Xena meets X-Files anyone? So first Xena is the plenty-o-cleavage FBI agent in a short skirt doing invesitagtions, runs into aliens and like Clark Kent turns into Xena: The Alien Slayer and kicks some serious butt...
You know, it's not the advertising that I hate so much. It's the lets-innundate-me-with-1590312812-ads-that-I-could n't-care-less-about-and-then-repeat-them-5-times-e very-hour.
Don't forget, you see 39482 ads because they're NOT TARGETED, and therefore the yield is very low.
If they could actually have me fill out a form to say "these are the things I'm interested in" and then only have me see ads that would be interesting, I think it would fly a lot more, and since it's a LOT MORE TARGETED, you would have less ads to deal with because they'd get a better response from their advertising.
I remember the same. I hacked into our central board office's novell network, grabbed the bindery, and obtained about 380 of 520 logins with a simple dictionary attack running on a 486 computer. Christ, I even had 3 sysadmin accounts (of 8) cracked. It was pretty pathetic. The guy who was in charge of the whole IT department (and hence a sysadmin) had a password of "greece". I phoned him up, got his voicemail, and said "Hey, I'm from XXX school and I think that we need to talk about the security of your computer system. By-the-way, I hear that Greece is lovely this time of year". I got a phone call back REALLY QUICKLY.;)
and by that EXACT POINT it is not any more secure either! If it still relies on the IDLC (Integer Discreet Logarithmic Cryptosystem) at it's roots, it is negligably more secure than RSA or DH. The only place where it gets more secure is that the "session key" cannot be intercepted (well: read right-now-we-can't-do-it), but right-now-we-can't-break-a-IDLC-either-so-what's-t he-point?
He absolutely refused to turn his show into a sci-fi sexy shoot-em-up like TNT wanted. He said that he'd rather can the show then turn it into that, and that is exactly what happened. TNT didn't want a brain show, so they stopped funding it.
JMS, in my books, is one credible man who stands for what he believes in. I seriously doubt if this new series will turn into anything other than the amazing quality productions that the original B5 turned out to be.
Get this: If you don't watch ads, instead of paying your wonderfully cheap $40/mo for cable, you'd need to pay $400/mo. So watch the goddam ads and shut up. Why are people so stressed out that they go to EXTRORDANARY lengths to avoid watching 6 minutes of commercials every hour? Get up and go to the washroom, fetch a snack, talk to your friend, discuss plot holes, etc. Seriously I have never found commercials to be a problem. The best way to avoid watching them is to AVERT YOUR EYES. And even if you did have to watch them, what is 6 minutes in the grand scheme of things??
The only other point that I want to make is that if they find a way to show me advertisements that are geared specifically towards what I'm interested in, I think that's fantastic! Show me ads on TV on all of the latest computer hardware, gadgets, cool cars, electronics, A/V hardware, etc, etc, and I will actually watch them! Everyone needs to take a country-class valium and calm down.
What's so unamerican about a company having the freedom to make and sell products as they see fit? If anything, all the rules and restrictions placed on Microsoft (and our efforts to put more restrictions on them, and in fact to break up the entire company) could hardly be called "American."
I think that you hit the proverbial nail on the head with that one. The main point of a capitalist society is that you are free to make products and sell them as you see fit, the government can't interfere. While it's morally wrong that a company can squash any possible future competition before they can get off the ground, forcing the company to NOT be able to do that is far from capitalism, getting a lot closer to socialism/communism there. And the fact of the matter still remains, and this one goes for everyone here. Ask yourself this question:
If you were at the helm of Microsoft, can you honestly say that you would do any differently?
If squishing one company could put another $50mil in sales in your company, and another $500k in your bank account, can you honestly say that you would not squash them because it's morally reprehensible? I honestly can't.
They coming up with new projects and products. That's *wonderful*, not terrible. It adds to the "marketplace of ideas." If we don't like them, we don't have to buy them.
I feel the same way. Microsoft is not a wholly bad company that's been squashing and prohibiting innovation in the industry. If anything they've been promoting it as well, because in order to try to compete with them you have to be damned creative, and they also have a lot of creative people working for them that have introduced many innovative ideas/technologies in their time. And they've tried as well. While the success of the paperclip is in debate, I've seen a lot of people who liked it. That's just one small example. However competition I think still takes the crown for enticing and forcing innovation, because you have to figure out ways to BEAT your opponent, and this gives a sense of urgency and forces creativity. There's no urgent need to improve products if you're the only one out there, so I don't agree with you on that point (that it's *wonderful*). I think that this is one of the only things that I actually don't like about the size of Microsoft, but again, trying not to be a hypocrite, I can't really blame them.
If Linux (or anything else) is going to make it in the marketplace, the people behind it will have to stop whining about not having the market equivalent of affirmative action, and instead will have to develop business models based on something other than "If we make it, they will come."
It seems to me that linux people seem to be a lot happier using MS as an excuse, and blaming them for all the problems. I'm not saying that there is no blame to go to Microsoft, but I think they're a convenient scapegoat for all problems. The fact of the matter is that linux is not ready for mainstream desktop usage. It's still too technical and there isn't enough applications for it (although, I must admit, it is growing). I think that linux users need to abandon the "I want everything for free" notion and start accepting that if they are willing to pay for software to run on linux, companies will be more willing to write their software to run natively on linux. Right now there is no incentive for any companies to do so because there is no money to be made.
