Terrorist: Can you hear me now?
Bomb: Yes
Terrorist: Good!
Terrorist: Can you hear me now?
Bomb: Wha--=-a---t?
Terrorist: I said "can you hear me now?"
Bomb: Oh, yes.
Terrorist: Now detonate!
Bomb: What? BEEP BEEP BEEP. Call is dropped
Terrorist: FUCK! I wasted all these anytime minutes and still didn't get my explosion.
Ok, so that was pretty lame, but it illustrates the stupidity of this whole idea. No terrorist who wanted to succeed would use cellphones for any part of their activities. They are inherently insecure and are also prone to horribly connection and sound quality problems, and if you didn't know that you haven't used a cell phone ever. This whole thing depends on criminals being idiots, and I don't think someone who can set up a remote detonation of any sort is going to be a complete moron. This is similar to the new "feature" found in many car trunks now that allows someone to open the hatch from inside, should they be kidnapped and placed in the trunk. It really doesn't seem like it should be a big concern. If the kidnapper didn't tie up the victim in the first place, then they probably will escape soon anyway. Instead, we feel the need to put people who are already in danger into potentially worse danger, by escaping into a completely unknown and potentially worse environment.
Basically, what I'm getting at is we in the US thrive on a false sense of security. Just a quick FYI, the entire effort to make flights more secure and all that nonsense hasn't done a damn thing for us. If someone wanted to get a weapon of some sort onto an airplane, they certainly could, and it wouldn't just be a random chance. If we think things need to be more secure, then we need to rethink our whole approach. Simply making everything a bigger pain in the ass than it already is doesn't make things more secure. Considering the fact that a strip/cavity search is the only 99.99999999999% effective means of discovering all weapons on an individual, we should only be performing such searches if we truly want to prevent terrorism and whatnot. By extending Kant's categorical imperative, our approach to security in general is hopelessly flawed and in terms of terror prevention almost exactly the same as doing nothing at all. The only good thing is that we make the "bad guys" work hard to cause mayhem, but the sad thing is that they can still do pretty much anything they want to. We are in some ways lucky that most criminal masterminds are also insane, because they are so effective and could do much more damage if they wanted.
I think it was actually pretty straightforward. It's good to see efforts like this, because it really is the best way to discourage such scams. Companies try to be politically correct (that, or just plain lazy) to some degree, so often don't investigate obvious scams. Scamming the scammers, though probably technically illegal, is still a great idea. I hope we get a response back from this guy because the end of the story was a little disappointing. I mean, we all know the scammer did get scammed, but the joke is so much better if you actually have hard evidence of some sort. At least an email saying "FUCK YOU" would be priceless.
I took the C++ test a few years ago, and it wasn't really all that difficult. What scared me was that I was the only one of the 8 at my school that pulled down a 5 from that test. I say that because while the AP test does give you an early indicator of how you may fair in college programming courses, it does not even begin to encompass true OOP programming and software engineering. The fact that so many people did so poorly on that test really made me reconsider my decision to do something besides programming. I struggle to learn advanced programming, but apparently I really should do it because I have been told that I "just do things right" and considering that so many programmers don't, I probably owe it to the world to stick to it with a little vi and whatever language I'm using at the time.
On a side note, if you bombed the AP test, or think you did, don't worry. It really doesn't matter unless you had to pay full price to take it;), and even then it's a fraction of the cost of 3-4 credit hours at just about any school. Even if you get a 2 on the test and CS or CE is your major, your school will have a course that will get you up to speed in a semester. Ultimately, the AP tests are just a convenience, not really a measure of how you can do. That said, don't let the scores get you down if this is what you want to do.
While it is a very good idea to plan for the future, a consumer operating system necessarily needs to run flawlessly on the average hardware of the day, not the best available. Microsoft should really be aiming at making the average requirements be approximately what makes an average top-of-the-line system today. I know that many of the said components will likely decrease in cost greatly over the next couple of years, but it is still ridiculous. Besides, there is nothing so totally major that Microsoft is adding to Longhorn that can justify them leaving the OS so horribly un-optimized. If Longhorn can, somehow, truly revolutionize computing than maybe this is called for. The thing is, I don't see that happening. There are already early releases of it that have been looked at, and there isn't anything spectacular. Honestly, none of the changes should be particularly resource intensive. Assuming that an "average" Longhorn system needs over a gig of RAM to run decently, that means you'd in theory need several gigs to achieve smooth performance, if possible. That means that the OS itself is probably going to be eating 512-1024MB of RAM. WTF could need that much? A massive, worthless disk cache? Just too much going on?
