How about we abolish the DHS altogether? What an expensive boondoggle it turned out to be. The worst part is that it got formed because the various intelligence agencies were engaged in turf wars and refusing to share info on possible threats to the US. The solution? Create another monster agency. Sigh.
I am not fond of the word 'fascism' because it's become a catch-all word for describing any policy or action a govt makes that is not to our liking. But in this case, we have a secret govt action in open collusion with big business at the expense of the general public which I think could accurately described as being fascist, or at least not far from it.
I have to say, I'm seriously disappointed and surprised by BO's decision to continue with a pandering Bushco policy decision.
She needs to be investigated for her conflict of interest between her position as chair on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee and her husband's firms receiving billions of dollars of defense construction contracts. Oops. She's the chair of the Senate Rules Committee. I guess there won't be any investigations.
It seems there is a real competition in the world to see who is the most paranoid country on the planet. Governments across the globe have surpassed any level of terror the terrorists could generate because they have institutionalized fear to far greater effect than the terrorists could ever achieve on their own.
Personally, I think this nonsense has more to do with xenophobia, racism, and political control than with combating actual terrorism.
Fark is a pathetic shell of what it used to be. Drew has really screwed up the site as compared to its glory days. I think this is another attempt at attention whoring to get people to come back to his site. It's not going to work.
Fuck Drew. He'll get over it.
This violates the 1st amendment. It places the Wifi operators in an uncomfortable position of being morality police while at the same time intimidates users with the threat of prosecution for posting "objectionable" content. This is another bill that ultimately does more harm than good and is unlikely to achieve any significant impact on child pron.
One thing I've realized with this administration is that it pays to be a bit paranoid. My gut is telling me that this has less to do with competitive internet service and more to do with carriers segregating traffic which would make it easier to conduct eavesdropping on things like VOIP and email without having to sort thru tons of torrent traffic.
Under the "reliability" tab, I read the case study for Continental AG. Here's a quote:
Continental first tested a Linux solution, but the company decided instead on a platform based on Microsoft® Windows Server(TM) 2003 Enterprise Edition and Windows® XP Professional because of the opportunity to lower costs and improve security. The new system architecture has considerably reduced IT costs at Continental AG.
The way it's worded implies that they replaced Linux with WS2K3 and XP, which saved all this money. But a more careful read shows that the original platform is unidentified (probably NT or such). Further, the discussion seemed to focus on the 24,000 desktops, not the servers, making this case largely irrelevant for comparing servers. An actual server comparison is never presented.
The bottom line is that this alleged proof of Windows superiority was done by comparing an anonymous and out-dated server platform against a more recent Windows server and then declaring Windows the winner over Linux with no justification given. WTF? Pure FUD indeed.
I already addressed this in another comment. But I'll restate it. There's a big difference between benign product placement and overt advertisement. A game set in Times Square or even a sports arena would provide an opportunity for product placement without spoiling the immersion of the game. These are special cases where the game is set in an area which normally has advertisement in the background as part of its atmosphere. However, the advertising has to be contemporary with the game setting or the illusion is spoiled. If the game is going to be ad supported, it should say as much and be offered with better pricing.
You may remember that when Demolition Man came out with that Taco Bell stunt, it was booed in theaters.
There's a difference between benign product placement and overt and intrusive advertisement.
That's a very special case. But if I'm playing a game set in WW2 germany or some medieval village, the last thing I want to see are ads for mountain dew and iPhones. It's equivalent to going to the movies and being subjected to advertising crawlers across the bottom of the screen during the movie. Screw that.
There is no way in hell I'm purchasing a game that spams me, especially considering that games are close to $60 in price. When I play a game, I want to be immersed in the game itself and not some billboard-infested advertising zone.
I suspect that once the patent gets a little further along that MS will begin introducing bits and pieces of this bullshit as a service packs into Vista. These unwanted 'features' would blend right into Vista's DRM system. Given Vista's new security emphasis, I imagine that MS will make it damn hard to block any of the this by hacking or using external ad-blocking software. I'll think I'll stay with my old W2K system. Fuck MS.
