You don't expect anyone to write a story about acquiring used hard drives only to find a). nothing on them or b). loads of non-incriminating data on them, do you?
As an addendum, it appears that my perception of the HIV situation in Brasil was colored mostly by the situation developing in Rio Grande do Sul. Nationally, their infection rates are below 1%.
It makes me sad that we in the United States have Mexico on our southern border and are forced to deal with them as a trade partner and a "source of unexpected, cheap labor". Brasil may have it's problems*cough*Lula*cough* but I'd rather deal with them and their citizens than Mexico and Mexicans.
As for the state of the Real and its weakness as a unit of currency, I must agree that many nice things can be had in Brasil for small amounts of money. I acquired accomodations in a nice downtime hotel in Curitiba for around $18 per night last year. A suite of the same nature in a city like Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, etc would easily have cost around $100 a night. Gasoline, however, was NOT cheap there. It's a good thing I spent all my time there walking or riding in vehicles owned by other people.
I must object. Brasil is home to many beautiful and clean women. I can tell you from personal experience that it is quite possible to have intimate relations with a lady from Brasil without acquiring any sort of disease or ailment(other than depression when you have to fly home).
Brasil may have a lamtentable HIV problem, granted, but it certainly isn't in the same risk category as some Asian or African countries.
That being said, I severely doubt that many slashdotters will have much to fear from HIV infection rates in Brasil or in any other nation. There are exceptions, I suppose . . .
I haven't been through North Dakota, but South Dakota was nothing but one huge ad for Wall Drug. Argh. At least the black hills region was nice. I stayed in Spearfish for a night. It's a nifty little town in the spring/summer.
If you really want a good drive in the US, go to Montana. They have a speed limit now, which is a bummer, but the drive from Billings -> Bozeman -> Butte-> Helena is great. That's the same basic route Charles Kuralt used to go on about, as I recall. You can go to Great Falls too, from Helena, but it's not really worth the trouble.
Right, but will Longhorn be the last, great OS development MS needs to make? Or will they release a half-dozen Longhorn "upgrades" in the future that are nothing but GUI tweaks with essentially the same kernel architecture and same APIs?
If Longhorn really is a revolutionary OS, MS should be able to keep it "current" with patches to facilitate support for new hardware standards as they emerge and add GUI tweaks as needed. Will MS show any real interest in doing this?
It seems to me that they are doing this to compensate for the delayed release of Longhorn. Longhorn has already been pushed back to . . . what was it, 2007? I'm sure MS would much rather keep its customers hooked on its old operating systems than see them migrate to a non-Windows OS. This may also be an indicator that we should expect more Longhorn delays.
I agree that it might be more prudent for MS to shift towards a business model in which they sell support, but do remember that MS is notorious for repackaging one of their current OSes with superficial or pointless alterations and selling it as a new, superior product. WinME is a prime example of this behavior.
Let's face it people, it's the 21st century. Yakov Smirnov is a genius, but we must continue to refine the art of repetitious comedy. This is why I present to you . ..
IN BERKELY CALIFORNIA, a man in Dayton, Ohio interviews YOU!
Schneier's argument is explained quite well in his own article. It makes a lot of sense. Any introduction of a new, monolithic ID system will inevitably be compromised by way of forgeries(it WILL happen). As Schneier pointed out, the worst "forgeries" are legitimate IDs issued to people using false names. Cryptography doesn't stop social engineering.
If any such flawed system is implemented, and if this system is sold as being a new, secure measure against identity theft, crime, and terrorism, all security agencies will come to rely upon the new ID card as their verification document of choice. Increased trust in the system only makes forged/scammed national ID cards more powerful to those seeking to abuse the system.
Furthermore, one could easily argue that a monolithic ID system would make forgeries easier to concoct. If you were in the business of making forged identity cards/documents/etc, which would you rather face? Multiple layers of personal idenfitication(Social Security card, dozens of different driver's licenses, international driver's license, passports, etc), or one national ID card? You could easily simplify your business by focusing on forgery of one national ID card rather than waste your time producing a variety of different documents and cards for different purposes. The difficulty of creating a forgery of the natiolal ID card might be greater initially, but once someone has cracked it . . . well, you get the idea. We'd be stuck in a race between the government updating/upgrading ID cards to prevent forgery and charlatans cracking the ID card to enable forgery. Who will win? My money's on the "bad guys".
While I might be similarly inclined to question the value of emulating Win9x on PocketPCs, I must admit that such an emulation is more useful than, oh, I don't know . . . installing Linux on a dead badger.
Actually, according to this site, the F4 Phantom is still in use in Japan, Germany, Korea, Greece, and Turkey. Looks like the site was current at least through 2003.
It would probably cost too much(remember, PDAs are too expensive for him). He might drop it, causing damage. He might run out of batteries.
The only obvious solution that would truly meet his demanding criteria would be for him to compose all his notes into an epic poem which he could memorize as lines of song and that could be passed on from one generation to the next. Alternatively, he could just sign the damn thing over and over, thereby annoying the hell out of everyone else nearby.
Were he to survive the trip home, he could then dictate the poem to himself, or use voice recognition software on his home computer. His vocal cords might not be up to the task after all that signing, mind you.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't expect anyone to write a story about acquiring used hard drives only to find a). nothing on them or b). loads of non-incriminating data on them, do you?
As an addendum, it appears that my perception of the HIV situation in Brasil was colored mostly by the situation developing in Rio Grande do Sul. Nationally, their infection rates are below 1%.
Okay.
Hmm, I had seen different data . . . but it may have been old.
If that is the case, then all the better for Brasil.
