Generally, transport encryptions don't have passwords/pins, it's unneccessary. Public/private keys are just fine. If it was purely for transport encryption, they'd just use SSL or something similar.
Um, isn't the whole point of Java/C# (which this error looks like) that you don't have to worry about memory leaks?
Data's data. If you hold a reference to it, it will always be there. You can hold a reference in hashtables and other such things. You don't have to worry about garbage collection (any more;-), but you still should know how to program.
Perhaps all rookie programmers should restrict themselves to the old pitfall days and limit the memory headroom to 1 or 2k in order to learn the basics of memory management.:-)
Part of the problem is that the port you are plugging into is sometimes itself inverted or even vertical. Then there is no way to be sure, it's literally a 50/50 shot every time unless you have a very good memory or only interact with a few machines. I've got three with vertical sockets that I regularly swap devices on and it took a while to get it right most of the time.
On the other hand, I can't think of a better alternative, other than basic audio jacks that are rotationally symetrical. But that design usually has issues with leaving contacts exposed when the wire is unplugged, something USB is pretty good at dealing with.
If you dom't realize that the United States went to war to protect its economic interests several times in the last century
Several times? They've been continously at war with some one since the fifties. With the exception of a couple of McCarthyism wars in asia, all of the USA's wars have been ecconomic in nature.
Someone once said that "war is armed robbery, writ large". It's just a hostile takeover of someone elses interests.
While the in-built "track changes" is useful, it's not version control. You can't go back to the document as it was on Jan 1st 2006. Part of the reason for version control is to safeguard against corruption. "Track changes" doesn't do this.
I use the comments stuff heavilly myself though, very useful to mark and annotate work-in-progress.
Ok, granted most of the pop stuff is a commercial, in fact I like Bill Hicks interpretation of them being pornography. "Causing sexual thoughts with no artistic merit". Yup, sounds like the top ten singles chart videos!
However, there are some great ones that I have already paid for. Fatboy Slims "Praise You" (Spike Jonze) is a brilliant example of guerilla filming. Aphex Twins "Window Licker" (again Spike Jonze) is a classic. De-lites "Groove is in the Heart" makes EVERYONE smile everytime. The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch up" exposes the inner-sexist in the viewer. The Beastie Boy's "Sabotage" (yet another Spike Jonze one) is utterly brilliant and still holds up. And there are lots more, Bjork, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and many other groups generally put out videos that stand well above "commerical" status.
What if you add/modify some music.. drop 20gigs again ?
No. Simply drag and drop the new stuff onto the drive. The "ideal" mp3 player can be mounted as a drive. Couldn't be simpler. Having to import to some music db just to copy across is a bit much IMHO.
Are you kidding? I set up a pals iPod for her, dropping 20gig onto it. If I could have dragged and dropped it would have been way easier and done overnight. Instead it took three days and a lot of manual effort.
Embedded webservers can have uses however. Many routers have web UIs that many readers will be familiar with, but the main difference is that they are not running Apache! There are better (more lightweight) embedded webservers out there.
You could do a couple of useful things to this. It could provide a means to upload files or change configuration settings. A messaging interface could be useful, letting you use the phones inbox on a PC. With things like WiFi and bluetooth, there are possiblities.
And as the parent poster says, running a webserver (etc) on a mobile/pda isn't all that new.
Last time I checked a dictionary the key qualifications of a democracy were regular elections where the people chose their representatives either directly or indirectly.
Add the phrase "informed electorate" and you aren't far off.
So what does a two party system have to do with democracy in your view?
It offers little in the way of genuine choice. What tends to happen is that people exercise strategic votes to get someone out rather than voting in. Also, two parties cannot represent anyone really. If you are anti-abortion and vote based on that issue, you need to accept everything that the Replublicans also support. Anti-abortion and pro-war...that's a strange mix if you ask me.
I fully expect things to polarise further in the US, with the Republicans picking up all of the Christian vote, with the Democrats getting what's left.
I think I prefer our relitively stable version of democracy with two parties. Parlamentary systems with all that dissovling parlament, sacking ministers on a whim and declaring elections every time you figure you can win is just too chaotic for my tastes.
Under our system, those responsible for the mistakes in Iraq would be held accountable. Converserly we have a system in the US where failure leads to promotion and medals. I think there is a happy middle ground there somewhere.
The idea of choosing when to have the election....well, I'm against that as well. However, the US style fixed elections will be abused in 2008 when a mysterious terror threat causes the elections to be posponed. That would leave the ruling party in power for the next four years as there is no fallback alternative should the election not happen.
or what it's worth boss, the state of Washington is predominantly Democrat
The rest of the world does not care for Democrats or Republican, we just see "America". Blaming the other side might be a nice way to win arguments interally, but externally it just makes you look ridiculous.