This case is different than most civil cases. In this case, the injured party is the American public at large. The lower court has already ruled that the govt's action was a violation of the 1st and 4th amendments, plus a violation of FISA which harms everyone even if they were not an explicit target of the illegal wiretaps.
What I'd like to know is how is one supposed to challenge a blatantly unconstitutional program when the govt has a monopoly on the evidence needed to show individual harm.
This ain't rocket science. You don't need a CPU to do this, let alone a PCB board. Doesn't anybody know how to build stuff using discrete logic anymore? Eesh.
I could have built this on a perfboard when I was 15.
Why on earth do you need Windoze for your car? I mean, stop and think about it. I can't think of a single function that I'd want in my vehicle that couldn't be run more efficiently and reliably by a dedicated microcontroller.
This is an example why I will never buy another Ford. Too much useless gadgetry to go wrong in them. Perhaps if Ford would spend more time improving the quality and durability of their cars instead of inventing new meaningless crap to stuff in them, then maybe their company wouldn't be perpetually in the shitter.
Microsoft is famous for its "Embrace and Extend" philosophy of locking people into their products by corrupting open standards. This looks to be the same thing once again.
I have to admit, it's been a while since I've read the TCP/IP protocol specs, but I don't remember there being any provisions for communicating things like OS type, version, or patch lists over the TCP/IP headers.
This brings up a major compatibility question as to how this is going to work with routers, linux servers, printers, and other devices on a network who either don't know about CTCP or don't give a shit about CTCP. This scheme also seems to be extremely vunerable to spoofing.
If M$ would spend half as much effort in securing their OS as they do coming up with these hare-brained schemes, then we wouldn't need such contrived solutions to security.
The problem is often the result of the person ahead the tailgater driving far too slow in the passing lane. I would hope that the police would at least spend some of their effort enforcing the "obstructing traffic" laws as well as enforcing speeding and tailgating laws.
We have signs all over the place on our highways which explicitely state that the "left lane is for passing only" and "slower traffic move right", yet there always seems to be some dickhead who thinks it's illegal to drive more the half the posted speed limit in these lanes. The result is that these assholes tend to bunch up traffic creating dangerous crowding and a high potential for accidents.
Speed doesn't kill -- Inappropriate speed kills, whether too fast or too slow. But the slow ones are never cited. This is wrong. My experience has shown that excessively slow drivers in fast moving traffic are more of a hazard than 99% of the speeders out there.
My cynical side believes that this whole program is just another form of revenue enhancement.
If game is written to support -both- DX9 and DX10, then it is not dependent on DX10 since it supports the older API. What I said is still very much correct: If a game is dependent on DX10 (ei. it doesn't support DX9 or OGL), then it's strictly a Vista only game with a limited audience.
Our company is not very big (about 20 people) so there wasn't a lot of inertia to make the change. Plus selling it to management wasn't an issue. I am management.
What prompted the change was that our developers use Linux systems for application development. (We live by the motto that if it's mission critical, don't use Windows.) OpenOffice allows our Linux and Windows users to exchange documents without problems. Plus OpenOffice can import Word documents so changing over didn't create any special problems beyond learning the OpenOffice GUI. And finally, OpenOffice is actually a pretty capable application. It's perfectly suited for doing any business document that we'll ever write.
We don't use spreadsheets so I don't know about the compatibility there.
Either your wishful thinking has overridden your physical senses, or you're living under a rock (or simply not a gamer and thus not paying attention to gaming-related news). Halo 3 will be a DirectX 10 title, thus requiring Vista. Let me just say that -consumers- dictate market forces, not microsoft or any other vendor. Any company that thinks it can issue edicts to its customers is probably setting itself up for failure. As a consumer, I don't care that Halo3 or any other game is scheduled to be only available on Vista. Put simply, I'm not going to spend a bucket load of $$$ to upgrade my system, so I can spend more $$$ to install an OS I don't want, just so I can spend $60 on a rehashed game sequel. Forget that idea.
