The studios will tell you you can backup your media. However if you gave your backup to someone else then its not going to work without your license (your not going to give them that to - that would be naughty or something) Of course if you loose your licence the studios will be more than happy to give you another one - just after you re-purchase all your media again. Remember this stuff is about terrorism, the american way of life and racking up huge profits for the handfull of multinationals who currently control distribution.
The best way to beat all of this is to buy *everything* proteted by DRM - and then return it when it dosn't work for you. That way the RIAA dosn't get to claim that theft is causing drops in sales - and the record companies get the message through thousands of expensive returns (and lost income) that the public just wont stand for people messing with their entertainment.
The problem is that the common cold and the flu are both viruses, and as such antibiotics have absolutly no effect on them. It is/was quite common to prescribe antibiotics to help combat secondary infections (I seem to always end up with a chest infection for example) which seems to have lead people to believe that unless their doctor is prescribing something they are in some way not being treated effectivly.
To compound the problem many people stop taking their antibiotics when they feel better (they have done their job right) which means that the bacteria have been exposed to a level of the antibiotic that hasn't killed 100% of the little nasties (a scientific term:) Soon enough we start to breed up a bigger better stronger bunch of killers. (Darwin by example)
To compound the problem in the western world we think its perfectly ok to feed our livestock constant doses of antibiotics even when there is no real evidence that its a) useful or b) more efficient. There is some evidence that such animals do grow slightly faster - something thats worth throwing away our furture use of antibiotics for..
A major reason is that you want to use custom chips as little as possible in your design. If you custom order chips the costs per item go up. Most of the electronics industry could care less about people seeing what chips they are actually using - which means that most chips end up with pretty writing all over them.
Which I can say is quite a useful feature when you drop a tray of components on the floor.
My point is the costs of creating something that looks like a jammer device to a *semi* intelligent AI type interface *may* be significantly cheaper than the cost of the device.
There are very cheap scanners available that will help you pinpoint frequencies such devices operate on - once you have a *rough* idea of frequencies create some very powerful broadband transmitters (the microwave is just one possible example) and litter them about everywhere - either you disrupt communications with the device or better still get it to try and bomb the device causing interference - meaning you can't then drop that same bomb on a legitimate target.
And then Someone works out that a $100 microwave missing its door looks exactly like a jammer source to your remote pilot (or your cruise missle) in fact you can turn the power down & get it to pulse for more effect.
Before you know it your dropping multi-million dollar munitions on microwave ovens in fields all over the place. If you wanted to get really snazzy you might build a wood shack over the microwave to make it really look the part as the pilot eye balls it. How many days of taxes do you want to pay to kill a microwave?
Basically *smart* weapons are just as avoidable as *dumb* ones - sooner or later real humans end up on the ground making actual human decisions.
The tiny little Capitol of Australia, Canberra, has for the past few years investing in a project called TransACT which promises to link the entire city with a state of the art fiber / copper network (basically fiber to the curb) with an atm (like) network actually running down the cables. The company is not selling content themselves leaving it up to others to acutally provide services like pay TV (which *still* hasn't really taken of in OZ) or all the other fun services you can send over a nice fast network (internet, movies on demand, pizza ordering - what more do you need:)
How long ago was the federal internet censorship legislation passed? All Australians are now required to be running some kind of approved adult filter (as the ISP's didn't want to have to filter themselves). The funny thing is I can't seem to find *anyone* who is actually complying with the law.
There arn't enough people in the country to even start to review & classify every web page produced from an Australian server. Yes the silly NSW government passed the legislation but they don't have to (and probably wont) ever provide the funds for it to be enfored.
Its good to see that once again the Ausatralian public is lead down the garden path by a small minority - is the government *really* wants to start passing internet legisation perhaps they could start by providing access free to all NSW schools & libraries (but then why would they do that it would cost actual money...)
If nothing else the descriptions of just how powerful & easy to deploy some of the agents discussed makes an absolute joke of technology such as a glabal missile defence. A modified smallpox could wipe the US off the map without so much as an ICBM in sight.
If you are running a DataBase containing a few meg (or even a few hundred) that can afford to come down for backups / maintenance (vacuming anyone?) then you will probably get no advantage from going to a more expensive commercial product.
Oracle (the DBMS I use most) lets you do funky things like online backups (backing up while your database is up & serving data), interesting index options, adding terabytes of disk while the system is up and running. All things that *most* people don't care about BUT are vital for 24/7 shops.
The proposed legistation attempts to rate internet content in a similar fashon to film & television. As Australia has a reasonably restrictive film ratings (note the term RATINGS) system quite a lot of content will end up rated R (Restricted 18+) or RC (Refused Clasification - view this & go to jail) books, magazines & newpapers are rated under a totally different system. The legistation goes one step futher and makes the linking to content illegal (if you link to a RC page your page will most likley also be rated RC) so in theory EVERY page on the internet will end up with an RC rating. Obviously this can't & won't work. In addition things like publishing a newspaper on line will most likley have to be restriced - you will end up with things that are perfectly legally published out in the real world becoming illegal once you place them on the net.
As someone who works in the IT industry I shudder at the eventual cost of this legistation, all because some parents don't feel the need to supervise their children while they use what is obviously a adult tool.
