More to the point, though -- should it be at "Cisco's" cost, or at the "Fair Market Value"? I.e. Suppose Dell offered a 3-year old computer? If it was "brand new", (never been sold), and it cost Dell $3000 to make, and would have resold, 3 years ago for $6000, but on Ebay might only fetch $1000, how much should the prize be "valued".
The cost to the provider isn't the only attribute of value: the prize "owner" may have overpaid for the item, or may have invested poorly and now has surplus stock -- which to "Dell", might be worth $50,000 for a markdown?
How many "prizes" come with a "CarFax" report, or a manufacturer warrantee? Is the new house they gave you on a flood plain?
The idea of the giver arbitrarily setting the price is *way* open to fraud in their favor. The burden of proof would be on the "winner" to prove the object wasn't as valuable as was claimed.
With the trip into space -- say it was valued at $100,000 (with a tax burden of $33,000). That means the real value of the prize is $100,000-$33,000 or $67,000. The IRS tax burden on winnings should be automatically, by law be subtracted from the value and be the responsibility of the giver, otherwise, winning a "prize" could be a form of punishment in just the headache to dispose of it. *plegh* -- unreasonable IRS.
... Microsoft is going to start getting tough [CC] with certain small business customers.
Of course they'd go after small businesses -- they are the ones that don't have the high power lawyers for defense. Sounds like MS is taking a page out of the RIAA's "sue the defenseless" tactic.
Was the luxury car contest open to the public? Sounds like it wasn't a winning at all but a payoff. Why wouldn't that be taxable.
The big problem comes not with all winnings, but prizes that have some supposed "cash value", but that cannot be exchanged for cash.
I saw a beautiful example of such a bogus contest in some men's magazine:
Valued Running RealCost Running Prize included airfare for two to NYC ooooooooooooooo 2500 2500 400 400 Reservations for two at some fancy hotel for 1 week 4900 7400 1000 1400 Entry fee to exclusive dance clubs oooooooooooooooooo 2000 9400 0 1400 Concert tix&all access pass ooooooooooooooooooooooooo 7000 16400 0 1400 Fancy dinners for two ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 2500 18900 2000 3400 Limo transportation ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 2100 21000 500 3900 Makeover oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 3000 24000 750 4650 Cash for Clothing "Spending Spree" oooooooooooooooooo 1000 25000 1000 5650
Total for Promo purposes (and IRS Value) = $25,000. Realcosts - priceline tickets club&concerts free for promotional consideration,
limo owned by company, drivers already on payroll;
makeover - promotional deals
So in reality, the prize promoter advertises a $25,000 prize, IRS requires 15-32% depending on your existing bracket. Most of the magazine readers are probably between 25-30% or will owe about $6000-$8000 in extra taxes.
No rags-to-riches, no poor, nor even middle class winners (how many want to spend ~$7000 for a shopping jaunt)? If you are already rich and have $7k in pocket change -- sure, but for average folk?
Same thing with the trip-into-space -- sure it's valued at the ticket's "face value", but how much can you get for it on Ebay? IRS claims you have to value donations at market value -- seems like that should apply to prizes too. To make things worse, some prize vendors make the prize non-transferable, "no cash substitution" -- which means you can't get the supposed value, nor can you sell it & transfer it to someone else. Even if you could -- how much do you think you'd get for 1 weeks worth of nights on some arbitrary set of dates at some NYC hotel or the other items. Selling off 1-night club passes? It's a joke.
If someone is paid in 'cash', taxes are unpleasant, but probably as fair as can be under our tax system. But when you have non-cash prizes, or especially prizes that cannot easily be converted to cash, it is very very wrong -- it's discrimination against anyone who isn't "rich enough" to afford the bogusly set taxes.
p.s. table spaces converted to filler to circumvent slashdot prohibition on tables; formatting broken by slashdot disallowing 'fixed font' (adding "ecode" tags caused slashdot to complain of too many junk characters; such intelligent software, allowing well formatted posts...!not!)
Any wireless performance that is less than optimal (less than wired equivalent?) can be considered a flaw. Thus RottenApple's claim that they need to charge for a "new feature" is complete and utter bull.
RottenApple is going down faster and faster. They are well making up for lost time in the being "evil" department. Wanna take bets on how long they'll take to reach MS's level?
If you look at evil "growth", RottenApple has MS beat hands-down. They just haven't had any product with large enough market share to really screw a large number of people (like their "Appletunes" DRM product)...