I have heard the argument that if MS was multiple companies, then one of the mini-MS's would be more willing to port software to linux because they're not tied to the other mini-MS that owns the OS. I don't agree, because again, there is no money to be made for linux. When it becomes acceptable in the consumer market to be willing to pay for lots of software to run on linux, then, and only then, will linux succeed. I do realize that there are companies that make software to sell on linux, but it's a chicken-in-the-egg problem right now. There isn't enough usage to warrant taking the time and effort to develop your companies applications for linux, but there isn't the market share because there is not enough applications.
I do truly believe that Linux is a good OS, and that it has the potential to be better than MS, but I do not think that this will happen for a while, and not until some changes happen.
Uhhh....what about the fact that almost everyone who goes online also intersects with Cisco routers? You're not using any logic, Katz.
While I don't agree with Katz, I also don't agree with you. It would be rather difficult for cisco to grab large amounts of information off the internet, especially if it's purely by sniffing packets, but it would be a lot easier for MS to simply get their Windows to "call home" and stick useful information directly into some databases.
Let's not forget one thing here guys: Q: Why do Microsoft, Jerry Springer, and Marilyn Manson exist? A: Because the public wants them to.
Because they cater to the public. Microsoft has this huge market share because they're doing stuff right, and people want their products. This is a sad fact to realize, but it is true. If you want a society in which large corporations can't run things, then go to a communist country. We're in a democracy, and unfortunately this is a side effect.
But I also seem to remember this saying: "don't put all your eggs in one basket".
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The X-box has some pretty heavyweights behind it, and it's a good box. They have the industry clout to push game manufacturers to develop for their box, and they have the money to back up pushing the box out the door at cheap prices. I think it's going to work. UltimateTV will probably succeed as well, provided they don't screw up the way that they release and market it. The technology that they promise will be used in it has been overdue for a long time, and all it needs is a company that can't fall over to push it out onto the market.
I don't think the issue here is whether or not the net CAN be regulated.. If the governments/companies put enough money towards anything, anything can be accomplished. Regulating the net is just a matter of money. However I think that the real question should be this: should the net be regulated? Personally, I think that it should not. I could get into a very long debate about that one, but I'll save it for now.
I agree with you totally (on the 5 year lifetime aspect) because how many products (in the technology sector) are still useful after that amount of time? Also, here's food for thought: the patent system should require information on how much it cost you to do your so-called "research"... If you genuinely spent a million bucks on research, then you should be granted a longer patent, or be allowed to charge more for royalties. (DAMN I'm on a french keyboard and can't find any of the *$*$ keys).. Or here's another idea, make patent owners required to license out their tech, and put limits on how much they can charge based on costs to research it in the first place... I'm not saying that these ideas could work, but it's food for thought anyways. Anyone have any comments???
No you're totally correct. Developmental employees in MS, for example, have to install the latest builds of the O/S on their dev machines, this is under the theory that if something's wrong they will have more incentive to fix it.
Picture it from the companies point of view:
We currently have an unsupported e-mail system that isn't meeting our needs. We can either (a) pay $$$$$$$$$ for another companies software, or (b) pay $0 and use our own, plus we give the employees more incentive to make it better.
From a management perspective, it doesn't seem like a bad choice to me.
Notice how they said "primary email"? You're allowed to use whatever you want, but you need the AOL software for company related stuff. We're forced to use notes here, but I just have it set up via POP3 to use Eudora, and I launch notes whenever I need to use some of the functionality (not that often). So it's not a big deal. It makes a lot of sense.
Looks to me that this is a case where the pantent systmem actully does what it is supposed to.
NOT AT ALL. If they had sued these companies when they started to use the magnets then that holds water. They intentionally WAIT until the market is huge and everyone is using, then they go and start patent mining for money. That's low and slimy, not legitimate usage.
First of all, even without human interference, it conducts heat, electricity, and sound
Heat, yes. Sound, yes. Radio? yes. Electricity? I don't think that having air constantly conducting electricity is a good thing, but I suppose lightning does fit under that bill, but not in the constant sense that you're referring to, unless I'm missing something
If a sub sends out, say, a bleep at 440 mHz, and receives one back from a sub 50 yards away, if the signals were fired simultaneously, both subs will think that they're 100 yards apart.
You got it backwards. If 2 subs simultaneously send out a sonar ping, they will receive the other one in 1/2 the time expected, and therefore think they are 25m apart (1/2x), not 100m (2x).
But think of an ocean filled with five billion submarines, each one sending out sonic vibrations
You're not going to have everyone using the same frequency, and besides, sonar was designed for casual use. If we had 5 billion subs, then we'd be using something a lot more sophisticated.
But how many ways can water vibrate?
You're not looking at things correctly. You don't need to simply assign everyone a different frequency. Think about how modems work. Think about our wonderful 300 baud modems 20 years ago, and now we have 56K packed into a tiny little 8khz of bandwidth, and that's low for that size of bandwidth because of the unperfectness of the phone network! For another example, take 1 freqency and randomly pulse it. I'm not entirely sure of how signals work underwater as well, but I'd imagive that it's not much different than through air. So send a "digital" sonar pulse with a unique ID attached. If you receive one that isn't yours,... Just like how a network works. There are a zillion ways to pack a lot of different data and signals into a single band.
