According to a post Alsee made the other day, the cost of the physicial TC chip itself is about $5.
The REAL cost cannot be measured, since it will be effectively infinite -- it can be incurred afresh every time we run afoul of something being dictated by the TC chip.:(
Imagine that you're part of a peaceful but politically-incorrect protest movement, which the authorities would rather went away and left them alone. Your protest march gets filmed by these public cameras, and a little legwork identifies you as one of the culprits. Now you're a target for harassment.
Or, taking this a bit further, let's say the gov't gets to the point where it NEEDS overthrowing. You happen to talk to a known "subversive" on the street, are caught by a public camera, and identified. You're now listed as one of the subversive's contacts, to be arrested in the next sweep.
This sort of thing HAS happened under some totalitarian regimes, so don't think it's just a tinfoil hat fantasy. And while the same thing could be accomplished by a system of live stooges, it's a lot harder to do massive surveillance when you're relying on a few stooges' eyeballs (and integrity, if any).
Mandatory towing with that sort of enthusiasm... betcha there are some interesting kickbacks going on behind the scenes, or at the very least some rather questionable contracts.
Oh, that's SO reassuring... "privacy" (TC-enforced advertising delivery, prohibited file saves, etc.) is hereby redefined as "all content not compulsory is forbidden".
ISTM this will drastically accelerate public perception of the PC as a disposable appliance, which "wears out" or "breaks" regularly (ie. stops being in compliance and no longer works with whatever)... ought to be well-loved by the PC OEMs.
Also occurs to me that this will encourage storing personal documents on remote sites, because when your TC PC "breaks", and your data gets eaten, you can still access the remote storage -- with another TC PC, that is. M$ has long wanted** to turn PCs back into dumb terminals, where access to both apps and your data is by subscription. TC PCs seem made to order for promoting this.
** M$ first promoted this "everything on a remote server" thing during the W2K launch tour. The 1000 or so IT pros in the audience developed uniformly angry scowls...
Not only that, but the conscious mind sometimes uses its own "intelligence" to talk itself into bad decisions.
Something I've noticed from Real Life, both with myself and others:
If I have to come up with a whole bunch of reasons why I should do something, I'd better back off and think again -- because they're not REAL reasons; they're a means of "talking myself into" doing whatever. IOW, justification and validation, not REAL reasons.
Conversely, decisions made on the spot and without a lot of agonizing (ie. made "on a hunch") are more likely to be correct... because I haven't had a chance to talk myself into or out of them.
...it lets your ISP check the "health" of your computer. It lets them check that you aren't infected with a virus. It lets them check that you have anti-viral software installed, and that it's up to date. It lets them enforce that you must run an approved firewall, and that it is properly configured.
I see that this also requires that your "approved firewall" has a designed-in hole (ie. security breach) that your ISP can peer through to inspect your system.
What's to prevent whoever the hell knows how to access this firewall hole from doing so? whether that's the government, a terrorist, an identity theft ring, the hacker kid down the street, or the latest virus... anyone could use it. And you'd never see it happen.
After looking at the Rabbit (your link), I think this isn't about the rabbit at all, but about the fact that Mickey Mouse *appears* to be a "derivative work" based on said rabbit. If Disney fails to control the rabbit, they could conceivably weaken their ownership of Mickey.
That said, I enjoy Al Michaels and am glad he got this chance to work where he wants to be.
I just jerked NAV 2005 off a client's box. It immediately went from running like a 16MHz 386 (I shit you not, it was THAT slow -- simple dialog boxes took as long as 20 seconds to redraw, and you could watch them being painted on the screen one row of pixels at a time!), to behaving like the 2.5GHz machine it really is. -- I've seen Norton put unacceptable drag to systems before, but this one was by far the worst. NAV alone was sucking down over 100mb of RAM.
