This makes no sense to me. If you're going to change it, why not just change it to a P (pass, or numerical equivalent thereof)? Much less risk of detetction, and if you *do* get caught, you've got the excuse "Why would I change it to 51% if I could have changed it to 90%?"
Easy2Sync is the best program for this, hands down. It costs big bucks (about $120 USD for the fully-featured version), but IMHO completely worth it. If a file has been changed on both systems it doesn't just overwrite both of them with the newest version but asks which one you want to keep. I've tried a great deal many programs in the past but this one just seems to work. They have a freeware version if you're interested (which is still pretty freaking nice). And no, I don't work for them.
They're marketing an image, my friend. I customize XP to the nines, but every other XP installation I've seen (library, work, etc. etc.) has the same blue taskbar with the green Start button. Instantly recognisable as Windows XP, which is exactly what Microsoft wants.
Does your boss read slashdot? Was this an underhanded way of getting the message across;)
Anyway. I'd suggest taking the average compensation of all the posts mentioned thus far, dropping it by a bit, and then emailing your boss the URL for this story. He'll see that you're being more than reasonable (and that he's an ass), and you'll likely get what you want. *OR*, he'll fire you on the spot;)
I think the point is that just the hour is too simple - people can guess that if they have your pin number. Here's a much better solution: second authentication is an automated phone call. You plug in the first password, the system calls you up and you input the second password via touch tone phone. They then give you a temp password that works once. If somebody is desperate enough for your account they'll bug your phone and watch your computer, but this should protect against rudimentary spyware, correct?
How about the current hour multiplied by a specific number known only to you? Easy to remember both numbers and difficult to crack (assuming the number is large enough).
Two-factor authentication mitigates this problem. If your password includes a number that changes every minute, or a unique reply to a random challenge, then it's harder for someone else to intercept. You can't write down the ever-changing part. An intercepted password won't be good the next time it's needed. And a two-factor password is harder to guess. Sure, someone can always give his password and token to his secretary, but no solution is foolproof.
Now, don't get me wrong - all my desktops are AMD, from the K3 (?) to my A64. But there's just no touching a P-M system by anybody. The register article mentions that battery life could be 1/3 of a P-M - well, my IBM X31 1.6GHz system gets about five hours of battery life on min performance, so that means that a Turion could hypothetically have 1.6 hours worth of battery life? Some Pentium 4-M's have bettery battery life than that! If these numbers are right, then AMD definitely needs to be worried.
But hell, in the desktop market they're kings, and everybody knows that. It's too bad they had to resort to benchmark fixing for a mobile processor.
Yeah, but you think that if you're paying $15 a month for a game they can damn well afford to dish out their own bandwidth instead of expecting its users to handle the load.
I would consider Far Cry to be a erroneous example, as it tends to do quite poorly in any nvidia benchmark. If you look at the numbers for Doom3 and Half-Life 2, you'll see that the performance is much better.
"But then again Nvidia fanboys who are crazy enough to spend 1200$ on a pair of video cards will doubtless have no problem with this."
When you consider the fact that two 6600GTs are the same price as a 6800GT, and the SLI'd 6600GTs are 1.5 times faster than the 6800GT, you realise that SLI is a Good Thing.
Price for two 6600GTs right now is between $500-600 CAD, far FAR off from your $1200 USD (I'm assuming) throwaway estimate.
There are some GBC games that are not backwards-compatible with the original GB (Mario 1, IIRC). This would make the GBC a completely separate platform, don't you think?
But on the other hand, it's $10. For how often I buy a new computer (once every two or three years) I think I can scrape up $10, or even $20, for a new computer tax every two years.
Get the Evolutions mod then - more ships, more weapons, the addition of different types of equipment (can't remember off-hand but they help with shield recharging, weapons recharging, heck, even additional armour!) and - the best part - heavier ships move *slower*! It takes longer to move a cargo train around than it does a little fighter. Amazing!
I know you're trying to be funny, but seriously, MS-DOS was *not* as stable as people make it out to be. Sure, if you're sitting at the A:/> prompt it won't crash, but it seemed like nothing back then was compatible with each other. I honestly believe that XP is far superior to MS-DOS, in terms of stability (at least).
You're right - it ran stuff faster in comparison to Windows 2.x or 3.x (I'm trying not to curse here), but I don't think that anybody who remembers how necessary autoexec.bat and config.sys was back then would say that MS-DOS was "the good ol' days."
I understand the need for these companies to distinguish themselves from each other, but seriously, why not XBox 2? The Playstation 2 didn't suffer in popularity because of the reused name, and certainly nobody's going to buy or not buy a console because of the coolness/geekiness of a title, right?
But I agree with you on the Gameboy. Unless they pull a Street Fighter on the name (Gameboy Advanced Ultra Turbo Edition), it's gotta end someday. How about GameChild? GameDancer? GameBlade? SuperBoy?
"The question I'm curious to canvas opinion on is why Microsoft is taking an attitude that is believed by so many to be damaging to their market position."