Speaking as a long time gamer (I still have a copy Commander Keen floating around) I can tell you that I'm not going to go to Vista. I also have talked to other gamers and computer users around my office and I have yet to find anyone interested in upgrading. DX10 might claim to have some marginally better graphics capabilities but I actually doubt this since as mentioned before, you ultimately run into the hardware limitions no matter which API you use. Both OpenGL and DX9 already support the power of programmable shaders thru CGI and HLSL, so what does DX10 bring to the table that's going to beat that? Probably nothing of consequence to the user.
Personally, I'm waiting for OpenGL 3.0 to come out.
Vista may not be an asset to gamers. DX10 doesn't really add any new features to the graphics capability of a system since that is largely dependent on hardware. Developers may like the newer DX10 interface, but there are severe backward compatibility issues for users. Any game which depends on DX10 will not run on XP or W2K platforms. I can't see developers embracing DX10/Vista for fear of excluding a large portion of the gaming market.
Slashdot Mirror
I was wondering if anyone was going to connect this to 2010. Maybe Jupiter has finally passed puberty.
How about we abolish the DHS altogether? What an expensive boondoggle it turned out to be. The worst part is that it got formed because the various intelligence agencies were engaged in turf wars and refusing to share info on possible threats to the US. The solution? Create another monster agency. Sigh.
I am not fond of the word 'fascism' because it's become a catch-all word for describing any policy or action a govt makes that is not to our liking. But in this case, we have a secret govt action in open collusion with big business at the expense of the general public which I think could accurately described as being fascist, or at least not far from it.
I have to say, I'm seriously disappointed and surprised by BO's decision to continue with a pandering Bushco policy decision.
She needs to be investigated for her conflict of interest between her position as chair on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee and her husband's firms receiving billions of dollars of defense construction contracts. Oops. She's the chair of the Senate Rules Committee. I guess there won't be any investigations.
Personally, I think this nonsense has more to do with xenophobia, racism, and political control than with combating actual terrorism.
Fark is a pathetic shell of what it used to be. Drew has really screwed up the site as compared to its glory days. I think this is another attempt at attention whoring to get people to come back to his site. It's not going to work. Fuck Drew. He'll get over it.
The wifi operators may not be common carriers themselves, but they are gateways to a common carrier network.
What a nation of paranoid nannies we're becoming.
Who cares. I have adsense blocked anyway.
One thing I've realized with this administration is that it pays to be a bit paranoid. My gut is telling me that this has less to do with competitive internet service and more to do with carriers segregating traffic which would make it easier to conduct eavesdropping on things like VOIP and email without having to sort thru tons of torrent traffic.
The way it's worded implies that they replaced Linux with WS2K3 and XP, which saved all this money. But a more careful read shows that the original platform is unidentified (probably NT or such). Further, the discussion seemed to focus on the 24,000 desktops, not the servers, making this case largely irrelevant for comparing servers. An actual server comparison is never presented.
The bottom line is that this alleged proof of Windows superiority was done by comparing an anonymous and out-dated server platform against a more recent Windows server and then declaring Windows the winner over Linux with no justification given. WTF? Pure FUD indeed.
I already addressed this in another comment. But I'll restate it. There's a big difference between benign product placement and overt advertisement. A game set in Times Square or even a sports arena would provide an opportunity for product placement without spoiling the immersion of the game. These are special cases where the game is set in an area which normally has advertisement in the background as part of its atmosphere. However, the advertising has to be contemporary with the game setting or the illusion is spoiled. If the game is going to be ad supported, it should say as much and be offered with better pricing.
You may remember that when Demolition Man came out with that Taco Bell stunt, it was booed in theaters. There's a difference between benign product placement and overt and intrusive advertisement.
That's a very special case. But if I'm playing a game set in WW2 germany or some medieval village, the last thing I want to see are ads for mountain dew and iPhones. It's equivalent to going to the movies and being subjected to advertising crawlers across the bottom of the screen during the movie. Screw that.
There is no way in hell I'm purchasing a game that spams me, especially considering that games are close to $60 in price. When I play a game, I want to be immersed in the game itself and not some billboard-infested advertising zone.
I suspect that once the patent gets a little further along that MS will begin introducing bits and pieces of this bullshit as a service packs into Vista. These unwanted 'features' would blend right into Vista's DRM system. Given Vista's new security emphasis, I imagine that MS will make it damn hard to block any of the this by hacking or using external ad-blocking software. I'll think I'll stay with my old W2K system. Fuck MS.