My take on it is that nobody would buy a 3-gig box if they can't properly use the extra gig of ram
You mean like all the 4GB Windows boxes that run WinXP (which was hard-coded in SP2 to limit itself to 3GB)? Maybe Apple is copying Microsoft? MS should sue 'em. They probably have a patent on wasting user memory.
There was a time where if a programmer had software "expire" for "non-payment", it was considered to be an illegal "time bomb". Now they call it licensing and deem it a "feature".
Could 'entrapment' be used as a defense (or something similar)? I mean I see the headlines that the MPAA is uploading material to bittorrent, and I think "gee, if they didn't want me to watch them, why would they upload them?"
I.e. If a studio exec uploads "infringing content" to a download site, and then people download that -- do you really downloaders could be successfully prosecuted for downloading the content studios have made available?
How is this different than bank robbers spending cash in a community? The cash would be 'stolen property', and people would be trafficking in "stolen property"...So if someone, "without willful intent to traffick" passed the stolen "merchandize", would it be conceivable that they would be charged "$30,000" per piece of money they traffick'ed in?
This sound like a punishment that would violate the "cruel and unusual" clause -- it unfairly penalizes people for downloading something, that in this case, the MPAA has made available; the size of the penalty would be cruel for 90% of Americans, since even 1 violation could bankrupt them and/or cause them to lose their personal property (like a house, or whatever). That seems excessively cruel and unusual for a crime where nothing physical has been damaged or lost.
Yeah, maybe I'm preaching to the choir...and this is just life in this, fascistic, anything-capitalistic-goes, society.:-(
I shouldn't be so shocked -- anything involving lawyers, money and the law is bound to be corrupt beyond reason.
Grr. More often, I am really developing a deep hate for the rules of "normalcy" in this society.
What about all the work that's gone into DX10? All the consultations with game studios and hardware developers? The tightening of the requirements for cards to be certified as DX10 capable which is designed to make your jobs easier?
Bzzzt. Incorrect. The tightening of requirements for Vista and DX10 has been more to satisfy DRM requirements of HD-DVD and Blue-Ray than anything else. Postings from graphics board manufacturers have said that Vista's requirements will make graphics cards manufacturer's jobs much harder. It won't be easy to ship out patch drivers and running Beta drivers -- forget it. They have to be signed (which means MS approved) or they will cause either a disabling or lowering of HD-video.
This also means that the days of new drivers coming out often to optimize game play may be drawing to a close. Driver development and certification just got notably more expensive with Vista. This will most certainly have some negative effect on gaming.
I had it install once with the install of some product or another -- but uninstalling it wasn't a problem. I was surprised that it got installed with whatever product I had installed, so I repeated the install -- the install had no option to not include the game.
I don't think WildTangent will have any difficulty installing their software in Vista (once they surmount the porting problem) -- since when I've seen it installed, it has come as an indivisible part of some other product. I agree, FWIW, that WT software isn't worth the diskspace it takes up -- unless I had a 4-5 year old. They might find it entertaining...
Security through obscurity? Does not apply. It would be if the vendor had not fixed the problem and was relying on obscurity of the bug to protect users. Instead they fixed the bug. Sounds like Security Through Fixing It; not as great as Secure By Design though.
What I'd really like to see, is...pull support for Novell/SuSE,...inform them they are in violation of liscense, and revoke usage
Geez, and then maybe their president and board be covered in honey and staked to a fire-ant hill, and all their customers go bankrupt!... Oh yeah, don't forget castration, mutilation and other pleasant forms of spiteful vindictiveness.
The bloat on linux is increasing too -- just not as fast - maybe 50% the rate of MS? I know that current versions of desktop software that was an acceptable, but a tight fit 5 years ago, probably won't run today.
Wanna think about bloat? Check out Firefox...my GAWD...can they make it any bigger and slower? It has nice features and is more secure, but it is a pig as well.:-|
Even the base OS has bloated significantly. Sometime in the past year, some rocket scientist kernel jockey decided that including all the procedure symbols (KALLSYMS) was a good idea -- not just by "default" but for everyone not doing embedded system development. I complained and was told to move into the modern world where memory was "cheap".
The linux folks have the same bloat-attitude, they are just further behind the curve.
As for someone assertion that Win2K took only 1Meg/process vs. WinXP taking 5M/process: bull-pucky. When I upgraded the *same* software didn't "magically" take up more memory. This isn't saying the base OS (XP) isn't larger by 50-80%, but that's not what the original poster said.
