I have a very dear friend who teaches college level english classes. I have, on more than one occasion, helped her grade papers. Sadly, it generally looks like I've slashed my wrists over the pile of papers by the time I've done. These students do not know the difference between "there", "their", and "they're" and use all of the interchangably. They also do not know the difference between "two", "too", and "to". I have seen 3-page papers that were a single run-on sentence. The only period in the whole paper was on the last page at the end. You should have seen what they did with commas and semi-colons.
When she started failing these students for not being proficient in what is ostensibly their native tongue, she got reprimanded for failing too many of them. Her superiors told her that she must learn to curve the grade so that more of them will pass. Her contention is that if you are not literate, you do not deserve to be in regular college classes. She felt like these students should be in remedial classes. When they threatened to fire her for refusing to change some of her students grades, she quit and went to work at another university. How much good is a college degree if you can pop open a crackerjack box and yank one out?
I've been part of a couple of clans, but they're now defunct. The groups that manage to stay together are "rah-rah, aren't we grand" kind of groups. They inflate numbers by counting everyone that's ever gamed with them as "a member" even though many of the people haven't shown up for an event in months. The ones that do play for fun don't seem to last. I think that they usually run out of steam because the founders lack org skills.
Added to the thing, good DM's are hard to come by. How about a class or two in DM training? How much fun are these noobs going to have if they get some crappy DM? A good DM is about 80% story teller, 10% rule-manager, and 10% parent-figure.
We all love Google and hate the Borg Collective - well at least the vast majority of us. I think that we're all stuck on how to react to this. I find that having yet another vulnerablity in IE disclosed is yet another reason to want Apple to license OSX for x86 machines.
If Apple would just give me the stabilty of Unix, the power of a CLI, and a GUI so nice that I don't really need the CLI on commodity hardware, I'd be a happy camper indeed. It would take me about all of 35 seconds to shove the disk into my laptop and start reformatting the hard drive.
Unfortunately the parent that started all this claims that he's seen a puddle of liquid water on the surface of Mars and that the rest of us are trapped by "dogma" because Mars is supposed to be a dry planet.
To which is say DUH! My first post was modded as a troll, which I find unfair because I challenged this in-DUH-vidual in a solid scientific basis - known ambient temperature and known atmospheric pressure. Frankly given the atomospheric pressure of Mars, which is a fraction of Earth's, and the ambient temprature, liquid water under normal circumstances simply isn't possible. Then the same In-DUH-vidual posted giving a "Dead Sea" scenario, which I think I have sufficiently disproven.
Saline water's freezing point decreases 1/2 of one degree Farenheight for each 5 parts per thousand increase in salinity. In converting celcius to Farenheit the average temp for Mars is -81.4 degrees. This means that you have to drop the freezing point of water for a total of 113.4 degrees. 113.4 x 2 = 226.8 which yields the number of 5 parts per thousand that you'd have to add to your theoritical liquid water on the surface of Mars. Now if you're actually capable of doing math, you'll quickly realize that 226.8 x 5 is a actually 1134 which is more than 1000. Since it's physically impossible to have 1134 parts per 1000, you're still stuck without liquid water.
Look, we as a society have set boundaries for things that we as a society consider to be "unsuitable" for children. Children are not given drivers licenses, allowed to enter into contracts, and cannot legally give consent for sex. Perhaps you'd like to extend that to 10 year olds as well? My point about the booze was that a 10 year old cannot go to the liquor store and make a purchase on their own.
Seriously, be reasonable. I know plenty of 12 year olds. I come from a very large family. While I don't have spycam's on them 24-7, I'm pretty sure that they're not having Clinton sex or any other kind of sex. Most of them still think the opposite sex is "gross" or "has cooties". I'd say you might want to find a better neighborhood to live in if the 12 year olds are getting busy. Perhaps you should move out of what ever backwoods place you live in since the "old enough bleed, old enough to breed" philosophy seems to be in force.
While I do agree that if you are old enough to be drafted, you ought to be old enough to drink. Frankly, I think that the legal age of responsibility ought to be raised to 21. No voting, no draft, no drinking, until that age. You obviously aren't old enough to recall when the drinking age was 18. The drinking age was raised because of the number of alcohol related deaths among those 18-21. A large number of them were from alcohol poisoning. The draft age was also originally 21 but was lowered during the Vietnam war because the Fed's ran out of 21 year olds. I find the fact that it's never been raised back up to be a bit disturbing.
My personal opinion is that if you think you're old enough to commit an adult crime like rape, armed robbery, murder, etc. then you're old enough to be tried as an adult. I don't know about where you live, but that's generally how it works here in Texas. We don't try 10 year olds as an adult for swiping a Snicker's bar from the 7-11. We will try a 10 year old as an adult for something like pre-meditated murder, though.
In all seriousness, I wouldn't want a kid like that in my neighborhood. If you like them so much, why don't you get some to move in with you? I'm sure the local foster parent program would be happy to hook you up with some of these poor troubled kids who just happen to have commited some violent crime. Once you've done that, let me know how that works out for you.