This is probably a good thing though, because it's a good opportunity for Linux, et al., to appeal to users who have inadequate machines when Longhorn is released (and that will be almost everyone, if this holds true). All we really need is something really cool at that time. Of course, this is a bunch of speculation and idealizations, but the opportunity is real and we should at least try to seize it.
I do not have HDTV in any form, but is gaining appeal for me simply because it is cooler than normal TV (not that I even really watch that, but still...). I have done research and have seen in many markets most of the major broadcast networks do have a fairly decent HDTV lineup, including most of the prime-time favorites.
Your question is valid and needed, however, because there really is little consistency so far. What you can get in HDTV varies from market to market and with cable from provider to provider right now. This is annoying and only helps to slow the adoption of what is in most ways a better technology. I would really like to see less people trying to make their own ridiculous profits from HDTV. If they really want to make money off of it, the hardware shouldn't be about 4x the cost of a roughly equivalent sized normal TV. I know that the picture is better, but it is bullshit and always has been that the HDTV itself won't get you access to any programming. These decoder boxes cost them pennies on the dollar to make and should be built in. There is no good argument other than greed, and greed makes for bad products (planned obsolescence, Microsoft, poorly built hardware that works well but doesn't last long, etc.). I am so sick and tired of greed, and I really hope that all HDTV related companies really screw themselves over horribly here (pretty much all of them deserve it badly).
Obviously, unsolicited advertisements are spam. However, if a user knowingly or unknowingly agrees to join a mailing list, including those that do not have reasonable privacy policies (i.e. they sell your info, if it's worth anything anymore anyway), is it really spam? They did bring it upon themself, after all. I argue that by operating a computer with Windows installed on it you are probably legally exempting yourself from any recourse at all against spam mailers in many cases. It's kind of a stretch, and I do not know enough about the law to say definitively, but I think it could be argued that the majority of Windows users have some clue about the inherent security and privacy problems (e.g. viruses, etc.) and because of that they are acknowledging that they have opened themselves up to many forms of solicititation. The main idea I'm thinking of here is popups and those offers that are obviously too good to be true: "Give us your information, and we'll use it only to get you great deals/gift certificates." That wording I just used could easily make someone think, at first glance, that their personal information is protected by a privacy policy, but the wording mentions no such protection. Using said information to "only get great deals" could easily mean selling that information to possibly give a little something back to the poor user.
To make a long story short, there are too many problems with any sort of legal attacks on either side of the spam war. The best way around it is to keep up our current technological efforts and hopefully eventually come up with a satisfactory alternative, or preferably enhancement, to our current email system. No, there is no need for taxes or email postage; it could never work anyway for so many reasons. Hopefully we will come up with something that does work, and I think we will soon. Until then, get a good spam filter or just restrict to your address book. It's annoying, but so are many other things in life, and we get by anyway.
...the GPL does not require distributors and integrators to staple the license to users' foreheads. Just a thought. Yea, it is kind of dishonest, and if they don't include all the original docs they should be punished and probably even banned from using GPL'd software for a while, seeing as Sun is basically just a burden on all of us: stale platform or just a rehash of what you can get anywhere else for free or less, and the easy-to-program-in-but-not-well-implemented Java.
You raise a good point. I agree that there is no reason not to go ahead and get a cert, especially if it is not that difficult and/or expensive to do so. It might backfire with the "overqualified" bullshit (which isn't always bullshit, just most of the time), but it most cases it really can't hurt. If you've got no money in the bank and are working $10/hour jobs, then it's probably a more practical route than college, regardless of the alleged importance of college.
Certification programs are only slightly more worthless than degrees, if we're being honest with ourselves. Employers should really wise up and take into account the fact that any clown can drink their way through college doing the bare minimum and show up for the same commencement ceremony as the handful of students who worked their asses off. Because of their more specific nature, certificates can be more valid, but the only way to truly see if someone can do the job is to hire them and have them do it. You can probably tell who can't do the job without anything more than the conventional application/resume/interview, but even with that there are no guarantees. I know, life isn't fair, but fuck, we really need to fix shit like this. There are so many problems with how we look at things like hiring and education, and if we fixed those, I honestly believe that people would be happier and much better off in general. Not to mention everything could be more efficient in general, which would result in pay increases.*
*You thought I was some poor, naive bastard. Of course the pay increases would only be for executives because that is also how things work and that needs to be stopped now.
