What/.'ers are missing here is that china is an internally repressive society so palladium is great for them. They are constantly seeking ways to control what their people do and don't see on the net, this is also MS's point of view. They are both into controlling everything.
Also remember Mao's statement, to paraphrase "all power comes from the end of a gun". China may believe that in the end they can use MS's technology and later control them.
Don't forget how brutal and ruthless china can be. They execute more people than any other country and have a terrible human rights record. MS is simply ruthless. Linux may be more Socialistic than Windows, but remember this is also about power.
You can find on the web, and Scientific American, the details of how key and combination locks work, why doesn't this make them less secure? I use them all the time, front door, as do most of us. Very few burglars actually pick locks, most find a weak spot in the security and enter there. A rock though a window is common enough.
From what I understand most crackers do much the same thing, they don't actually crack the security software, they call up and get someone to give them their password, or go though the garbage and find one written down.
Also, can't you reverse engineer Windows if your determined enough? The binaries are in machine code, sit there with a hex printout of the binary, and the x86 machine instruction set and work out how it works in detail? Okay, its not easy, but if you're willing to kill yourself and anyone else by flying a jet into a skyscraper, how much more difficult is it to do this?
In looking at these posts they seem rather traditional to me, you get to a certain age, go to school, get a job and make money. I went to school majored in Anthropology with a minor in CS. Met a great woman who is also a programmer. Got married and had kids. Seeing as she paid more in taxes than I made I stayed home with the little (ahem) joys while she continued to work for a major insurance company. With the cost of childcare in the N.E. it made a lot of sense. While most of the posters here concern themselves with programming machines, I have three little people to program (its usually called teaching and raising). And I tell you, if you want over worked and underpayed try being a homemaker.
This misses many of the points, and like many Mac users I'll point out the obvious first:
1)The Tibook is 1 inch thick and 5 pounds *WITH* the battery, the dell is 1.6 inches thick and over 6 pounds *WITH OUT* the battery. This is a big difference in size.
2)processor speed is a joke, your HD speed and graphics card make a more noticeable difference in any high end machine, PPC, Intel or AMD. Unless your grinding down massive files humans can't see these differences.
3)Why do people post screen resolutions when they talk about monitors? Color accuracy, now that is important, and can be checked. Screen resolutions are only useful when seenng how any OS chooses to draw the screen.
4)Macs can be more expensive, the dell is a butt ugly black slab, the Tibook is super cool. Yes, sexy costs. A lap dance from a super model will cost you more than a common stripper.
If a bank didn't secure it's assets "properly", good safes, whatever, that would not make it any less a crime to steal from them. Stealing is stealing after all. What that would do is leave them open for liability suits brought by patrons of that bank, the two having little in common.
This fails another way, most banking transactions are computer transactions these days. The safes "ARE" just secure files, we hope. More money is held by American banks than there is money.
Yes, the above statement is true, there is far more money in the banking computer systems then there is printed by the Bureau of Engraving. Don't forget that was also most likely one of the things that OBL wanted to do, trash the Banking computer systems
I keep seeing all this "you can't bomb forces that you can't find stuff", and "remember the Russian experience and Vietnam. Here are some replies to what I've seen posted here
1) Bombing
A)There ARE concentrations of Taliban troops, they are in the North fighting the Northern Alliance.
B) Israel has fought in regions like this, the Baca Valley in Syria for one, and found that standard bombing and Napalm were quite effective.
C)The Taliban have no real air defense, so they can be bombed as long as we like, their stinger missiles are useless against high flying aircraft. And remember, we dropped more tonnage of munitions on Iraq then in Vietnam, that does have an effect.
D)There is plenty to bomb, it has been said again and again how deep the caves the terrorists and Tailban hide in are, we can and do remove mountain tops when it suits us.
2)How different the Afghan are
A)If we do this anything like right, we should be able to avoid the Afghan people.
B)From what I hear the Afghan people has little use for the Taliban, so will they fight us?
C)Several years of studying Anthropology I tend to think people aren't that different all over the world.
3)Losses
A)Okay lets see, apx 15,000 Russian losses vs 1,000,000 Afghan, that's about a 66 to one loss ratio, Not good.
B)Vietnam Losses: 6,000 American, 2,000,000 Vietnamese loses, that's about 333 to one loss ratio, just terrible. Remember, that is with the Militaries hands tied behind their back.
C)Iraq 200,000 to 40, that's about 6000 to one, no matter how tuff the Afghans are, how long can they sustain these sort of loss rates?
I'm not suggesting that any of this is good, it is just to point out that the "facts" being tossed about my not be what they seem.