It makes me sad that we in the United States have Mexico on our southern border and are forced to deal with them as a trade partner and a "source of unexpected, cheap labor". Brasil may have it's problems*cough*Lula*cough* but I'd rather deal with them and their citizens than Mexico and Mexicans.
As for the state of the Real and its weakness as a unit of currency, I must agree that many nice things can be had in Brasil for small amounts of money. I acquired accomodations in a nice downtime hotel in Curitiba for around $18 per night last year. A suite of the same nature in a city like Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, etc would easily have cost around $100 a night. Gasoline, however, was NOT cheap there. It's a good thing I spent all my time there walking or riding in vehicles owned by other people.
I must object. Brasil is home to many beautiful and clean women. I can tell you from personal experience that it is quite possible to have intimate relations with a lady from Brasil without acquiring any sort of disease or ailment(other than depression when you have to fly home).
Brasil may have a lamtentable HIV problem, granted, but it certainly isn't in the same risk category as some Asian or African countries.
That being said, I severely doubt that many slashdotters will have much to fear from HIV infection rates in Brasil or in any other nation. There are exceptions, I suppose . . .
I haven't been through North Dakota, but South Dakota was nothing but one huge ad for Wall Drug. Argh. At least the black hills region was nice. I stayed in Spearfish for a night. It's a nifty little town in the spring/summer.
If you really want a good drive in the US, go to Montana. They have a speed limit now, which is a bummer, but the drive from Billings -> Bozeman -> Butte-> Helena is great. That's the same basic route Charles Kuralt used to go on about, as I recall. You can go to Great Falls too, from Helena, but it's not really worth the trouble.
This is not the best Cube.
Right, but will Longhorn be the last, great OS development MS needs to make? Or will they release a half-dozen Longhorn "upgrades" in the future that are nothing but GUI tweaks with essentially the same kernel architecture and same APIs?
If Longhorn really is a revolutionary OS, MS should be able to keep it "current" with patches to facilitate support for new hardware standards as they emerge and add GUI tweaks as needed. Will MS show any real interest in doing this?
It seems to me that they are doing this to compensate for the delayed release of Longhorn. Longhorn has already been pushed back to . . . what was it, 2007? I'm sure MS would much rather keep its customers hooked on its old operating systems than see them migrate to a non-Windows OS. This may also be an indicator that we should expect more Longhorn delays.
I agree that it might be more prudent for MS to shift towards a business model in which they sell support, but do remember that MS is notorious for repackaging one of their current OSes with superficial or pointless alterations and selling it as a new, superior product. WinME is a prime example of this behavior.
Damn, so I did. Too bad they can't mod me "-1 Blind as Bat". I guess Flamebait will have to suffice for now.
I predict they'll get some footage like this.
Let's face it people, it's the 21st century. Yakov Smirnov is a genius, but we must continue to refine the art of repetitious comedy. This is why I present to you . . .
IN BERKELY CALIFORNIA, a man in Dayton, Ohio interviews YOU!
Cheat Commandos, rock, rock on!
Why not coal?. It could work out very well for us, you know. Better than it has in the past anyway.
I don't miss the old trackballs. The one on Marble Madness always used to pinch my fingers at the edges.
An in depth article on this topic has already been written. It's much better than the NY Times offering.
Schneier's argument is explained quite well in his own article. It makes a lot of sense. Any introduction of a new, monolithic ID system will inevitably be compromised by way of forgeries(it WILL happen). As Schneier pointed out, the worst "forgeries" are legitimate IDs issued to people using false names. Cryptography doesn't stop social engineering.
If any such flawed system is implemented, and if this system is sold as being a new, secure measure against identity theft, crime, and terrorism, all security agencies will come to rely upon the new ID card as their verification document of choice. Increased trust in the system only makes forged/scammed national ID cards more powerful to those seeking to abuse the system.
Furthermore, one could easily argue that a monolithic ID system would make forgeries easier to concoct. If you were in the business of making forged identity cards/documents/etc, which would you rather face? Multiple layers of personal idenfitication(Social Security card, dozens of different driver's licenses, international driver's license, passports, etc), or one national ID card? You could easily simplify your business by focusing on forgery of one national ID card rather than waste your time producing a variety of different documents and cards for different purposes. The difficulty of creating a forgery of the natiolal ID card might be greater initially, but once someone has cracked it . . . well, you get the idea. We'd be stuck in a race between the government updating/upgrading ID cards to prevent forgery and charlatans cracking the ID card to enable forgery. Who will win? My money's on the "bad guys".
While I might be similarly inclined to question the value of emulating Win9x on PocketPCs, I must admit that such an emulation is more useful than, oh, I don't know . . . installing Linux on a dead badger.
South Korea is the land of the infinite bandwidth.
Actually, according to this site, the F4 Phantom is still in use in Japan, Germany, Korea, Greece, and Turkey. Looks like the site was current at least through 2003.
Intel makes breast implants? Whoa. Far out.
I'm sorry, but this REALLY needs to be done. Moderators, please activate your social justice circuitry before modding this.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, America fucks YOU!
Yakov Smirnov is a genius. I love this country! Thank you.
The fact that the install time caused him to clean his room leads me to believe that slashdotters everywhere could benefit from Pear PC.
Now if only it had caused him to take a shower and change his underwear . . .
It would probably cost too much(remember, PDAs are too expensive for him). He might drop it, causing damage. He might run out of batteries.
The only obvious solution that would truly meet his demanding criteria would be for him to compose all his notes into an epic poem which he could memorize as lines of song and that could be passed on from one generation to the next. Alternatively, he could just sign the damn thing over and over, thereby annoying the hell out of everyone else nearby.
Were he to survive the trip home, he could then dictate the poem to himself, or use voice recognition software on his home computer. His vocal cords might not be up to the task after all that signing, mind you.