Geez again? TIMING you idiots
April fool starts on the 1st of april. Not on 31st of march. Geez. Is it that hard to read a calendar? And a good april fools joke is funny because people are tricked into thinking something that clearly couldn't be true. USPTO passing a silly patent does not qualify.
The evolutionist
What kind of insect could possibly not see the bloody obviousness off this one. Use a cookie to store data. Well fucking duh. What next? Patent the use of an engine to power something? A trunk to carry luggage? A shovel to dig with? Outsourcing is bad enough but hiring lower lifeforms goes to far!
The pessimist with a gun
This story only goes to show patent reform is impossible. Nothing will help here anymore but the old "put them against the wall" at the revolution. Going to be really crowded too. What will all the lawyers, ceo's, outsources, alcohol free beer inventors and people who talk in caps on the web.
The European
Anyone else find it slightly odd that all the idiot patent stories come from america? Wonder why the USPTO is unable to hire any smart people. Is the USPTO banned from hiring non-americans?
Come on you weren't expecting any serious response were you? Feeble jokes for a feeble joke of an institution.
It may be like the police here that they run Windows as the base OS but really run the app on a Unix somewhere through a terminal session. Maybe even a mainframe.
On the other hand it would be easy to fit goverment with the latest in secure systems. Just pay more taxes.
Right choice is bad. One party system is good!
on
The Paradox of Choice
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Don't want to confuse the lower classes with all these options on the ballot paper you know. Might scare them.
The old MS joke comes to mind:
One world, One web, One program - Microsoft Ad
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer
Either this guy think this is a good idea or he doesn't understand choice.
The current choice is simply:
Apple
Easy oneway to do things. (well if you don't make use of its unix background wich you never need to touch if you don't want to)
Windows
Oneway for the OS. (easy until you become an admin, the old change network settings example comes to mind)
Choice for everything else. Just check how many email programs and office suits there really are for windows.
Linux
Roll your own. Choice in everything except hardware. And even there you got choice. Just write your own.
BSD
For the necrophiliacs.
But how is this any different from choosing a car? Choosing a house? Choosing a meal?
Do I want a car I can fix myself if needed (handy if you drive in remote places) or just a little town cruiser how about no car at all? Do I want my own house I can rebuild however I want or do I want a nice rented apartment fully furnitured with a maid? Do I want a meal I can microwave and be ready or do I want to spend hours in the kitchen to create a feast fit a king?
Now some people here seem to want everyone to make the same choice they have. This applies equally to all computer OSes. These people accuse other OS users of being zealots and never realise they are a very black pot.
I for one am not scared of choice. I am scared one day I will not have a choice. Choose whatever OS you want. But let it be YOUR choice.
This story is about doctors SPOKEN notes being put in writing. The doctor is supposed to do database abstraction while doing surgery? I know doctors are not the dumbest people, although their blunder kill thousands each year, but that might just be a little bit diffiult.
Seperarting database records like you suggest is indeed possible. You could easily seperate a patients credit history from their medical history. Doctor don't need to know payment details and the collectors don't need to know medical details.
But in this case that is impossible. Medical details do belong with the name.
She was payed to transcribe. Instead she outsourced. She got paid to keep records confidential, she didn't instead going with the lowest bidder to maximize her profits. No doubt offering the lowest bid herself making other respectable companies loose out on the contract.
No this whole story is one of greed and it starts right at the patients. After all they want low low insurance and medical bills. So the hospital saves by outsourcing instead of doing it in house. The outsourced company outsources again instead of doing it in house and so on.
Feeling sympathy here is misplaced. Each and everyone involved, including the patients, is a victim of their greed.
What it took to ruin her was her own greed. She was hired to do the transcribing. But instead of hiring her own people, checking those people, checking their work she outsourced it to a lower bidder.
This has nothing to do with countries and law this has to do with your privacy being handled by the lowest bidder.
Each step in the chain shows someone wanting lots of money for not doing anything. If hospitals and others were serious they would do the transcribing in house. But of course that is no longer allowed. Focus on your core capabilities has become the watch word. So that a place like a hospital is now really a meeting hall for outsourcing companies. From temp nurses to cleaners, from caterers to office staff. No one works for the hospital, they all work for the lowest bidder.