You are so right on. Additionally, simply because we know about this stuff does not mean we need to speak up on the behalf of others who are less knowledgeable. Instead, we need to keep up the good work developing alternative (and much better in most cases) solutions to the lousy commercial ones. As Linux continues to catch on at all levels, it presumably will help force out malware due to the heightened difficulty in engineering such software for an OS such as Linux, BSD, or others. Fighting these annoyances on a grand scale and on privacy grounds is probably the most foolish waste of effort. Protect your computer like you do your home, but don't let that get in the way of what you do. I think it's fairly obvious that the best solution is to prevent the installation of this kind of software in the first place. As people get more proactive, the malware gets more insidious, but that won't continue forever. It will have to reach a point where it simply is not worth it, especially for "legitimate" corporations.
Why would there be media hype? This is the media and what they do. A simple glance at the Dilbert 2003 Weasel Awards reveals that the news media is the third weaseliest profession. Though this is by no means a scientific survey and really cannot fully support my claim, I do believe that there is some validity to those results. The media is all about sensationalizing whatever they can get their hands on, but that doesn't mean that everything this community finds important will be publicized in any fashion at all by any other news service.
This "invasion of privacy" is not really an involuntary invasion. You have to know the risks of installing such software on your machine. If you voluntarily let someone into your home, are they invading your privacy by keeping track (in any fashion) of what you happen to be doing? I say no, because by allowing them in and not having unbreakable rules then you are allowing them to at very least keep track of what they see. This all goes back to advertising and squeezing every last penny out of it. The media makes pretty much all of their money with advertising, so of course they will not investigate their own questionable procedures lest they incriminate themselves in their own publications. Just because the spyware is coming from Amazon doesn't mean that it's newsworthy. I hate it just as much as everyone else here does, but you have to understand that if they think they can make money off of it, they'll do it. Companies like Amazon couldn't care less about having every customer being happy. As long as the money keeps pouring in they'll think they're doing everything right.
RSA SecurID authenticators are as simple to use as entering a password, but much more secure. Each end user is assigned an RSA SecurID authenticator which generates a new, unpredictable code every 60 seconds. The user combines this number with a secret PIN to log into protected resources.(from here)
Actually, SecurID is not stored, at least not in any implementation I've seen. I'm fairly certain there is some math involved here, such as each key being based on the last one or whatever. This seems like an inherently better idea anyway, though it may not have any real security benefits unless you condsider the social aspect of the whole thing. Regardlesss, a SecurID would be a great way of doing this if it is in fact implemented in a prompt-user-for-sequence fashion.
Do Bluetooth input devices really work perfectly, though? I have never actually bought one but that is mainly due to the fact that I have no need and don't need heavy batteries to replace or recharge. It has always been a concern of mine that the latency of Bluetooth would be a major issue however. With most all computers having multiple USB buses nowadays, anyway, there is no reason this shouldn't be continued with WUSB to prevent latency and bandwidth issues.
Ultimately, I think the biggest concern is in how this is implemented in the peripherals. I see problems with exclusivity and so on. It would seem to me that expensive user interfaces would need to be added to "simple" devices such as printers and so on so that a proper connection can be established. I could be completely wrong as I don't see an LCD on Bluetooth keyboards, but the more sensitive the data the more security you need. More security requires more interfaces to implement and optimize it. I can see WUSB either making things more complex or simpler, and I sure hope we can look forward to more simplicity. And if this new standard isn't good enough to act as a replacement for wired USB in all possible applications for new products, then I don't think it should be implemented. We're finally getting over old-school buses, and the last thing we need is to keep piling things on top of each other.
Call me a minimalist, but I think that FireWire for wired peripheral connections, WUSB for wireless peripheral connections, and hopefully some kind of new wireless "ethernet" is all we should need for external connections at the consumer level. Don't expect to see this any time soon, however.
You are right that the costs are high, but they are not prohibitive. Also, these costs are not created by the current "monopoly" but rather by the inherent fact that these things cost money. I live in a rather poor neighborhood in Chicago, and I can choose between two different cable companies in my building. It used to be three but there was a merger. If costs were truly prohibitive, there wouldn't be such a choice.
I really don't know how much profit cable companies take from monthly service charges, especially compared to similar services such as satellite or cell phones. But as has been written before, cable programming is just "bait" for the advertisements. The money you pay each month for cable is seen as a connection charge to the cable company. This can be loosely compared to how we pay for an internet connection but that payment is not for the content (in most cases) but rather for the connection. Free content on the web is paid for by advertising, much how TV works. Premium, ad-free content on the web requires payment in some form, much like cable channels such as HBO and Cinemax.
What this all means is that the cable companies cannot in any practical means charge you significantly less monthly if you choose not to have certain channels. This means that while there may be a law passed to require custom packages, this same law will not cut your cable bill in half by any means. I could see cable companies offering a flat connection charge of say $30 a month and then a certain charge for each channel added to the package. Different channels might cost different amounts. As you can see here, you may end up paying more to achieve about the same amount of decent programming you had originally. You may only have 4 favorite channels, that's how I am, but I find that having more options is often better. yes, half of the channels do suck, but who cares?