Of course -- as "usual" MS has made XP significantly slower when measuring XP -- as initially released vs. the current "product". Not only has there been the bloat of hundreds of band-aid patches, but some of those patches have had a noticeable and documented performance impact of 10-20% in some cases (network performance, Office apps). MS never did fix the problems introduced by SP2 -- they were too busy producing their next fiasco: Vista.
Let's hope Vista is the last major OS release from MS for a long time. Maybe they'll have time to actually fix bugs in their current software before leaping to the next.:=(
...the PC is useless for things that consumer's want to do
Um -- WITH WINDOWS the PC is useless for many things that consumer's want to do.
But for the largest group of purchasers, having to buy a copy of Windows for each of your 10,000 employees can get expensive. Linux servers are more reliable, usually faster and easier to manage.
I disagree that all, or even "most", consumers need Windows to do what they want to do. I've had more than one friend or housemate that was perfectly happy with a preconfigured linux desktop. All they wanted was email and web browsing. A "free" OS was fine for that they are usually, noticeably faster.
...without an OS the computer is no where near as useful
Yes, but is Windows the only OS? That's the flaw in your (and HP's) argument. One doesn't need Windows to make a computer function.
Isn't France one of the countries pushing for only open-source software being used in government? Most closed source software is untrustable. How many software programs are "certified" or "verified" as trustworthy by independent, 3rd party evaluators? Note: that means the software is trusted not only to not do "bad things", but _is_ trusted to be documented and perform as documented. MS gets away with murder in this area. They call virtually all bugs "cases" or "incidents". I've never *personally* heard an MS support employee admit to a bug. Their take is almost always that "you" are doing something wrong.
Some time ago Gates made the excuse that "compromised machines" could not be reliably fixed or restored. The real truth is that even non-compromised machines that go bad simply because you were foolish enough to install the latest "critical update" cannot be reliably restored or fixed. Inevitably, they resort to telling you a reinstall is necessary -- or, as I've experienced on more than one occasion: after a multi-month exchange with me going through uninstalls, registry purges, reinstalls, "test" installs of newer software, etc, being still "stumped", they just stop returning calls. They can't fix it, and they just start ignoring you. Even if you let "months" go by, and "pulse" them for progress, they'll claim they are still "researching the problem". Multiple years later, they have still not called back and the case numbers are still open. Only the death of the hardware (including hard disk) that forces a re-install (when a restore, "doesn't" (or it does, but reg-settings mismatch), does the problem "go away".
Forcing people to buy Windows with their computer is sadistic. Windows *does* have it's place, but it certainly is not on "every" computer sold, nor on the majority of the systems I use.
The "bovine excrement" line that "all computers must be sold with an OS" because "bare-bones computers end up with pirated MS OS's on them" is one of the bigger lies (and OEM requirements) foisted on computer users today and in times past. Microsoft requires their large OEM customers to ship an OS with every computer (they used to require a copy of Microsoft be shipped and installed, but eventually backed off of that because their monopolistic practices were exposed.
At one "big iron" vendor, our contract read that we had to pay MS a license fee for *every* desktop computer we sold, because customers *could* (with a Software emulator) run Windows on the computer. It was a complete ripoff, costing 100's of thousands of dollars over the life of the desktops.
MS's most recent attempt to force more purchases of Windows was the attempt to limit the number of major hardware changes with "Vista" to "2" installs -- then requiring the user to shell out another $450 (for XP-Professional equivalent). I've had multiple computers with Windows -- and I didn't need to buy another copy of Windows for each of them -- because they replaced earlier computers and the earlier computers were formatted and in
I thought defacing (which included flattening coins under trains last time that was popular) money included melting them down? I seem to remember friends wanting to make jewelry by decorating clothing with coinage being told they had to use foreign currency, as drilling holes in US currency was illegal.
At what point do you draw the line between what looks real and what is real?
It's sorta "stupid" to ban "real" images if "manufactured" or "computer generated" images can look real.
Besides, it's not the "realism" that's the problem, it's the idea. Do we allow banning an idea? It certainly seems ok in the case of "real" porn.
What's the difference between sex porn and violence porn? Why is one "bannable", but the other not? Is sex somehow more obscene than killing?
Stupidity runs amok in governments. Hysteria and mass panic. Logic and reason don't enter into it -- it's about manipulating the masses. So are bans against "real" images effective in banning the ideas?
I can't imagine a patent covering this functionality.
