"Hope you're not saying Macs aren't general purpose."
No. I'm sorry, I *really* should have clarified that point in my original post.
A lot of people out there by their machines for what they can do down the road, as opposed to what they can do right this second. Mac is virtually non-existent in the computer retail space. If it appears that there isn't a barrage of new stuff headed for it, it's hard to buy it under the idea that it'll be general purpose outside of what already comes with it.
That's what I had in mind, sorry I didn't express it before.
"Or, one could buy a Mac and forget about it entirely... "
You can forget about a lot entirely if you go that route. Not saying Mac is unusuable, but computers are general purpose machines, and the more general, the more attractive they are.
"Everyone in your family should be lined up and shot."
What about families that use a whiteboard to leave notes for each other? What about people who make local phone calls? What about... ah I'm outta steam. Figure as long as we're taking to illogical extremes...
"What ever happened to just screaming/yelling down a hallway?"
Hey dad!! DAAAAAAAAD! Go to ay ess kay dot ess el ay ess H (I don't know how to spell H) dee oh tee dot oh ar gee slash see oh em em ee eh tee ess dot pee el question mark es eye dee equals 91426 and symbol see eye dee equals 7867909... that comment was really funny! What? Emai? Okay.
"Because I have a computer at work, three computers at home, and regularly visit slashdot at other locations, all of which require logging in or otherwise maintaining a cookie, and requires the use of yet another password and username, all for to accomplish the ostensibly simple task of reading an article. "
"You most certainly do -- the NYTimes requires a valid email address, and giving it to them is a sure-fire way to increase your daily spam intake. "
This is not true. They do not verify your address. Bet you didn't even try. So what's your real motivation. Trying to show off for Slashdot, maybe get a lil karma? Lazy? Bad experience you didn't want to share with us? Trying to sound intelligent by having an extreme opinion?
"I think it was a joke. And if anything, it makes fun of e-mail more than it does AOL. "
The topic is AOL and spam, which is a form of e-mail. How is this off-topic? Why was this modded down? Could have used this point to mod an interesting/funny post up.
" If they were spamming me by sending me actual hot wet nubile asian cheerleader teens willing to do my every bidding I'd have precious few complaints. "
Oh... her again? I think I'm going to go wash my hair.
This is not insightful. I spent many years doing tech support, and I've only been able to use this line once:
"Here is the answer as it is printed in the manual..."
Once. Our manual isn't the best ever written, but it wasn't bad. A lot of the problems that came up were a combination of unusual circumstances and the occasional defect in our software. It cannot be expected for the manual to cover interaction with products that didn't exist at the time of writing. Our software used VFW codecs. Our manual couldn't have predicted that our software wouldn't see DivX's bitrate option.
" However privlidge separation on a Unix box would prevent a harmful payload in a worm of this sort, unless the user was running as root."
Could you elaborate on this a little? From what little I understand of permissions in *nix, this might prevent data from being written in the wrong spot (i.e. overwriting of system files), but would it prevent a headless app from running and sending out messages to other machines?
Ah if only application firewalls were standard issue like virus scanners. At least Microsoft's forcing that evolution to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
When I posted that, I had a legitimate username and password, no verification. TRY IT.
Relax dude, my comment wasn't an attack on Apple.
Thank you for the clarification.
Aren't GPS systems built to avoid recieving false readings? Encryption? Fault detection?
"Isn't it effectively flat-rate pricing when they give you X minutes for Y dollars a month?"
Not when they economize by cutting convos short.
"Hope you're not saying Macs aren't general purpose."
No. I'm sorry, I *really* should have clarified that point in my original post.
A lot of people out there by their machines for what they can do down the road, as opposed to what they can do right this second. Mac is virtually non-existent in the computer retail space. If it appears that there isn't a barrage of new stuff headed for it, it's hard to buy it under the idea that it'll be general purpose outside of what already comes with it.
That's what I had in mind, sorry I didn't express it before.
"Damn. A movie player for a gameboy. It almost can do what a full computer can do.."
Too bad a full computer can't do what a GameBoy can do. Fit in your pocket.
"Or, one could buy a Mac and forget about it entirely... "
You can forget about a lot entirely if you go that route. Not saying Mac is unusuable, but computers are general purpose machines, and the more general, the more attractive they are.