All this breast beating by us geeks about freedom of speech and back-doors in encryption software is very nice. I got to watch all the good stuff real time, fun, no? I have friends who I will never see again, family who are most likely crippled for life with massive head trauma, and kids who want an explanation. Why is daddy crying? I live not too far from the WTC and get (-- notice, not past tense) to smell it. By the way, not too far is the other end of Brooklyn. Look at the space shots of the plume of smoke. It looked like it was snowing here. I would like to make several points that can be responded to separately, as they don't really have a thematic thread.
1) These guys don't use email and electronic communications a lot, the important stuff happens face to face. Most of this stuff is irrelevant
2)news is breaking that our old friend Saddam Hussian may have funded a lot of this. We may be back in Bagdad.
3)We are human and the people we appoint to govern are human, The only two real ways to protect American freedom is a free press and each of us taking an active part in our goverment, not just bitching on slashdot about it.
Hi! - I just did what you did except I joined a small school as its computer teacher and will be working with kids over the summer. There have been a number of great posts so far. The more detailed the post has been the better. Here are my set of points (repeating others at times)
1)Have fun - if your not they won't. 2)there is no such thing as "kids", instead there is a group of individuals who are kids. Each will have their own quirks. 3)Have a very good idea what you want to do so you are not floundering - but be willing to chuck it all if it isn't working or something better pops up. 4)deal with groups of 3-6 at a time and have them work in teams. 5)realize you are there do deal with the kids not the computers, most of your time will be spent dealing with the teams - their interacting with each other, and individual kids with-in teams 6)This is a summer camp - keep things on the lite side and focus on having them enjoy themselves.
Ed. Points.
Kids come in age groups and you have to deal with them in that way 3-6 year olds are almost a different species from 9-12 year olds. And starting at about 12 it comes clear that they are also from a different universe:) What I've done. Started out this way.
all groups: what are the parts of a computer? everyone can give 1 or 2 answers. When you think of computers what do you think of? Again 1 or 2 answers per kid - game, net, etc are good answers. (This will give you a good idea of who knows what.) Answer questions
**explain rules about how to use computers and how to handle problems, Everone, or every group, gets half hour or some such and if anything goes wrong or seems strange - stop and ask for help, etc ***
This should take about 30 - 45 minutes per group of 3 - 6 kids. Your are spending a lot of time just learning their names. What I do is when ever you speak you have to say your name first. At this point there will be tons of calling out, kids cutting each other off, yelling or looking lost and glum. This will help show who will need to be sat on to control and who will require some drawing out.
take a computer apart. I just dug out one of the schools old Mac LCIIIs and pulled it apart and let the kids handle the parts. Show them which parts are what. This is a hard drive, this is the CPU, etc. Answer questions.
This is also good for 30 -60 minutes per group. Don't rush though, when their attention seems to start to waver it's time to move on.
Here I started to split things by age. Kids 3-6 are not very good at handling abstractions, here stick to hands on and if you want this to happen do that. Move from the concret to the abstact.
6-9 are better then 3-6ers at abstration but still not very good. They can deal with simple analogies, CPU is like a brain. In this age group I start to introduce some vocabulary, as in syntax and algorithm.
9-12s can start to deal with abstractions so I start to use simple pancake diagrams to show the different levels of a computer and how software works and programming is done. source - assembler - binary - machine. And start them one working on the machines.
12 + they start to be teenagers.
You will spend a vast amount of time just manageing what happens and keeping order. if you need anything else you can post again or sendemails.
I read Mr. Carmacks article and thought, humm, here is an interesting tidbit. He called an iMac DV he had form over function. I think this misses the point. The form is the function of the iMac. We'll leave the G4s out of this for now.
What is most important on and iMac:
small - monitors increase in size geometricly, a 17 inch monitior is a lot bigger than a 15. I don't think you can make one with a 17 incher.
quiet - no fan. This may have a large impact on what hardware can be put inside. A g4 may just run to hot.
ease of use - look at the slot loading cd. Tbis is an important feature, it does make it easier to use. The MacOS. Real easy and cool way to get to the RAM and slot for Airport card. USB and Firewire easy to get at and use.
good looking - this is something that you live with. Haveing something pleasent in your enviroment is important.
Fast enough - just here you get to speed. If you want a web server don't use and iMac.
For the pro G4 series you have a better argument if you complain about lack of speed, but not a great one. Here again raw speed is just one factor out of many. How easy the case is to open and access is something that is considered as important and its speed. The difference isn't huge and can change at any time. What should be remembered is that you use the whole computer - not just the CPU - so you have to make the whole computer good.
On something of a side note - I read that if you took a snapshot of all the cpu cycles at some specific time you would find that the thing they are doing most is drawing screen savers. In writting this little thing I spent a fair amount to time just thinking about what I was doing. My 300mz G3 did nothing of any use during that time.