While the idea might be patentable, it would be a patent of restricting access to the network based on what software the computer is running.
On a Linux box, to serve back a packet to allow the machine to obtain access would most certainly not use the same algorithm nor be an example of the same idea since the Linux box would be implementing a "work-around" -- simulating a "valid reply" -- not actually returning it's real "windows patch level".
OTOH -- Maybe MS could encrypt & sign the extra DHCP info then use the DMCA if Linux tried to break this [network] "access protection mechanism".
I.e. -- suppose you could be allowed to connect to a "net" if you provide the proper "authorization" (some summary of machine state). Perhaps on that net is offered some "unrestricted" movie & TV watching ability. The "authorization" key could be said to restricting access to the premium content. Cracks to circumvent having a valid "key" (again, perhaps, some software/machine state), might be interpretable as violations of the DMCA...
From wikipedia: magnitude 6-6.9 quakes can destructive in areas up to 100 miles across. For 8-8.0 magnitude quakes, serious damage can cover areas several hundred miles across. For a magnitude 9 or greater, we are talking areas several THOUSAND miles across.
So...yeah, a 15 second warning per 40 miles would be very useful. As for your house being undamaged -- consider yourself lucky.
As for some SF earthquake in the 90's in the Bay Area -- I don't recall any quakes of any large magnitude. Perhaps you are thinking of the 1989 quake that stopped the World Series game in SF. It had a surface magnitude of 7.1 and lasted for 15 seconds (geez, it sure seemed longer at the time...at least 30;^/ ).
Apparently, out of your belief that quakes don't travel very far, you call it a "SF earthquake". It was actually 60 miles south-south-east in the Santa Cruz mountains near the Loma Prieta peak (in Santa Clara County). At the time, it caused a record 6bln dollars damage. Areas hard hit included San Francisco, Oakland, the SF Penninsula, Los Gatos, Santa Cruz (10 miles away from the epicenter), Watsonville and the Monterey Bay.
Damage in SF, 60 miles away caused buildings to collapse and run-away fires due to the water lines being ruptured. It was the worst quake to hit the area since 1906. The largest number of people killed were on highway 17, (now 880) in Oakland on a section known as the Cypress Freeway. The freeway was 3-4 lanes in each direction, one direction over the other. The section pancaked -- with the people on the lower deck being crushed. The SF-Oakland Bay Bridge was damaged (it's also a double decker design) with 1 50ft section of the bridge collapsing onto the lower. To the south, the nearest bridge was 17 miles away angling away from SF, so going that route was 50 miles out of ones way. If you lived on the north side of the collapsed freeway, you had to go 30 miles out of your way and go over 2 bridges to get to SF. The Bay Bridge was closed for slightly over a month.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, the only artery going between Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley was 17 (same highway as the one that collapsed in Oakland). It was closed for a month as well due to a landslide that covered the freeway.
The entire downtown area of Santa Cruz, the "Pacific Garden Mall", was heavily damaged, with many building collapsing or condemned due to damage. Most of the damaged buildings were of older construction -- unreinforced masonry and brick facades.
It was estimated by officials that about 3% of the Bay Area's population left the area due to the severity of the quake.
FYI, in 1983, a M 6.7 quake that caused major damage in Coalinga, CA was _felt_ for about a 180-190 mile radius (south to LA, and east to Nevada). AFAIK, damage was limited to the Coalinga area, where a 12-block downtown area had to be completely rebuilt. More than 800 single-family homes were destroyed or heavily damaged. Aftershocks as large as M 6.0, continued for more than 2 years!
As for the Bay area, unfortunately, according to geologists, it is overdue for one or more earthquakes on more than one fault line. Yuck. Another 1906 level earthquake happening today could cause a disaster, taking out both SF and Silicon Valley.
Hmmm...anyone done a good disaster movie destroying Silicon Valley?
The study would have been more meaningful if it hadn't conflated spam blocking with ad blocking.
What is spam but "ads"?
In the vein of TV-execs that believe TV-ad skipping is pirating -- are you stealing your internet access? If you aren't watching your share of popups and spam, how will the internet support itself? I mean, blocking such things -- not watching them is a bit like pirating your internet content for free! Shame on us....*cough*
Slashdot Mirror
More to the point, though -- should it be at "Cisco's" cost, or at the "Fair Market Value"? I.e. Suppose Dell offered a 3-year old computer? If it was "brand new", (never been sold), and it cost Dell $3000 to make, and would have resold, 3 years ago for $6000, but on Ebay might only fetch $1000, how much should the prize be "valued".