Neat eh? And the funny thing is? Medical bills only seem to go up. Why am I paying more insurance when all this cost saving is going on?
There are "emotion" games out there but emotion leads to sex and that is forbidden in the US of A. Better to kill then fuck. The Sims are a notable exception but they don't really have emotion just stats.
Of course a super game would be one that manages emotion without violence or sex. Or with. I am not sure on that one.
Other way around would be better. Napolean did not discriminate let alone murder huge number of people because they were the wrong religion/race/whatever.
In fact napolean had different religions in his army. Good luck being a catholic in englands army. Foot soldier was just about allowed but nothing higher.
You I am afraid have fallen for the old propaganda. Napolean was no more a dictotator then any other ruler from that era. In many ways less so. All european countries waged wars of conquest. Napoleon just won a lot more.
It is just that the british won and have therefore written the history books. Even they don't seem to manage much more then making him into a looney. Exactly what warcrimes has Napoleon been accused off?
But this is more then just nitpicking. You have shown exactly what is wrong. These politicians are just like you. They have accepted one source of information as the absolute truth without bothering to think for themselves or seek other sources of information.
It is easy to believe copyright infringement is a serious issue when you choose to listen only to certain copyright holders. It is easy believe napolean was like hitler if you choose only to listen to british history.
People aren't going into houses and copying furniture. They are copying the furniture they bought.
So it is totally unlike shoplifting. It would be like this. I buy an apple ( the fruit ) and through technology can then give away that apple without loss of the apple. Sort like a horn of plenty but ONLY after I paid for it.
File sharing can be easily stopped. Make it easier and cheaper to buy then to get it from a sharer. Hard? Not really. The internet ain't a nice place to get things. We do it because we are fed up with buying crap but I do still buy DVD's. Just only the cheap old movies. You know a few euro for old movies you are not supposed to really enjoy.
To make the apple example really work. I used to live in the betuwe (fruit growing part of holland). I would walk past apple growing trees with apples in easy reach to go to the supermarket to buy apples. Because paying for them was easier then stealing them.
I did use to buy PC Gamer but stopped round about Operation Flashpoint. At the same time another soldier sim was released. Lets just say that I had widely different views on how they were judged and started to realize that the reviews were not what you would call objective. Imagine a car reviewer slagging of a jaguar because he is allergic to cats.
But a little bit farther back you have a real test of game reviewing. "Hidden & Dangerous" was widely reviewed as a great game. Maybe it was. No mere mortal ever managed to play it.
It had a gigantic number of game killing bugs. So many it would seem impossible that reviewers couldn't have noticed. So yes afterwards game reviewers admitted that yes they had encountered the bugs but had decided not to mention it since the game was so great.
Only by the time the sequel was being previewed did game rags start to really talk about the piece of crap the original was.
I said this before, "game reviews ain't worth the paper they are printed on wich is really bad news for online reviews". Until people start to realize that game reviewing includes product testing game reviews will continue to be little more then some idiot being paid to blub about games he liked or hated.
As for wich reviews are honest? Demos. Tells you 99% if what you need to know.
Most people I know treat game reviews as advertising. No different then an "making of" program on the latest movie. We use other gamers to review games.
Should the game industry care? Well yes, even better then demos is downloading the entire game. Perfect review. You can only sell crap so many times before I start thinking that stealing from lying scumbags isn't all that bad. You don't think I am going to pay for a single game ever from Illusion soft or take 2 again? Let them first patch the product they sold me.
but at a loss of mobility. Laptop I can use in my entire house. If you got a wifi-router then you are essentially cable free. Then adding a USB drive would tether you to the drive.
Not a major pain but this would solve it.
Anyway the cost is not that high. Only 100 more then a usb solution. Peanuts really.
Only thing I can't figure out is why they went with 2.5 inch disks. Such a device would have to be on day and night to achieve that true "get in range and play" usability and laptop drives are not exactly designed to run 24/7
So you are saying that people talking M$ and Windoze on/. allows them to vent their anger instead of building it up until they get fed up and switch?
It sorta makes sense.
But saying this is better makes you the ultimate couch potatoe. So you would happily live in a police state as long as you are allowed to complain in a forum about it?