Ultimately, the best solution for dealing with high cable bills is to call up customer service and explain that you cannot afford the rate any more. They'll usually cut your bill down considerably for a year and then you can renegotiate later.
It doesn't really do anything that is currently needed.
It is more complicated than it needs to be.
Cell phones accomplish the exact same thing for the same cost and at a sadly higher reliability level.
It's going to be regulated as hell sooner or later.
It's not a satisfactory long-term solution.
What annoys me the most is that cell phones still are not treated as "normal" phones by the key places where it matters, such as credit cards, etc. If I pay a monthly bill on a cell phone, and I need a positive credit rating to even get that service plan in the first place, why is that not good enough to establish credit? It annoys me that even though it seems like something that has been overlooked, it also looks like we're just giving extra business to land-line providers. I have no need for such a telephone line, but I will probably have to get one the next time I move as it still is a requirement for many things.
Dude, guess what, GSM more or less means SIM card. You almost certainly don't have GSM if you don't have a SIM card. What service are you using? Many of the providers in the US offer GSM and TDMA or CDMA phones even now, though they usually fail to clearly make the distinction to their customers. I am not certain whether there is an official GSM standard, but assuming there is I would imagine it calls for a SIM card. I'm sure that if anywhere anyone went against that it would be here in the US, but I'm just saying from personal experience and from what I've seen, if there isn't a SIM card in the phone, it isn't GSM. Oh and another note: just because there is a SIM card doesn't mean that it is GSM.
Yea, but this is blatant dishonesty and essentially cheating. I just read an article that says that ethical corporations do better in the long run, and this isn't a simple karma question. Be good to people and they'll be good to you. They're not just "customers" or "consumers," but people. This stuff is real, it's not a game. There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values. If you're an asshole now, as a person or a corporation, it will come back to get you one way or another. Microsoft and SCO may be getting what they want now, but they'll be hurting for this later.
You didn't get the shaft if you bought a FSB400 motherboard. You shafted yourself. Don't think that a CPU that is not on the market ever will be. Buying a motherboard as some sort of future investment is about the worst idea I have ever heard. Yea, sometimes you want the latest and greatest, and it happens to work with your current CPU, but you can't get pissed when you can't the CPU you want for the motherboard later on. This is similar to buying a new truck, minus the engine, and throwing in this engine you already have that happens to work. You have no guarantee that the next engine design will work in your current truck. There is usually no reason to suspect it will either. I am sorry this didn't work out for you. I am disappointed as well, but no one got the shaft here.
I am also perfectly content with the performance of my FSB333 system and I can't imagine why anyone (especially a desktop user) would need anything faster. Honestly, there is no appreciable or noticeable difference in performance between these two FSB speeds. I don't have any benchmarks to back myself up, so you probably should ignore what I'm saying. Realistically, all you're going to see is maybe a handful more FPS in your favorite game, or a couple seconds less on a minute-plus operation. I realize that our demand for the best possible is a good part of what drives this industry, but it also drives this wonderful planned obsolesence which is wasteful and foolish. I'm typing this on a Dell laptop that was top of the line 2 years ago. It isn't anymore, but it still is snappy as all hell in Linux and Windows. It only has a Geforce4go, but it plays almost every game just fine. And you know what, it's only a P4M 1.8 running on a FSB266.
I understand that we always want the best we can get, but we need to understand also that when we're on the cutting edge of technology, we're going to lose some blood. That's just how it works.
Sorry, didn't mean to be too defensive, I just get sick when I see all the stupid fighting over BSD and such. It really is so lame, and I would hate to see all serious discussion of Gentoo on Slashdot be cancelled out be such garbage.
You know, I really find it ironic how often groups of people get attacked on Slashdot and called "zealots" as if their ideas were worthless and wrong simply because you can't understand their reasoning. Everyone who runs Linux is a "zealot" in Bill Gates eyes. We're all bullied by him and big business in general, and then some of us decide to turn our anger and frustration towards members of our own community simply because we find them to be easy targets.
Who cares if you don't like Gentoo or BSD or whatever? Just because someone else likes to run them doesn't make them an idiot. Pretty much any current Linux distro or BSD distro or any similar OS is going to get the same things done for you. They may do things in different ways, but ultimately they have fairly similar results. I'm not trying to devalue any viewpoints or systems here, but honestly there is no point in bitter, angry fighting over superior open source OS's because they are pretty much all way better than Windows.