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What /.'ers are missing here is that china is an internally repressive society so palladium is great for them. They are constantly seeking ways to control what their people do and don't see on the net, this is also MS's point of view. They are both into controlling everything.
Also remember Mao's statement, to paraphrase "all power comes from the end of a gun". China may believe that in the end they can use MS's technology and later control them.
Don't forget how brutal and ruthless china can be. They execute more people than any other country and have a terrible human rights record. MS is simply ruthless. Linux may be more Socialistic than Windows, but remember this is also about power.
As a rule everything MS does it does to grow and expand it's monopoly. Therefore this is also to do the same. You can't trust MS.
Can someone explain this to me -
You can find on the web, and Scientific American, the details of how key and combination locks work, why doesn't this make them less secure? I use them all the time, front door, as do most of us. Very few burglars actually pick locks, most find a weak spot in the security and enter there. A rock though a window is common enough.
From what I understand most crackers do much the same thing, they don't actually crack the security software, they call up and get someone to give them their password, or go though the garbage and find one written down.
Also, can't you reverse engineer Windows if your determined enough? The binaries are in machine code, sit there with a hex printout of the binary, and the x86 machine instruction set and work out how it works in detail? Okay, its not easy, but if you're willing to kill yourself and anyone else by flying a jet into a skyscraper, how much more difficult is it to do this?
In looking at these posts they seem rather traditional to me, you get to a certain age, go to school, get a job and make money. I went to school majored in Anthropology with a minor in CS. Met a great woman who is also a programmer. Got married and had kids. Seeing as she paid more in taxes than I made I stayed home with the little (ahem) joys while she continued to work for a major insurance company. With the cost of childcare in the N.E. it made a lot of sense. While most of the posters here concern themselves with programming machines, I have three little people to program (its usually called teaching and raising). And I tell you, if you want over worked and underpayed try being a homemaker.
This misses many of the points, and like many Mac users I'll point out the obvious first:
1)The Tibook is 1 inch thick and 5 pounds *WITH* the battery, the dell is 1.6 inches thick and over 6 pounds *WITH OUT* the battery. This is a big difference in size.
2)processor speed is a joke, your HD speed and graphics card make a more noticeable difference in any high end machine, PPC, Intel or AMD. Unless your grinding down massive files humans can't see these differences.
3)Why do people post screen resolutions when they talk about monitors? Color accuracy, now that is important, and can be checked. Screen resolutions are only useful when seenng how any OS chooses to draw the screen.
4)Macs can be more expensive, the dell is a butt ugly black slab, the Tibook is super cool. Yes, sexy costs. A lap dance from a super model will cost you more than a common stripper.
If a bank didn't secure it's assets "properly", good safes, whatever, that would not make it any less a crime to steal from them. Stealing is stealing after all. What that would do is leave them open for liability suits brought by patrons of that bank, the two having little in common.
This fails another way, most banking transactions are computer transactions these days. The safes "ARE" just secure files, we hope. More money is held by American banks than there is money.
Yes, the above statement is true, there is far more money in the banking computer systems then there is printed by the Bureau of Engraving. Don't forget that was also most likely one of the things that OBL wanted to do, trash the Banking computer systems
I keep seeing all this "you can't bomb forces that you can't find stuff", and "remember the Russian experience and Vietnam. Here are some replies to what I've seen posted here
1) Bombing
A)There ARE concentrations of Taliban troops, they are in the North fighting the Northern Alliance.
B) Israel has fought in regions like this, the Baca Valley in Syria for one, and found that standard bombing and Napalm were quite effective.
C)The Taliban have no real air defense, so they can be bombed as long as we like, their stinger missiles are useless against high flying aircraft. And remember, we dropped more tonnage of munitions on Iraq then in Vietnam, that does have an effect.
D)There is plenty to bomb, it has been said again and again how deep the caves the terrorists and Tailban hide in are, we can and do remove mountain tops when it suits us.
2)How different the Afghan are
A)If we do this anything like right, we should be able to avoid the Afghan people.
B)From what I hear the Afghan people has little use for the Taliban, so will they fight us?
C)Several years of studying Anthropology I tend to think people aren't that different all over the world.
3)Losses
A)Okay lets see, apx 15,000 Russian losses vs 1,000,000 Afghan, that's about a 66 to one loss ratio, Not good.
B)Vietnam Losses: 6,000 American, 2,000,000 Vietnamese loses, that's about 333 to one loss ratio, just terrible. Remember, that is with the Militaries hands tied behind their back.
C)Iraq 200,000 to 40, that's about 6000 to one, no matter how tuff the Afghans are, how long can they sustain these sort of loss rates?