I then installed ZoneAlarm v2.6.something (I like this old version, being more reliable and very lightweight), Avast 4.current (I prefer FProt, but he needed both free and set-and-forget), and had a MORE secure system than he'd started with, with NO performance impact. (I reliably notice as little as 3% performance diff; I don't need to see benchmarks:)
More secure, you ask? Along the way I'd discovered that NAV's firewall was silently crashing and not restarting, so sometimes his machine wasn't protected at all!! What with having DSL, it's a damn wonder it wasn't infected with something. (Now he has a router too, so should be set for good.)
BTW I think I owe you an email, but yours got lost in my overflowing inbox and was never seen again:(
That's an interesting thought... what if our own emissions have indeed been slowing the inevitable trend? because that would indeed explain the current spike, if our own failure to pollute was letting the system normalize (in geo-era terms, not piddly civilized man's terms).
Tho I have a hard time believing we have that much influence on solar cycles and orbital wobble:)
And have they adjusted their tree ring data for precipitation? because tree growth is typically more affected by water than by temperature (more water leads to more growth). Or are they assuming the precipitation is a constant dependent on temperature? if so, what about the effects of shifts in ocean currents, leading to deluges in some areas and droughts in others? do they even have any way to cross-check that?
If you don't think water is a factor... I've got several trees here that are the exact same age and species, and are perforce experiencing the same climate and soil (it's very uniform here in the desert); but due to vagaries of my irrigation system, they get wildly different amounts of water. Those with better access to water are anywhere from 2 to 5 times the size of their siblings in drier locations.
And if we do manage to slow or halt global warming... what happens when the next ice age hits? If the earth doesn't warm up as much as normal between ice ages, maybe the ice age following this warm spell will be that much colder.
Or to use the old postcard analogy -- the post card's message is hanging right out there in plain sight, for all the world to read -- but someone still has to go to the post office and root thru the mail bin. So it really depends on who has permission to be in the back end of the post office.
Or with email, who has permission to root thru mail servers' content.
And WHO you're talking to can be a great deal more interesting. Frex, if you're part of a "disapproved" political group and the gov't wanted to round up the whole group at once. All they'd have to do is track who talks to whom, and arrest everyone in the chain.
My thought was just the opposite: "Hey M$, show me why I should trust your AV software over Frisk or Avast or any other company that's been doing it since forever and has an established track record??"
My thoughts exactly. Borland has decided to shift from actually making something useful, to "managing" stuff other people made. What happens when NO ONE makes anything, and everyone focuses on "management"??
It's much like how whenever I go to a company's website, and the very first thing I see is their "investment" info, or a series of corporate buzzwords like those you cite, I know that company works solely to keep their *stockholders* happy... but products? customers?? Who needs 'em, they're just needless lines on the expense ledger.
Especially since it might even be viewed as THE company that made eastern Canada economically viable, back in its day. If it hadn't been for the Hudson Bay Company's many trading posts, some areas probably wouldn't have been settled at all.
Thanks for the info. I hadn't realised why the big lines are strung "wide" like that, tho now that you mention it, it's obvious:)
In some places I've seen not the typical Kong-sized Erector Set towers, but rather, a triple row of plain Kong-sized poles. I expect this is somewhat cheaper to construct than the complex towers, and uses no more easement space, but why is it used so seldom?
Funny thing, my first thought re a Westinghouse product was "light bulbs", tho I can't remember when I last saw one.
However, I last saw a Westinghouse stove a few minutes ago, in my own kitchen... 1950 vintage, and it still works. Best damn oven you ever saw (tho it sucks power like a vampire).
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According to a post Alsee made the other day, the cost of the physicial TC chip itself is about $5.
:(
The REAL cost cannot be measured, since it will be effectively infinite -- it can be incurred afresh every time we run afoul of something being dictated by the TC chip.
Imagine that you're part of a peaceful but politically-incorrect protest movement, which the authorities would rather went away and left them alone. Your protest march gets filmed by these public cameras, and a little legwork identifies you as one of the culprits. Now you're a target for harassment.