And can the same cubic inch of water really carry a million transmissions with a million different frequencies and vectors?
Radio waves travel through substance. For that matter, air is not much different than water. They're both 'fluid', one is just a lot more dense than the other. For this matter, you should be able to pack just about the same amount of information through water as you can through air. I'm not an expert, but that only makes sense to me.
What are the possible effects of completely saturating the air with information?
I think we're far from that point, and one thing you're forgetting is that we evolved being bathed in radio waves. The more hazerdous stuff was blocked by our wonderful atmosphere, but radio has always been around. There is no apparent large health risks for the amounts that are being broadcast, at the powers that they are being broadcast at. I think as technology progresses (as it has already), we will be able to pack more and more information into less and less power and bandwidth in the air, and since there's just so much of it, I don't think this is a problem we'll have to face any time soon.
And you thought cell phones were a distraction? How many of you reading this actually listen to one complete song on FM radio? Yes, you station-surf constantly, don't you; We all have two minute hamsterlike attention spans. Is having 100 channels to flip through a really fantastic idea?
Umm, I do. I listen to complete songs all the time. I even have a stack of about 10 CDs that I've customly made, and listen to them all the time too. There 2 or 3 good radio stations that I like to listen to here, and when I do I'll listen to 4 or 5 songs in a row before one comes up that I don't like.
Quite frankly, I think that radio has become... well it's nearing the end of it's life. Realistically I only listen to radio when I'm bored with the CDs that I've made, or if I'm in a atypical music listening mood, or if I'm with someone else in the car who doesn't share my interests. With the internet and the plethora of wireless devices coming, and portable MP3 players, etc, radio as we know it isn't as appealing anymore. I know that most of the world still hasn't heard an MP3, but I mean that within the next 2 decades we'll probably see the death of radio as we know it, and head to a much more subscription/specific music broadcasts that are either tailered to what we like specifically, or are literally what we choose.
Besides, I think it's about time that radio got a revamp, I mean, how long has it been since we had a real change in the way that radio works?
This article was listed along the sidelines in ones of those 'slashboxes' for a day or so now, so why is this news here? I've submitted several good news stories that have all been rejected (even a few that someone else submitted after mine were rejected and theirs got on, and yet this gets in? (grumble)
I think you're living in an idealistic utopian society. The same process applies to the people MAKING the software. They don't have the time to make it bulletproof either, or to hold the hand of the hey-I-read-"learn-unix-in-21-days"-so-now-I-am-an- administrator admins while they don't know what they're doing, and the people who DO know what they're doing usually have the sense to spend the 5 minutes after installing to do the minimal lockdown, but unfortuantely hindsight is 20/20 and it's easier to look back on what should have been done rather than being there myself. Umm, what was I point? I've lost it.
to prevent buffer overflows is... (drumroll please)
COMPETENT PROGRAMMING!
Think of it. If I'm going to read in data, I will never ever ever blindly pass in a fixed-length array. In many many cases you can peek ahead to see how much data is waiting to be collected, or specify the length of your array so that the called function will not overflow your buffer. If you can't (then the called function was not written properly, but...) do something silly like allocate a buffer in the heap, and then copy the needed data into an internal buffer afterwards. If the "temp space" buffer is out-of-range-of-executable-code and big enough (reasonably, we can assume that we're not going to receive a 26MB buffer overflow) then even with a function that you can't specify the length of your array, an overflow will not be a problem. It's common sense people, especially with all of the press coverage that buffer overflow attacks have gotten. It's not brain science, just another example of incompetent programming.
Wow, I don't think I've seen so much MS-defence in one article in a while (well, I set my filter to 2 by default, and once I did that/. seems a LOT more intelligent!)
One thing you guys are all forgetting is that sysadmins, many times, simply don't have the time to admin properly. They're given 1/2 the time required to do any specific task, then the (usually clueless) management has another "mission-critical-must-be-done-yesterday" task to complete, and although the sysadmin intends to go back later to ensure everything is running properly and securely, in reality they just don't have the time.
in case you didn't realize, RF is everywhere, and we have been bathed in it for millions of years. Especially now that we have radio stations broadcasting 24/7 everywhere you go, we're always bathed in it. Add in the cell phones now operating in the microwave frequencies, and, well, you get my point. In order for it to get bad though we'd have to be exposed to a few hundred times the power that we're currently exposed to.
I'm sorry, but this is getting EXCEPTIONALLY ANNOYING. I'm getting sick-and-tired of people bashing MS for things that really aren't their fault!
If you want to shoot someone down, point the gun in the right direction!
I'm not saying MS is perfect. Far from it. But you people are just as bad as the media that you slander!
Let's get one thing straight here. One simple concept. In ANY OS, there are 2 main parts (for simplicity sake here at least): The O/S and THE DRIVERS. 99% of the bad publicity that NT gets (BSODs, crashes, faults, etc) are due to FLAKY DRIVERS, not the OS itself. I had a D-Link network card that I used with NT4, and I never had to reboot to change my IP address. That's right! nowhere in NT does it say that you must reboot to change the IP address (or just about anything for that matter, including installing drivers), but because the people who write the drivers just want to get their stuff out the door, they write it the easiest way possible. And if that means that people need to reboot, well hell, you only install the hardware once so who cares? I've used other pieces of hardware under NT4 as well that did not require a reboot to install the drivers. There's this little flag that NT reads from the driver setup that tells NT to request a system reboot when it's completed. Once again folks: DRIVER PROBLEM, NOT OS.