Nothing that a lot of cynical people haven't expected for a long time but still sad. Oh well most westerners comfort themselves that they live in a democracy despite the fact they are ruled by a minority (the people who actually vote). Maybe human kind is just another herd animal. Today the lion ate someone else so for now I am safe.
If only 1/2 of the people who could vote register and only half of those who register vote then you got 1/4 of the population who could vote actually voting. Since bush was elected by less then half the votes then you are talking about a democracy where the veto empowered leader has less then 1/8 of the total voters behind him. Not exactly a staggering number.
And you have the nerve to complain about other countries? I note that very little mention in the article was made of attempts by western countries to censor the net.
Say that the only PC you got is a laptop you use both at home and at work. Now a decent laptop has got a fair bid of storage so unless you have specific needs having one of the firewire/usb external drives is probably obsolete for office use. Anyway there are heavy duty laptops with dual HD's.
But when you add home use people might want to store movies and music and ehehm nature programs on their laptop but not actually have it present on the laptop. Sure you could then at your desk at home have a usb/firewire external drive but that means you loose the mobility of a laptop. It can be fun working on the floor or sofa. Some laptops have tv outs so put the laptop on the tv and watch your downloads on the big screen.
This wifi drive would then allow you to access your own files at home without any need for plugging in cables. Just put the thing somewhere central and your laptop is hooked up just like you use a wifi network station to allow you to use the laptop without cat5 cables.
Frankly this is the only real use I can see. The WIFI-HD needs to be powered by a powercord and that means it ain't all that mobile. So it can't be used to give you PDA a storage boost. Using it in the office is pretty lame as it ads another security risk, an other piece of software to admin and its function can be easily duplicated with the existing file server.
But for people with only laptops at home it could make sense.
Only other possible use might be people with a PDA who are not close to a PC like setup but who are closed to something like a car. But it would have to be small operations as something like the Police Ambulance would have access to far better solutions. Maybe something for a mechanic? Store all the schematics and data on the WIFI-HD. Give him a pda and as long as he is within range of his car he got all the data in the world. Cheaper then pulling data over mobile phone lines.
Damn I knew russian soldier were though (well their WW2 version were anyway) but WOW! No wonder the germans lost. Put these guys on the front and they just rip tanks apart with their hands.
Remote controlled spy planes are nothing new. This one is different because of its size and that it can be deployed by frontline troops rather then by a support unit.
It does the same job and it comes in a nice shiny box. When it doesn't work as advertised you can call MS (well the phone number is on the MS page so it must be MS and not some support outsourcing company that underbid everyone else) and that will take your call and come right along to fix it.
I see this kinda argument you have all the time. Oh MS is better since it has guarantees. Yet in practice it never seems to work. Make that call and all you get is a phone bill.
But quit frankly I don't really give a damn. Buy ASP and pay for every extra module you need. It is a free world. Zealots who say you should use X because of Y should be ignored.
Just remember. Your MS support is done by the lowest bidder. Have fun.
Unix is better and those buying cheap windows get what they pay for? Certainly explains a lot.
Gladly it is also not true. Red Hat is more then happy to charge more then MS does. Windows you get from dell. Linux you get from IBM. If you think IBM is cheaper then Dell you are a loony.
To a company with an IT budget Linux isn't free. Free as in freedom perhaps, but at least the first buy is free. It is not even as it is cheaper because there are less upgrades. If you bought Windows 2000 then you are sitting pretty right? No expensive upgrades until Longhorn somewhere beyond 2008? 8 years without any new license having to be bought? Not bad MS. Oh you bought License 6.0. Well we all told you that was silly wasn't it. Don't worry, your boss okayed it first time so just Powerpoint him into okaying the License renewal. What they don't know they can't use to fire you.
There is really only why we haven't seen Linux sweep away the market yet. TIME.
Try to look back at history and look at the PC "revolution". Exactly how long did MS take to become really powerfull in companies? Didn't exactly happen overnight did it? The IBM ad says it all. Linux is young, but he is learning.
Or did people forget how often MS has ignored roadmaps en planned release dates? Wasn't there a whole story on how all the suckers who bought license 6.0 have gotten no new software for their money?