The biggest argument against liquid water on mars is this little thing called physics. Water on earth and water on Mars, both being made of H20, behave the same. Since we're aware of the temperature of Mars, liquid water on the surface NOT existing is pretty much a forgone conclusion. The average surface temperature on Mars is MINUS 63 Celcius. Considering that water freezes at 0 degress celcius, I hardly think that it's dogma to insist that the "puddle" you saw was something else besides liquid water.
The other argument against it is another little thing called vapor pressure. Since the atmosphere of Mars is considerable thinner than that of Earth. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is 0.0056 that of Earth's. Given the temperature there, any water would move directly from a solid (ice) to gaseous (steam) state. Liquid simply isn't physically possible.
Since it's really not possbile, the dogmatics are the ones who insist that it exists despite every bit of scientific evidence to the contrary. Unless of course you're proposing the Mars is actually an alternate universe with complete seperate physical laws. Or perhaps you're advocating "Intelligent Design" on Mars????
Trillian doesn't support Google talk yet, but I'm told that's coming. Until then, I have one friend on there. The rest of us have been using IM too long to get away from AOL, MSN, ICQ, IRC, etc. Trillian handles them all on my PC and on my Mac, I use Fire for the same functionality. Basically, a good chat client will let me IM with anyone on any service.
Penn (from Penn & Teller) said it best, "You do not have the right not to be offended." I'm an adult and as an adult, I expect that there will be things that are available to me that are not available to children. We have a whole host of them that we as a society have deemed unsuitable. The include things like booze, porn, and cigarettes just to name the three most notable examples.
While I'm not a big proponent of any of these three, I think that they should be available for the adults who wish to indulge. Are they suitable for kids? No. Would I give any of the above to an eight year old? No. Frankly, I'm sick of the parents who complain about the sex/violence/drugs/etc in video games but then run right out and buy whatever M rated thing happens to be topping the charts this week for their eight year old kid.
I have only one thing to say to those parents "DUH! It's rated M for a reason." It's really very simple. If you don't want Johnny playing them, DON'T BUY THEM!!! He's eight so I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a job, which means he has no income. Since he has no income, that means you bought him the game in the first place. Bad parents! No biscuit!!
If you want to be really sure what he's playing, don't put the PC and/or the gaming console in his room. First off, the PC in the room is set up for on-line child predators, so you get another -10 on Parenting Skills just for that. The same goes for the gaming consoles, now that the newer ones have chat functions built in. You get another -10 on the Parenting skills for that as well. Add that to the fact that you just bought your kid GTA and he's gotten ahold of the hot coffee mod, that's a -20 on the Parenting Skills. I fail to see how this could possibly be ESRB's fault.
The fact is that most database engines (the entire database application) come with a fairly good security model that almost never gets implemented. There is typically very little done to most databases in the way of restricting user accounts to specific databases (not instances of the engine), tables, rows, columns, etc. One of the biggest lessons in this ought to come from the sheer number of SQL worms out there that look for instaces that don't have a SQL admin password set - DUH! The fact that these are still being issued means that DBA's still have not wised up enough to even set the password. If your security model is so lax that you can't be bothered to either set a password or change the factory default, you're not going to be concerned with minor details like patching your operating system and application, doing any kind of hardening, or setting appropriate access permissions.
The fact of the matter is that until more mandatory disclosure laws are passed companies will simply choose to ignore the simple basic things they can do to secure a database. Security to many (PHB) managers is a widget of some kind that they can buy and plug in to their network. This writer ignores a very simple flaw in his logic. Typcially, one compromises the database to get the box. If I own the box, encrypting the contents of the datbase won't help you any. It's going to have to be encrypted in such a way that it can be decrypted for use, unless you plan on turning all your data into MD5 hashes (evil grin).
Given the assumption that you want to be able to decrypt your data, you'll have to have the means to do so either stored on that box or on the receiving box, which is also likely on your network. If it's stored on that box, guess what, I've got access to it since UR ()WN3D. If it's another box, hey, I got this one so I can see what this one answers requests from and then I know what I need to ()WN next. Since your security on box was obviously lax enough to let me in, getting the next box down the line won't be any harder.
Mind you that all this assuming that I don't fire up the Beowulf cluster and just crack your encryption the hard way.
1. Frankly, I love my TiVO. I can watch MORE TV with it since I can skip the commercials. If you know the right things to push on the remote, you don't have to watch the ads. A "60" minute show becomes something more like 40 real minutes of programming. That means that in the same 2 hour time period, I can watch 3 shows instead of two.
2. Codecs really aren't a problem for my TiVO. If there's a show or movie coming on, I can TiVO and watch it at my leisure any time later. I even have the option to burn it to DVD, complete with the ever-so-user friendly TiVO interface.
3. While I am dependent on what is offered, I have sattelite and have such a wide selection of channels, I don't really feel the need for "on demand" anything.
4. Your problems with resolution, pause/fast forward, and speed aren't one of my issues. My TiVo encodes everything perfectly and it manages to do most of its work either while I'm at work or asleep.
5. My ISP recently upgraded our service. We now have a 7MB/sec connection complete with fiber coming into our home. Our price for this - $36/month. We have plenty of bandwidth to download anything we want. Again, with 500+ channels to choose from and a TiVO to catch whatever I want whenever it's shown, I don't really feel the need for it.
