Even existing translation programs could benefit from a ranking system. Wouldn't it be helpful if you could tell just how confident the translator is about a certain phrase or word? That way, you could rephrase your sentence before you foolishly ask someone to "taste" you....
You're going to tell me that Bill Gates' Daughter downloads MP3s from Kazaa? HA!
If Bill gates is the Richest man in America, then his daughter is the most SPOILED BRAT in America. She wouldn't download MP3s, she would *BUY* the CDs. She mentions to Daddy that she likes the new smashmouth disc, and Bill hires Smashmouth to play at her slumber party.
Apologies to the artist formerly known as Prince..
on
The Impending IP Crisis
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs."
I imagine that the Kessel run is from one planet (or space station, or "BASE") to another. Planets are constantly orbiting their stars, and there is a lot of other interstellar material floating around. Maybe Han was just lucky enough to make the Kessel run when the 2 planets were closest together, or maybe he sucessfully navigated an asteroid field. What are the odds of that?
I see no mention of an IR blaster (or campatible) unit sold with this, or even the option for it. If it won't AUTOMATICALLY tuen my cable box on, tune to the correct channel, and record the show, then it's just an expensive digital VCR. I'll use my VHS, thank you very much.
Yeah, LCDs outsold CRTs, but how many of the LCD owners are unsatisfied with their slower responding pixels and limited viewing angle?
Every day where I work, users are saying they want an LCD monitor for their workstation. Of course, we have no money in the budget for that, so I have to tell them 'no', but they don't know that the LCDs have downfalls. They just think that they are 'Cool'.
How do you know that the monitoring is without consent? Just because a first level technician didn't know anything about it? These servers could have been placed by the ISP, or maybe its parent company, or even the US government.
The MicroSoft "Home of the future" was burned to the ground last night. The fire started in the CPU closet, and quickly spread to the rest of the house. Fire suppression systems were not activated due to an apparently faulty heat sensor.
The local Fire Department said that overclocking could have been the cause of the blaze.
I friend of mine just bought an Archos MP3 player (no video). He is now on his third one. The first one had a fault where sometimes it would just stop playing. Also, when you turned it off, you could still hear the hard drive trying to do something (constantly!). The only thing worse than an MP3 player that will not run is one that will not STOP!
The second player would not read from the HD fast enough, and would cause the codec to repeat. It sounds like the QA on these things is a little lacking, or maybe there was an entire shipment that had bad HDs or something.
I used to work for a small computer company (ten years ago, mind you). There I saw all brands of hard drives fail, but the brand that failed the least seemed to be Western Digital. I would recommend WD drives to anybody at that time.
Connor drives were still around, before they were bought out by Seagate, and they even had compatibility problems WITH OTHER CONNOR DRIVES. Maxtor drives boasted 8k of internal cache (try not to laugh too much) which made them faster than most drives, but I found that they were the most fragile. I first saw a Quantum drive when a customer specifically ordered one. He had read a review that said it was a really high performance drive at the time. Sadly, it was a FIREBALL, and it was returned 3 months later because one of the ASICs burned up. (It literally turned into a Fireball!)
When places like Wal-Mart started to carry hard disks, it seemed that the only brand they had was MAXTOR. I thought maybe they LIKE to get returns, or maybe Maxtor had become a little more reliable. This incident just makes me feel better about my decision to use WD only.
Sure, it might work in the lab, under a particular set of conditions.... But there could be work arounds that the bios may not take into consideration. In order for the bios to ping the server, I would surmise that it would need direct access to the NIC card. This particular laptop probably has one built in, and that's fine.
What if the theif never uses it?
He could use a PCMCIA NIC of a different brand. He could use a USB NIC. Maybe even one of those parallel port Frankensteins. Would the bios be able to support the necessary low-level drivers for something like that? It's been my experience that it's actually *DIFFICULT* to get drivers to work sometimes. They don't usually work BY ACCIDENT. Oh well, maybe the bios waits for you to boot, and hooks into your OS.
Hmmm... How does it do that? Does it know what OS I am running? What if I am running Linux? or OS/2? Or Windows 3.11? Or something even more strange that might exist?
What if Phoenix gets bought out? What if the economy causes them to drop support for this feature? What if my laptop just plain outlives the life of this service?
This is just plain Not a Good Idea. There are currently other methods to deal with the problem. Methods that exist right now. It could be a corporate policy prohibiting unencrypted secrets. It could be a pair of handcuffs attached to the laptop. It's just a dumb idea to implement all this stuff IN THE BIOS when a better solution would be to properly secure the data and equipment in the first place.
Slashdot has less of an effect because you can simply walk away from it at any time, and when you return, pick up right where you left off. In an interactive game, you would be hesitant to just depart, forfeiting any lead or advantage you might have in the game. You would probably say "Just a sec..." as you wait for a break in the action. Turn-based games might also elicit pressure from the other players for you to return to the game, rather than actually working.
I have nothing against games in the workplace... As long as they are text based and time independant single player games.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if they will outsource support to the US....
Even existing translation programs could benefit from a ranking system. Wouldn't it be helpful if you could tell just how confident the translator is about a certain phrase or word? That way, you could rephrase your sentence before you foolishly ask someone to "taste" you....
You're going to tell me that Bill Gates' Daughter downloads MP3s from Kazaa? HA!
If Bill gates is the Richest man in America, then his daughter is the most SPOILED BRAT in America.
She wouldn't download MP3s, she would *BUY* the CDs.