Now all of a sudden there is XP Rebloated or something shoved into this fantasy roadmap and longhorn has wandered of god knows where. Yup MS has roadmaps alright. It just doesn't follow them. But I suppose they are usefull you can read them and what is on them is EXACTLY what will NOT happen.
But why do they fall for it then? Because people are stupid short-sighted lazy and greedy. Roadmaps are nice things to show in powerpoint presentations to management when they are wondering why that huge IT budget still isn't delivering solutions that just fucking work.
"At the moment there are some problems wich we are working with but Look, a chart here says MS will fix it all no later then tomorrow". Kinda sad that grown men and women still don't get that one.
Most of the other arguments are bullshit ones. One not mentioned but still often used is "Opensource has no guarantees, no one I can sue" this is apparently used by companies without lawyers. Since any lawyer will tell you that sueing MS is pointless. Windows destroyed your data? Though. Of course this is true for all software for some reason. If I buy a truck and it explodes destroying my factory the truck manufacturer will have to pay for it but software seems to be a "you bought it, your risk" kinda product.
Oh well, off reading the rest of the comment. Kinda intrestting to keep track of them. Have you noticed people switched from the old "I don't use linux because I like my soundcard to work" to "I don't use linux bacause I like my digital camera to work"?
6 more years without a new console? Considering the other players that would mean Sony skipping a generation in hardware. Bold move. Sure they will have proven hardware with a gigantic catalog while MS and Nintendo will be trying to sell expensive new hardware with a tiny catalog.
But 6 years? PS2 is hardly the most advanced one out there. Are they not expecting HDTV to become more mainstream between now and then?
Either they are betting on the PSP and then it better be a bloody good system or they are gambling on making the PS3 leap years ahead rather then getting yet another slightly better system out now.
Not holding my breath waiting for either to turn up.
Maybe for storing logs and preferences?
You know unix so you should know off syslog. Syslog writes the logs not the firewall process. At least that is the way it is supposed to be. Syslog allows you to have the actual logs on another machine on a one way link (no deleting logs when the machine is comprimised). Suslog can only write only to the filesystem. Not to the HD itself. That in turn is not its job. That is the job off reiserfs? Perhaps you could even limit wich filesystem a process can write too. Syslog has no bussiness outside/var/log/ Further more it has no business overwriting existing files or deleting from files. Just append please.
Writing preferences? Again no, that is done with vi not by the firewall. IPTABLES can flush its settings but if I remember correctly this just flushes it to the standard output wich you can of course redirect. But no need for the firewall process to write to the HD. Even if have a nice config util then this is a userland tool not the firewall process itself. We are on unix not windows.
Now a "make clean" will be a keyboard-bound process, yay!
Worse if you run a real firewall/dmz then you won't do this anyway. No compilers present. Hardened machines only have binaries placed on them. Why give a hacker a ready toolset to work with?
The solution won't be simple. Making stuff bug free or buffer overflow free would be nice but sadly seems impossible. I think if people still find bugs in openssl and openssh then we are just going to have to accept the fact that there will be holes.
I am just hoping, not sure as I just started on the subject, that I might be able to setup the first line of defence in such a way that any attacker who does get in finds himself unable to do anything. If SELinux does what I think it does then this would not have worked on it. SELinux would have detected that the firewall was doing something it was not allowed to and would have denied it.
Multiple layers of defence. I hate to think of my pc's as a warzone but thats the way it is.
Cause Linux and BSD sure ain't safe against this. Bufferoverflows ain't nothing new and this analasys shows there is no security in being a small target.
Might be time to make a security model that stops a firewall application from writing to the Harddisk or deleting files. Why should it after all? Or a limiting just how many emails a user can send, how many times do you send thousands in a minute?
Perhaps even a delete mechanism that doesn't allow destruction of data without a password.
Paranoid? 12.000 machines just went Poof in half an hour with this virus if the story tells it right. Doesn't exactly cheer me.
With all the recent stories it become pretty clear that MS has become a loose cannon. Yes once usefull for making computing afforable but now a dangerous element that might threaten our way of life.
Now if only we could get the CIA to find some kids website with quotes on Redmond having weapons of masdestruction.
Exactly wich OS was linux written on? Does history record?
