Several European oil companies (most notably Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum) have gotten involved in other energy sources than just oil (hydrogen, solar, wind and others).
However, the US oil companies (such as ExxonMobil and Chevron) refuse to acknowledge that any energy sources other than oil even exist and are fighting tooth and nail all alternative energy sources and anything that would show that humans are killing the planet with fossil fuels.
Why aren't the US companies following the lead of the Europeans and trying to become world leaders in the new technologies before someone else (such as Shell or BP) beats them to it?
Remember that Windows Vista has changed the way some drivers are written. The audio subsystem has been completely rewritten for example. And the way windows talks to display drivers has changed too. So all the drivers for these subsystems have to be rewritten to fit the new Vista driver model.
Also, in order for all the DRM to work, only software drivers that are secure enough are allowed to run on vista if you want to use "protected content". This means that all those old XP drivers (many of which don't meet the requirements vis a vis protected content) wont work if you want DRM.
Despite all the talk about "security", Vista includes NO tools of any kind for detecting nasties (viruses, trojans, spyware, worms, rootkits or anything else). Way back in the dos 6 days Microsoft included an anti-virus program. Then when windows 95 came out, they stopped doing that. With nasties of all kinds being one of the top reasons for people to need some kind of computer help/support, one would think that adding anti-virus and anti-spyware (both of which would be memory resident and catch stuff before it can take hold of your PC) and such to Vista would be a great way to get sales from people tired of dealing with such crap.
1.Don't assume all customers are idiots, especially when they call for support.
2.Hire technical support people that know something about computers. And let them have the power to do real technical support instead of insisting that they follow the checklists.
3.Don't use proprietary hardware. More specifically, all components inside the machines should be standard as much as possible (for example, use standard PSUs with standard pinouts and not proprietary ones with custom DELL pinouts). Would make it easier for DELL to just switch suppliers if they e.g. decided that brand x power supplies sucked and brand y were better. This gives DELL negotiation power over suppliers (whereas if they had a custom PSU, the company that makes them has more leverage since the costs to have another company continue to make the custom PSU are expensive relatively speaking)
4.This also extends to software. Do not use any proprietary drivers. All hardware should use the same drivers as you would use if you bought the hardware in a box from a retail store. All drivers should have separate installers included directly with the machine and/or be available to download from the web site such that it is possible to install a normal non DELL non OEM copy of Windows on the DELL machine and not have hardware that wont work right because the only way to get the drivers is to install the special DELL version of windows.
5.Tone down the crap that is pre-installed. All spyware should be removed completely. All demos and time limited software should have uninstall options and also any limitations in the software (such as anti-virus programs with shorter subscription lengths than retail boxed copies have) should be clearly documented.
What I want to know is why Microsoft (who ends up being blamed when crapware pre-installed by Dell or HP or Compaq or whoever makes the system run like a dog) isn't putting more pressure on OEM's not to install this crap.
If Microsoft told the big OEM's that they had to stop installing this crap or risk being charged more for windows (or whatever penalty Microsoft uses with them when they do something MS doesn't like), the OEM's would have no choice but to comply. Microsoft would win because they don't get the flak for the system slowdowns and whatever else the pre-installed crap causes. Maybe the OEM's might need to charge more for the PCs since they aren't "subsidized" by the crapware anymore but everyone will be forced to do it so it wont matter.
I don't know if its still true but last I looked, one of the good thing about the BBC is that its news service is as close to an independent news service as its possible to get. The BBC doesn't have to bow down to any corporate masters (unlike commercial news services such as CNN, Fox News, Channel 4, ITV etc etc) and because they aren't government funded (thanks to the license fee) they don't have to bow down to the government either
I thought that because of the license fees, the BBC was essentially independent from the government and (unlike our own ABC here in australia) didnt have to care about the government or its "backers" (be they big corporations or otherwise)
There were a couple of cases at my uni where they asked for floppy disk. In my case I just asked if I could submit on CD ROM instead and they accepted that.
Sell it on ebay to one of those people who want an iPhone but do not live in a market or coverage area covered by a carrier who has been able to secure an iPhone deal.
Here in Australia with Telstra, you can buy phones on contract from Telstra and said phones are NOT locked to the Telstra network. Of course if you want to drop out of the contract before its up, there are early termination fees that you have to pay. You can also walk into the store and buy any phone they sell outright with no contract, no subsidy and no network lock and then use it with any carrier that is compatible (in australia or otherwise)
The only phones Telstra lock to their network are prepaid phones and I think they may even unlock those if you have spent enough money with them.
If Cingular did the same thing with the iPhone and sold it completely unlocked at whatever cost they had to sell it at to make a profit from the iPhone sale, all this would be a moot point.
Does it include the features for protecting a PDF from being altered/read without the right password or whatever it is (the ones that Russian guy was arrested for). What about the features that deal with applying black bars over text (can we build a PDF reader that completely ignores such data and see all the text that whoever did the obscuring thought was no longer readable?)
What I want to know is, in this world where large companies of all kinds make so much noise over globalization, why cant we have a world where instead of there being an "EMI France" and a "EMI US" and a "EMI Australia", there is just "EMI" and which country an item is sold in is no longer relavent.