6. I would like to be able to take the things I TiVO and load them on to my laptop. TiVO says that the hold up on this is not them, not technology, but the MPAA. Given that, I doubt you'll be seeing this any time soon from anyone. It would certainly make for a more intersting commute to and from work.
7. I agree that you should be able to balance price vs. features to what ever you are comfortable with, can afford, etc.
If this joint venture with Intel can make the thing I've come to adore better, than I'm all for it. If they're looking to add a bunch more DRM crap to my TiVO, I'm going to be fighting mad.
Seriously, the whole dang world isn't meant for kids. We're adults and we'd like to have some adult type fun. If you honestly beleive that the whole world is meant to be some damned Disney park, PG-rated place, you are a moron. "Southpark", while it is cartoon, is clearly not meant for children and neither is "Drawn Together", which is also cartoon. We keep "Playboy" and "Hustler" available for adults but access is denied to children, unless a parent buys one and gives it to them. The same goes for "R" rated movies, booze, cigarettes, porn, and whole host of other things we, as a society, have deemed "unsuitable" for children.
As an avid gamer, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen parents purchasing video games rated "M" for their children. In many cases, the parent enters the store, guided by said child, who points at what they want and Mom or Dad plops down the plastic to pay for it. In cases where the child looks to be of sufficient age to me (15+), I don't generally say anything to the parent. If they look younger, I generally do say something like "So...Do you get your kid hookers and booze too?"
A lot of parents don't take the time to investigate what's in the games that Little Johnny wants and they flatly ignore the ratings labels. I realize that a lot of parents don't game and I do think that stores need to have at least one rather large poster that explains that games are rated "M" for violence, nudity and/or sexuality, languge, and/or drug usage. Lord knows we have mandatory signs for everything else in the country.
This is a real-life case from one of my consulting clients. They are a small construction company with 3 servers (2 file and one email) and about 10 workstations. They chose to convert to Linux based servers and workstations for a variety of reasons. The cost savings on the software purchases were plowed into a one-time expense of employee training and they've been quite happy with the results.
$189 per seat vs. $50 per seat for the Codeweaver's Plugin Microsoft Office = Same price regardless ($700 + $35 per CAL) x 2 = $1750 vs. $0 and $0 CAL's for Server ($700 + $35 per CAL) x 1 = $1050 vs $0 and $0 for CAL's for mail server
That's well in excess of $4000 in savings. The employer wisely chose to invest this in training and sent a couple of his people off to class. This cost him about $2000 for the both of them at a local community college. He then had those two train the rest of the staff. After some initial pain, he's enjoyed a $2000 savings just in his first year on the software alone.
What's not included in this is that they will be able to use the same hardware for at least one additional year. Had they upgraded their operating systems to the current Microsoft releases, they would have had to upgrade their server hardware as well. Some of their workstations would also have required new hardware. Another expense that's not included in this is not having to purchase antivirus or anitspyware products for the workstations. Since 99%+ of these things are Microsoft-targeted, they simply fail to execute in a Linux environment.
Sheesh...does this thing come with a plastic pocket protector, too? Like some of the other posters, it's obvious enough to even the most casual observer that I'm a geek. Do I really need to paste a sign on my forehead? My Treo plays MP3's rather well and can play them through the headset I'm already wearing. Why add ANOTHER set of headphones?
I tend to agree with the earlier poster who postulates that data and application are two different issues. You should be able to use any application you like to access YOUR data. If the file formats are truly standard, than the best product - open source or otherwise - will win. Features, price point, etc will rule the day. This has NEVER been the Microsoft business model and I think all of here are well aware of it.
I plan on keeping a rather close eye on this gentleman for quite some time. All politicians lie when their lips move, regardless of party. However, any politican who thinks that anything Microsoft is doing is "good" is immediately suspect, simply because of the legal and ethical track record of the company. Frankly, he's shown me one thing. He's either a fool or a dupe (read "handpuppet"). I say that he's a fool because he's obviously too dense to find some able technical advisors to set him straight. I say that he's a dupe because if he's not a fool and he's knowingly endorsing this, they've already got their hooks in him which makes him a handpuppet. The only question is which category he falls into.
While he may not be our govenor and this isn't Massachusetts, this *is* Texas. We kill you back. We don't like that sort of thing any better here.
The first prophet was called Netscape and he was mighty, leading the people serenely through the internet. But the people forsook the prophet and the prophet turned to evil ways. In time, the first prophet was corrupted by evil in the form of the giant ISP known as Baal or AOL.
The second prophet was a false prophet called Internet Explorer, which hid its true nature from the people until it was nearly too late since it was sent out by the great deceiver, Microsoft. The great deceiver tried to limit their access to the internet and to turn them aside from anything that the deceiver did not make money off of.
The people groaned and labored to feed the great deceiver, but alas, nothing could fill his belly. The great deciever blessed the heresey of having the browser integrated into the operating system. Loudly did the people cry unto the computer gods for a new prophet to lead them, but the gods were angry since the had given the people Linux. The people ignored Linux and chose to follow the great deceiver.