PS No sane person can argue that a two-party system is a democratic means of government. If you really want to sort US politics, this Republican/Democrat thing must stop.
Re:Has this guy got much legal defence?
on
Online Revenge
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· Score: 1
Its like someone selling a house then going back 6 months later trying to reclaim property they left behind.
Bad analogy. If they had left credit cards by mistake, would it be OK for you to use them? Also, under UK law personal data is protected and by posting it online he is breaking that law.
To the best of my knowledge it's not supported by any Windows Mobile / Smartphone. The latest offical media player is Windows Media 10. MS have never offered a Windows Media upgrade to their phones although some operators have released updated ROM images for the phones that took them from 9 to 10.
Result: terrorists fly to mexico and walk into the US.
That's highly unlikely. Firstly, Canada would be a better choice to do that. Secondly, there are a dozen easier ways. Sail in on a private charter, cargo ship, or a cruise with false tourist visas. Similar tricks can be done with air traffic to smaller airports. The walk from Mexico is through a desert and the end is guarded by rednecks with dogs & guns. Tough choice...
What a load of NONSENSE.
People actually waste their time worrying about this crap.
Yes, they do. The same part of the bible that says gay sex is a sin also has similarly strong words for those who eat shellfish. Quote the book itself:
Leviticus 18:22 - Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
Leviticus 11:12 - Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.
This is where "kosher" comes from. It's food that follows the laws stated in The Old Testiment. If you don't follow them, you will burn in hell aparently. Things like kosher and halal may seem silly to some, but they are no more silly than anything else in religion.
You can have an iPod and not use iTunes. In fact, you can use Rhapsody and use your iPod.
How is that any good for "an iTunes consumer" as I mentioned? You miss the point of this whole proposed law it seems. It's NOTHING to do with iPods. It's everything to do with iTunes and the increasing sales of downloaded digital media.
In fact, you can use iTunes and use any other MP3 player for that fact. It just won't sync up as nice.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Music purchased through iTunes is infected with DRM and can only be played on preauthroized machines. You need to crawl to Apple and hope they haven't changed their policy everytime you get a new PC. And you can ONLY use an iPod for portable aac + "fairplay" formats.
It's a monopoly. And it's Apples. Has your mind imploded yet or are you still in denial?
It's funny how no one has mentioned Microsoft, MTV, and the Urge! brand fit into this.
Talk about lockout.
"France Considers Anti-DRM 'iPod Law'" is the article title. Urge is US-only. Maybe that's why?;-) Of course, the "iPod Law" bit was undoubtably a creation of Apple's fabulous PR facilities, up there with the likes of "Patriot Act". It's all in the name...
I understand France's position on this but people still have a choice.
What choice? If you are an iTunes consumer and your when you iPod breaks or you fancy an upgrade, you are SOL. You have no choice but to buy Apple. This proposed law says that the manufactures should work together. To give YOU choice.
And when did MTV only require IE now to view their video content?
It's probably part of their contract that they have to use WMV with DRM on their whole operation, when they sold their soul to MS. If MTV has a soul, I believe it died about the time they stopped the whole "Music" part of that and ceased to be relevant.
And that old adage wasn't just proved false once, pretty much every time man invents a more efficent means of killing, some misguided individual believes it to herald the end of war(see crossbow and nuclear weapons)
Do you not understand that this works in the opposite way? The adage you mention (which I've heard many times before) is about more lethal weapons. Using combat droids is the complete opposite, which is my whole point that I seem to be failing to get across. It just got more palitable to the population that must back the war in a democracy. Expect more war and more "combat operations" in other locations.
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.
"Guarded"? Is this by the Department of Defence? And if I recall correctly, that film was partly set in Cuba, a country that has never attacked the USA, yet has been attacked by you on several occasions for purely idealogical reasons. Iraq has never attacked America. The Talliban has never attacked America, in fact they were allies & business partners until very recently. Their faux-pa was to demand evidence before handing over a suspect. We have supported and continue to support far more represive regimes than them.
I understand the point you are making, but when you are usually the agressor the rhetoric is a little paper-thin.
Sorry, the thing that prevents a lot of war is costs outweigh the benefits(ie. the economics don't work out), not peoples' deaths.
Wrong. Not in a democracy. We could invade Saudi Arabia tomorrow if we wanted, economically it would work out. What's preventing it is public opinion. The current US administration has been trying to invade Iraq since 1998, they practically got elected to achieve this goal. What gave them the ability to pull it off was the public opinion and fear from 9/11.