I'm not suggesting that any of this is good, it is just to point out that the "facts" being tossed about my not be what they seem.
All this breast beating by us geeks about freedom of speech and back-doors in encryption software is very nice. I got to watch all the good stuff real time, fun, no? I have friends who I will never see again, family who are most likely crippled for life with massive head trauma, and kids who want an explanation. Why is daddy crying? I live not too far from the WTC and get (-- notice, not past tense) to smell it. By the way, not too far is the other end of Brooklyn. Look at the space shots of the plume of smoke. It looked like it was snowing here. I would like to make several points that can be responded to separately, as they don't really have a thematic thread.
1) These guys don't use email and electronic communications a lot, the important stuff happens face to face. Most of this stuff is irrelevant
2)news is breaking that our old friend Saddam Hussian may have funded a lot of this. We may be back in Bagdad.
3)We are human and the people we appoint to govern are human, The only two real ways to protect American freedom is a free press and each of us taking an active part in our goverment, not just bitching on slashdot about it.
1)Have fun - if your not they won't.
2)there is no such thing as "kids", instead there is a group of individuals who are kids. Each will have their own quirks.
3)Have a very good idea what you want to do so you are not floundering - but be willing to chuck it all if it isn't working or something better pops up.
4)deal with groups of 3-6 at a time and have them work in teams.
5)realize you are there do deal with the kids not the computers, most of your time will be spent dealing with the teams - their interacting with each other, and individual kids with-in teams
6)This is a summer camp - keep things on the lite side and focus on having them enjoy themselves.
Ed. Points.
Kids come in age groups and you have to deal with them in that way 3-6 year olds are almost a different species from 9-12 year olds. And starting at about 12 it comes clear that they are also from a different universe
What I've done. Started out this way.
all groups:
what are the parts of a computer? everyone can give 1 or 2 answers.
When you think of computers what do you think of? Again 1 or 2 answers per kid - game, net, etc are good answers.
(This will give you a good idea of who knows what.) Answer questions
**explain rules about how to use computers and how to handle problems, Everone, or every group, gets half hour or some such and if anything goes wrong or seems strange - stop and ask for help, etc ***
This should take about 30 - 45 minutes per group of 3 - 6 kids. Your are spending a lot of time just learning their names. What I do is when ever you speak you have to say your name first. At this point there will be tons of calling out, kids cutting each other off, yelling or looking lost and glum. This will help show who will need to be sat on to control and who will require some drawing out.
take a computer apart. I just dug out one of the schools old Mac LCIIIs and pulled it apart and let the kids handle the parts. Show them which parts are what. This is a hard drive, this is the CPU, etc. Answer questions.
This is also good for 30 -60 minutes per group. Don't rush though, when their attention seems to start to waver it's time to move on.
Here I started to split things by age. Kids 3-6 are not very good at handling abstractions, here stick to hands on and if you want this to happen do that. Move from the concret to the abstact.
6-9 are better then 3-6ers at abstration but still not very good. They can deal with simple analogies, CPU is like a brain. In this age group I start to introduce some vocabulary, as in syntax and algorithm.
9-12s can start to deal with abstractions so I start to use simple pancake diagrams to show the different levels of a computer and how software works and programming is done. source - assembler - binary - machine. And start them one working on the machines.
12 + they start to be teenagers.You will spend a vast amount of time just manageing what happens and keeping order. if you need anything else you can post again or sendemails.
I read Mr. Carmacks article and thought, humm, here is an interesting tidbit. He called an iMac DV he had form over function. I think this misses the point. The form is the function of the iMac. We'll leave the G4s out of this for now.
What is most important on and iMac:
small - monitors increase in size geometricly, a 17 inch monitior is a lot bigger than a 15. I don't think you can make one with a 17 incher.
quiet - no fan. This may have a large impact on what hardware can be put inside. A g4 may just run to hot.
ease of use - look at the slot loading cd. Tbis is an important feature, it does make it easier to use. The MacOS. Real easy and cool way to get to the RAM and slot for Airport card. USB and Firewire easy to get at and use.
good looking - this is something that you live with. Haveing something pleasent in your enviroment is important.
Fast enough - just here you get to speed. If you want a web server don't use and iMac.
For the pro G4 series you have a better argument if you complain about lack of speed, but not a great one. Here again raw speed is just one factor out of many. How easy the case is to open and access is something that is considered as important and its speed. The difference isn't huge and can change at any time. What should be remembered is that you use the whole computer - not just the CPU - so you have to make the whole computer good.
On something of a side note - I read that if you took a snapshot of all the cpu cycles at some specific time you would find that the thing they are doing most is drawing screen savers. In writting this little thing I spent a fair amount to time just thinking about what I was doing. My 300mz G3 did nothing of any use during that time.