I happen to like Gentoo, and I run it on some of my machines. But I also run RedHat and Mandrake and Mac OS X and I even have one Windows XP box. I don't particularly care about the alleged optimization in Gentoo, because there is no noticeable difference in speed between any recent distro I have run. What I do care about is the fact that it is highly customizable, fairly easy to use, and frankly pretty cool. The Portage system is a unique adaptation of BSD Ports and the similar Linux counterparts.
I fail to see how Debian is better than Gentoo. They are somewhat similar, and I wouldn't say that either is necessarily better. Of course, with Linux, it ultimately comes down to what is best for you. Either way, there is no way anyone can definitively say one is better. One could go on all day about the goodness of Debian, and I could throw that all out in my mind because I happen to not like how Debian feels and acts. Or I could just go by the simple fact that although initial installation of Gentoo can be more complex than that of Debian, Gentoo worked infinitely better with my hardware from the start. But all that demonstrates is that I like Gentoo better than Debian. It might be the case that I'm the only person that feels that way, and you know what, I would be fine with that.
What I am trying to say here is that we just need to try to be more tolerant here on Slashdot, and ultimately in all areas. Sure, we shouldn't tolerate an OS that is blatantly or hopelessly flawed, but I just don't see that describing Gentoo or any other OS that I have used recently. Go ahead and debate, go ahead and criticize, but realize that you can't really fault someone for their opinions.
I answer your question of why I run Gentoo: because I like it. I respect that you don't like it, if that is the case. I can see how many, if not most people would not like it at all. But I do like it and I am no "zealot." I wouldn't take a bullet for Gentoo, but I'll stick up for it if it is unfairly slammed. I am willing to see the flaws in my chosen distro. Are you?
That's funny because I recently had a dream that AAA was actually a secret, elite police service that recruited new officers at gunpoint and were training for an eventual takeover of the US and removal of pretty much all rights. It would be ironic if AAA was actually the vehicle that Bush chose to carry out this plan. Tee hee hee.
Regardless of whether anyone even cares about the noise that an alarm makes, many thieves can disable the alarm before it even gets a chance to go off. It really isn't that hard to force the hood open and disconnect the battery in under a minute, especially if you work the same kind of car. Car alarms may deter a drunken idiot who is trying to steal a car to get from point A to point x, but that doesn't have anything to do with the professional thieves who are the really scary ones. Those are the folks you're not going to get your stuff back from.
The difference here is that with the laptop alarm, the brash, impulsive types can easily pull off a theft (if not a regular wherever it occurs) by simply grabbing the laptop and running. The professionals who do it more slickly may be thrown a curveball by a noisemaker, and will have to resort to some sort of attention-getting activities or give up.
Slashdot Mirror
Bomb: Yes
Terrorist: Good!
Terrorist: Can you hear me now?
Bomb: Wha--=-a---t?
Terrorist: I said "can you hear me now?"
Bomb: Oh, yes. Terrorist: Now detonate!
Bomb: What?
BEEP BEEP BEEP. Call is dropped
Terrorist: FUCK! I wasted all these anytime minutes and still didn't get my explosion.
Ok, so that was pretty lame, but it illustrates the stupidity of this whole idea. No terrorist who wanted to succeed would use cellphones for any part of their activities. They are inherently insecure and are also prone to horribly connection and sound quality problems, and if you didn't know that you haven't used a cell phone ever. This whole thing depends on criminals being idiots, and I don't think someone who can set up a remote detonation of any sort is going to be a complete moron. This is similar to the new "feature" found in many car trunks now that allows someone to open the hatch from inside, should they be kidnapped and placed in the trunk. It really doesn't seem like it should be a big concern. If the kidnapper didn't tie up the victim in the first place, then they probably will escape soon anyway. Instead, we feel the need to put people who are already in danger into potentially worse danger, by escaping into a completely unknown and potentially worse environment.
Basically, what I'm getting at is we in the US thrive on a false sense of security. Just a quick FYI, the entire effort to make flights more secure and all that nonsense hasn't done a damn thing for us. If someone wanted to get a weapon of some sort onto an airplane, they certainly could, and it wouldn't just be a random chance. If we think things need to be more secure, then we need to rethink our whole approach. Simply making everything a bigger pain in the ass than it already is doesn't make things more secure. Considering the fact that a strip/cavity search is the only 99.99999999999% effective means of discovering all weapons on an individual, we should only be performing such searches if we truly want to prevent terrorism and whatnot. By extending Kant's categorical imperative, our approach to security in general is hopelessly flawed and in terms of terror prevention almost exactly the same as doing nothing at all. The only good thing is that we make the "bad guys" work hard to cause mayhem, but the sad thing is that they can still do pretty much anything they want to. We are in some ways lucky that most criminal masterminds are also insane, because they are so effective and could do much more damage if they wanted.