Finally, the computer gods softened their hearts and heard the cries of the people and sent a third prophet. The people are fortunate that they have not been abandoned for straying from the path of Linux. Mighty indeed is the penguin. A new prophet has been sent to lead us out of the valley of the shadow of ActiveX.
Halleujah!
The heavens opened, the angels sang, and Firefox descended into our midst to releive us from the woe that is Internet Explorer.
As a long time agitator for the loosening of the ICANN/Verisign stronghold over domain registrations and other internet related items, I have to admit to being surprised to find that they're facing an even bigger bunch of l4m3r& in court. Who would have thought it? I *gasp* think I might want to see ICANN win this one.
About that...why not some things like finish cleaing up from Katrina? The above ground cemetery that's in the Big Easy is a Big Infection waiting to happen. Strains of influenza, cholera, typhoid fever, and all the crap that people have died from in the last 200 years are now active thanks to the flood that opened the crypts and rehydrated all the microbes. While I'm all in favor of internet connections, I'm more in favor of dealing with disease outbreaks and popping a cork in any possible epidemics first. When it comes time to spend money, basic necessities come first. You can survive without an internet connection. Yes, it really is possible.
I've been known to randomly place stickes on co-workers' cars. It's one of the more common office pranks here. One of our tech support technican's pick up says "Intel Pentium III", which is very funny considering that the thing barely runs. He's really good at fixing computers...not so good with his truck. Our administrative assistant's car says "Cable managment by Panduit" and "NOC'd out by Extreme Networks".
We've also been known to make stickers...like the one that mysteriously ended up on our boss' car "Ask me about my penis enlargement."
Considering that the project here is run by computer geeks who had to search the net for hours in order to get everything working, what are the odds that this will actually become a consumer device? Frankly, the description in the article sounds like more work than I want to do, espeically considering that Tivo's here are running about $40 here. If I work on it for 8 hours to get it working, that's $5 an hour. You can make better money at Wal-Mart and that doesn't even factor in the hardware he purchased to run his VideoKeg on.
He also writes about how hard it was to theme the interface. Frankly, one of the best things about the Tivo is the user interface. It's simple, inutitive and attractive. In short, it rocks. I will say that his idea of a touch screen is nice addition. A Tivo with a touchscreen at the bar, playing music videos instead of just songs could be a nifty niche market. There's also a lot of hidden functionality to the Tivo that allows me to do really nifty things.
Tivo on other hand, is largely "plug and play" - well with in the capabilities of the average end user (my parents for example). Tivo also has a rather nice range of capabilites. I can view my own photos, videos, etc. from my Tivo. I can also listen to my MP3 collection from my Tivo. Currently the only thing that the Tivo doesn't do is allow of web browsing and playing of games. I'm given to understand that in a rev or two, the Tivo will be able to do those things.
The French government voted to accept the Nazi's terms, which earned them the epithet "Vichy Government". The Vichy Government also operated their own camps, in addition to actively assisting the Nazis in rounding up and shipping people to camps in Poland. French President of the Council, Philippe Pétain who was in fact voted into office in 1940. He was a war hero from WWI who turned on his own people and handed them blissfuly over to the Nazis. Ask a Frenchman what he thinks of the Vichy goverment now. Yet, they voted for this goober at the time, which is my point.
Actually, if you'll check, you'll find that one of the major official reasons given by the French government at the time of their surrender to the Nazis was that specifically they did not want to have their musems bombed. They were also quite aware of what the Nazis were doing to the people in the countries that they "occupied" and they were surrenduring their own people to a bunch of genocidal maniacs. The French had been smuggling out reports of Nazi atrocities for quite some time in an attempt to get the US involved in the war before it spread as far as it did. Instead of telling me that I "don't know anything about history", I would suggest that you do some serious reading.
No, we didn't participate in WWII much until we were actually attacked. We pretty much had a belly full of useless European posturing during WWI, which ended in 1926. Since we were attacked in Pearl Harbor in 1941, most the men currently in our military at the time either had themselves seen action in WWI or their fathers had. We got drawn in to a European conflict then and came out rather the worse for wear. When WWII rolled around, it looked like another Euro-trash party to us and so we decided to sit it out. Mustard gas, anyone? Thanks, I'll pass.
You kill someone here in Texas, we kill you back. That's our idea of justice. In this case, Sony's ill advised actions and refusal to supply a decent removal tool pretty much sealed their fate. The AG's office here in Texas is pretty agressive about all kinds of things, but Consumer's Rights is a "hot button" here.
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I have a very dear friend who teaches college level english classes. I have, on more than one occasion, helped her grade papers. Sadly, it generally looks like I've slashed my wrists over the pile of papers by the time I've done. These students do not know the difference between "there", "their", and "they're" and use all of the interchangably. They also do not know the difference between "two", "too", and "to". I have seen 3-page papers that were a single run-on sentence. The only period in the whole paper was on the last page at the end. You should have seen what they did with commas and semi-colons.
When she started failing these students for not being proficient in what is ostensibly their native tongue, she got reprimanded for failing too many of them. Her superiors told her that she must learn to curve the grade so that more of them will pass. Her contention is that if you are not literate, you do not deserve to be in regular college classes. She felt like these students should be in remedial classes. When they threatened to fire her for refusing to change some of her students grades, she quit and went to work at another university. How much good is a college degree if you can pop open a crackerjack box and yank one out?