"Everyone in your family should be lined up and shot."
What about families that use a whiteboard to leave notes for each other? What about people who make local phone calls? What about... ah I'm outta steam. Figure as long as we're taking to illogical extremes...
"This technology also transmits location information as metadata. "
Don't forget time of day!
"It's 2am in the morning! STFU!!!"
"What ever happened to just screaming/yelling down a hallway?"
Hey dad!! DAAAAAAAAD! Go to ay ess kay dot ess el ay ess H (I don't know how to spell H) dee oh tee dot oh ar gee slash see oh em em ee eh tee ess dot pee el question mark es eye dee equals 91426 and symbol see eye dee equals 7867909... that comment was really funny! What? Emai? Okay.
"Because I have a computer at work, three computers at home, and regularly visit slashdot at other locations, all of which require logging in or otherwise maintaining a cookie, and requires the use of yet another password and username, all for to accomplish the ostensibly simple task of reading an article. "
Bitch to NYT, not Slashdot.
"You most certainly do -- the NYTimes requires a valid email address, and giving it to them is a sure-fire way to increase your daily spam intake. "
This is not true. They do not verify your address. Bet you didn't even try. So what's your real motivation. Trying to show off for Slashdot, maybe get a lil karma? Lazy? Bad experience you didn't want to share with us? Trying to sound intelligent by having an extreme opinion?
"Well, I for one don't enjoy tossing my information about willy-nilly just to read an article."
1.) They don't do anything to verify that it's legit.
2.) BFD.
"Hey editors, we can smell when you have product placements as "news". Please, at least note that in the story."
If it's interesting, who cares if it's an ad?
Ads aren't automatically bad.
"A high power transmitter system that blankets a plane's GPS receiver with pre-calculated gps data."
Admittedly, I don't know a whole lot about GPS, but wouldn't they need a satellite in the right place in orbit to do this?
Clarification, please.
" well I guess a spammer could make a program to collect the names in those chat rooms. Then later on spam you... "
AOL is big enough that a dictionary/brute force attack would be fruitful.
"I think it was a joke. And if anything, it makes fun of e-mail more than it does AOL. "
The topic is AOL and spam, which is a form of e-mail. How is this off-topic? Why was this modded down? Could have used this point to mod an interesting/funny post up.
" If they were spamming me by sending me actual hot wet nubile asian cheerleader teens willing to do my every bidding I'd have precious few complaints. "
Oh... her again? I think I'm going to go wash my hair.
The comet image looks a lot like the comet in the intro to Deep Space Nine. (Coincidently, there's a banner ad for DS9 on DVD...)
Sorry, I screwed up the italics tag. Shoulda previewed.
"Option 3: RTFM"
This is not insightful. I spent many years doing tech support, and I've only been able to use this line once:
"Here is the answer as it is printed in the manual..."
Once. Our manual isn't the best ever written, but it wasn't bad. A lot of the problems that came up were a combination of unusual circumstances and the occasional defect in our software. It cannot be expected for the manual to cover interaction with products that didn't exist at the time of writing. Our software used VFW codecs. Our manual couldn't have predicted that our software wouldn't see DivX's bitrate option.
" However privlidge separation on a Unix box would prevent a harmful payload in a worm of this sort, unless the user was running as root."
Could you elaborate on this a little? From what little I understand of permissions in *nix, this might prevent data from being written in the wrong spot (i.e. overwriting of system files), but would it prevent a headless app from running and sending out messages to other machines?
Ah if only application firewalls were standard issue like virus scanners. At least Microsoft's forcing that evolution to happen.
Serious question: What's to stop this type of exploit from affecting Linux or OSX?
" First, OS X does have pre-emptive multitasking."
That was part of the joke.
"Second, pre-emptive multitasking is unrelated to running multiple instances of a program."
Yes it does, though in this particular case may not be all that big of deal.
"Last, it just wasn't funny."
If you've ever seen a fanatic go apeshit over that argument, it is. Perhaps I'm in the minority here?
Can't please everybody.
"I didn't have a "-1, Unfunny" or "-1, Uninformative", so I had to use Overrated."
You could have just hit the reply button instead of wasting a mod point.
Damn. Modded down. Guess I forgot to put up the "It's a joke, don't take it too seriously" disclaimer.