Anyway MS got its chance when IBM decided to launch a cheap crap machine. IBM wanted one since Apple was doing not to bad selling very light hardware and software (compared to the big iron of IBM) to both consumers and horror of horror even businesses. IBM didn't want to let that market go but neither thought it to be very big or important. It just wanted to be in there fast.
So they let two upstart outsiders do a lot of the work. Intel for the hardware and Microsoft for the software. There is probably a dungeon somewhere at IBM where a couple of bodies lie behind glass where new bosses are taken and shown the ghastly remain of those who drew up the Microsoft contract.
Microsoft was loose and all has not been well.
So where would the world be without Micosoft? Pfff that is a thoughie. Would IBM have developed their own software instead? Would it have been a solid piece of software as we find on big iron but immensly expensive? (if you think unix is good you never worked on a mainframe)
Then apple would have been the low end supplier with IBM PC's coming in at the top end, you know like now but in reverse. Would apple have allowed clones? If not then PC's would still be expensive, the lowest price would be Apples, yes ouch, and the top segment of PC's would be IBM's, take it bitch.
MS was told to build a dirt cheap OS and Intel to build a dirt cheap piece of hardware. IBM never really intended the PC revolution. It wanted thin clients powered by big hardware. Not dozens of single task crap machines. It just wasn't prepared to let apple take that market.
Maybe the PC market would be better without MS but there also might not be a PC market without MS. or might there? We do have the home computers. Might they have filled the role? C64000 anyone? The sinclairs, the ataries and god knows what else?
I think a world without MS is certainly a world that would have been a whole lot more fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Geez again? TIMING you idiots April fool starts on the 1st of april. Not on 31st of march. Geez. Is it that hard to read a calendar? And a good april fools joke is funny because people are tricked into thinking something that clearly couldn't be true. USPTO passing a silly patent does not qualify.
What kind of insect could possibly not see the bloody obviousness off this one. Use a cookie to store data. Well fucking duh. What next? Patent the use of an engine to power something? A trunk to carry luggage? A shovel to dig with? Outsourcing is bad enough but hiring lower lifeforms goes to far!
This story only goes to show patent reform is impossible. Nothing will help here anymore but the old "put them against the wall" at the revolution. Going to be really crowded too. What will all the lawyers, ceo's, outsources, alcohol free beer inventors and people who talk in caps on the web.
Anyone else find it slightly odd that all the idiot patent stories come from america? Wonder why the USPTO is unable to hire any smart people. Is the USPTO banned from hiring non-americans?
Come on you weren't expecting any serious response were you? Feeble jokes for a feeble joke of an institution.
Good gag but it is all in the timing. Next time try to have some self control. Your girlfriend will love you for it.
On the other hand it would be easy to fit goverment with the latest in secure systems. Just pay more taxes.
The old MS joke comes to mind:
One world, One web, One program - Microsoft Ad
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer
Either this guy think this is a good idea or he doesn't understand choice.
The current choice is simply:
Easy oneway to do things. (well if you don't make use of its unix background wich you never need to touch if you don't want to)
Oneway for the OS. (easy until you become an admin, the old change network settings example comes to mind)
Choice for everything else. Just check how many email programs and office suits there really are for windows.
Roll your own. Choice in everything except hardware. And even there you got choice. Just write your own.
For the necrophiliacs.
But how is this any different from choosing a car? Choosing a house? Choosing a meal?
Do I want a car I can fix myself if needed (handy if you drive in remote places) or just a little town cruiser how about no car at all? Do I want my own house I can rebuild however I want or do I want a nice rented apartment fully furnitured with a maid? Do I want a meal I can microwave and be ready or do I want to spend hours in the kitchen to create a feast fit a king?
Now some people here seem to want everyone to make the same choice they have. This applies equally to all computer OSes. These people accuse other OS users of being zealots and never realise they are a very black pot.
I for one am not scared of choice. I am scared one day I will not have a choice. Choose whatever OS you want. But let it be YOUR choice.
Seperarting database records like you suggest is indeed possible. You could easily seperate a patients credit history from their medical history. Doctor don't need to know payment details and the collectors don't need to know medical details.
But in this case that is impossible. Medical details do belong with the name.
