In past years, the exam has been based on C++ (1 year) and Pascal (around 10 years).
I think the poster may have his numbers confused. It was in C++ for as long as I can remember (up until the change to Java of course). I took both the A and AB tests a number of years back and both were in C++. In fact, my teacher also took the exam when he was in high school (only the A test was offered then) and even then it was in C++.
See, that's where you're wrong, and where the beauty of open source comes into light. There won't be a new "linux." Linux isn't anything more than a kernel running a huge massive conglomeration of open source software.
Even if a whole "new" kernel is written (not likely unless computers completely and utterly change their whole construction) the entire look and feel of the resulting system will be extremely similar due to the enormous dependance on GNU/GPL software. The whole UNIX platform has changed very little in the last fiftyish years, and nothing short of a complete architecture overhaul is going to change that.
The article on thermal paste is quite interesting, such advances are sure to aid in the cooling levels for the near future. However, I often wonder why there hasn't been much development in the way of devising viable (read: cheap) alternative cooling solutions (e.g water/fliud, air piping, effective passive cooling). It seems that the now archaic heatsink/fan just isn't cutting it anymore, at least down to a bearable level that is (the amount of noise my cpu fan creates is ridiculous).
Part of this is the chip maker's fault, for running the chip too hot/fast. Likewise, part of the fault rests on the case/fan manufacturers, as the cases become increasingly smaller, dealing with cooling becomes harder, as there is less space to work in.
It is getting to the point where I feel that my peace of mind with regards to noise is well worth the sacrifice of speed. After all, I don't need the full power of my cpu most of the time, just when compiling/rendering/encoding. The cpu just isn't the bottleneck anymore, and it's useless to continue in this speed race, not until the other system components catch up. Why doesn't the industry work together to create a better solution? It's high time I'm rid of the constant roar of these machines.
Why bother cracking NT (and Win2K/XP) passwords when you can just overwrite them?
Why would you even bother to overwrite them? Just boot to DOS and read/copy at will. Apparenly, none of the information at your work is encrypted, otherwise you would not be able to just overwrite the password.
As you know, all encrypted files with NTFS require the creator's password to unlock. There is a reason to crack the passwords, because if security was employed as tightly as possible, simply overwriting them with a floppy will not be enough. Just because you can login as admin doesn't mean you can access all the files. If any of those people that left were savvy enough to encrypt any files, you've essentially locked yourself out of reading those by changing the password.
You're more than correct. It really isn't for his pocket. Why do you think ms hasn't released any real dividends all these years, 8 cents per share is nothing. It's because of the enormous stake Bill has in ms. he's got near 12% of all outstanding shares. Thus, if he releases dividends, 12% goes straight to him, out of the equity of the company, to be taxed at 40%ish by the federal government. He's not an idiot, this proposition would result in Bill having to pay close to $500 million more in taxes. Why would he want to do that when the money could be better spent within the company's equity.
It's really quite a shock to hear this, but heck I'll be happy, I've got 400 shares myself.;)
>>I fail to see where there is a privacy implication here.
I know that in this case the availibity of the DNA bank was a great aid (seemingly the real big lead in this case) which helped the police find a suspect. The story says that the DNA they found matched a teenager who was known to the police. Though the statement is quite vague, it hints that the police had taken a sample and had not yet submitted it to Britian's national database, as there were no immediate matches. As much as I hate such a database even existing, the fact that in this case, the teen's DNA didn't show up in the database, and somehow police "knew" whose it belonged to really feels like foul play. It must be against regulation to keep DNA local without submission to the database. How could they possibly have known that it belonged to the teen? Isn't it a violation of the teen's rights to be used as a link to the killer? Fingerprints are completely unique (minus identical twins of course), but DNA is hereditary, which inmho should be considered a defninte breach of privacy if a relative is used to tunnel in and point to you. Your crime is your crime, it seems somewhat outrageous that your relatives could help incriminate you just because they're your relatives, providing no other evidence other than blood.
The privacy implication is that the police used DNA of a completely unrelated party (whose DNA wasn't even on the database I might add) to incrimiate this suspect. Here we have a relative with no connection to the crime being used as the connection to the suspect. If they are allowed to do this, what prevents the police from making relation maps (parents, siblings, spouses, cousins, etc...) of the people they have DNA for. That way, they could use a partial match from a distant cousin (who is in the database) and thus assign probabilities of guilt to the suspects. Come now, the line must be drawn somewhere.That, my dear sir, is the privacy issue.