BTW - The same thing goes for Win9X. However that's the extent that I'm going to defend that OS because it really is bad.
It's the driver issues that cause almost all of the instability that we saw with NT4. Because drivers have unrestricted access to the entire system, if a driver goes AWOL and shits over something, the server has NO CHOICE but to BSOD because it cannot guarantee the integrity of the rest of the system. There is no way to protect against that. As well, the VAST MAJORITY of the drivers that caused problems were NOT MSQL CERTIFIED, which means that MS didn't run it through regression testing and stress tests. Have you guys ever seen the NT STRESS TEST CD? That disk puts every single API through every single conceivable breaking point to make sure that the OS ITSELF is stable. And guess what? Install NT4 or W2K on any system that's MSQL certified, with MSQL certified drivers, and you can run the stress tests until your face turns blue, the system will not crash. I've done this, so I can vouch for it.
I'm not against bashing a company for things that are legitimate complaints. Hell, MS is far from perfect, I bash them a lot. But I'm really tired of this linux-lovers-anonymous-style mentality that MS is bad, so before we even THINK about what we're saying, let's just bash them anyways! The latest article that was posted about MS's request to OEMs to report companies that request volume computers without a preinstalled OS to report them is understandable. Since the only way to put a legitimate MS os on a new PC is either (a) OEMed or (b) buy new, then the cheapest solution is obviously (a). If company Y askes supplier X for 50 computers, and says that they don't want an OS, then it means that they're most likely going to install a pirated copy of windows (or assume that their site license that they have for OSes allows them to use that OS on new machines, which it does not). This isn't a "hey MS hates linux, look!" issue, because face it, the majority of companys that buy bulk computers are putting them on their employees desks, and just about all of them run MS oses. Sorry, it's the facts. And companies that use linux servers usually don't buy 50 at a time, so that's not the issue here either. If a company wants 5 linux PCs, and 45 MS PCs, then they can order 45 with OSes, and 5 without. No big deal, and that's not big enough for MS to care. But statistics show that just-about-every-company that has bought volume PCs without OSes has been pirating. This had nothing to do with home users or the average user who asks for a computer without an OS, but yet JUST ABOUT EVERYONE jumped on the bandwagon with their anti-MS-toting-bullshit comments without actually reading up on the article and understanding what it said! You editors and main guys here are no exception either.
Don't get me wrong now. I use linux, and I have a great deal of respect for it, but I also use W2K, and I have a great deal of respect for that as well. Both systems have their strong points and their faults. This is not an anti-linux-because-I-love-MS rant, it's a get-your-shit-together-and-learn-about-what-you're -complaining-about-before-you-stick-your-foot-in-y our-mouth rant.
[/end rant]
If you're going to flame me, don't bother. I'm not going to read it, so you're just wasting your breath. If you want to have a meaningful debate, by all means, go ahead.
You think the UK keyboard is a hassle, try the French! I had to have my natural keyboard shipped here because I couldn't stand the French layout. To use the numbers you need to use the shift key as well, A,Q,Z,W, and M are in slightly different places, you can't use the right alt-key because it's used to give special characters, but yet it looks just like a normal keyboard so it's impossible to adjust! Why can't we just all get along with a standard? (yeah I know why, but it's more fun to rant)
and as a solution to the screw problem, use better screws!
seriously though, I've been using a normal Logitech wireless "natural" keyboard for months, and I used to have hand problems, now I don't! It's great, I have a comfy chair and a lap-desk thing, so I can move all over the place, free of cables. I attached a gel pad to the front of the keyboard (it came with a ?! stupid hard plastic wrist wrest) and it's my saviour. Heck, I even brought it to France with me. Don't need $300USD either, this setup cost me just under $100.
However, I'm still interested in getting a lazy boy setup! Hook me up with one of those, mounted dual keyboard, computer integrated into the base and a LCD screen that can be moved (via an arm of course) to anywhere in front of my view (i.e. so if I'm laying down I can move it to be in front of me), and I'd pay $$$$$$ for that!
Ignorant indeed. Instructions are not one clock cycle each. I/O and memory concerns will also significantly slow AI down.
Well excuuuuuuuuuuseee me. You know what I meant. 500 million cycles per second then, happy? Christ, get a legitimate beef if you're going to shoot me down. My point was that there is a lot of cycles between each frame, and you don't need to do collision avoidance and pathfinding EVERY frame. Once you find a path, it takes a few hundred frames to follow it. Even if something changes, it's unlikely you'll need to pathfind again until 10 frames or so later. Ditto with collision avoidance. I think the problem, as someone else stated, lies not in CPU resources but in programming resources and time. I doubt as though the AIs are nearly as optimized as they could be, if enough time was given.
Slashdot Mirror
Xena meets X-Files anyone? So first Xena is the plenty-o-cleavage FBI agent in a short skirt doing invesitagtions, runs into aliens and like Clark Kent turns into Xena: The Alien Slayer and kicks some serious butt...
