Modular would be very good for this kind of software, look at the linux kernel as an example... Modules can be loaded at runtime, or disabled completely at compiletime... With typical office software, 99% of users would only have the core functionality and one or two modules loaded. Customised builds could build in the functions *they* require for performance, and remove unnecessary stuff completely.
I have always run a large number of services on a single unix system, sometimes splitting them up through the use of chroot, always isolating them from each other by running as different users... The only benefit i see from virtualization would be having each machine as a simple container that can be moved around different physical hardware, but then again copying a full linux install from one disk to another is not that hard, and unless you have a heavily customized kernel it should boot up just fine on a different machine.
Having individual apps isolated, so they could be moved to dedicated machines if the load increased would be useful, but chroot could buy that, on the other hand nothing i'm doing right now stresses 5 year old hardware so i could move the whole install to a newer more powerful machine.
Not exactly.. You have to explicitly acquire the JRE and install it, and the first version you install includes the firefox extension, subsequent updates may update functionality you already installed.
It's not like the JRE shipped by default with the OS, and the original version didn't include the firefox extension while subsequent updates bring this new functionality.
Why? noone is forcing the students to actually use the iphone for their personal communication... Chances are any university student in japan already has their own phone.
With the 360 you get a big dongle that gives you optical, component video and analog audio... When the HDMI connector is in use this dongle doesn't fit... But there is a smaller dongle that only does audio which does fit alongside the HDMI cable... I got one of each when i bought a 360 elite, but i guess some of the cheaper bundles don't come with it.
People buying a 40" monitor would expect a much better resolution than that offered by 1080p... Look at the resolutions supported by the high end displays from Apple for instance.
You can do audio over DVI too, i have a satellite receiver called a DM800 which does exactly that... DVI on the DM800 end, and HDMI on the TV end, audio works over it.
Do i really want to connect the xbox to the tv via ethernet? Wouldn't it be more useful to connect it to, let's say an ethernet switch? HDMI should stick to what it does with 1.3, video and sound, which is all the TV will require.... And there should still be the ability to split them out, my TV has fairly mediocre speakers and i would like to connect the sound output from my console to a separate amplifier.
You need to use a decent program for generating PDF files... If you use those crappy print to pdf programs you lose all the indexing, and some of them even insert the text as graphics so it can't be edited...
A decently generated pdf has a clickable index and is easily searchable, a poorly generated one is just a series of bitmap images.
Car manufacturers don't make their own radios... Car manufacturers are in fact more like Linux distributions, they take a huge bundle of third party components and package them together in their own uniquely styled branded unit. And i doubt there is any car manufacturer in the world that wouldn't consider bundling a radio from a different manufacturer if that manufacturer gave them a good deal.
On the other hand, Mozilla couldn't approach MS and ask for their browser to be bundled by default...
It was expensive because people were willing to pay that much, thus they increased their margins massively... Once they faced competition, prices came down significantly, yet they still make a huge profit because the actual cost is trivially low.
This is why competition is important, without it MS can charge what they like and consumers have no choice but to get screwed.
What you really want to do... Is offer "Ubuntu Basic" for $1, and "Ubuntu Pro" for $160, which is exactly the same software but comes with a better support package... That way, you have the cheap ubuntu for people who want to save money, and the expensive one for people who think more expensive = better.
Some of the competitors are free... IE is not free (in either sense of the word), it requires a windows license, which is also not free.
A monopoly of a closed product is always bad, wether that product is given away without cost or not. It causes stagnation, and locks out other players from the market.. The more sites that are tied to IE, the less useful macos, linux, iphones, set top boxes and all kinds of other non windows products become, resulting in overall damage to the market.
IE also completely stagnated while it had no serious competition...
Were mozilla a monopoly it would be a slightly better situation, since people could easily port the code to other platforms or make improvements to it, but still not good.
Having new standards created, wether by the w3c or browser makers can be a good thing, providing those standards are openly documented...
IE on the other hand, came up with its own ways of doing things which were intentionally not openly documented, and intentionally tied to windows.
Also, when a single piece of software has a monopoly progress stagnates... If IE had attained a monopoly before the existence of javascript then javascript would never have happened, look at how long IE completely stagnated until firefox became a serious threat...
Actually, the EU are not telling you what software can come with a new computer... More accurately, they are providing users more choice as to what software they can get.