I suppose that will happen the same day as airline pilots report seeing pigs out the window, the devil has to place an order for warm jackets because hell has just frozen over, osama bin laden walks into the US base in Kabul with a signed confession showing that he ordered the 9/11 attacks and Microsoft releases the source code to Windows under the GPL:)
Linux IS more secure than windows. Windows is insecure because it has to be in order to run all the windows apps (just look at all the apps that wont run except as an administrator, on linux the only programs that wont run except as root are generally either system administration programs that should only be being used when you are doing administration stuff or programs that can run as setuid root (and the number of programs that need to actually run as setuid root are minimal).
Even if Dell, HP Compaq, Apple, Sun AND IBM said "We will buy our graphics cards exclusively from whichever vendor (ATI or NVIDIA) is the first to deliver open source drivers or hardware specs for the full line of cards", it still wouldn't be enough for them to do it.
It would require all the gold in Fort Knox and then some in order to be able to liberate (either by buying outright or acquiring a license) all the patents that are covered by a modern 3D graphics card.
Giving out your email and IM addresses online is perfectly safe.
I would never give out my address or phone numbers but I have no problems with giving out my name, my email and IM addresses or roughly where I am (i.e. "Perth, Australia")
Get the kid a hotmail address or a gmail address or similar and let them have at it.
If Intel can make a graphics card that is better than my current GeForce FX 5700LE in all areas (including shader performance) I am sold. Especially if they have open source Linux drivers for the thing:)
Here in australia you can report your GSM/UMTS phone as stolen (for example reporting the IMEI number) and all the carriers will block it (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, 3)
Games that use Steam (such as half-life 2) dont require any funky CD based copy protections (I havent seen it myself but I would imagine that the retail boxed HL2 is just an offline copy of the protected data files steam would download to your local disk and then install)
Terchnically yes they do. The copy protection drivers are loaded every time the game starts up and loading a kernel driver is one thing that (IIRC) requires administrator access.
Maybe microsoft can work with the copy protection companies and the games companies to come up with an answer so that copy proetction can continue to be secure but can function correctly in vista limited user mode without needing administrator access after the software has been installed.
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Several European oil companies (most notably Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum) have gotten involved in other energy sources than just oil (hydrogen, solar, wind and others).
However, the US oil companies (such as ExxonMobil and Chevron) refuse to acknowledge that any energy sources other than oil even exist and are fighting tooth and nail all alternative energy sources and anything that would show that humans are killing the planet with fossil fuels.
Why aren't the US companies following the lead of the Europeans and trying to become world leaders in the new technologies before someone else (such as Shell or BP) beats them to it?
Remember that Windows Vista has changed the way some drivers are written. The audio subsystem has been completely rewritten for example. And the way windows talks to display drivers has changed too. So all the drivers for these subsystems have to be rewritten to fit the new Vista driver model.
Also, in order for all the DRM to work, only software drivers that are secure enough are allowed to run on vista if you want to use "protected content". This means that all those old XP drivers (many of which don't meet the requirements vis a vis protected content) wont work if you want DRM.
Despite all the talk about "security", Vista includes NO tools of any kind for detecting nasties (viruses, trojans, spyware, worms, rootkits or anything else).
Way back in the dos 6 days Microsoft included an anti-virus program.
Then when windows 95 came out, they stopped doing that.
With nasties of all kinds being one of the top reasons for people to need some kind of computer help/support, one would think that adding anti-virus and anti-spyware (both of which would be memory resident and catch stuff before it can take hold of your PC) and such to Vista would be a great way to get sales from people tired of dealing with such crap.
1.Don't assume all customers are idiots, especially when they call for support.
2.Hire technical support people that know something about computers. And let them have the power to do real technical support instead of insisting that they follow the checklists.
3.Don't use proprietary hardware. More specifically, all components inside the machines should be standard as much as possible (for example, use standard PSUs with standard pinouts and not proprietary ones with custom DELL pinouts). Would make it easier for DELL to just switch suppliers if they e.g. decided that brand x power supplies sucked and brand y were better. This gives DELL negotiation power over suppliers (whereas if they had a custom PSU, the company that makes them has more leverage since the costs to have another company continue to make the custom PSU are expensive relatively speaking)
4.This also extends to software. Do not use any proprietary drivers. All hardware should use the same drivers as you would use if you bought the hardware in a box from a retail store. All drivers should have separate installers included directly with the machine and/or be available to download from the web site such that it is possible to install a normal non DELL non OEM copy of Windows on the DELL machine and not have hardware that wont work right because the only way to get the drivers is to install the special DELL version of windows.
5.Tone down the crap that is pre-installed. All spyware should be removed completely. All demos and time limited software should have uninstall options and also any limitations in the software (such as anti-virus programs with shorter subscription lengths than retail boxed copies have) should be clearly documented.
What I want to know is why Microsoft (who ends up being blamed when crapware pre-installed by Dell or HP or Compaq or whoever makes the system run like a dog) isn't putting more pressure on OEM's not to install this crap.