Or, taking this a bit further, let's say the gov't gets to the point where it NEEDS overthrowing. You happen to talk to a known "subversive" on the street, are caught by a public camera, and identified. You're now listed as one of the subversive's contacts, to be arrested in the next sweep.
This sort of thing HAS happened under some totalitarian regimes, so don't think it's just a tinfoil hat fantasy. And while the same thing could be accomplished by a system of live stooges, it's a lot harder to do massive surveillance when you're relying on a few stooges' eyeballs (and integrity, if any).
Mandatory towing with that sort of enthusiasm... betcha there are some interesting kickbacks going on behind the scenes, or at the very least some rather questionable contracts.
Looks to me like they've just reinvented the RAMcards we used to expand available memory space in XTs, 286s, and the occasional low-end 386.
In fact my 286 has one that was used as a RAMdisk, effectively doubling performance.
Of course, in that era we were talking adding between 2mb and 8mb, and being happy to have it!
Oh, that's SO reassuring... "privacy" (TC-enforced advertising delivery, prohibited file saves, etc.) is hereby redefined as "all content not compulsory is forbidden".
... ought to be well-loved by the PC OEMs.
ISTM this will drastically accelerate public perception of the PC as a disposable appliance, which "wears out" or "breaks" regularly (ie. stops being in compliance and no longer works with whatever)
Also occurs to me that this will encourage storing personal documents on remote sites, because when your TC PC "breaks", and your data gets eaten, you can still access the remote storage -- with another TC PC, that is. M$ has long wanted** to turn PCs back into dumb terminals, where access to both apps and your data is by subscription. TC PCs seem made to order for promoting this.
** M$ first promoted this "everything on a remote server" thing during the W2K launch tour. The 1000 or so IT pros in the audience developed uniformly angry scowls...
Not only that, but the conscious mind sometimes uses its own "intelligence" to talk itself into bad decisions.
Something I've noticed from Real Life, both with myself and others:
If I have to come up with a whole bunch of reasons why I should do something, I'd better back off and think again -- because they're not REAL reasons; they're a means of "talking myself into" doing whatever. IOW, justification and validation, not REAL reasons.
Conversely, decisions made on the spot and without a lot of agonizing (ie. made "on a hunch") are more likely to be correct... because I haven't had a chance to talk myself into or out of them.
I see that this also requires that your "approved firewall" has a designed-in hole (ie. security breach) that your ISP can peer through to inspect your system.
What's to prevent whoever the hell knows how to access this firewall hole from doing so? whether that's the government, a terrorist, an identity theft ring, the hacker kid down the street, or the latest virus... anyone could use it. And you'd never see it happen.
After looking at the Rabbit (your link), I think this isn't about the rabbit at all, but about the fact that Mickey Mouse *appears* to be a "derivative work" based on said rabbit. If Disney fails to control the rabbit, they could conceivably weaken their ownership of Mickey.
That said, I enjoy Al Michaels and am glad he got this chance to work where he wants to be.
I just jerked NAV 2005 off a client's box. It immediately went from running like a 16MHz 386 (I shit you not, it was THAT slow -- simple dialog boxes took as long as 20 seconds to redraw, and you could watch them being painted on the screen one row of pixels at a time!), to behaving like the 2.5GHz machine it really is. -- I've seen Norton put unacceptable drag to systems before, but this one was by far the worst. NAV alone was sucking down over 100mb of RAM.
:)
:(
I then installed ZoneAlarm v2.6.something (I like this old version, being more reliable and very lightweight), Avast 4.current (I prefer FProt, but he needed both free and set-and-forget), and had a MORE secure system than he'd started with, with NO performance impact. (I reliably notice as little as 3% performance diff; I don't need to see benchmarks
More secure, you ask? Along the way I'd discovered that NAV's firewall was silently crashing and not restarting, so sometimes his machine wasn't protected at all!! What with having DSL, it's a damn wonder it wasn't infected with something. (Now he has a router too, so should be set for good.)