OK... Enough late night reruns for me.
only for the palm IIIx and IIIe? I guess the palm III and V users are SOL?
yeah I agree entirely. It's utterly hillarious the number of people who are that gullible and just take what they are offered as 100% truth.
Does anyone else think that we need to have a moderation system for the EDITORS here? Sorry timothy, (-1, Flaimbait) for you.
You know, it's not the advertising that I hate so much. It's the lets-innundate-me-with-1590312812-ads-that-I-could n't-care-less-about-and-then-repeat-them-5-times-e very-hour.
Don't forget, you see 39482 ads because they're NOT TARGETED, and therefore the yield is very low.
If they could actually have me fill out a form to say "these are the things I'm interested in" and then only have me see ads that would be interesting, I think it would fly a lot more, and since it's a LOT MORE TARGETED, you would have less ads to deal with because they'd get a better response from their advertising.
Seems like a win-win situation to me...
I remember the same. I hacked into our central board office's novell network, grabbed the bindery, and obtained about 380 of 520 logins with a simple dictionary attack running on a 486 computer. Christ, I even had 3 sysadmin accounts (of 8) cracked. It was pretty pathetic. The guy who was in charge of the whole IT department (and hence a sysadmin) had a password of "greece". I phoned him up, got his voicemail, and said "Hey, I'm from XXX school and I think that we need to talk about the security of your computer system. By-the-way, I hear that Greece is lovely this time of year". I got a phone call back REALLY QUICKLY. ;)
and by that EXACT POINT it is not any more secure either! If it still relies on the IDLC (Integer Discreet Logarithmic Cryptosystem) at it's roots, it is negligably more secure than RSA or DH. The only place where it gets more secure is that the "session key" cannot be intercepted (well: read right-now-we-can't-do-it), but right-now-we-can't-break-a-IDLC-either-so-what's-t he-point?
That is NOT going to happen.
Remember JMS and B5:Crusade?
He absolutely refused to turn his show into a sci-fi sexy shoot-em-up like TNT wanted. He said that he'd rather can the show then turn it into that, and that is exactly what happened. TNT didn't want a brain show, so they stopped funding it.
JMS, in my books, is one credible man who stands for what he believes in. I seriously doubt if this new series will turn into anything other than the amazing quality productions that the original B5 turned out to be.
Get this: If you don't watch ads, instead of paying your wonderfully cheap $40/mo for cable, you'd need to pay $400/mo. So watch the goddam ads and shut up. Why are people so stressed out that they go to EXTRORDANARY lengths to avoid watching 6 minutes of commercials every hour? Get up and go to the washroom, fetch a snack, talk to your friend, discuss plot holes, etc. Seriously I have never found commercials to be a problem. The best way to avoid watching them is to AVERT YOUR EYES. And even if you did have to watch them, what is 6 minutes in the grand scheme of things??
The only other point that I want to make is that if they find a way to show me advertisements that are geared specifically towards what I'm interested in, I think that's fantastic! Show me ads on TV on all of the latest computer hardware, gadgets, cool cars, electronics, A/V hardware, etc, etc, and I will actually watch them! Everyone needs to take a country-class valium and calm down.
What's so unamerican about a company having the freedom to make and sell products as they see fit? If anything, all the rules and restrictions placed on Microsoft (and our efforts to put more restrictions on them, and in fact to break up the entire company) could hardly be called "American."
I think that you hit the proverbial nail on the head with that one. The main point of a capitalist society is that you are free to make products and sell them as you see fit, the government can't interfere. While it's morally wrong that a company can squash any possible future competition before they can get off the ground, forcing the company to NOT be able to do that is far from capitalism, getting a lot closer to socialism/communism there. And the fact of the matter still remains, and this one goes for everyone here. Ask yourself this question:
If you were at the helm of Microsoft, can you honestly say that you would do any differently?
If squishing one company could put another $50mil in sales in your company, and another $500k in your bank account, can you honestly say that you would not squash them because it's morally reprehensible? I honestly can't.
They coming up with new projects and products. That's *wonderful*, not terrible. It adds to the "marketplace of ideas." If we don't like them, we don't have to buy them.
I feel the same way. Microsoft is not a wholly bad company that's been squashing and prohibiting innovation in the industry. If anything they've been promoting it as well, because in order to try to compete with them you have to be damned creative, and they also have a lot of creative people working for them that have introduced many innovative ideas/technologies in their time. And they've tried as well. While the success of the paperclip is in debate, I've seen a lot of people who liked it. That's just one small example. However competition I think still takes the crown for enticing and forcing innovation, because you have to figure out ways to BEAT your opponent, and this gives a sense of urgency and forces creativity. There's no urgent need to improve products if you're the only one out there, so I don't agree with you on that point (that it's *wonderful*). I think that this is one of the only things that I actually don't like about the size of Microsoft, but again, trying not to be a hypocrite, I can't really blame them.
If Linux (or anything else) is going to make it in the marketplace, the people behind it will have to stop whining about not having the market equivalent of affirmative action, and instead will have to develop business models based on something other than "If we make it, they will come."