The cost to the provider isn't the only attribute of value: the prize "owner" may have overpaid for the item, or may have invested poorly and now has surplus stock -- which to "Dell", might be worth $50,000 for a markdown?
How many "prizes" come with a "CarFax" report, or a manufacturer warrantee? Is the new house they gave you on a flood plain?
The idea of the giver arbitrarily setting the price is *way* open to fraud in their favor. The burden of proof would be on the "winner" to prove the object wasn't as valuable as was claimed.
With the trip into space -- say it was valued at $100,000 (with a tax burden of $33,000).
That means the real value of the prize is $100,000-$33,000 or $67,000. The IRS tax burden on winnings should be automatically, by law be subtracted from the value and be the responsibility of the giver, otherwise, winning a "prize" could be a form of punishment in just the headache to dispose of it. *plegh* -- unreasonable IRS.
Was the luxury car contest open to the public? Sounds like it wasn't a winning at all but a payoff. Why wouldn't that be taxable.
The big problem comes not with all winnings, but prizes that have some supposed "cash value", but that cannot be exchanged for cash.
I saw a beautiful example of such a bogus contest in some men's magazine:
Valued Running RealCost Running
Prize included airfare for two to NYC ooooooooooooooo 2500 2500 400 400
Reservations for two at some fancy hotel for 1 week 4900 7400 1000 1400
Entry fee to exclusive dance clubs oooooooooooooooooo 2000 9400 0 1400
Concert tix&all access pass ooooooooooooooooooooooooo 7000 16400 0 1400
Fancy dinners for two ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 2500 18900 2000 3400
Limo transportation ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 2100 21000 500 3900
Makeover oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 3000 24000 750 4650
Cash for Clothing "Spending Spree" oooooooooooooooooo 1000 25000 1000 5650
Total for Promo purposes (and IRS Value) = $25,000.
Realcosts - priceline tickets club&concerts free for promotional consideration,
limo owned by company, drivers already on payroll;
makeover - promotional deals
So in reality, the prize promoter advertises a $25,000 prize, IRS requires 15-32%
depending on your existing bracket. Most of the magazine readers are probably between 25-30% or will owe about $6000-$8000 in extra taxes.
No rags-to-riches, no poor, nor even middle class winners (how many want to spend ~$7000 for a shopping jaunt)? If you are already rich and have $7k in pocket change -- sure, but for average folk?
Same thing with the trip-into-space -- sure it's valued at the ticket's "face value", but how much can you get for it on Ebay? IRS claims you have to value donations at market value -- seems like that should apply to prizes too. To make things worse, some prize vendors make the prize non-transferable, "no cash substitution" -- which means you can't get the supposed value, nor can you sell it & transfer it to someone else. Even if you could -- how much do you think you'd get for 1 weeks worth of nights on some arbitrary set of dates at some NYC hotel or the other items. Selling off 1-night club passes? It's a joke.
If someone is paid in 'cash', taxes are unpleasant, but probably as fair as can be under our tax system. But when you have non-cash prizes, or especially prizes that cannot easily be converted to cash, it is very very wrong -- it's discrimination against anyone who isn't "rich enough" to afford the bogusly set taxes.
p.s. table spaces converted to filler to circumvent slashdot prohibition on tables; formatting broken by slashdot disallowing 'fixed font' (adding "ecode" tags caused slashdot to complain of too many junk characters; such intelligent software, allowing well formatted posts...!not!)
Seems like profits of big pharma may not be the best way to "incentivize" medical cures. Cancer cures are only profitable if the patient has to maintain a lifetime regime of the drug and if it can be patented (i.e. - one pharma has a monopoly). Similar problem is happening in antibiotic research (post-antibiotic apocalypse anyone?).
Any wireless performance that is less than optimal (less than wired equivalent?) can be considered a flaw. Thus RottenApple's claim that they need to charge for a "new feature" is complete and utter bull.
RottenApple is going down faster and faster. They are well making up for lost time in the being "evil" department. Wanna take bets on how long they'll take to reach MS's level?
If you look at evil "growth", RottenApple has MS beat hands-down. They just haven't had any product with large enough market share to really screw a large number of people (like their "Appletunes" DRM product)...
You mean like all the 4GB Windows boxes that run WinXP (which was hard-coded in SP2 to limit itself to 3GB)?
