That's not how I read the article. They've certainly received one prototype and possibly some of the initial batches.
Regardless, what would that matter? They've probably been planning to install (pirated) Windows on these machines ever since they made the order. This was a way to avoid having to pay the Windows tax.
Yeah, it's completely impossible that they received their computers, were dissatisfied with Linux because it wasn't what they were used to, and decided to wipe the drives and install (no doubt pirated) Windows on it. It has to be Microsoft's evil blackmail machine.
Wikipedia is supposed to be a comprehensive online encyclopedia. It's not supposed to be an open-ended "who's who" of the world that includes your grandma and everyone on my street.
Yes, and the downside to the including everything and being a "who's who" is uh, what? You're getting to it, right?
There is a fine line between documenting an even slightly notable person or thing and spamming your content. Should there really be ten billion articles on wikipedia?
Should there be ten billion articles? Maybe we could answer that if you would maybe share the promised downside?
One for every single human that lives and dies in a decade? Just because there is plenty of storage for articles doesn't mean there shouldn't be some requisite notability level to be included.
Yes, you've now restated your point twice. I heard it the first time, but I'm willing to wade through this while you get to the downside.
Don't get me wrong -- I hate a lot of the idiocy I've seen about "but they aren't notable enough" on wikipedia and I think they are far too extreme. . . but every tool with a comic or a blog doesn't deserve an article in Wikipedia.
Stop restating your point already, and get to the downside.
It's not about advertising your product. It's not a contact database. It's not a resume database.
Great, we've gotten all the way to the end of this post without your promised explanation of a downside. Joy. I'll bet that you edit Wikipedia.
Yes, so you want Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc., to all tailor their search engines to obey Wikipedia's special tags? Ah, yeah, I'll get back to you on that.
HL2 was all right, but the combat was never all that interesting to me. It was a bit of an endurance trial more than something kinetic and fun. Head crabs just aren't very fun to fight. The ammo limitations took more away from the game than they added to it. (See Serious Sam for how it should be done.)
Your argument is one of the silliest that I've come across. If lots of non-notable articles make it in, what's the problem? Just tag them as non-notable and move on. That way you don't have to bother with all the arguments and bureaucracy, and there isn't really a downside, as long as things get tagged (or moved if that's how they want to do it).
The problem with upgrading consoles is that you suddenly have two hardware platforms. Do game designers design for the old platform, and limit their features, or do they design for the new platform and limit their audience? They will almost invariably choose the first. Therefore uptake on the new console is low, and consumers feel ripped off -- both the consumers who buy a useless new console, and the consumers who spent their money on the inferior old console.
With the Xbox 360, however, it's a different deal. None of the upgrades are going to effect the gaming capabilities of the Xbox. Even the hard-drive limitation won't stop you from playing any games. What you get with an upgraded Xbox is a more capable box for movies and general home entertainment.
On the other hand, despite this being a good technical idea, Microsoft is most likely going to flub it like they did with 6 editions of Vista. If Microsoft does flub it, people will worry about which edition of the Xbox they should buy, and hold off purchasing altogether.
Ultimately? Social compacts backed up by force. Nobody will notice if they disregard your "ownership" of the world. But they will get their asses sued if they ignore copyright. If you want your ownership of the world to be taken seriously, start investing in a big army.
Trusted Computing is only bad if the owner of the hardware does not have control over the software on the machine, the hardware keys etc.
It's not always bad even then. It depends who the owner of the machine is. If the owner is someone who is easy to socially engineer (90% of users, I'm sure -- Come look at the dancing bears!), then a behemoth corporation is in effect the system administrator for all those people, and locking down machines by allowing only signed applications can make sense. Most people aren't computer savvy and pretending that they are isn't a sane way to make decisions about the computer ecosystem.
Windows Update isn't an enterprise-class solution. Again, makes regression impossible. Push your own solution with the Microsoft-provided hotfix packages, or sneakernet them.
Vista is a pretty good operating system. The worst things about it are that: 1) it's new. And that's it. (You have my permission to ignore anybody who talks about "the horrible DRM in Vista" as a raving loon.) Vista is nicer operating system than XP in lots of ways. Yes, it's new and breaks things, but that is the price of change for any OS. (Don't whine to me about how Linux never breaks, you haven't been using it as long as I have.)
However, I hope that the uproar against Vista will teach Microsoft something. "Same old" isn't good enough any more. There are too many alternatives now. People are not going to satisfied with minor improvements any more.
I personally wish that Vista had never happened. An OS is just something for controlling your hardware and running more than one program at the same time. Another service pack for XP would have been preferable to Vista. Vista is better than XP, but not nearly enough better.
The worst thing about Vista isn't a problem with Vista -- it's a problem with Microsoft: there are 6 editions. If Microsoft had released a single edition there would be a lot less to gripe about.
Responsible firmware updates don't brick hardware. For example, an update can run a checksum on essential system files before applying itself. Not doing so when you know beforehand about bricking problems (which Apple announced it did) is either A) incompetent, or B) malicious.
So is Apple incompetent at making software, or are they malicious towards their users? I think we all have a pretty good idea which one it is.
You see, after selling you something, Apple doesn't own it anymore, you do. Apple's contract with AT&T does not give them the right to destroy unlocked phones not owned by them.
I called up my girlfriend to tell her about this. I hope she's having better luck listening to it on her Mac than I am on Vista -- the free Realplayer seems to think it's being installed as a restricted user even when it's not. Good testing, Real.
Maybe I'll download all the gray codecs and listen to this on one of my Linux boxes. Or I'll look around for Real Alternative, if it's still being hacked on.
Seen the same thing here. Lots of attacks on our Linux servers. We've had individual user accounts compromised through captured.ssh keys (from a compromised off-site machine), unupdated php websites, and badly coded cgi scripts. Nothing that has gotten root, but still a pain to deal with. Shared hosting of university web sites is lots of fun, ain't it?