She mentions to Daddy that she likes the new smashmouth disc, and Bill hires Smashmouth to play at her slumber party.
I'm gonna subnet like it's 255.255.255.254.
"It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs."
I imagine that the Kessel run is from one planet (or space station, or "BASE") to another. Planets are constantly orbiting their stars, and there is a lot of other interstellar material floating around. Maybe Han was just lucky enough to make the Kessel run when the 2 planets were closest together, or maybe he sucessfully navigated an asteroid field. What are the odds of that?
I see no mention of an IR blaster (or campatible) unit sold with this, or even the option for it. If it won't AUTOMATICALLY tuen my cable box on, tune to the correct channel, and record the show, then it's just an expensive digital VCR. I'll use my VHS, thank you very much.
"Hey, Quaid! It's me, remember? Bennie's the name. I'm gonna drill you, sucka!"
Yeah, LCDs outsold CRTs, but how many of the LCD owners are unsatisfied with their slower responding pixels and limited viewing angle?
Every day where I work, users are saying they want an LCD monitor for their workstation. Of course, we have no money in the budget for that, so I have to tell them 'no', but they don't know that the LCDs have downfalls. They just think that they are 'Cool'.
If it cannot keep Orville and Wilbur Wright away from the airspace, it's no damn good.
Maybe I should trademark the letter 'E'.
Interesting.... About 6 months ago, I approached a Wells Fargo ATM just in time to see it reboot. It was running NT 4.0 Service pack 5.
The interesting part being the diversity of the OS on the ATM.
How do you know that the monitoring is without consent? Just because a first level technician didn't know anything about it?
These servers could have been placed by the ISP, or maybe its parent company, or even the US government.
I'm Gummi, dammit!
I don't think I would enjoy getting smacked upside the spacecraft by a cable going 25,000 MPH faster than me.
Can anyone say whiplash?
The MicroSoft "Home of the future" was burned to the ground last night. The fire started in the CPU closet, and quickly spread to the rest of the house. Fire suppression systems were not activated due to an apparently faulty heat sensor.
The local Fire Department said that overclocking could have been the cause of the blaze.
Perhaps this would set a precedent where you could pay $12,000 to never be sued by the RIAA again. For some of us, it would be totally worth it.
I friend of mine just bought an Archos MP3 player (no video). He is now on his third one. The first one had a fault where sometimes it would just stop playing. Also, when you turned it off, you could still hear the hard drive trying to do something (constantly!). The only thing worse than an MP3 player that will not run is one that will not STOP!
The second player would not read from the HD fast enough, and would cause the codec to repeat.
It sounds like the QA on these things is a little lacking, or maybe there was an entire shipment that had bad HDs or something.
Gasoline is a tool for ARSON!
I used to work for a small computer company (ten years ago, mind you). There I saw all brands of hard drives fail, but the brand that failed the least seemed to be Western Digital. I would recommend WD drives to anybody at that time.
Connor drives were still around, before they were bought out by Seagate, and they even had compatibility problems WITH OTHER CONNOR DRIVES. Maxtor drives boasted 8k of internal cache (try not to laugh too much) which made them faster than most drives, but I found that they were the most fragile.
I first saw a Quantum drive when a customer specifically ordered one. He had read a review that said it was a really high performance drive at the time. Sadly, it was a FIREBALL, and it was returned 3 months later because one of the ASICs burned up. (It literally turned into a Fireball!)
When places like Wal-Mart started to carry hard disks, it seemed that the only brand they had was MAXTOR. I thought maybe they LIKE to get returns, or maybe Maxtor had become a little more reliable. This incident just makes me feel better about my decision to use WD only.
Sure, it might work in the lab, under a particular set of conditions.... But there could be work arounds that the bios may not take into consideration. In order for the bios to ping the server, I would surmise that it would need direct access to the NIC card. This particular laptop probably has one built in, and that's fine.
What if the theif never uses it?
He could use a PCMCIA NIC of a different brand. He could use a USB NIC. Maybe even one of those parallel port Frankensteins.
Would the bios be able to support the necessary low-level drivers for something like that? It's been my experience that it's actually *DIFFICULT* to get drivers to work sometimes. They don't usually work BY ACCIDENT. Oh well, maybe the bios waits for you to boot, and hooks into your OS.
Hmmm... How does it do that?
Does it know what OS I am running? What if I am running Linux? or OS/2? Or Windows 3.11? Or something even more strange that might exist?
What if Phoenix gets bought out? What if the economy causes them to drop support for this feature? What if my laptop just plain outlives the life of this service?
This is just plain Not a Good Idea. There are currently other methods to deal with the problem. Methods that exist right now. It could be a corporate policy prohibiting unencrypted secrets. It could be a pair of handcuffs attached to the laptop. It's just a dumb idea to implement all this stuff IN THE BIOS when a better solution would be to properly secure the data and equipment in the first place.
Just imagine the shipping costs if you have to send it back for service!
I haven't even seen the MOVIE yet...
There is no money in patenting the guilty or innocent pleas... You should patent something like a filibuster...
Slashdot has less of an effect because you can simply walk away from it at any time, and when you return, pick up right where you left off. In an interactive game, you would be hesitant to just depart, forfeiting any lead or advantage you might have in the game. You would probably say "Just a sec..." as you wait for a break in the action.
:)
Turn-based games might also elicit pressure from the other players for you to return to the game, rather than actually working.
I have nothing against games in the workplace... As long as they are text based and time independant single player games.