Maybe Apple is copying Microsoft? MS should sue 'em. They probably have a patent on wasting user memory.
There was a time where if a programmer had software "expire" for "non-payment", it was considered to be an illegal "time bomb". Now they call it licensing and deem it a "feature".
Could 'entrapment' be used as a defense (or something similar)? I mean I see the headlines that the MPAA is uploading material to bittorrent, and I think "gee, if they didn't want me to watch them, why would they upload them?"
:-(
I.e. If a studio exec uploads "infringing content" to a download site, and then people download that -- do you really downloaders could be successfully prosecuted for downloading the content studios have made available?
How is this different than bank robbers spending cash in a community? The cash would be 'stolen property', and people would be trafficking in "stolen property"...So if someone, "without willful intent to traffick" passed the stolen "merchandize", would it be conceivable that they would be charged "$30,000" per piece of money they traffick'ed in?
This sound like a punishment that would violate the "cruel and unusual" clause -- it unfairly penalizes people for downloading something, that in this case, the MPAA has made available; the size of the penalty would be cruel for 90% of Americans, since even 1 violation could bankrupt them and/or cause them to lose their personal property (like a house, or whatever). That seems excessively cruel and unusual for a crime where nothing physical has been damaged or lost.
Yeah, maybe I'm preaching to the choir...and this is just life in this, fascistic, anything-capitalistic-goes, society.
I shouldn't be so shocked -- anything involving lawyers, money and the law is bound to be corrupt beyond reason.
Grr. More often, I am really developing a deep hate for the rules of "normalcy" in this society.
l.
Sounds similar in "symptoms" (the freezing and the 15-20 second period) to this Firefox bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36684 9.
I take it that you can't reproduce the problem in IE or Opera?
What's they cpu usage? Does it freeze all firefox windows or just the Yahoo window?
Bzzzt. Incorrect. The tightening of requirements for Vista and DX10 has been more to satisfy DRM requirements of HD-DVD and Blue-Ray than anything else. Postings from graphics board manufacturers have said that Vista's requirements will make graphics cards manufacturer's jobs much harder. It won't be easy to ship out patch drivers and running Beta drivers -- forget it. They have to be signed (which means MS approved) or they will cause either a disabling or lowering of HD-video.
This also means that the days of new drivers coming out often to optimize game play may be drawing to a close. Driver development and certification just got notably more expensive with Vista. This will most certainly have some negative effect on gaming.
I had it install once with the install of some product or another -- but uninstalling it wasn't a problem. I was surprised that it got installed with whatever product I had installed, so I repeated the install -- the install had no option to not include the game.
I don't think WildTangent will have any difficulty installing their software in Vista (once they surmount the porting problem) -- since when I've seen it installed, it has come as an indivisible part of some other product. I agree, FWIW, that WT software isn't worth the diskspace it takes up -- unless I had a 4-5 year old. They might find it entertaining...
No -- from the article on OSX vs. Vista pointed to on slashdot, the user only has to press "OK", -- no password required.
Security through obscurity? Does not apply. It would be if the vendor had not fixed the problem and was relying on obscurity of the bug to protect users. Instead they fixed the bug. Sounds like Security Through Fixing It; not as great as Secure By Design though.
The ice shelf collapsed 16 months ago...
It just took a while for the news to reach us....
Geez, and then maybe their president and board be covered in honey and staked to a fire-ant hill, and all their customers go bankrupt!... Oh yeah, don't forget castration, mutilation and other pleasant forms of spiteful vindictiveness.
I applaud your sense of logic and balance.
Depends on whether or not the strap broke... :-O
The bloat on linux is increasing too -- just not as fast - maybe 50% the rate of MS? I know that current versions of desktop software that was an acceptable, but a tight fit 5 years ago, probably won't run today.
:-|
:=(
Wanna think about bloat? Check out Firefox...my GAWD...can they make it any bigger and slower? It has nice features and is more secure, but it is a pig as well.
Even the base OS has bloated significantly. Sometime in the past year, some rocket scientist kernel jockey decided that including all the procedure symbols (KALLSYMS) was a good idea -- not just by "default" but for everyone not doing embedded system development. I complained and was told to move into the modern world where memory was "cheap".
The linux folks have the same bloat-attitude, they are just further behind the curve.
As for someone assertion that Win2K took only 1Meg/process vs. WinXP taking 5M/process: bull-pucky. When I upgraded the *same* software didn't "magically" take up more memory. This isn't saying the base OS (XP) isn't larger by 50-80%, but that's not what the original poster said.