It's impossible to make long-term power sources from radioisotopes? Uh oh, somebody better tell the CIA that their spy satellites are going to start falling out of the sky any day now.
The article is actually better than the slashdot headline -- it gives reasons why nuclear laptop batteries seem to be commercially impractical (though I can imagine military applications), but doesn't call them an unscientific myth.
Of course, this will devolve into disinformation where people believe that even the third party application hacks also might void the warranty or "damage" the phone, or that Apple is purposely "damaging" phones that are unlocked, and then villainously not honoring the warranties just to "stick it" to them, when in reality it's nothing of the sort...so I expect it to be a big bad press brouhaha when the first people get their phones bricked.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not how I read the article. They've certainly received one prototype and possibly some of the initial batches.
Regardless, what would that matter? They've probably been planning to install (pirated) Windows on these machines ever since they made the order. This was a way to avoid having to pay the Windows tax.
Yeah, it's completely impossible that they received their computers, were dissatisfied with Linux because it wasn't what they were used to, and decided to wipe the drives and install (no doubt pirated) Windows on it. It has to be Microsoft's evil blackmail machine.
Yes, so you want Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc., to all tailor their search engines to obey Wikipedia's special tags? Ah, yeah, I'll get back to you on that.
HL2 was all right, but the combat was never all that interesting to me. It was a bit of an endurance trial more than something kinetic and fun. Head crabs just aren't very fun to fight. The ammo limitations took more away from the game than they added to it. (See Serious Sam for how it should be done.)
Your argument is one of the silliest that I've come across. If lots of non-notable articles make it in, what's the problem? Just tag them as non-notable and move on. That way you don't have to bother with all the arguments and bureaucracy, and there isn't really a downside, as long as things get tagged (or moved if that's how they want to do it).
I don't think you read enough Slashdot. The Supreme Court has made it pretty clear that the first amendment is only here to protect pornographers.
The problem with upgrading consoles is that you suddenly have two hardware platforms. Do game designers design for the old platform, and limit their features, or do they design for the new platform and limit their audience? They will almost invariably choose the first. Therefore uptake on the new console is low, and consumers feel ripped off -- both the consumers who buy a useless new console, and the consumers who spent their money on the inferior old console.
With the Xbox 360, however, it's a different deal. None of the upgrades are going to effect the gaming capabilities of the Xbox. Even the hard-drive limitation won't stop you from playing any games. What you get with an upgraded Xbox is a more capable box for movies and general home entertainment.
On the other hand, despite this being a good technical idea, Microsoft is most likely going to flub it like they did with 6 editions of Vista. If Microsoft does flub it, people will worry about which edition of the Xbox they should buy, and hold off purchasing altogether.
Ultimately? Social compacts backed up by force. Nobody will notice if they disregard your "ownership" of the world. But they will get their asses sued if they ignore copyright. If you want your ownership of the world to be taken seriously, start investing in a big army.
Is it? I may have been talking about Microsoft and 90% of home users.
"Don't get exposed to new genes," you should have said.
I don't know about you, but when I decide that I'm going to whine about Microsoft, I'll pick something that actually matters.
Vista is a pretty good operating system. The worst things about it are that: 1) it's new. And that's it. (You have my permission to ignore anybody who talks about "the horrible DRM in Vista" as a raving loon.) Vista is nicer operating system than XP in lots of ways. Yes, it's new and breaks things, but that is the price of change for any OS. (Don't whine to me about how Linux never breaks, you haven't been using it as long as I have.)
However, I hope that the uproar against Vista will teach Microsoft something. "Same old" isn't good enough any more. There are too many alternatives now. People are not going to satisfied with minor improvements any more.
I personally wish that Vista had never happened. An OS is just something for controlling your hardware and running more than one program at the same time. Another service pack for XP would have been preferable to Vista. Vista is better than XP, but not nearly enough better.
The worst thing about Vista isn't a problem with Vista -- it's a problem with Microsoft: there are 6 editions. If Microsoft had released a single edition there would be a lot less to gripe about.
Responsible firmware updates don't brick hardware. For example, an update can run a checksum on essential system files before applying itself. Not doing so when you know beforehand about bricking problems (which Apple announced it did) is either A) incompetent, or B) malicious.
So is Apple incompetent at making software, or are they malicious towards their users? I think we all have a pretty good idea which one it is.
You see, after selling you something, Apple doesn't own it anymore, you do. Apple's contract with AT&T does not give them the right to destroy unlocked phones not owned by them.
I called up my girlfriend to tell her about this. I hope she's having better luck listening to it on her Mac than I am on Vista -- the free Realplayer seems to think it's being installed as a restricted user even when it's not. Good testing, Real.
Maybe I'll download all the gray codecs and listen to this on one of my Linux boxes. Or I'll look around for Real Alternative, if it's still being hacked on.
Seen the same thing here. Lots of attacks on our Linux servers. We've had individual user accounts compromised through captured .ssh keys (from a compromised off-site machine), unupdated php websites, and badly coded cgi scripts. Nothing that has gotten root, but still a pain to deal with. Shared hosting of university web sites is lots of fun, ain't it?
Most likely explanation: No computers were stolen. Probably nothing but information was stolen.
It's impossible to make long-term power sources from radioisotopes? Uh oh, somebody better tell the CIA that their spy satellites are going to start falling out of the sky any day now.
The article is actually better than the slashdot headline -- it gives reasons why nuclear laptop batteries seem to be commercially impractical (though I can imagine military applications), but doesn't call them an unscientific myth.
You could do it in hardware. If hardware lists the hash of the binary of each VM running on the system on a niftly LCD screen, the problem goes away.