "Reality TV" to watch and they're happy.
This company just proves the saying "A fool and his money are soon venture capital".
I seriously can't believe this concept ever got past the drunken-scheming-businessplan-on-a-napkin phase.
Yes, this might catch your average completely clueless snatch-and-grab thief, but I wonder how often those guys go through the trouble of connecting a stolen laptop to an internet connection anyway?
What would be really fun is to report some PHB's laptop stolen while he's on a business trip with this software installed:)
You're still overlooking the "playback and transfer" issue. Even if you could somehow remember an entire HD program in vivid detail and full 15 channel surround sound, it is highly unlikely that you would be able to a) transfer this memory flawlessly to another person, or b) play the memory back to an audience.
If there were some way for Hollyweird to structure this such that the only way to "remember" something long term (ie: record it for now) would be to watch the program in real time then we would probably have much less resistance from them. Furthermore if there were an ironclad guarantee that the "memory" could not be transmitted to any person(s) that did not watch the same program in realtime then this whole argument would have never happened.
You make an interesting point, but I don't think it holds water.
I think that "best radio personality" is a bit of an oxymoron. I do agree that satellite radio is much better than FM though. I've had Sirius for a bit now and am pretty happy with it. I just wish that Sirius and XM had better sounds quality.
I *any* Dell invested US$100M in a company (ie Redhat) that they were planning on doing future business with, prior to any public announcements they could very possibly be accussed of insider trading.
With all of the class action lawsuits going around these days I would doubt that Dell would want to risk any scrutiny for a "simple" investment. This leads me to believe that Dell has no intentions of significantly altering their current state in relation to Redhat, pre-installed linux, new offerings, etc.
Open source is done in a mode of sharing code, and this includes the benefit of not having to start from scratch.
You don't just ask for a check and then the VC gives you the cash. You have to prove somewhat of a business model and new idea, etc. That being said the pitch, when you're leveraging ANY existing code base, usually goes something like "Ordinarily we would need X million dollars to get this going. However, because we can build off of previous works we only need X/Y million dollars (where Y is some number greater than Y).
The fact that open source projects are being utilized is reflected in the size of the investment.
Additionally, these projects are not usually pitched as "we want to simply improve package P", it's more like "Imagine if you took package S and pre-loaded onto a 1U server with a managment GUI and then wrote a customized reporting application to go with it, and then sold the whole thing with a service and support contract..."
Especially when you consider that there are products already available that can greatly reduce, or eliminate, these sorts of things.
Guardium http://www.guardium.com/ Tizor http://www.tizor.com Lumigent http://www.lumigent.com/ (just to name a few) All have solutions to information access/identity theft problems. If a company is storing personal/private/sensitive info it would seem they would be more aggressive in deploying preventative measures.
Slashdot Mirror
One reason might be to make sure they always have a web browser that works with their stuff. It wouldn't be beyond Microsoft's tactics for them to suddenly add some "feature" to IE that suddenly makes all of Google's Cool Stuff stop working well.
Also, if Google can promote adoption of Opera as a solid replacement for IE, the result will be that Microsoft's dominance is reduced. This is a Good Thing.
Very few places count as a "high security environment". Most of the sutff here is discussing a typical office environment. Even places that claim to be "high security" usually aren't. I've walked into/through many high security office buildings with no problems at all.
The cleaning, and especially security, people generally have a master key. It all depends on if you have your own cleaners, or a building crew, etc. But the basic point is that you shouldn't assume locked office == security, unless you have 100% full control of access (not just THINK you have control).
These same cleaners and rent-a-cops would also have access to offices as well. So this is a strawman argument.
Okay, so I suppose we're going to have drag a real-world example out of you? Your vagarities don't really provide much insight.
And linux is just as shocked at what a simpleton you are for not being able to figure out a new UI.
Great, so then we can all DDoS coke.com because we like Pepsi better, right?
Or do you think someone should take the time to read/validate/investigate these complaints? If so, by the time some human slogs through all the complaints the spammer would probably have moved on.
Interesting idea, but rather unfeasible (IMO).
I see a lot of "squatters" at Starbucks, Beaners, Panera, etc that will sip a single $2.00 coffee for 3 hours just to sit there and surf the net.
I think a system that worked like the gas-station car wash would be best. With every purchase (or every $8.00 spent) you get a code worth 1 hour of access time.
Yes it is. I said it looks ALMOST exactly like...
Sorry that I didn't go into greater detail. BTW, I did RTFA. I was going to comment in my initial post that this thing really looks like a horrible fucking kludge. If it's only using the PCI bus for power then it's a stupid design (or a recycled PCB, see my initial comment). A lot of modern machines have limited PCI slots, and the big-ass card precludes it from being used in most Mini-ITX/epia/really small form factor cases, because a lot of them don't have room for any add-in cards that high or long. If you're just using the PCI slot for power, then put the card in a hard-drive sized form factor, which has a better chance of fitting into a PC, and get the power from a regular drive connector (legacy or SATA).
OR, put the damn SATA ship on the card so you don't need a cable and then it uses the PCI slot it occupies for something more useful.