Of course -- as "usual" MS has made XP significantly slower when measuring XP -- as initially released vs. the current "product". Not only has there been the bloat of hundreds of band-aid patches, but some of those patches have had a noticeable and documented performance impact of 10-20% in some cases (network performance, Office apps). MS never did fix the problems introduced by SP2 -- they were too busy producing their next fiasco: Vista.
Let's hope Vista is the last major OS release from MS for a long time. Maybe they'll have time to actually fix bugs in their current software before leaping to the next.
Um -- WITH WINDOWS the PC is useless for many things that consumer's want to do.
But for the largest group of purchasers, having to buy a copy of Windows for each of your 10,000 employees can get expensive. Linux servers are more reliable, usually faster and easier to manage.
I disagree that all, or even "most", consumers need Windows to do what they want to do. I've had more than one friend or housemate that was perfectly happy with a preconfigured linux desktop. All they wanted was email and web browsing. A "free" OS was fine for that they are usually, noticeably faster.
Yes, but is Windows the only OS? That's the flaw in your (and HP's) argument. One doesn't need Windows to make a computer function.
Isn't France one of the countries pushing for only open-source software being used in government? Most closed source software is untrustable. How many software programs are "certified" or "verified" as trustworthy by independent, 3rd party evaluators? Note: that means the software is trusted not only to not do "bad things", but _is_ trusted to be documented and perform as documented. MS gets away with murder in this area. They call virtually all bugs "cases" or "incidents". I've never *personally* heard an MS support employee admit to a bug. Their take is almost always that "you" are doing something wrong.
Some time ago Gates made the excuse that "compromised machines" could not be reliably fixed or restored. The real truth is that even non-compromised machines that go bad simply because you were foolish enough to install the latest "critical update" cannot be reliably restored or fixed. Inevitably, they resort to telling you a reinstall is necessary -- or, as I've experienced on more than one occasion: after a multi-month exchange with me going through uninstalls, registry purges, reinstalls, "test" installs of newer software, etc, being still "stumped", they just stop returning calls. They can't fix it, and they just start ignoring you. Even if you let "months" go by, and "pulse" them for progress, they'll claim they are still "researching the problem". Multiple years later, they have still not called back and the case numbers are still open. Only the death of the hardware (including hard disk) that forces a re-install (when a restore, "doesn't" (or it does, but reg-settings mismatch), does the problem "go away".
Forcing people to buy Windows with their computer is sadistic. Windows *does* have it's place, but it certainly is not on "every" computer sold, nor on the majority of the systems I use.
The "bovine excrement" line that "all computers must be sold with an OS" because "bare-bones computers end up with pirated MS OS's on them" is one of the bigger lies (and OEM requirements) foisted on computer users today and in times past. Microsoft requires their large OEM customers to ship an OS with every computer (they used to require a copy of Microsoft be shipped and installed, but eventually backed off of that because their monopolistic practices were exposed.
At one "big iron" vendor, our contract read that we had to pay MS a license fee for *every* desktop computer we sold, because customers *could* (with a Software emulator) run Windows on the computer. It was a complete ripoff, costing 100's of thousands of dollars over the life of the desktops.
MS's most recent attempt to force more purchases of Windows was the attempt to limit the number of major hardware changes with "Vista" to "2" installs -- then requiring the user to shell out another $450 (for XP-Professional equivalent). I've had multiple computers with Windows -- and I didn't need to buy another copy of Windows for each of them -- because they replaced earlier computers and the earlier computers were formatted and in
I thought defacing (which included flattening coins under trains last time that was popular) money included melting them down? I seem to remember friends wanting to make jewelry by decorating clothing with coinage being told they had to use foreign currency, as drilling holes in US currency was illegal.
At what point do you draw the line between what looks real and what is real?
It's sorta "stupid" to ban "real" images if "manufactured" or "computer generated" images can look real.
Besides, it's not the "realism" that's the problem, it's the idea. Do we allow banning an idea? It certainly seems ok in the case of "real" porn.
What's the difference between sex porn and violence porn? Why is one "bannable", but the other not? Is sex somehow more obscene than killing?
Stupidity runs amok in governments. Hysteria and mass panic. Logic and reason don't enter into it -- it's about manipulating the masses. So are bans against "real" images effective in banning the ideas?
But would you be able to see her?
I can't imagine a patent covering this functionality.
While the idea might be patentable, it would be a patent of restricting access to the network based on what software the computer is running.