I think it was actually pretty straightforward. It's good to see efforts like this, because it really is the best way to discourage such scams. Companies try to be politically correct (that, or just plain lazy) to some degree, so often don't investigate obvious scams. Scamming the scammers, though probably technically illegal, is still a great idea. I hope we get a response back from this guy because the end of the story was a little disappointing. I mean, we all know the scammer did get scammed, but the joke is so much better if you actually have hard evidence of some sort. At least an email saying "FUCK YOU" would be priceless.
On a side note, if you bombed the AP test, or think you did, don't worry. It really doesn't matter unless you had to pay full price to take it ;), and even then it's a fraction of the cost of 3-4 credit hours at just about any school. Even if you get a 2 on the test and CS or CE is your major, your school will have a course that will get you up to speed in a semester. Ultimately, the AP tests are just a convenience, not really a measure of how you can do. That said, don't let the scores get you down if this is what you want to do.
This is probably a good thing though, because it's a good opportunity for Linux, et al., to appeal to users who have inadequate machines when Longhorn is released (and that will be almost everyone, if this holds true). All we really need is something really cool at that time. Of course, this is a bunch of speculation and idealizations, but the opportunity is real and we should at least try to seize it.
Your question is valid and needed, however, because there really is little consistency so far. What you can get in HDTV varies from market to market and with cable from provider to provider right now. This is annoying and only helps to slow the adoption of what is in most ways a better technology. I would really like to see less people trying to make their own ridiculous profits from HDTV. If they really want to make money off of it, the hardware shouldn't be about 4x the cost of a roughly equivalent sized normal TV. I know that the picture is better, but it is bullshit and always has been that the HDTV itself won't get you access to any programming. These decoder boxes cost them pennies on the dollar to make and should be built in. There is no good argument other than greed, and greed makes for bad products (planned obsolescence, Microsoft, poorly built hardware that works well but doesn't last long, etc.). I am so sick and tired of greed, and I really hope that all HDTV related companies really screw themselves over horribly here (pretty much all of them deserve it badly).
To make a long story short, there are too many problems with any sort of legal attacks on either side of the spam war. The best way around it is to keep up our current technological efforts and hopefully eventually come up with a satisfactory alternative, or preferably enhancement, to our current email system. No, there is no need for taxes or email postage; it could never work anyway for so many reasons. Hopefully we will come up with something that does work, and I think we will soon. Until then, get a good spam filter or just restrict to your address book. It's annoying, but so are many other things in life, and we get by anyway.
...the GPL does not require distributors and integrators to staple the license to users' foreheads. Just a thought. Yea, it is kind of dishonest, and if they don't include all the original docs they should be punished and probably even banned from using GPL'd software for a while, seeing as Sun is basically just a burden on all of us: stale platform or just a rehash of what you can get anywhere else for free or less, and the easy-to-program-in-but-not-well-implemented Java.
You raise a good point. I agree that there is no reason not to go ahead and get a cert, especially if it is not that difficult and/or expensive to do so. It might backfire with the "overqualified" bullshit (which isn't always bullshit, just most of the time), but it most cases it really can't hurt. If you've got no money in the bank and are working $10/hour jobs, then it's probably a more practical route than college, regardless of the alleged importance of college.
Certification programs are only slightly more worthless than degrees, if we're being honest with ourselves. Employers should really wise up and take into account the fact that any clown can drink their way through college doing the bare minimum and show up for the same commencement ceremony as the handful of students who worked their asses off. Because of their more specific nature, certificates can be more valid, but the only way to truly see if someone can do the job is to hire them and have them do it. You can probably tell who can't do the job without anything more than the conventional application/resume/interview, but even with that there are no guarantees. I know, life isn't fair, but fuck, we really need to fix shit like this. There are so many problems with how we look at things like hiring and education, and if we fixed those, I honestly believe that people would be happier and much better off in general. Not to mention everything could be more efficient in general, which would result in pay increases.*
*You thought I was some poor, naive bastard. Of course the pay increases would only be for executives because that is also how things work and that needs to be stopped now.
You are so right on. Additionally, simply because we know about this stuff does not mean we need to speak up on the behalf of others who are less knowledgeable. Instead, we need to keep up the good work developing alternative (and much better in most cases) solutions to the lousy commercial ones. As Linux continues to catch on at all levels, it presumably will help force out malware due to the heightened difficulty in engineering such software for an OS such as Linux, BSD, or others. Fighting these annoyances on a grand scale and on privacy grounds is probably the most foolish waste of effort. Protect your computer like you do your home, but don't let that get in the way of what you do. I think it's fairly obvious that the best solution is to prevent the installation of this kind of software in the first place. As people get more proactive, the malware gets more insidious, but that won't continue forever. It will have to reach a point where it simply is not worth it, especially for "legitimate" corporations.