No this whole story is one of greed and it starts right at the patients. After all they want low low insurance and medical bills. So the hospital saves by outsourcing instead of doing it in house. The outsourced company outsources again instead of doing it in house and so on.
Feeling sympathy here is misplaced. Each and everyone involved, including the patients, is a victim of their greed.
Maybe I am just a cynical bastard.
This has nothing to do with countries and law this has to do with your privacy being handled by the lowest bidder.
Each step in the chain shows someone wanting lots of money for not doing anything. If hospitals and others were serious they would do the transcribing in house. But of course that is no longer allowed. Focus on your core capabilities has become the watch word. So that a place like a hospital is now really a meeting hall for outsourcing companies. From temp nurses to cleaners, from caterers to office staff. No one works for the hospital, they all work for the lowest bidder.
Neat eh? And the funny thing is? Medical bills only seem to go up. Why am I paying more insurance when all this cost saving is going on?
There are "emotion" games out there but emotion leads to sex and that is forbidden in the US of A. Better to kill then fuck. The Sims are a notable exception but they don't really have emotion just stats.
Of course a super game would be one that manages emotion without violence or sex. Or with. I am not sure on that one.
In fact napolean had different religions in his army. Good luck being a catholic in englands army. Foot soldier was just about allowed but nothing higher.
You I am afraid have fallen for the old propaganda. Napolean was no more a dictotator then any other ruler from that era. In many ways less so. All european countries waged wars of conquest. Napoleon just won a lot more.
It is just that the british won and have therefore written the history books. Even they don't seem to manage much more then making him into a looney. Exactly what warcrimes has Napoleon been accused off?
But this is more then just nitpicking. You have shown exactly what is wrong. These politicians are just like you. They have accepted one source of information as the absolute truth without bothering to think for themselves or seek other sources of information.
It is easy to believe copyright infringement is a serious issue when you choose to listen only to certain copyright holders. It is easy believe napolean was like hitler if you choose only to listen to british history.
So it is totally unlike shoplifting. It would be like this. I buy an apple ( the fruit ) and through technology can then give away that apple without loss of the apple. Sort like a horn of plenty but ONLY after I paid for it.
File sharing can be easily stopped. Make it easier and cheaper to buy then to get it from a sharer. Hard? Not really. The internet ain't a nice place to get things. We do it because we are fed up with buying crap but I do still buy DVD's. Just only the cheap old movies. You know a few euro for old movies you are not supposed to really enjoy.
To make the apple example really work. I used to live in the betuwe (fruit growing part of holland). I would walk past apple growing trees with apples in easy reach to go to the supermarket to buy apples. Because paying for them was easier then stealing them.
But a little bit farther back you have a real test of game reviewing. "Hidden & Dangerous" was widely reviewed as a great game. Maybe it was. No mere mortal ever managed to play it.
It had a gigantic number of game killing bugs. So many it would seem impossible that reviewers couldn't have noticed. So yes afterwards game reviewers admitted that yes they had encountered the bugs but had decided not to mention it since the game was so great.
Only by the time the sequel was being previewed did game rags start to really talk about the piece of crap the original was.
I said this before, "game reviews ain't worth the paper they are printed on wich is really bad news for online reviews". Until people start to realize that game reviewing includes product testing game reviews will continue to be little more then some idiot being paid to blub about games he liked or hated.
As for wich reviews are honest? Demos. Tells you 99% if what you need to know.
Most people I know treat game reviews as advertising. No different then an "making of" program on the latest movie. We use other gamers to review games.
Should the game industry care? Well yes, even better then demos is downloading the entire game. Perfect review. You can only sell crap so many times before I start thinking that stealing from lying scumbags isn't all that bad. You don't think I am going to pay for a single game ever from Illusion soft or take 2 again? Let them first patch the product they sold me.
Is dupe spotting some sexual perversion? You get a woody each time you think you spotted one? Ooh same subject. DUPE oh yes god DUPE!
Geez. Oh well moderate me down now dupespotters.
Not a major pain but this would solve it.
Anyway the cost is not that high. Only 100 more then a usb solution. Peanuts really.
Only thing I can't figure out is why they went with 2.5 inch disks. Such a device would have to be on day and night to achieve that true "get in range and play" usability and laptop drives are not exactly designed to run 24/7
It sorta makes sense.