Society is a tradeoff between regulations and freedom... Give people too much freedom and they will abuse it to take all freedom away from others - if you have no effective government then warlords will rule, typically with an iron fist and lots of fighting.. eventually one warlord will rise to the top and you'll have a totalitarian government. This is great for the warlord, but the average guy on the street now has virtually no freedom whatsoever.
Force MS to remove IE from windows, and then let OEMs bundle whatever browser they want... 99% of users receive windows preinstalled with a hardware purchase anyway, and most oems already bundle all kinds of stuff with their installs.
And before you bring up linux, this is exactly how linux works, Linus only distributes a kernel and it is up to third parties to bundle it together with other apps.
I doubt a cracker would use this, most of the features listed seem to appeal to non technical management types... Crackers (and for that matter more technical people other than crackers) are more likely to use john the ripper, which runs on more platforms, supports more cipher types, supports clustering etc.
Incidentally, the talk about "pre computed dictionary files" is a ridiculous idea, you turn a small dictionary, say 100 words, into a huge file consisting of 100 * * , and you end up storing thousands of hashes for salts not being used in the passwords you're trying to crack.. Yes sure, some password types are not salted, but these types are also generally very weak and a modern cpu may be able to compute them faster than it can spool from disk.
Because they want to be seen to be tough on... And cuba has nothing they really need. They would like to do the same with china and russia, but the big business lobbyists who pay for their political campaigns wouldn't like that. Cuba are just a scapegoat because noone that matters (read: noone with money) cares about them.
What do you think the north korean government tells people is the reason they can't have internet access? They won't say "because we are an evil controlling corrupt government", they will say "because foreign governments are trying to isolate you"... The people in north korea have no other source of information, so what will they believe?
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Modular would be very good for this kind of software, look at the linux kernel as an example...
Modules can be loaded at runtime, or disabled completely at compiletime... With typical office software, 99% of users would only have the core functionality and one or two modules loaded. Customised builds could build in the functions *they* require for performance, and remove unnecessary stuff completely.
More so in the windows world than unix...
I have always run a large number of services on a single unix system, sometimes splitting them up through the use of chroot, always isolating them from each other by running as different users... The only benefit i see from virtualization would be having each machine as a simple container that can be moved around different physical hardware, but then again copying a full linux install from one disk to another is not that hard, and unless you have a heavily customized kernel it should boot up just fine on a different machine.
Having individual apps isolated, so they could be moved to dedicated machines if the load increased would be useful, but chroot could buy that, on the other hand nothing i'm doing right now stresses 5 year old hardware so i could move the whole install to a newer more powerful machine.
Not exactly..
You have to explicitly acquire the JRE and install it, and the first version you install includes the firefox extension, subsequent updates may update functionality you already installed.
It's not like the JRE shipped by default with the OS, and the original version didn't include the firefox extension while subsequent updates bring this new functionality.
Why? noone is forcing the students to actually use the iphone for their personal communication... Chances are any university student in japan already has their own phone.
No, the 360's optical port is not blocked...
With the 360 you get a big dongle that gives you optical, component video and analog audio... When the HDMI connector is in use this dongle doesn't fit... But there is a smaller dongle that only does audio which does fit alongside the HDMI cable... I got one of each when i bought a 360 elite, but i guess some of the cheaper bundles don't come with it.
People buying a 40" monitor would expect a much better resolution than that offered by 1080p... Look at the resolutions supported by the high end displays from Apple for instance.
Streaming media capabilities built in to the TV would be quite useful... Unfortunately, they're more likely to use the functionality to implement DRM.
Wow, didn't know you could even get CRT based HDTV...
I still have a 24" SGI CRT and that's heavy enough.
You can do audio over DVI too, i have a satellite receiver called a DM800 which does exactly that... DVI on the DM800 end, and HDMI on the TV end, audio works over it.
Some videocards do that too i believe.
Do i really want to connect the xbox to the tv via ethernet?
Wouldn't it be more useful to connect it to, let's say an ethernet switch?
HDMI should stick to what it does with 1.3, video and sound, which is all the TV will require.... And there should still be the ability to split them out, my TV has fairly mediocre speakers and i would like to connect the sound output from my console to a separate amplifier.
You need to use a decent program for generating PDF files...