It seems to me that linux people seem to be a lot happier using MS as an excuse, and blaming them for all the problems. I'm not saying that there is no blame to go to Microsoft, but I think they're a convenient scapegoat for all problems. The fact of the matter is that linux is not ready for mainstream desktop usage. It's still too technical and there isn't enough applications for it (although, I must admit, it is growing). I think that linux users need to abandon the "I want everything for free" notion and start accepting that if they are willing to pay for software to run on linux, companies will be more willing to write their software to run natively on linux. Right now there is no incentive for any companies to do so because there is no money to be made.
I have heard the argument that if MS was multiple companies, then one of the mini-MS's would be more willing to port software to linux because they're not tied to the other mini-MS that owns the OS. I don't agree, because again, there is no money to be made for linux. When it becomes acceptable in the consumer market to be willing to pay for lots of software to run on linux, then, and only then, will linux succeed. I do realize that there are companies that make software to sell on linux, but it's a chicken-in-the-egg problem right now. There isn't enough usage to warrant taking the time and effort to develop your companies applications for linux, but there isn't the market share because there is not enough applications.
I do truly believe that Linux is a good OS, and that it has the potential to be better than MS, but I do not think that this will happen for a while, and not until some changes happen.
Uhhh....what about the fact that almost everyone who goes online also intersects with Cisco routers? You're not using any logic, Katz.
While I don't agree with Katz, I also don't agree with you. It would be rather difficult for cisco to grab large amounts of information off the internet, especially if it's purely by sniffing packets, but it would be a lot easier for MS to simply get their Windows to "call home" and stick useful information directly into some databases.
Let's not forget one thing here guys:
Q: Why do Microsoft, Jerry Springer, and Marilyn Manson exist?
A: Because the public wants them to.
Because they cater to the public. Microsoft has this huge market share because they're doing stuff right, and people want their products. This is a sad fact to realize, but it is true. If you want a society in which large corporations can't run things, then go to a communist country. We're in a democracy, and unfortunately this is a side effect.
But I also seem to remember this saying: "don't put all your eggs in one basket".
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The X-box has some pretty heavyweights behind it, and it's a good box. They have the industry clout to push game manufacturers to develop for their box, and they have the money to back up pushing the box out the door at cheap prices. I think it's going to work. UltimateTV will probably succeed as well, provided they don't screw up the way that they release and market it. The technology that they promise will be used in it has been overdue for a long time, and all it needs is a company that can't fall over to push it out onto the market.
I don't think the issue here is whether or not the net CAN be regulated.. If the governments/companies put enough money towards anything, anything can be accomplished. Regulating the net is just a matter of money. However I think that the real question should be this: should the net be regulated? Personally, I think that it should not. I could get into a very long debate about that one, but I'll save it for now.
I agree with you totally (on the 5 year lifetime aspect) because how many products (in the technology sector) are still useful after that amount of time? Also, here's food for thought: the patent system should require information on how much it cost you to do your so-called "research"... If you genuinely spent a million bucks on research, then you should be granted a longer patent, or be allowed to charge more for royalties. (DAMN I'm on a french keyboard and can't find any of the *$*$ keys).. Or here's another idea, make patent owners required to license out their tech, and put limits on how much they can charge based on costs to research it in the first place... I'm not saying that these ideas could work, but it's food for thought anyways. Anyone have any comments???
No you're totally correct. Developmental employees in MS, for example, have to install the latest builds of the O/S on their dev machines, this is under the theory that if something's wrong they will have more incentive to fix it.
Picture it from the companies point of view:
We currently have an unsupported e-mail system that isn't meeting our needs. We can either (a) pay $$$$$$$$$ for another companies software, or (b) pay $0 and use our own, plus we give the employees more incentive to make it better.
From a management perspective, it doesn't seem like a bad choice to me.
Notice how they said "primary email"? You're allowed to use whatever you want, but you need the AOL software for company related stuff. We're forced to use notes here, but I just have it set up via POP3 to use Eudora, and I launch notes whenever I need to use some of the functionality (not that often). So it's not a big deal. It makes a lot of sense.
Looks to me that this is a case where the pantent systmem actully does what it is supposed to.
NOT AT ALL. If they had sued these companies when they started to use the magnets then that holds water. They intentionally WAIT until the market is huge and everyone is using, then they go and start patent mining for money. That's low and slimy, not legitimate usage.
First of all, even without human interference, it conducts heat, electricity, and sound
... Just like how a network works. There are a zillion ways to pack a lot of different data and signals into a single band.
Heat, yes. Sound, yes. Radio? yes. Electricity? I don't think that having air constantly conducting electricity is a good thing, but I suppose lightning does fit under that bill, but not in the constant sense that you're referring to, unless I'm missing something
If a sub sends out, say, a bleep at 440 mHz, and receives one back from a sub 50 yards away, if the signals were fired simultaneously, both subs will think that they're 100 yards apart.
You got it backwards. If 2 subs simultaneously send out a sonar ping, they will receive the other one in 1/2 the time expected, and therefore think they are 25m apart (1/2x), not 100m (2x).
But think of an ocean filled with five billion submarines, each one sending out sonic vibrations
You're not going to have everyone using the same frequency, and besides, sonar was designed for casual use. If we had 5 billion subs, then we'd be using something a lot more sophisticated.
But how many ways can water vibrate?