What I'd like to know is how is one supposed to challenge a blatantly unconstitutional program when the govt has a monopoly on the evidence needed to show individual harm.
This ain't rocket science. You don't need a CPU to do this, let alone a PCB board. Doesn't anybody know how to build stuff using discrete logic anymore? Eesh. I could have built this on a perfboard when I was 15.
Why on earth do you need Windoze for your car? I mean, stop and think about it. I can't think of a single function that I'd want in my vehicle that couldn't be run more efficiently and reliably by a dedicated microcontroller.
This is an example why I will never buy another Ford. Too much useless gadgetry to go wrong in them. Perhaps if Ford would spend more time improving the quality and durability of their cars instead of inventing new meaningless crap to stuff in them, then maybe their company wouldn't be perpetually in the shitter.
Microsoft is famous for its "Embrace and Extend" philosophy of locking people into their products by corrupting open standards. This looks to be the same thing once again.
I have to admit, it's been a while since I've read the TCP/IP protocol specs, but I don't remember there being any provisions for communicating things like OS type, version, or patch lists over the TCP/IP headers.
This brings up a major compatibility question as to how this is going to work with routers, linux servers, printers, and other devices on a network who either don't know about CTCP or don't give a shit about CTCP. This scheme also seems to be extremely vunerable to spoofing.
If M$ would spend half as much effort in securing their OS as they do coming up with these hare-brained schemes, then we wouldn't need such contrived solutions to security.
The problem is often the result of the person ahead the tailgater driving far too slow in the passing lane. I would hope that the police would at least spend some of their effort enforcing the "obstructing traffic" laws as well as enforcing speeding and tailgating laws.
We have signs all over the place on our highways which explicitely state that the "left lane is for passing only" and "slower traffic move right", yet there always seems to be some dickhead who thinks it's illegal to drive more the half the posted speed limit in these lanes. The result is that these assholes tend to bunch up traffic creating dangerous crowding and a high potential for accidents.
Speed doesn't kill -- Inappropriate speed kills, whether too fast or too slow. But the slow ones are never cited. This is wrong. My experience has shown that excessively slow drivers in fast moving traffic are more of a hazard than 99% of the speeders out there.
My cynical side believes that this whole program is just another form of revenue enhancement.
If game is written to support -both- DX9 and DX10, then it is not dependent on DX10 since it supports the older API. What I said is still very much correct: If a game is dependent on DX10 (ei. it doesn't support DX9 or OGL), then it's strictly a Vista only game with a limited audience.
Our company is not very big (about 20 people) so there wasn't a lot of inertia to make the change. Plus selling it to management wasn't an issue. I am management.
What prompted the change was that our developers use Linux systems for application development. (We live by the motto that if it's mission critical, don't use Windows.) OpenOffice allows our Linux and Windows users to exchange documents without problems. Plus OpenOffice can import Word documents so changing over didn't create any special problems beyond learning the OpenOffice GUI. And finally, OpenOffice is actually a pretty capable application. It's perfectly suited for doing any business document that we'll ever write.
We don't use spreadsheets so I don't know about the compatibility there.
Speaking as a long time gamer (I still have a copy Commander Keen floating around) I can tell you that I'm not going to go to Vista. I also have talked to other gamers and computer users around my office and I have yet to find anyone interested in upgrading. DX10 might claim to have some marginally better graphics capabilities but I actually doubt this since as mentioned before, you ultimately run into the hardware limitions no matter which API you use. Both OpenGL and DX9 already support the power of programmable shaders thru CGI and HLSL, so what does DX10 bring to the table that's going to beat that? Probably nothing of consequence to the user.
Personally, I'm waiting for OpenGL 3.0 to come out.
Vista may not be an asset to gamers. DX10 doesn't really add any new features to the graphics capability of a system since that is largely dependent on hardware. Developers may like the newer DX10 interface, but there are severe backward compatibility issues for users. Any game which depends on DX10 will not run on XP or W2K platforms. I can't see developers embracing DX10/Vista for fear of excluding a large portion of the gaming market.