BTW I think I owe you an email, but yours got lost in my overflowing inbox and was never seen again
Could be. Perhaps we oughta throw a few nukes down some of the earth's smoking holes, and see what happens! ;)
See also "Krakatoa" and "the year without a summer"...
That's an interesting thought... what if our own emissions have indeed been slowing the inevitable trend? because that would indeed explain the current spike, if our own failure to pollute was letting the system normalize (in geo-era terms, not piddly civilized man's terms).
:)
Tho I have a hard time believing we have that much influence on solar cycles and orbital wobble
And have they adjusted their tree ring data for precipitation? because tree growth is typically more affected by water than by temperature (more water leads to more growth). Or are they assuming the precipitation is a constant dependent on temperature? if so, what about the effects of shifts in ocean currents, leading to deluges in some areas and droughts in others? do they even have any way to cross-check that?
If you don't think water is a factor... I've got several trees here that are the exact same age and species, and are perforce experiencing the same climate and soil (it's very uniform here in the desert); but due to vagaries of my irrigation system, they get wildly different amounts of water. Those with better access to water are anywhere from 2 to 5 times the size of their siblings in drier locations.
And if we do manage to slow or halt global warming... what happens when the next ice age hits? If the earth doesn't warm up as much as normal between ice ages, maybe the ice age following this warm spell will be that much colder.
Not only that, but if we're to blame for climate shifts...
1) which human activities caused the global warming observed around 800AD ??
1b) which human activities caused the "little ice age" ??
and
2) why didn't the massive early-industrial era pollution have such an effect? After all, we've cleaned up the air a LOT since then.
3) All right, who turned up the sun??
Are any of the old Bell Labs patents still in force? if so, were they included in the SBC-eats-AT&T deal??
Or to use the old postcard analogy -- the post card's message is hanging right out there in plain sight, for all the world to read -- but someone still has to go to the post office and root thru the mail bin. So it really depends on who has permission to be in the back end of the post office.
Or with email, who has permission to root thru mail servers' content.
And WHO you're talking to can be a great deal more interesting. Frex, if you're part of a "disapproved" political group and the gov't wanted to round up the whole group at once. All they'd have to do is track who talks to whom, and arrest everyone in the chain.
You misspelled "stockholders".
My thought was just the opposite: "Hey M$, show me why I should trust your AV software over Frisk or Avast or any other company that's been doing it since forever and has an established track record??"
It will be good news IF the new owner is indeed like the old Borland. Do we know that yet?
BTW, what's going to happen to Borland's "museum", where you could get free copies of their older compilers?
My thoughts exactly. Borland has decided to shift from actually making something useful, to "managing" stuff other people made. What happens when NO ONE makes anything, and everyone focuses on "management"??
It's much like how whenever I go to a company's website, and the very first thing I see is their "investment" info, or a series of corporate buzzwords like those you cite, I know that company works solely to keep their *stockholders* happy... but products? customers?? Who needs 'em, they're just needless lines on the expense ledger.
Especially since it might even be viewed as THE company that made eastern Canada economically viable, back in its day. If it hadn't been for the Hudson Bay Company's many trading posts, some areas probably wouldn't have been settled at all.
Thanks for the info. I hadn't realised why the big lines are strung "wide" like that, tho now that you mention it, it's obvious :)
In some places I've seen not the typical Kong-sized Erector Set towers, but rather, a triple row of plain Kong-sized poles. I expect this is somewhat cheaper to construct than the complex towers, and uses no more easement space, but why is it used so seldom?
Funny thing, my first thought re a Westinghouse product was "light bulbs", tho I can't remember when I last saw one.
However, I last saw a Westinghouse stove a few minutes ago, in my own kitchen... 1950 vintage, and it still works. Best damn oven you ever saw (tho it sucks power like a vampire).