You're not looking at things correctly. You don't need to simply assign everyone a different frequency. Think about how modems work. Think about our wonderful 300 baud modems 20 years ago, and now we have 56K packed into a tiny little 8khz of bandwidth, and that's low for that size of bandwidth because of the unperfectness of the phone network! For another example, take 1 freqency and randomly pulse it. I'm not entirely sure of how signals work underwater as well, but I'd imagive that it's not much different than through air. So send a "digital" sonar pulse with a unique ID attached. If you receive one that isn't yours,
And can the same cubic inch of water really carry a million transmissions with a million different frequencies and vectors?
Radio waves travel through substance. For that matter, air is not much different than water. They're both 'fluid', one is just a lot more dense than the other. For this matter, you should be able to pack just about the same amount of information through water as you can through air. I'm not an expert, but that only makes sense to me.
What are the possible effects of completely saturating the air with information?
I think we're far from that point, and one thing you're forgetting is that we evolved being bathed in radio waves. The more hazerdous stuff was blocked by our wonderful atmosphere, but radio has always been around. There is no apparent large health risks for the amounts that are being broadcast, at the powers that they are being broadcast at. I think as technology progresses (as it has already), we will be able to pack more and more information into less and less power and bandwidth in the air, and since there's just so much of it, I don't think this is a problem we'll have to face any time soon.
And you thought cell phones were a distraction? How many of you reading this actually listen to one complete song on FM radio? Yes, you station-surf constantly, don't you; We all have two minute hamsterlike attention spans. Is having 100 channels to flip through a really fantastic idea?
Umm, I do. I listen to complete songs all the time. I even have a stack of about 10 CDs that I've customly made, and listen to them all the time too. There 2 or 3 good radio stations that I like to listen to here, and when I do I'll listen to 4 or 5 songs in a row before one comes up that I don't like.
Quite frankly, I think that radio has become... well it's nearing the end of it's life. Realistically I only listen to radio when I'm bored with the CDs that I've made, or if I'm in a atypical music listening mood, or if I'm with someone else in the car who doesn't share my interests. With the internet and the plethora of wireless devices coming, and portable MP3 players, etc, radio as we know it isn't as appealing anymore. I know that most of the world still hasn't heard an MP3, but I mean that within the next 2 decades we'll probably see the death of radio as we know it, and head to a much more subscription/specific music broadcasts that are either tailered to what we like specifically, or are literally what we choose.
Besides, I think it's about time that radio got a revamp, I mean, how long has it been since we had a real change in the way that radio works?
This article was listed along the sidelines in ones of those 'slashboxes' for a day or so now, so why is this news here? I've submitted several good news stories that have all been rejected (even a few that someone else submitted after mine were rejected and theirs got on, and yet this gets in? (grumble)
I think you're living in an idealistic utopian society. The same process applies to the people MAKING the software. They don't have the time to make it bulletproof either, or to hold the hand of the hey-I-read-"learn-unix-in-21-days"-so-now-I-am-an- administrator admins while they don't know what they're doing, and the people who DO know what they're doing usually have the sense to spend the 5 minutes after installing to do the minimal lockdown, but unfortuantely hindsight is 20/20 and it's easier to look back on what should have been done rather than being there myself. Umm, what was I point? I've lost it.
to prevent buffer overflows is... (drumroll please)
COMPETENT PROGRAMMING!
Think of it. If I'm going to read in data, I will never ever ever blindly pass in a fixed-length array. In many many cases you can peek ahead to see how much data is waiting to be collected, or specify the length of your array so that the called function will not overflow your buffer. If you can't (then the called function was not written properly, but...) do something silly like allocate a buffer in the heap, and then copy the needed data into an internal buffer afterwards. If the "temp space" buffer is out-of-range-of-executable-code and big enough (reasonably, we can assume that we're not going to receive a 26MB buffer overflow) then even with a function that you can't specify the length of your array, an overflow will not be a problem. It's common sense people, especially with all of the press coverage that buffer overflow attacks have gotten. It's not brain science, just another example of incompetent programming.
Wow, I don't think I've seen so much MS-defence in one article in a while (well, I set my filter to 2 by default, and once I did that /. seems a LOT more intelligent!)
One thing you guys are all forgetting is that sysadmins, many times, simply don't have the time to admin properly. They're given 1/2 the time required to do any specific task, then the (usually clueless) management has another "mission-critical-must-be-done-yesterday" task to complete, and although the sysadmin intends to go back later to ensure everything is running properly and securely, in reality they just don't have the time.
in case you didn't realize, RF is everywhere, and we have been bathed in it for millions of years. Especially now that we have radio stations broadcasting 24/7 everywhere you go, we're always bathed in it. Add in the cell phones now operating in the microwave frequencies, and, well, you get my point. In order for it to get bad though we'd have to be exposed to a few hundred times the power that we're currently exposed to.
[begin rant]
e -complaining-about-before-you-stick-your-foot-in-y our-mouth rant.
I'm sorry, but this is getting EXCEPTIONALLY ANNOYING. I'm getting sick-and-tired of people bashing MS for things that really aren't their fault!
If you want to shoot someone down, point the gun in the right direction!
I'm not saying MS is perfect. Far from it. But you people are just as bad as the media that you slander!