But saying this is better makes you the ultimate couch potatoe. So you would happily live in a police state as long as you are allowed to complain in a forum about it?
Nothing that a lot of cynical people haven't expected for a long time but still sad. Oh well most westerners comfort themselves that they live in a democracy despite the fact they are ruled by a minority (the people who actually vote). Maybe human kind is just another herd animal. Today the lion ate someone else so for now I am safe.
And you have the nerve to complain about other countries? I note that very little mention in the article was made of attempts by western countries to censor the net.
But when you add home use people might want to store movies and music and ehehm nature programs on their laptop but not actually have it present on the laptop. Sure you could then at your desk at home have a usb/firewire external drive but that means you loose the mobility of a laptop. It can be fun working on the floor or sofa. Some laptops have tv outs so put the laptop on the tv and watch your downloads on the big screen.
This wifi drive would then allow you to access your own files at home without any need for plugging in cables. Just put the thing somewhere central and your laptop is hooked up just like you use a wifi network station to allow you to use the laptop without cat5 cables.
Frankly this is the only real use I can see. The WIFI-HD needs to be powered by a powercord and that means it ain't all that mobile. So it can't be used to give you PDA a storage boost. Using it in the office is pretty lame as it ads another security risk, an other piece of software to admin and its function can be easily duplicated with the existing file server.
But for people with only laptops at home it could make sense.
Only other possible use might be people with a PDA who are not close to a PC like setup but who are closed to something like a car. But it would have to be small operations as something like the Police Ambulance would have access to far better solutions. Maybe something for a mechanic? Store all the schematics and data on the WIFI-HD. Give him a pda and as long as he is within range of his car he got all the data in the world. Cheaper then pulling data over mobile phone lines.
Mmmm, might not be such a bad gadget after all.
Remote controlled spy planes are nothing new. This one is different because of its size and that it can be deployed by frontline troops rather then by a support unit.
I see this kinda argument you have all the time. Oh MS is better since it has guarantees. Yet in practice it never seems to work. Make that call and all you get is a phone bill.
But quit frankly I don't really give a damn. Buy ASP and pay for every extra module you need. It is a free world. Zealots who say you should use X because of Y should be ignored.
Just remember. Your MS support is done by the lowest bidder. Have fun.
Gladly it is also not true. Red Hat is more then happy to charge more then MS does. Windows you get from dell. Linux you get from IBM. If you think IBM is cheaper then Dell you are a loony.
To a company with an IT budget Linux isn't free. Free as in freedom perhaps, but at least the first buy is free. It is not even as it is cheaper because there are less upgrades. If you bought Windows 2000 then you are sitting pretty right? No expensive upgrades until Longhorn somewhere beyond 2008? 8 years without any new license having to be bought? Not bad MS. Oh you bought License 6.0. Well we all told you that was silly wasn't it. Don't worry, your boss okayed it first time so just Powerpoint him into okaying the License renewal. What they don't know they can't use to fire you.
There is really only why we haven't seen Linux sweep away the market yet. TIME.
Try to look back at history and look at the PC "revolution". Exactly how long did MS take to become really powerfull in companies? Didn't exactly happen overnight did it? The IBM ad says it all. Linux is young, but he is learning.
Now all of a sudden there is XP Rebloated or something shoved into this fantasy roadmap and longhorn has wandered of god knows where. Yup MS has roadmaps alright. It just doesn't follow them. But I suppose they are usefull you can read them and what is on them is EXACTLY what will NOT happen.
But why do they fall for it then? Because people are stupid short-sighted lazy and greedy. Roadmaps are nice things to show in powerpoint presentations to management when they are wondering why that huge IT budget still isn't delivering solutions that just fucking work.
"At the moment there are some problems wich we are working with but Look, a chart here says MS will fix it all no later then tomorrow". Kinda sad that grown men and women still don't get that one.
Most of the other arguments are bullshit ones. One not mentioned but still often used is "Opensource has no guarantees, no one I can sue" this is apparently used by companies without lawyers. Since any lawyer will tell you that sueing MS is pointless. Windows destroyed your data? Though. Of course this is true for all software for some reason. If I buy a truck and it explodes destroying my factory the truck manufacturer will have to pay for it but software seems to be a "you bought it, your risk" kinda product.