This "invasion of privacy" is not really an involuntary invasion. You have to know the risks of installing such software on your machine. If you voluntarily let someone into your home, are they invading your privacy by keeping track (in any fashion) of what you happen to be doing? I say no, because by allowing them in and not having unbreakable rules then you are allowing them to at very least keep track of what they see. This all goes back to advertising and squeezing every last penny out of it. The media makes pretty much all of their money with advertising, so of course they will not investigate their own questionable procedures lest they incriminate themselves in their own publications. Just because the spyware is coming from Amazon doesn't mean that it's newsworthy. I hate it just as much as everyone else here does, but you have to understand that if they think they can make money off of it, they'll do it. Companies like Amazon couldn't care less about having every customer being happy. As long as the money keeps pouring in they'll think they're doing everything right.
RSA SecurID authenticators are as simple to use as entering a password, but much more secure. Each end user is assigned an RSA SecurID authenticator which generates a new, unpredictable code every 60 seconds. The user combines this number with a secret PIN to log into protected resources.(from here)
Actually, SecurID is not stored, at least not in any implementation I've seen. I'm fairly certain there is some math involved here, such as each key being based on the last one or whatever. This seems like an inherently better idea anyway, though it may not have any real security benefits unless you condsider the social aspect of the whole thing. Regardlesss, a SecurID would be a great way of doing this if it is in fact implemented in a prompt-user-for-sequence fashion.
Ultimately, I think the biggest concern is in how this is implemented in the peripherals. I see problems with exclusivity and so on. It would seem to me that expensive user interfaces would need to be added to "simple" devices such as printers and so on so that a proper connection can be established. I could be completely wrong as I don't see an LCD on Bluetooth keyboards, but the more sensitive the data the more security you need. More security requires more interfaces to implement and optimize it. I can see WUSB either making things more complex or simpler, and I sure hope we can look forward to more simplicity. And if this new standard isn't good enough to act as a replacement for wired USB in all possible applications for new products, then I don't think it should be implemented. We're finally getting over old-school buses, and the last thing we need is to keep piling things on top of each other.
Call me a minimalist, but I think that FireWire for wired peripheral connections, WUSB for wireless peripheral connections, and hopefully some kind of new wireless "ethernet" is all we should need for external connections at the consumer level. Don't expect to see this any time soon, however.
I really don't know how much profit cable companies take from monthly service charges, especially compared to similar services such as satellite or cell phones. But as has been written before, cable programming is just "bait" for the advertisements. The money you pay each month for cable is seen as a connection charge to the cable company. This can be loosely compared to how we pay for an internet connection but that payment is not for the content (in most cases) but rather for the connection. Free content on the web is paid for by advertising, much how TV works. Premium, ad-free content on the web requires payment in some form, much like cable channels such as HBO and Cinemax.
What this all means is that the cable companies cannot in any practical means charge you significantly less monthly if you choose not to have certain channels. This means that while there may be a law passed to require custom packages, this same law will not cut your cable bill in half by any means. I could see cable companies offering a flat connection charge of say $30 a month and then a certain charge for each channel added to the package. Different channels might cost different amounts. As you can see here, you may end up paying more to achieve about the same amount of decent programming you had originally. You may only have 4 favorite channels, that's how I am, but I find that having more options is often better. yes, half of the channels do suck, but who cares?
Ultimately, the best solution for dealing with high cable bills is to call up customer service and explain that you cannot afford the rate any more. They'll usually cut your bill down considerably for a year and then you can renegotiate later.
What annoys me the most is that cell phones still are not treated as "normal" phones by the key places where it matters, such as credit cards, etc. If I pay a monthly bill on a cell phone, and I need a positive credit rating to even get that service plan in the first place, why is that not good enough to establish credit? It annoys me that even though it seems like something that has been overlooked, it also looks like we're just giving extra business to land-line providers. I have no need for such a telephone line, but I will probably have to get one the next time I move as it still is a requirement for many things.
You know, not only are you off topic but you are incorrect as well. Choose mcpu or march, but not both please.