2 cents,
Queen B
I've been part of a couple of clans, but they're now defunct. The groups that manage to stay together are "rah-rah, aren't we grand" kind of groups. They inflate numbers by counting everyone that's ever gamed with them as "a member" even though many of the people haven't shown up for an event in months. The ones that do play for fun don't seem to last. I think that they usually run out of steam because the founders lack org skills.
Added to the thing, good DM's are hard to come by. How about a class or two in DM training? How much fun are these noobs going to have if they get some crappy DM? A good DM is about 80% story teller, 10% rule-manager, and 10% parent-figure.
2 cents,
Queen B
We all love Google and hate the Borg Collective - well at least the vast majority of us. I think that we're all stuck on how to react to this. I find that having yet another vulnerablity in IE disclosed is yet another reason to want Apple to license OSX for x86 machines.
If Apple would just give me the stabilty of Unix, the power of a CLI, and a GUI so nice that I don't really need the CLI on commodity hardware, I'd be a happy camper indeed. It would take me about all of 35 seconds to shove the disk into my laptop and start reformatting the hard drive.
2 cents,
Queen B
We spotted this on MarketWatch yesterday and submitted it but got rejected. Now you post it today from someone else. Niiiiice.
Secondly, I'm offended that the Borg Collective thinks we should pay them to fix THEIR problems.
2 cents,
Queen B
Unfortunately the parent that started all this claims that he's seen a puddle of liquid water on the surface of Mars and that the rest of us are trapped by "dogma" because Mars is supposed to be a dry planet.
To which is say DUH! My first post was modded as a troll, which I find unfair because I challenged this in-DUH-vidual in a solid scientific basis - known ambient temperature and known atmospheric pressure. Frankly given the atomospheric pressure of Mars, which is a fraction of Earth's, and the ambient temprature, liquid water under normal circumstances simply isn't possible. Then the same In-DUH-vidual posted giving a "Dead Sea" scenario, which I think I have sufficiently disproven.
2 cents,
Queen B
This isn't about those nimrods who thought they could force the end of the world by cloning Jesus is it?
2 cents,
Queen B
Saline water's freezing point decreases 1/2 of one degree Farenheight for each 5 parts per thousand increase in salinity. In converting celcius to Farenheit the average temp for Mars is -81.4 degrees. This means that you have to drop the freezing point of water for a total of 113.4 degrees. 113.4 x 2 = 226.8 which yields the number of 5 parts per thousand that you'd have to add to your theoritical liquid water on the surface of Mars. Now if you're actually capable of doing math, you'll quickly realize that 226.8 x 5 is a actually 1134 which is more than 1000. Since it's physically impossible to have 1134 parts per 1000, you're still stuck without liquid water.
2 cents,
Queen B
Look, we as a society have set boundaries for things that we as a society consider to be "unsuitable" for children. Children are not given drivers licenses, allowed to enter into contracts, and cannot legally give consent for sex. Perhaps you'd like to extend that to 10 year olds as well? My point about the booze was that a 10 year old cannot go to the liquor store and make a purchase on their own.
Seriously, be reasonable. I know plenty of 12 year olds. I come from a very large family. While I don't have spycam's on them 24-7, I'm pretty sure that they're not having Clinton sex or any other kind of sex. Most of them still think the opposite sex is "gross" or "has cooties". I'd say you might want to find a better neighborhood to live in if the 12 year olds are getting busy. Perhaps you should move out of what ever backwoods place you live in since the "old enough bleed, old enough to breed" philosophy seems to be in force.
While I do agree that if you are old enough to be drafted, you ought to be old enough to drink. Frankly, I think that the legal age of responsibility ought to be raised to 21. No voting, no draft, no drinking, until that age. You obviously aren't old enough to recall when the drinking age was 18. The drinking age was raised because of the number of alcohol related deaths among those 18-21. A large number of them were from alcohol poisoning. The draft age was also originally 21 but was lowered during the Vietnam war because the Fed's ran out of 21 year olds. I find the fact that it's never been raised back up to be a bit disturbing.
My personal opinion is that if you think you're old enough to commit an adult crime like rape, armed robbery, murder, etc. then you're old enough to be tried as an adult. I don't know about where you live, but that's generally how it works here in Texas. We don't try 10 year olds as an adult for swiping a Snicker's bar from the 7-11. We will try a 10 year old as an adult for something like pre-meditated murder, though.
In all seriousness, I wouldn't want a kid like that in my neighborhood. If you like them so much, why don't you get some to move in with you? I'm sure the local foster parent program would be happy to hook you up with some of these poor troubled kids who just happen to have commited some violent crime. Once you've done that, let me know how that works out for you.
2 cents,
Queen B
The biggest argument against liquid water on mars is this little thing called physics. Water on earth and water on Mars, both being made of H20, behave the same. Since we're aware of the temperature of Mars, liquid water on the surface NOT existing is pretty much a forgone conclusion. The average surface temperature on Mars is MINUS 63 Celcius. Considering that water freezes at 0 degress celcius, I hardly think that it's dogma to insist that the "puddle" you saw was something else besides liquid water.