Let's see: Windows is sold on nearly every x86 computer sold in a store. Office is the de facto standard for the business & academic world. Internet Explorer (like it or not) has a market dominance of over 90%. My guess is that they can take pretty much any attitude they want, cuz they're not going anywhere now or any time soon. As long as they hold onto the "Get Windows With Any PC Purchased!", known affectionately as the Microsoft Tax, their "market position" is going to remain where it has for the past twenty years - dominating everybody else.
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The current and former Liberal government already treats us like shit, so yes.
This makes no sense to me. If you're going to change it, why not just change it to a P (pass, or numerical equivalent thereof)? Much less risk of detetction, and if you *do* get caught, you've got the excuse "Why would I change it to 51% if I could have changed it to 90%?"
Easy2Sync is the best program for this, hands down. It costs big bucks (about $120 USD for the fully-featured version), but IMHO completely worth it. If a file has been changed on both systems it doesn't just overwrite both of them with the newest version but asks which one you want to keep. I've tried a great deal many programs in the past but this one just seems to work. They have a freeware version if you're interested (which is still pretty freaking nice). And no, I don't work for them.
They're marketing an image, my friend. I customize XP to the nines, but every other XP installation I've seen (library, work, etc. etc.) has the same blue taskbar with the green Start button. Instantly recognisable as Windows XP, which is exactly what Microsoft wants.
Anyway. I'd suggest taking the average compensation of all the posts mentioned thus far, dropping it by a bit, and then emailing your boss the URL for this story. He'll see that you're being more than reasonable (and that he's an ass), and you'll likely get what you want. *OR*, he'll fire you on the spot ;)
I think the point is that just the hour is too simple - people can guess that if they have your pin number. Here's a much better solution: second authentication is an automated phone call. You plug in the first password, the system calls you up and you input the second password via touch tone phone. They then give you a temp password that works once. If somebody is desperate enough for your account they'll bug your phone and watch your computer, but this should protect against rudimentary spyware, correct?
How about the current hour multiplied by a specific number known only to you? Easy to remember both numbers and difficult to crack (assuming the number is large enough).
Two-factor authentication mitigates this problem. If your password includes a number that changes every minute, or a unique reply to a random challenge, then it's harder for someone else to intercept. You can't write down the ever-changing part. An intercepted password won't be good the next time it's needed. And a two-factor password is harder to guess. Sure, someone can always give his password and token to his secretary, but no solution is foolproof.
When I'm writing a major paper, I drain the battery almost completely each day. Most places I need to use it don't have plug-ins available.
Steps down to about 600Mhz. How much faster do you need it to use Word? Also, at that speed, it can play a xvid for about two or three hours.
WHOOPS - huge typo! My point still stands - 5 hours is much, much better than 3. But yeah, this puts it on par with what, mobile P3?
But hell, in the desktop market they're kings, and everybody knows that. It's too bad they had to resort to benchmark fixing for a mobile processor.
And how long would you be expected to keep the seed up for option 2? $2 off isn't worth a month of saturating my upstream.
Yeah, but you think that if you're paying $15 a month for a game they can damn well afford to dish out their own bandwidth instead of expecting its users to handle the load.
Oh, and you can get 6600GTs with 256MB.
When you consider the fact that two 6600GTs are the same price as a 6800GT, and the SLI'd 6600GTs are 1.5 times faster than the 6800GT, you realise that SLI is a Good Thing.
Price for two 6600GTs right now is between $500-600 CAD, far FAR off from your $1200 USD (I'm assuming) throwaway estimate.
There are some GBC games that are not backwards-compatible with the original GB (Mario 1, IIRC). This would make the GBC a completely separate platform, don't you think?
You answered your own question - the GBA is backwards compatible with GB and GBC games, both separate platforms.
But on the other hand, it's $10. For how often I buy a new computer (once every two or three years) I think I can scrape up $10, or even $20, for a new computer tax every two years.
Linked without the slash so that people can actually download it.
Get the Evolutions mod then - more ships, more weapons, the addition of different types of equipment (can't remember off-hand but they help with shield recharging, weapons recharging, heck, even additional armour!) and - the best part - heavier ships move *slower*! It takes longer to move a cargo train around than it does a little fighter. Amazing!
Righteous Fire. Very interesting expansion pack, but bloody difficult IIRC.
You're right - it ran stuff faster in comparison to Windows 2.x or 3.x (I'm trying not to curse here), but I don't think that anybody who remembers how necessary autoexec.bat and config.sys was back then would say that MS-DOS was "the good ol' days."
But I agree with you on the Gameboy. Unless they pull a Street Fighter on the name (Gameboy Advanced Ultra Turbo Edition), it's gotta end someday. How about GameChild? GameDancer? GameBlade? SuperBoy?
Let's see: Windows is sold on nearly every x86 computer sold in a store. Office is the de facto standard for the business & academic world. Internet Explorer (like it or not) has a market dominance of over 90%. My guess is that they can take pretty much any attitude they want, cuz they're not going anywhere now or any time soon. As long as they hold onto the "Get Windows With Any PC Purchased!", known affectionately as the Microsoft Tax, their "market position" is going to remain where it has for the past twenty years - dominating everybody else.