Dude, guess what, GSM more or less means SIM card. You almost certainly don't have GSM if you don't have a SIM card. What service are you using? Many of the providers in the US offer GSM and TDMA or CDMA phones even now, though they usually fail to clearly make the distinction to their customers. I am not certain whether there is an official GSM standard, but assuming there is I would imagine it calls for a SIM card. I'm sure that if anywhere anyone went against that it would be here in the US, but I'm just saying from personal experience and from what I've seen, if there isn't a SIM card in the phone, it isn't GSM. Oh and another note: just because there is a SIM card doesn't mean that it is GSM.
Yea, but this is blatant dishonesty and essentially cheating. I just read an article that says that ethical corporations do better in the long run, and this isn't a simple karma question. Be good to people and they'll be good to you. They're not just "customers" or "consumers," but people. This stuff is real, it's not a game. There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values. If you're an asshole now, as a person or a corporation, it will come back to get you one way or another. Microsoft and SCO may be getting what they want now, but they'll be hurting for this later.
Well I'm not sure if it is in fact possible, but if it is, these people may know.
I am also perfectly content with the performance of my FSB333 system and I can't imagine why anyone (especially a desktop user) would need anything faster. Honestly, there is no appreciable or noticeable difference in performance between these two FSB speeds. I don't have any benchmarks to back myself up, so you probably should ignore what I'm saying. Realistically, all you're going to see is maybe a handful more FPS in your favorite game, or a couple seconds less on a minute-plus operation. I realize that our demand for the best possible is a good part of what drives this industry, but it also drives this wonderful planned obsolesence which is wasteful and foolish. I'm typing this on a Dell laptop that was top of the line 2 years ago. It isn't anymore, but it still is snappy as all hell in Linux and Windows. It only has a Geforce4go, but it plays almost every game just fine. And you know what, it's only a P4M 1.8 running on a FSB266.
I understand that we always want the best we can get, but we need to understand also that when we're on the cutting edge of technology, we're going to lose some blood. That's just how it works.
Sorry, didn't mean to be too defensive, I just get sick when I see all the stupid fighting over BSD and such. It really is so lame, and I would hate to see all serious discussion of Gentoo on Slashdot be cancelled out be such garbage.
Who cares if you don't like Gentoo or BSD or whatever? Just because someone else likes to run them doesn't make them an idiot. Pretty much any current Linux distro or BSD distro or any similar OS is going to get the same things done for you. They may do things in different ways, but ultimately they have fairly similar results. I'm not trying to devalue any viewpoints or systems here, but honestly there is no point in bitter, angry fighting over superior open source OS's because they are pretty much all way better than Windows.
I happen to like Gentoo, and I run it on some of my machines. But I also run RedHat and Mandrake and Mac OS X and I even have one Windows XP box. I don't particularly care about the alleged optimization in Gentoo, because there is no noticeable difference in speed between any recent distro I have run. What I do care about is the fact that it is highly customizable, fairly easy to use, and frankly pretty cool. The Portage system is a unique adaptation of BSD Ports and the similar Linux counterparts.
I fail to see how Debian is better than Gentoo. They are somewhat similar, and I wouldn't say that either is necessarily better. Of course, with Linux, it ultimately comes down to what is best for you. Either way, there is no way anyone can definitively say one is better. One could go on all day about the goodness of Debian, and I could throw that all out in my mind because I happen to not like how Debian feels and acts. Or I could just go by the simple fact that although initial installation of Gentoo can be more complex than that of Debian, Gentoo worked infinitely better with my hardware from the start. But all that demonstrates is that I like Gentoo better than Debian. It might be the case that I'm the only person that feels that way, and you know what, I would be fine with that.
What I am trying to say here is that we just need to try to be more tolerant here on Slashdot, and ultimately in all areas. Sure, we shouldn't tolerate an OS that is blatantly or hopelessly flawed, but I just don't see that describing Gentoo or any other OS that I have used recently. Go ahead and debate, go ahead and criticize, but realize that you can't really fault someone for their opinions.
I answer your question of why I run Gentoo: because I like it. I respect that you don't like it, if that is the case. I can see how many, if not most people would not like it at all. But I do like it and I am no "zealot." I wouldn't take a bullet for Gentoo, but I'll stick up for it if it is unfairly slammed. I am willing to see the flaws in my chosen distro. Are you?
That's funny because I recently had a dream that AAA was actually a secret, elite police service that recruited new officers at gunpoint and were training for an eventual takeover of the US and removal of pretty much all rights. It would be ironic if AAA was actually the vehicle that Bush chose to carry out this plan. Tee hee hee.
The difference here is that with the laptop alarm, the brash, impulsive types can easily pull off a theft (if not a regular wherever it occurs) by simply grabbing the laptop and running. The professionals who do it more slickly may be thrown a curveball by a noisemaker, and will have to resort to some sort of attention-getting activities or give up.