The other argument against it is another little thing called vapor pressure. Since the atmosphere of Mars is considerable thinner than that of Earth. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is 0.0056 that of Earth's. Given the temperature there, any water would move directly from a solid (ice) to gaseous (steam) state. Liquid simply isn't physically possible.
Since it's really not possbile, the dogmatics are the ones who insist that it exists despite every bit of scientific evidence to the contrary. Unless of course you're proposing the Mars is actually an alternate universe with complete seperate physical laws. Or perhaps you're advocating "Intelligent Design" on Mars????
Seriously, don't take my word for it. Dave Soper has posted a really nice article about it here - http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/Mars/water.html
2 cents,
Queen B
Trillian doesn't support Google talk yet, but I'm told that's coming. Until then, I have one friend on there. The rest of us have been using IM too long to get away from AOL, MSN, ICQ, IRC, etc. Trillian handles them all on my PC and on my Mac, I use Fire for the same functionality. Basically, a good chat client will let me IM with anyone on any service.
2 cents,
Queen B
Penn (from Penn & Teller) said it best, "You do not have the right not to be offended." I'm an adult and as an adult, I expect that there will be things that are available to me that are not available to children. We have a whole host of them that we as a society have deemed unsuitable. The include things like booze, porn, and cigarettes just to name the three most notable examples.
While I'm not a big proponent of any of these three, I think that they should be available for the adults who wish to indulge. Are they suitable for kids? No. Would I give any of the above to an eight year old? No. Frankly, I'm sick of the parents who complain about the sex/violence/drugs/etc in video games but then run right out and buy whatever M rated thing happens to be topping the charts this week for their eight year old kid.
I have only one thing to say to those parents "DUH! It's rated M for a reason." It's really very simple. If you don't want Johnny playing them, DON'T BUY THEM!!! He's eight so I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a job, which means he has no income. Since he has no income, that means you bought him the game in the first place. Bad parents! No biscuit!!
If you want to be really sure what he's playing, don't put the PC and/or the gaming console in his room. First off, the PC in the room is set up for on-line child predators, so you get another -10 on Parenting Skills just for that. The same goes for the gaming consoles, now that the newer ones have chat functions built in. You get another -10 on the Parenting skills for that as well. Add that to the fact that you just bought your kid GTA and he's gotten ahold of the hot coffee mod, that's a -20 on the Parenting Skills. I fail to see how this could possibly be ESRB's fault.
2 cents,
Queen B
The fact is that most database engines (the entire database application) come with a fairly good security model that almost never gets implemented. There is typically very little done to most databases in the way of restricting user accounts to specific databases (not instances of the engine), tables, rows, columns, etc. One of the biggest lessons in this ought to come from the sheer number of SQL worms out there that look for instaces that don't have a SQL admin password set - DUH! The fact that these are still being issued means that DBA's still have not wised up enough to even set the password. If your security model is so lax that you can't be bothered to either set a password or change the factory default, you're not going to be concerned with minor details like patching your operating system and application, doing any kind of hardening, or setting appropriate access permissions.
The fact of the matter is that until more mandatory disclosure laws are passed companies will simply choose to ignore the simple basic things they can do to secure a database. Security to many (PHB) managers is a widget of some kind that they can buy and plug in to their network. This writer ignores a very simple flaw in his logic. Typcially, one compromises the database to get the box. If I own the box, encrypting the contents of the datbase won't help you any. It's going to have to be encrypted in such a way that it can be decrypted for use, unless you plan on turning all your data into MD5 hashes (evil grin).
Given the assumption that you want to be able to decrypt your data, you'll have to have the means to do so either stored on that box or on the receiving box, which is also likely on your network. If it's stored on that box, guess what, I've got access to it since UR ()WN3D. If it's another box, hey, I got this one so I can see what this one answers requests from and then I know what I need to ()WN next. Since your security on box was obviously lax enough to let me in, getting the next box down the line won't be any harder.
Mind you that all this assuming that I don't fire up the Beowulf cluster and just crack your encryption the hard way.
2 cents,
Queen B
Yeah, right, with a 32MB proprietary video card? *Shrug* I'm sure you'll get greaaat resolution out of that.
2 cents,
Queen B
PS: There is a heavily upgraded mini at my house. About the only thing you can't upgrade fairly simply is the video card.
1. Frankly, I love my TiVO. I can watch MORE TV with it since I can skip the commercials. If you know the right things to push on the remote, you don't have to watch the ads. A "60" minute show becomes something more like 40 real minutes of programming. That means that in the same 2 hour time period, I can watch 3 shows instead of two.
2. Codecs really aren't a problem for my TiVO. If there's a show or movie coming on, I can TiVO and watch it at my leisure any time later. I even have the option to burn it to DVD, complete with the ever-so-user friendly TiVO interface.
3. While I am dependent on what is offered, I have sattelite and have such a wide selection of channels, I don't really feel the need for "on demand" anything.
4. Your problems with resolution, pause/fast forward, and speed aren't one of my issues. My TiVo encodes everything perfectly and it manages to do most of its work either while I'm at work or asleep.