If you use those crappy print to pdf programs you lose all the indexing, and some of them even insert the text as graphics so it can't be edited...
A decently generated pdf has a clickable index and is easily searchable, a poorly generated one is just a series of bitmap images.
Litestep is based on Afterstep, which you can easily installed on Ubuntu...
Car manufacturers don't make their own radios...
Car manufacturers are in fact more like Linux distributions, they take a huge bundle of third party components and package them together in their own uniquely styled branded unit. And i doubt there is any car manufacturer in the world that wouldn't consider bundling a radio from a different manufacturer if that manufacturer gave them a good deal.
On the other hand, Mozilla couldn't approach MS and ask for their browser to be bundled by default...
IE6 was massively less standards compliant than mozilla 0.9, in fact it was less standards compliant than mozilla 0.6 which came out a year earlier...
Also, look at the gap between IE6 and IE7, massive stagnation because there was no serious competition at the time.
It was expensive because people were willing to pay that much, thus they increased their margins massively...
Once they faced competition, prices came down significantly, yet they still make a huge profit because the actual cost is trivially low.
This is why competition is important, without it MS can charge what they like and consumers have no choice but to get screwed.
Actually the US government won, then had a change of administration and decided to give up.
What you really want to do... Is offer "Ubuntu Basic" for $1, and "Ubuntu Pro" for $160, which is exactly the same software but comes with a better support package...
That way, you have the cheap ubuntu for people who want to save money, and the expensive one for people who think more expensive = better.
Some of the competitors are free...
IE is not free (in either sense of the word), it requires a windows license, which is also not free.
A monopoly of a closed product is always bad, wether that product is given away without cost or not. It causes stagnation, and locks out other players from the market.. The more sites that are tied to IE, the less useful macos, linux, iphones, set top boxes and all kinds of other non windows products become, resulting in overall damage to the market.
IE also completely stagnated while it had no serious competition...
Were mozilla a monopoly it would be a slightly better situation, since people could easily port the code to other platforms or make improvements to it, but still not good.
Having new standards created, wether by the w3c or browser makers can be a good thing, providing those standards are openly documented...
IE on the other hand, came up with its own ways of doing things which were intentionally not openly documented, and intentionally tied to windows.
Also, when a single piece of software has a monopoly progress stagnates... If IE had attained a monopoly before the existence of javascript then javascript would never have happened, look at how long IE completely stagnated until firefox became a serious threat...
Actually, the EU are not telling you what software can come with a new computer...
More accurately, they are providing users more choice as to what software they can get.
Society is a tradeoff between regulations and freedom... Give people too much freedom and they will abuse it to take all freedom away from others - if you have no effective government then warlords will rule, typically with an iron fist and lots of fighting.. eventually one warlord will rise to the top and you'll have a totalitarian government. This is great for the warlord, but the average guy on the street now has virtually no freedom whatsoever.
Force MS to remove IE from windows, and then let OEMs bundle whatever browser they want...
99% of users receive windows preinstalled with a hardware purchase anyway, and most oems already bundle all kinds of stuff with their installs.
And before you bring up linux, this is exactly how linux works, Linus only distributes a kernel and it is up to third parties to bundle it together with other apps.
I doubt a cracker would use this, most of the features listed seem to appeal to non technical management types...
Crackers (and for that matter more technical people other than crackers) are more likely to use john the ripper, which runs on more platforms, supports more cipher types, supports clustering etc.
Incidentally, the talk about "pre computed dictionary files" is a ridiculous idea, you turn a small dictionary, say 100 words, into a huge file consisting of 100 * * , and you end up storing thousands of hashes for salts not being used in the passwords you're trying to crack..
Yes sure, some password types are not salted, but these types are also generally very weak and a modern cpu may be able to compute them faster than it can spool from disk.
The world elects bad leaders because the political process attracts the greedy and power hungry...
Because they want to be seen to be tough on ... And cuba has nothing they really need. They would like to do the same with china and russia, but the big business lobbyists who pay for their political campaigns wouldn't like that. Cuba are just a scapegoat because noone that matters (read: noone with money) cares about them.
What do you think the north korean government tells people is the reason they can't have internet access?
They won't say "because we are an evil controlling corrupt government", they will say "because foreign governments are trying to isolate you"... The people in north korea have no other source of information, so what will they believe?