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In past years, the exam has been based on C++ (1 year) and Pascal (around 10 years).
I think the poster may have his numbers confused. It was in C++ for as long as I can remember (up until the change to Java of course). I took both the A and AB tests a number of years back and both were in C++. In fact, my teacher also took the exam when he was in high school (only the A test was offered then) and even then it was in C++.
it makes me wonder what will be the New Linux
See, that's where you're wrong, and where the beauty of open source comes into light. There won't be a new "linux." Linux isn't anything more than a kernel running a huge massive conglomeration of open source software.
Even if a whole "new" kernel is written (not likely unless computers completely and utterly change their whole construction) the entire look and feel of the resulting system will be extremely similar due to the enormous dependance on GNU/GPL software. The whole UNIX platform has changed very little in the last fiftyish years, and nothing short of a complete architecture overhaul is going to change that.
The article on thermal paste is quite interesting, such advances are sure to aid in the cooling levels for the near future. However, I often wonder why there hasn't been much development in the way of devising viable (read: cheap) alternative cooling solutions (e.g water/fliud, air piping, effective passive cooling). It seems that the now archaic heatsink/fan just isn't cutting it anymore, at least down to a bearable level that is (the amount of noise my cpu fan creates is ridiculous).
Part of this is the chip maker's fault, for running the chip too hot/fast. Likewise, part of the fault rests on the case/fan manufacturers, as the cases become increasingly smaller, dealing with cooling becomes harder, as there is less space to work in.
It is getting to the point where I feel that my peace of mind with regards to noise is well worth the sacrifice of speed. After all, I don't need the full power of my cpu most of the time, just when compiling/rendering/encoding. The cpu just isn't the bottleneck anymore, and it's useless to continue in this speed race, not until the other system components catch up. Why doesn't the industry work together to create a better solution? It's high time I'm rid of the constant roar of these machines.
Why bother cracking NT (and Win2K/XP) passwords when you can just overwrite them?
Why would you even bother to overwrite them? Just boot to DOS and read/copy at will. Apparenly, none of the information at your work is encrypted, otherwise you would not be able to just overwrite the password.
As you know, all encrypted files with NTFS require the creator's password to unlock. There is a reason to crack the passwords, because if security was employed as tightly as possible, simply overwriting them with a floppy will not be enough. Just because you can login as admin doesn't mean you can access all the files. If any of those people that left were savvy enough to encrypt any files, you've essentially locked yourself out of reading those by changing the password.
You're more than correct. It really isn't for his pocket. Why do you think ms hasn't released any real dividends all these years, 8 cents per share is nothing. It's because of the enormous stake Bill has in ms. he's got near 12% of all outstanding shares. Thus, if he releases dividends, 12% goes straight to him, out of the equity of the company, to be taxed at 40%ish by the federal government. He's not an idiot, this proposition would result in Bill having to pay close to $500 million more in taxes. Why would he want to do that when the money could be better spent within the company's equity.
;)
It's really quite a shock to hear this, but heck I'll be happy, I've got 400 shares myself.
>>I fail to see where there is a privacy implication here.
I know that in this case the availibity of the DNA bank was a great aid (seemingly the real big lead in this case) which helped the police find a suspect. The story says that the DNA they found matched a teenager who was known to the police. Though the statement is quite vague, it hints that the police had taken a sample and had not yet submitted it to Britian's national database, as there were no immediate matches. As much as I hate such a database even existing, the fact that in this case, the teen's DNA didn't show up in the database, and somehow police "knew" whose it belonged to really feels like foul play. It must be against regulation to keep DNA local without submission to the database. How could they possibly have known that it belonged to the teen? Isn't it a violation of the teen's rights to be used as a link to the killer? Fingerprints are completely unique (minus identical twins of course), but DNA is hereditary, which inmho should be considered a defninte breach of privacy if a relative is used to tunnel in and point to you. Your crime is your crime, it seems somewhat outrageous that your relatives could help incriminate you just because they're your relatives, providing no other evidence other than blood.
The privacy implication is that the police used DNA of a completely unrelated party (whose DNA wasn't even on the database I might add) to incrimiate this suspect. Here we have a relative with no connection to the crime being used as the connection to the suspect. If they are allowed to do this, what prevents the police from making relation maps (parents, siblings, spouses, cousins, etc...) of the people they have DNA for. That way, they could use a partial match from a distant cousin (who is in the database) and thus assign probabilities of guilt to the suspects. Come now, the line must be drawn somewhere.That, my dear sir, is the privacy issue.