If Microsoft told the big OEM's that they had to stop installing this crap or risk being charged more for windows (or whatever penalty Microsoft uses with them when they do something MS doesn't like), the OEM's would have no choice but to comply. Microsoft would win because they don't get the flak for the system slowdowns and whatever else the pre-installed crap causes. Maybe the OEM's might need to charge more for the PCs since they aren't "subsidized" by the crapware anymore but everyone will be forced to do it so it wont matter.
I don't know if its still true but last I looked, one of the good thing about the BBC is that its news service is as close to an independent news service as its possible to get. The BBC doesn't have to bow down to any corporate masters (unlike commercial news services such as CNN, Fox News, Channel 4, ITV etc etc) and because they aren't government funded (thanks to the license fee) they don't have to bow down to the government either
I thought that because of the license fees, the BBC was essentially independent from the government and (unlike our own ABC here in australia) didnt have to care about the government or its "backers" (be they big corporations or otherwise)
There were a couple of cases at my uni where they asked for floppy disk.
In my case I just asked if I could submit on CD ROM instead and they accepted that.
Sell it on ebay to one of those people who want an iPhone but do not live in a market or coverage area covered by a carrier who has been able to secure an iPhone deal.
Here in Australia with Telstra, you can buy phones on contract from Telstra and said phones are NOT locked to the Telstra network. Of course if you want to drop out of the contract before its up, there are early termination fees that you have to pay. You can also walk into the store and buy any phone they sell outright with no contract, no subsidy and no network lock and then use it with any carrier that is compatible (in australia or otherwise)
The only phones Telstra lock to their network are prepaid phones and I think they may even unlock those if you have spent enough money with them.
If Cingular did the same thing with the iPhone and sold it completely unlocked at whatever cost they had to sell it at to make a profit from the iPhone sale, all this would be a moot point.
Does it include the features for protecting a PDF from being altered/read without the right password or whatever it is (the ones that Russian guy was arrested for).
What about the features that deal with applying black bars over text (can we build a PDF reader that completely ignores such data and see all the text that whoever did the obscuring thought was no longer readable?)
So basically something like what you would get if you took a blackberry and shot at it with an enlarging ray? :)
Here in Australia we dropped the 1c and 2c coins (and made the $1 and $2 notes into $1 and $2 coins) and things didnt fall apart :)
What I want to know is, in this world where large companies of all kinds make so much noise over globalization, why cant we have a world where instead of there being an "EMI France" and a "EMI US" and a "EMI Australia", there is just "EMI" and which country an item is sold in is no longer relavent.
:)
I suppose that will happen the same day as airline pilots report seeing pigs out the window, the devil has to place an order for warm jackets because hell has just frozen over, osama bin laden walks into the US base in Kabul with a signed confession showing that he ordered the 9/11 attacks and Microsoft releases the source code to Windows under the GPL
That is not strictly true.
Linux IS more secure than windows.
Windows is insecure because it has to be in order to run all the windows apps (just look at all the apps that wont run except as an administrator, on linux the only programs that wont run except as root are generally either system administration programs that should only be being used when you are doing administration stuff or programs that can run as setuid root (and the number of programs that need to actually run as setuid root are minimal).
Even if Dell, HP Compaq, Apple, Sun AND IBM said "We will buy our graphics cards exclusively from whichever vendor (ATI or NVIDIA) is the first to deliver open source drivers or hardware specs for the full line of cards", it still wouldn't be enough for them to do it.
It would require all the gold in Fort Knox and then some in order to be able to liberate (either by buying outright or acquiring a license) all the patents that are covered by a modern 3D graphics card.
Giving out your email and IM addresses online is perfectly safe.
I would never give out my address or phone numbers but I have no problems with giving out my name, my email and IM addresses or roughly where I am (i.e. "Perth, Australia")
Get the kid a hotmail address or a gmail address or similar and let them have at it.
If I wanted to run binary kernel modules I would just buy a 6xxx series NVIDIA and be done with it. :)
I specifically said "Open Source"
If Intel can make a graphics card that is better than my current GeForce FX 5700LE in all areas (including shader performance) I am sold. :)
Especially if they have open source Linux drivers for the thing
Prioritization is not inherently bad. Whats bad is prioritizing within the same network protocols.
For example, prioritizing ComCast VOIP service over Vonage VOIP service.
Or prioritizing video.cnn.com over video.google.com
Maybe they need Cyborg spiders ala The Web Between The Worlds :)
Integrated graphics is right out, I regularly work with very large pieces of data and I cannot use a graphics card that uses system RAM as video RAM.
Here in australia you can report your GSM/UMTS phone as stolen (for example reporting the IMEI number) and all the carriers will block it (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, 3)
Games that use Steam (such as half-life 2) dont require any funky CD based copy protections (I havent seen it myself but I would imagine that the retail boxed HL2 is just an offline copy of the protected data files steam would download to your local disk and then install)
Terchnically yes they do. The copy protection drivers are loaded every time the game starts up and loading a kernel driver is one thing that (IIRC) requires administrator access.
Maybe microsoft can work with the copy protection companies and the games companies to come up with an answer so that copy proetction can continue to be secure but can function correctly in vista limited user mode without needing administrator access after the software has been installed.