Oh well, off reading the rest of the comment. Kinda intrestting to keep track of them. Have you noticed people switched from the old "I don't use linux because I like my soundcard to work" to "I don't use linux bacause I like my digital camera to work"?
But 6 years? PS2 is hardly the most advanced one out there. Are they not expecting HDTV to become more mainstream between now and then?
Either they are betting on the PSP and then it better be a bloody good system or they are gambling on making the PS3 leap years ahead rather then getting yet another slightly better system out now.
Oh well. HL2 out yet?
You know unix so you should know off syslog. Syslog writes the logs not the firewall process. At least that is the way it is supposed to be. Syslog allows you to have the actual logs on another machine on a one way link (no deleting logs when the machine is comprimised). Suslog can only write only to the filesystem. Not to the HD itself. That in turn is not its job. That is the job off reiserfs? Perhaps you could even limit wich filesystem a process can write too. Syslog has no bussiness outside /var/log/ Further more it has no business overwriting existing files or deleting from files. Just append please.
Writing preferences? Again no, that is done with vi not by the firewall. IPTABLES can flush its settings but if I remember correctly this just flushes it to the standard output wich you can of course redirect. But no need for the firewall process to write to the HD. Even if have a nice config util then this is a userland tool not the firewall process itself. We are on unix not windows. Now a "make clean" will be a keyboard-bound process, yay!
Worse if you run a real firewall/dmz then you won't do this anyway. No compilers present. Hardened machines only have binaries placed on them. Why give a hacker a ready toolset to work with?
The solution won't be simple. Making stuff bug free or buffer overflow free would be nice but sadly seems impossible. I think if people still find bugs in openssl and openssh then we are just going to have to accept the fact that there will be holes.
I am just hoping, not sure as I just started on the subject, that I might be able to setup the first line of defence in such a way that any attacker who does get in finds himself unable to do anything. If SELinux does what I think it does then this would not have worked on it. SELinux would have detected that the firewall was doing something it was not allowed to and would have denied it.
Multiple layers of defence. I hate to think of my pc's as a warzone but thats the way it is.
Might be time to make a security model that stops a firewall application from writing to the Harddisk or deleting files. Why should it after all? Or a limiting just how many emails a user can send, how many times do you send thousands in a minute?
Perhaps even a delete mechanism that doesn't allow destruction of data without a password.
Paranoid? 12.000 machines just went Poof in half an hour with this virus if the story tells it right. Doesn't exactly cheer me.
Now if only we could get the CIA to find some kids website with quotes on Redmond having weapons of masdestruction.
Anyway MS got its chance when IBM decided to launch a cheap crap machine. IBM wanted one since Apple was doing not to bad selling very light hardware and software (compared to the big iron of IBM) to both consumers and horror of horror even businesses. IBM didn't want to let that market go but neither thought it to be very big or important. It just wanted to be in there fast.
So they let two upstart outsiders do a lot of the work. Intel for the hardware and Microsoft for the software. There is probably a dungeon somewhere at IBM where a couple of bodies lie behind glass where new bosses are taken and shown the ghastly remain of those who drew up the Microsoft contract.
Microsoft was loose and all has not been well.
So where would the world be without Micosoft? Pfff that is a thoughie. Would IBM have developed their own software instead? Would it have been a solid piece of software as we find on big iron but immensly expensive? (if you think unix is good you never worked on a mainframe)
Then apple would have been the low end supplier with IBM PC's coming in at the top end, you know like now but in reverse. Would apple have allowed clones? If not then PC's would still be expensive, the lowest price would be Apples, yes ouch, and the top segment of PC's would be IBM's, take it bitch.
MS was told to build a dirt cheap OS and Intel to build a dirt cheap piece of hardware. IBM never really intended the PC revolution. It wanted thin clients powered by big hardware. Not dozens of single task crap machines. It just wasn't prepared to let apple take that market.
Maybe the PC market would be better without MS but there also might not be a PC market without MS. or might there? We do have the home computers. Might they have filled the role? C64000 anyone? The sinclairs, the ataries and god knows what else?
I think a world without MS is certainly a world that would have been a whole lot more fun.