5. My ISP recently upgraded our service. We now have a 7MB/sec connection complete with fiber coming into our home. Our price for this - $36/month. We have plenty of bandwidth to download anything we want. Again, with 500+ channels to choose from and a TiVO to catch whatever I want whenever it's shown, I don't really feel the need for it.
6. I would like to be able to take the things I TiVO and load them on to my laptop. TiVO says that the hold up on this is not them, not technology, but the MPAA. Given that, I doubt you'll be seeing this any time soon from anyone. It would certainly make for a more intersting commute to and from work.
7. I agree that you should be able to balance price vs. features to what ever you are comfortable with, can afford, etc.
If this joint venture with Intel can make the thing I've come to adore better, than I'm all for it. If they're looking to add a bunch more DRM crap to my TiVO, I'm going to be fighting mad.
2 cents,
Queen B
Seriously, the whole dang world isn't meant for kids. We're adults and we'd like to have some adult type fun. If you honestly beleive that the whole world is meant to be some damned Disney park, PG-rated place, you are a moron. "Southpark", while it is cartoon, is clearly not meant for children and neither is "Drawn Together", which is also cartoon. We keep "Playboy" and "Hustler" available for adults but access is denied to children, unless a parent buys one and gives it to them. The same goes for "R" rated movies, booze, cigarettes, porn, and whole host of other things we, as a society, have deemed "unsuitable" for children.
As an avid gamer, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen parents purchasing video games rated "M" for their children. In many cases, the parent enters the store, guided by said child, who points at what they want and Mom or Dad plops down the plastic to pay for it. In cases where the child looks to be of sufficient age to me (15+), I don't generally say anything to the parent. If they look younger, I generally do say something like "So...Do you get your kid hookers and booze too?"
A lot of parents don't take the time to investigate what's in the games that Little Johnny wants and they flatly ignore the ratings labels. I realize that a lot of parents don't game and I do think that stores need to have at least one rather large poster that explains that games are rated "M" for violence, nudity and/or sexuality, languge, and/or drug usage. Lord knows we have mandatory signs for everything else in the country.
2 cents,
Queen B
This is a real-life case from one of my consulting clients. They are a small construction company with 3 servers (2 file and one email) and about 10 workstations. They chose to convert to Linux based servers and workstations for a variety of reasons. The cost savings on the software purchases were plowed into a one-time expense of employee training and they've been quite happy with the results.
$189 per seat vs. $50 per seat for the Codeweaver's Plugin
Microsoft Office = Same price regardless
($700 + $35 per CAL) x 2 = $1750 vs. $0 and $0 CAL's for Server
($700 + $35 per CAL) x 1 = $1050 vs $0 and $0 for CAL's for mail server
That's well in excess of $4000 in savings. The employer wisely chose to invest this in training and sent a couple of his people off to class. This cost him about $2000 for the both of them at a local community college. He then had those two train the rest of the staff. After some initial pain, he's enjoyed a $2000 savings just in his first year on the software alone.
What's not included in this is that they will be able to use the same hardware for at least one additional year. Had they upgraded their operating systems to the current Microsoft releases, they would have had to upgrade their server hardware as well. Some of their workstations would also have required new hardware. Another expense that's not included in this is not having to purchase antivirus or anitspyware products for the workstations. Since 99%+ of these things are Microsoft-targeted, they simply fail to execute in a Linux environment.
2 cents,
Queen B
Sheesh...does this thing come with a plastic pocket protector, too? Like some of the other posters, it's obvious enough to even the most casual observer that I'm a geek. Do I really need to paste a sign on my forehead? My Treo plays MP3's rather well and can play them through the headset I'm already wearing. Why add ANOTHER set of headphones?
2 cents,
Queen B.
I tend to agree with the earlier poster who postulates that data and application are two different issues. You should be able to use any application you like to access YOUR data. If the file formats are truly standard, than the best product - open source or otherwise - will win. Features, price point, etc will rule the day. This has NEVER been the Microsoft business model and I think all of here are well aware of it.
I plan on keeping a rather close eye on this gentleman for quite some time. All politicians lie when their lips move, regardless of party. However, any politican who thinks that anything Microsoft is doing is "good" is immediately suspect, simply because of the legal and ethical track record of the company. Frankly, he's shown me one thing. He's either a fool or a dupe (read "handpuppet"). I say that he's a fool because he's obviously too dense to find some able technical advisors to set him straight. I say that he's a dupe because if he's not a fool and he's knowingly endorsing this, they've already got their hooks in him which makes him a handpuppet. The only question is which category he falls into.
While he may not be our govenor and this isn't Massachusetts, this *is* Texas. We kill you back. We don't like that sort of thing any better here.
2 cents,
Queen B
The first prophet was called Netscape and he was mighty, leading the people serenely through the internet. But the people forsook the prophet and the prophet turned to evil ways. In time, the first prophet was corrupted by evil in the form of the giant ISP known as Baal or AOL.
The second prophet was a false prophet called Internet Explorer, which hid its true nature from the people until it was nearly too late since it was sent out by the great deceiver, Microsoft. The great deceiver tried to limit their access to the internet and to turn them aside from anything that the deceiver did not make money off of.