On a Linux box, to serve back a packet to allow the machine to obtain access would most certainly not use the same algorithm nor be an example of the same idea since the Linux box would be implementing a "work-around" -- simulating a "valid reply" -- not actually returning it's real "windows patch level".
OTOH -- Maybe MS could encrypt & sign the extra DHCP info then use the DMCA if Linux tried to break this [network] "access protection mechanism".
I.e. -- suppose you could be allowed to connect to a "net" if you provide the proper "authorization" (some summary of machine state). Perhaps on that net is offered some "unrestricted" movie & TV watching ability. The "authorization" key could be said to restricting access to the premium content. Cracks to circumvent having a valid "key" (again, perhaps, some software/machine state), might be interpretable as violations of the DMCA...
Yeah -- sure!
And "real people" used to firmly believe the world was flat.
Just because games are "duped" into believing they are getting faster response times doesn't make it true.
The card _*cannot*_ work for internet based games.
On a direct-connect, local LAN it could conceivably make a difference.
Over the internet? Not on today's internet. Not possible.
BTW, if you believe the card will help anything, lemme sell you a bridge...
You are uninformed.
;^/ ).
From wikipedia:
magnitude 6-6.9 quakes can destructive in areas up to 100 miles
across. For 8-8.0 magnitude quakes, serious damage can cover areas several hundred miles across. For a magnitude 9 or greater, we are talking areas several THOUSAND miles across.
So...yeah, a 15 second warning per 40 miles would be very useful. As for your house being undamaged -- consider yourself lucky.
As for some SF earthquake in the 90's in the Bay Area -- I don't recall any quakes of any large magnitude. Perhaps you are thinking of the 1989 quake that stopped the World Series game in SF. It had a surface magnitude of 7.1 and lasted for 15 seconds (geez, it sure seemed longer at the time...at least 30
Apparently, out of your belief that quakes don't travel very far, you call it a "SF earthquake". It was actually 60 miles south-south-east in the Santa Cruz mountains near the Loma Prieta peak (in Santa Clara County). At the time, it caused a record 6bln dollars damage. Areas hard hit included San Francisco, Oakland, the SF Penninsula, Los Gatos, Santa Cruz (10 miles away from the epicenter), Watsonville and the Monterey Bay.
Damage in SF, 60 miles away caused buildings to collapse and run-away fires due to the water lines being ruptured. It was the worst quake to hit the area since 1906. The largest number of people killed were on highway 17, (now 880) in Oakland on a section known as the Cypress Freeway. The freeway was 3-4 lanes in each direction, one direction over the other. The section pancaked -- with the people on the lower deck being crushed. The SF-Oakland Bay Bridge was damaged (it's also a double decker design) with 1 50ft section of the bridge collapsing onto the lower. To the south, the nearest bridge was 17 miles away angling away from SF, so going that route was 50 miles out of ones way. If you lived on the north side of the collapsed freeway, you had to go 30 miles out of your way and go over 2 bridges to get to SF. The Bay Bridge was closed for slightly over a month.
In the Santa Cruz Mountains, the only artery going between Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley was 17 (same highway as the one that collapsed in Oakland). It was closed for a month as well due to a landslide that covered the freeway.
The entire downtown area of Santa Cruz, the "Pacific Garden Mall", was heavily damaged, with many building collapsing or condemned due to damage. Most of the damaged buildings were of older construction -- unreinforced masonry and brick facades.
It was estimated by officials that about 3% of the Bay Area's population left the area due to the severity of the quake.
FYI, in 1983, a M 6.7 quake that caused major damage in Coalinga, CA was _felt_ for about a 180-190 mile radius (south to LA, and east to Nevada). AFAIK, damage was limited to the Coalinga area, where a 12-block downtown area had to be completely rebuilt. More than 800 single-family homes were destroyed or heavily damaged. Aftershocks as large as M 6.0, continued for more than 2 years!
As for the Bay area, unfortunately, according to geologists, it is overdue for one or more earthquakes on more than one fault line. Yuck. Another 1906 level earthquake happening today could cause a disaster, taking out both SF and Silicon Valley.
Hmmm...anyone done a good disaster movie destroying Silicon Valley?
In the vein of TV-execs that believe TV-ad skipping is pirating -- are you stealing your internet access? If you aren't watching your share of popups and spam, how will the internet support itself? I mean, blocking such things -- not watching them is a bit like pirating your internet content for free! Shame on us....*cough*