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The studios will tell you you can backup your media. However if you gave your backup to someone else then its not going to work without your license (your not going to give them that to - that would be naughty or something) Of course if you loose your licence the studios will be more than happy to give you another one - just after you re-purchase all your media again. Remember this stuff is about terrorism, the american way of life and racking up huge profits for the handfull of multinationals who currently control distribution.
The best way to beat all of this is to buy *everything* proteted by DRM - and then return it when it dosn't work for you. That way the RIAA dosn't get to claim that theft is causing drops in sales - and the record companies get the message through thousands of expensive returns (and lost income) that the public just wont stand for people messing with their entertainment.
The problem is that the common cold and the flu are both viruses, and as such antibiotics have absolutly no effect on them. It is/was quite common to prescribe antibiotics to help combat secondary infections (I seem to always end up with a chest infection for example) which seems to have lead people to believe that unless their doctor is prescribing something they are in some way not being treated effectivly.
:) Soon enough we start to breed up a bigger better stronger bunch of killers. (Darwin by example)
To compound the problem many people stop taking their antibiotics when they feel better (they have done their job right) which means that the bacteria have been exposed to a level of the antibiotic that hasn't killed 100% of the little nasties (a scientific term
To compound the problem in the western world we think its perfectly ok to feed our livestock constant doses of antibiotics even when there is no real evidence that its a) useful or b) more efficient. There is some evidence that such animals do grow slightly faster - something thats worth throwing away our furture use of antibiotics for..
A major reason is that you want to use custom chips as little as possible in your design. If you custom order chips the costs per item go up. Most of the electronics industry could care less about people seeing what chips they are actually using - which means that most chips end up with pretty writing all over them.
Which I can say is quite a useful feature when you drop a tray of components on the floor.
My point is the costs of creating something that looks like a jammer device to a *semi* intelligent AI type interface *may* be significantly cheaper than the cost of the device.
There are very cheap scanners available that will help you pinpoint frequencies such devices operate on - once you have a *rough* idea of frequencies create some very powerful broadband transmitters (the microwave is just one possible example) and litter them about everywhere - either you disrupt communications with the device or better still get it to try and bomb the device causing interference - meaning you can't then drop that same bomb on a legitimate target.
And then Someone works out that a $100 microwave missing its door looks exactly like a jammer source to your remote pilot (or your cruise missle) in fact you can turn the power down & get it to pulse for more effect.
Before you know it your dropping multi-million dollar munitions on microwave ovens in fields all over the place. If you wanted to get really snazzy you might build a wood shack over the microwave to make it really look the part as the pilot eye balls it. How many days of taxes do you want to pay to kill a microwave?
Basically *smart* weapons are just as avoidable as *dumb* ones - sooner or later real humans end up on the ground making actual human decisions.
Where as down in Australia we laugh at the US's attemts to get decent mobile coverage of your cattle station sized country :)
The tiny little Capitol of Australia, Canberra, has for the past few years investing in a project called TransACT which promises to link the entire city with a state of the art fiber / copper network (basically fiber to the curb) with an atm (like) network actually running down the cables. The company is not selling content themselves leaving it up to others to acutally provide services like pay TV (which *still* hasn't really taken of in OZ) or all the other fun services you can send over a nice fast network (internet, movies on demand, pizza ordering - what more do you need :)
How long ago was the federal internet censorship legislation passed? All Australians are now required to be running some kind of approved adult filter (as the ISP's didn't want to have to filter themselves). The funny thing is I can't seem to find *anyone* who is actually complying with the law.
There arn't enough people in the country to even start to review & classify every web page produced from an Australian server. Yes the silly NSW government passed the legislation but they don't have to (and probably wont) ever provide the funds for it to be enfored.
Its good to see that once again the Ausatralian public is lead down the garden path by a small minority - is the government *really* wants to start passing internet legisation perhaps they could start by providing access free to all NSW schools & libraries (but then why would they do that it would cost actual money...)
If nothing else the descriptions of just how powerful & easy to deploy some of the agents discussed makes an absolute joke of technology such as a glabal missile defence. A modified smallpox could wipe the US off the map without so much as an ICBM in sight.
If you are running a DataBase containing a few meg (or even a few hundred) that can afford to come down for backups / maintenance (vacuming anyone?) then you will probably get no advantage from going to a more expensive commercial product.
Oracle (the DBMS I use most) lets you do funky things like online backups (backing up while your database is up & serving data), interesting index options, adding terabytes of disk while the system is up and running. All things that *most* people don't care about BUT are vital for 24/7 shops.
The proposed legistation attempts to rate internet content in a similar fashon to film & television. As Australia has a reasonably restrictive film ratings (note the term RATINGS) system quite a lot of content will end up rated R (Restricted 18+) or RC (Refused Clasification - view this & go to jail) books, magazines & newpapers are rated under a totally different system. The legistation goes one step futher and makes the linking to content illegal (if you link to a RC page your page will most likley also be rated RC) so in theory EVERY page on the internet will end up with an RC rating. Obviously this can't & won't work.
In addition things like publishing a newspaper on line will most likley have to be restriced - you will end up with things that are perfectly legally published out in the real world becoming illegal once you place them on the net.
As someone who works in the IT industry I shudder at the eventual cost of this legistation, all because some parents don't feel the need to supervise their children while they use what is obviously a adult tool.