The people groaned and labored to feed the great deceiver, but alas, nothing could fill his belly. The great deciever blessed the heresey of having the browser integrated into the operating system. Loudly did the people cry unto the computer gods for a new prophet to lead them, but the gods were angry since the had given the people Linux. The people ignored Linux and chose to follow the great deceiver.
Finally, the computer gods softened their hearts and heard the cries of the people and sent a third prophet. The people are fortunate that they have not been abandoned for straying from the path of Linux. Mighty indeed is the penguin. A new prophet has been sent to lead us out of the valley of the shadow of ActiveX.
Halleujah!
The heavens opened, the angels sang, and Firefox descended into our midst to releive us from the woe that is Internet Explorer.
2 cents,
Queen B
As a long time agitator for the loosening of the ICANN/Verisign stronghold over domain registrations and other internet related items, I have to admit to being surprised to find that they're facing an even bigger bunch of l4m3r& in court. Who would have thought it? I *gasp* think I might want to see ICANN win this one.
2 cents,
Queen B
About that...why not some things like finish cleaing up from Katrina? The above ground cemetery that's in the Big Easy is a Big Infection waiting to happen. Strains of influenza, cholera, typhoid fever, and all the crap that people have died from in the last 200 years are now active thanks to the flood that opened the crypts and rehydrated all the microbes. While I'm all in favor of internet connections, I'm more in favor of dealing with disease outbreaks and popping a cork in any possible epidemics first. When it comes time to spend money, basic necessities come first. You can survive without an internet connection. Yes, it really is possible.
2 cents,
Queen B
I've been known to randomly place stickes on co-workers' cars. It's one of the more common office pranks here. One of our tech support technican's pick up says "Intel Pentium III", which is very funny considering that the thing barely runs. He's really good at fixing computers...not so good with his truck. Our administrative assistant's car says "Cable managment by Panduit" and "NOC'd out by Extreme Networks".
We've also been known to make stickers...like the one that mysteriously ended up on our boss' car "Ask me about my penis enlargement."
2 cents,
Queen B
Considering that the project here is run by computer geeks who had to search the net for hours in order to get everything working, what are the odds that this will actually become a consumer device? Frankly, the description in the article sounds like more work than I want to do, espeically considering that Tivo's here are running about $40 here. If I work on it for 8 hours to get it working, that's $5 an hour. You can make better money at Wal-Mart and that doesn't even factor in the hardware he purchased to run his VideoKeg on.
He also writes about how hard it was to theme the interface. Frankly, one of the best things about the Tivo is the user interface. It's simple, inutitive and attractive. In short, it rocks. I will say that his idea of a touch screen is nice addition. A Tivo with a touchscreen at the bar, playing music videos instead of just songs could be a nifty niche market. There's also a lot of hidden functionality to the Tivo that allows me to do really nifty things.
Tivo on other hand, is largely "plug and play" - well with in the capabilities of the average end user (my parents for example). Tivo also has a rather nice range of capabilites. I can view my own photos, videos, etc. from my Tivo. I can also listen to my MP3 collection from my Tivo. Currently the only thing that the Tivo doesn't do is allow of web browsing and playing of games. I'm given to understand that in a rev or two, the Tivo will be able to do those things.
I think I'll wait for the Tivo.
2 cents,
Queen B
The French government voted to accept the Nazi's terms, which earned them the epithet "Vichy Government". The Vichy Government also operated their own camps, in addition to actively assisting the Nazis in rounding up and shipping people to camps in Poland. French President of the Council, Philippe Pétain who was in fact voted into office in 1940. He was a war hero from WWI who turned on his own people and handed them blissfuly over to the Nazis. Ask a Frenchman what he thinks of the Vichy goverment now. Yet, they voted for this goober at the time, which is my point.
Actually, if you'll check, you'll find that one of the major official reasons given by the French government at the time of their surrender to the Nazis was that specifically they did not want to have their musems bombed. They were also quite aware of what the Nazis were doing to the people in the countries that they "occupied" and they were surrenduring their own people to a bunch of genocidal maniacs. The French had been smuggling out reports of Nazi atrocities for quite some time in an attempt to get the US involved in the war before it spread as far as it did. Instead of telling me that I "don't know anything about history", I would suggest that you do some serious reading.
No, we didn't participate in WWII much until we were actually attacked. We pretty much had a belly full of useless European posturing during WWI, which ended in 1926. Since we were attacked in Pearl Harbor in 1941, most the men currently in our military at the time either had themselves seen action in WWI or their fathers had. We got drawn in to a European conflict then and came out rather the worse for wear. When WWII rolled around, it looked like another Euro-trash party to us and so we decided to sit it out. Mustard gas, anyone? Thanks, I'll pass.
2 more cents,
Queen B
You kill someone here in Texas, we kill you back. That's our idea of justice. In this case, Sony's ill advised actions and refusal to supply a decent removal tool pretty much sealed their fate. The AG's office here in Texas is pretty agressive about all kinds of things, but Consumer's Rights is a "hot button" here.
2 cents,
Queen B