Instead, they chose the worst of both worlds: rob power from the PCI bus, and the cable over to your SATA card while taking up too much room to do so.
Brilliant! Good thing the first run is limited to 1000 units.
Wow, this thing looks almost EXACTLY like the RAM add-in cards we stuck into ISA slots in the mid/late 80's for our zippy '286 and '386 based machines.
:)
Looks like they dug up an old PCB screen, added a battery backup and changed the connectors to work with modern RAM
Among other things, I handle the physical hardware design spec for my companies product (the product is software which is loaded onto a hardware to make an "appliance"). I've received emails from quite a few vendors recently offering this sort of solid-state NV storage. I think this market sector is really starting to creep forward, and these might be the kinds of "disks" we see as the norm in the not-so-distant future.
I think first off, though, these will be like caching drives - holding only the data that is most seek-time sensitive to a particular application.
Wow, you could make Conclusion Jumping an Olympic sport with your talents!
A passive current monitor isn't going to have any effect on the dryer motor.
If DRM of audio and video media comes to my OS, I will find another OS.
Great. You and the other 3 zealots can all get together and throw yourselfs an OS-conversion party.
Because here's the bottom line: OSes are irrelevent now. It's the applications that matter.
Sell Grandma Betsy, or Aunt Shirley on this (or, Bubba Joe) and then get back to me on that statement.
In theory I agree with everything you've said. The problem is that 95% of all Windows users are clueless buffoons with no REAL "Digital Integrity". They don't care that much about DRM or the fact that the content-producers are slowly tightening a noose around their necks. Just keep playing that same stupid Britney song on the radio over and over, and give them another dose of dumb-fuck "Reality TV" to watch and they're happy.
This company just proves the saying "A fool and his money are soon venture capital".
:)
I seriously can't believe this concept ever got past the drunken-scheming-businessplan-on-a-napkin phase.
Yes, this might catch your average completely clueless snatch-and-grab thief, but I wonder how often those guys go through the trouble of connecting a stolen laptop to an internet connection anyway?
What would be really fun is to report some PHB's laptop stolen while he's on a business trip with this software installed
If your HR director is porting around a laptop with unencrypted data on employees you have bigger problems.
The data shouldn't even *be* on a laptop in the first place.
What exactly does an HR person need to do remotely? Keep sensitive data on an internal server and use a VPN to access it.
Ah, yeah, I see what you mean. My bad for skimming the article.
Oh well, it's too little, too late in either case.
I had a Sun laptop in something like '97. And it wasn't brand new even then.
Why can't it happen? Isn't this essentially what happened with the in-flight phones they installed in the 90's?
You're still overlooking the "playback and transfer" issue. Even if you could somehow remember an entire HD program in vivid detail and full 15 channel surround sound, it is highly unlikely that you would be able to a) transfer this memory flawlessly to another person, or b) play the memory back to an audience.
If there were some way for Hollyweird to structure this such that the only way to "remember" something long term (ie: record it for now) would be to watch the program in real time then we would probably have much less resistance from them. Furthermore if there were an ironclad guarantee that the "memory" could not be transmitted to any person(s) that did not watch the same program in realtime then this whole argument would have never happened.
You make an interesting point, but I don't think it holds water.
Did someone swap the "S" and "K" keys on your keyboard?
I think that "best radio personality" is a bit of an oxymoron. I do agree that satellite radio is much better than FM though. I've had Sirius for a bit now and am pretty happy with it. I just wish that Sirius and XM had better sounds quality.
I *any* Dell invested US$100M in a company (ie Redhat) that they were planning on doing future business with, prior to any public announcements they could very possibly be accussed of insider trading.
With all of the class action lawsuits going around these days I would doubt that Dell would want to risk any scrutiny for a "simple" investment. This leads me to believe that Dell has no intentions of significantly altering their current state in relation to Redhat, pre-installed linux, new offerings, etc.
+5, Inisghtful.
:)
If only society operated on more logic and less emotion...
Open source is done in a mode of sharing code, and this includes the benefit of not having to start from scratch.
You don't just ask for a check and then the VC gives you the cash. You have to prove somewhat of a business model and new idea, etc. That being said the pitch, when you're leveraging ANY existing code base, usually goes something like "Ordinarily we would need X million dollars to get this going. However, because we can build off of previous works we only need X/Y million dollars (where Y is some number greater than Y).
The fact that open source projects are being utilized is reflected in the size of the investment.
Additionally, these projects are not usually pitched as "we want to simply improve package P", it's more like "Imagine if you took package S and pre-loaded onto a 1U server with a managment GUI and then wrote a customized reporting application to go with it, and then sold the whole thing with a service and support contract..."
Yup.
Especially when you consider that there are products already available that can greatly reduce, or eliminate, these sorts of things.
Guardium http://www.guardium.com/
Tizor http://www.tizor.com
Lumigent http://www.lumigent.com/
(just to name a few) All have solutions to information access/identity theft problems. If a company is storing personal/private/sensitive info it would seem they would be more aggressive in deploying preventative measures.