Let's get one thing straight here. One simple concept. In ANY OS, there are 2 main parts (for simplicity sake here at least): The O/S and THE DRIVERS. 99% of the bad publicity that NT gets (BSODs, crashes, faults, etc) are due to FLAKY DRIVERS, not the OS itself. I had a D-Link network card that I used with NT4, and I never had to reboot to change my IP address. That's right! nowhere in NT does it say that you must reboot to change the IP address (or just about anything for that matter, including installing drivers), but because the people who write the drivers just want to get their stuff out the door, they write it the easiest way possible. And if that means that people need to reboot, well hell, you only install the hardware once so who cares? I've used other pieces of hardware under NT4 as well that did not require a reboot to install the drivers. There's this little flag that NT reads from the driver setup that tells NT to request a system reboot when it's completed. Once again folks: DRIVER PROBLEM, NOT OS.
BTW - The same thing goes for Win9X. However that's the extent that I'm going to defend that OS because it really is bad.
It's the driver issues that cause almost all of the instability that we saw with NT4. Because drivers have unrestricted access to the entire system, if a driver goes AWOL and shits over something, the server has NO CHOICE but to BSOD because it cannot guarantee the integrity of the rest of the system. There is no way to protect against that. As well, the VAST MAJORITY of the drivers that caused problems were NOT MSQL CERTIFIED, which means that MS didn't run it through regression testing and stress tests. Have you guys ever seen the NT STRESS TEST CD? That disk puts every single API through every single conceivable breaking point to make sure that the OS ITSELF is stable. And guess what? Install NT4 or W2K on any system that's MSQL certified, with MSQL certified drivers, and you can run the stress tests until your face turns blue, the system will not crash. I've done this, so I can vouch for it.
I'm not against bashing a company for things that are legitimate complaints. Hell, MS is far from perfect, I bash them a lot. But I'm really tired of this linux-lovers-anonymous-style mentality that MS is bad, so before we even THINK about what we're saying, let's just bash them anyways! The latest article that was posted about MS's request to OEMs to report companies that request volume computers without a preinstalled OS to report them is understandable. Since the only way to put a legitimate MS os on a new PC is either (a) OEMed or (b) buy new, then the cheapest solution is obviously (a). If company Y askes supplier X for 50 computers, and says that they don't want an OS, then it means that they're most likely going to install a pirated copy of windows (or assume that their site license that they have for OSes allows them to use that OS on new machines, which it does not). This isn't a "hey MS hates linux, look!" issue, because face it, the majority of companys that buy bulk computers are putting them on their employees desks, and just about all of them run MS oses. Sorry, it's the facts. And companies that use linux servers usually don't buy 50 at a time, so that's not the issue here either. If a company wants 5 linux PCs, and 45 MS PCs, then they can order 45 with OSes, and 5 without. No big deal, and that's not big enough for MS to care. But statistics show that just-about-every-company that has bought volume PCs without OSes has been pirating. This had nothing to do with home users or the average user who asks for a computer without an OS, but yet JUST ABOUT EVERYONE jumped on the bandwagon with their anti-MS-toting-bullshit comments without actually reading up on the article and understanding what it said! You editors and main guys here are no exception either.
Don't get me wrong now. I use linux, and I have a great deal of respect for it, but I also use W2K, and I have a great deal of respect for that as well. Both systems have their strong points and their faults. This is not an anti-linux-because-I-love-MS rant, it's a get-your-shit-together-and-learn-about-what-you'r
[/end rant]
If you're going to flame me, don't bother. I'm not going to read it, so you're just wasting your breath. If you want to have a meaningful debate, by all means, go ahead.
Thank you.
-- Telek
You think the UK keyboard is a hassle, try the French! I had to have my natural keyboard shipped here because I couldn't stand the French layout. To use the numbers you need to use the shift key as well, A,Q,Z,W, and M are in slightly different places, you can't use the right alt-key because it's used to give special characters, but yet it looks just like a normal keyboard so it's impossible to adjust! Why can't we just all get along with a standard? (yeah I know why, but it's more fun to rant)
as a solution to the cable problem, use wireless!
and as a solution to the screw problem, use better screws!
seriously though, I've been using a normal Logitech wireless "natural" keyboard for months, and I used to have hand problems, now I don't! It's great, I have a comfy chair and a lap-desk thing, so I can move all over the place, free of cables. I attached a gel pad to the front of the keyboard (it came with a ?! stupid hard plastic wrist wrest) and it's my saviour. Heck, I even brought it to France with me. Don't need $300USD either, this setup cost me just under $100.
However, I'm still interested in getting a lazy boy setup! Hook me up with one of those, mounted dual keyboard, computer integrated into the base and a LCD screen that can be moved (via an arm of course) to anywhere in front of my view (i.e. so if I'm laying down I can move it to be in front of me), and I'd pay $$$$$$ for that!
-- Telek
Ignorant indeed. Instructions are not one clock cycle each. I/O and memory concerns will also significantly slow AI down.
Well excuuuuuuuuuuseee me. You know what I meant. 500 million cycles per second then, happy? Christ, get a legitimate beef if you're going to shoot me down. My point was that there is a lot of cycles between each frame, and you don't need to do collision avoidance and pathfinding EVERY frame. Once you find a path, it takes a few hundred frames to follow it. Even if something changes, it's unlikely you'll need to pathfind again until 10 frames or so later. Ditto with collision avoidance. I think the problem, as someone else stated, lies not in CPU resources but in programming resources and time. I doubt as though the AIs are nearly as optimized as they could be, if enough time was given.