Though I appreciate your mickey mouse belief that enough deaths will mean an end to war.
I never said that. Just because the old adage about machine guns stopping war is false, it doesn't mean that the opposite is also false. As I've repeatively said, the one thing that changes public opinion on war is bodies coming home. We don't care about the civilian cost, nor the enemy fighters (sorry, "terrorists"), and sadly we don't give a shit about soldiers getting injured either.
If South Korea were attacked by North Korea, and the US intervened, would America's use of mine-clearing robots be a good thing, or a bad thing?
Why is it always a scenario where you come to the rescue of the little poor guy?:-) That's hollywood, not the past 40 years of reality...not passing judgement, we've been at it for hundreds of years on this side of the pond.
Of course if NK attacked the south they would be useful, if you wanted to actually clear the barrier.
The machinegun was going to end all wars. Dynamite was going to end all wars. The atom bomb was going to end all wars. Something tells me mine-clearing robots isn't going to make much of a difference one way or another in the grand calculation about whether we go to war or not.
That's my point. The whole "end all wars" thing never works. However, in a democracy the decission to go to war, especially a "prememtive strike" as we seem to be calling this one, public opinion is key to getting that. And troop deaths mean a lot.
Enlighten all of us; why would the "Marines Deaths" prevent "our Armies" from "invading resource rich countries?" As if the death of a fellow Marine or soldier really means something to you.
You seem to have picked me up wrong; I'm not saying that I care any more or less than the next guy. That wasn't my point. And I appreciate your point of view having been there, seriously. I do know a couple folk that have served in Iraq (and are just now), but they don't talk about it much so I would be bullshiting to try and pretend I had a clue what it all about. But onto my point:
Why do you think it took a FOIA request to get photographs of the returning dead? Body bags coming home turn war opinion more than anything else in our culture. The civilian deaths are a sidenote, if ever mentioned. Human nature I guess.
Stalin, who was a bit of an expert on the whole buisiness of killing innocent people said: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic". To our leaders, that's what the troops are, numbers. My point is that if we start deploying robots to do more and more combat operations, we will lose the one thing that prevents a lot of war; the deaths and injury of our own troops. Ultimately that can cause leaders to fall, the same leaders who make the war.
If war becomes policially cheaper, then we will see more of it.
Oh, "flag-draped coffins" dont come in Fed-X we use DHL now. That is the dumbest remark I have ever heard. They are fly in on military planes escorted by the military.
Did you honsestly think I meant that literally? Shit, sorry, was just a figure of speach. I have seen the photos you know, you don't see many fedex planes in those colours...
9-11 was not America's fault but thanks for that once again biased history lesson.
Em, yes it was. Unless you genuinely believe the "they hate freedom" bit. Bin Ladens main personal beef was the presence of US troops on Saudi soil. This is well documented. It was a direct result of your foreign policies of the past 40 years. They aren't attacking countries like Holland or Canada. And in 2005 the first ever suicide bombing in Western Europe (a large and diverse area politically) was done by people who specificly stated the UK's involvment in Iraq as their reasoning.
With some distributions of it, yes. XP is also a business OS, but most folk are familiar with the Home edition.
If the Beta is meant to run on a very specifically configured machine, then MS should clearly state as much so that people who are reviewing the product don't waste their time.
They probably did clearly state it. MS betas aren't generally available to the public and I'd assume their beta came with a big warning. Hell, their regular software does, do you ever read the EULAs?:-)
Why didn't Microsoft tell him to abort the installation on a laptop, and obtain a "business class desktop" on which to test the installation?
Because it's beta and not polished yet. The UI on the installer will be one of the last things to get done, once everything else has been finalized. Plus, the lack of a "-f" option would just piss people off. If they want to try it out, let them.
Beta means that it's almost ready to ship, but that not enough people have had their hands on it to truly iron out all the bugs.
Betas are not to iron out bugs in the commercial model, certainly not as much as it's done in the OSS world. Google has blurred the definition of beta for most people. The real testing is taking place in Microsoft shops, sure, they'll probably be accepting bug reports, but the onus will be on the internal development and testing. A beta, in this situation, is more for user feedback and marketing rather than testing. Don't expect to get any real work done on it. It may hose your drives partitions. Have a play around, see how solitare is looking and write your blog with the screenshots. MS are probably loving the publicity. Well, maybe not the press they get round these parts...;-)
A Beta (or near beta) OS should work on most consumer computer hardware, of which laptops now make up the majority.
Yes on the first part, but as I've said in another post in this thread (and have others), laptop drivers are not simple. Having driver problems on any OS is common, unless the vendor provides them which most do. Each vendor makes their own for the same chips bought from third-parties like S3 and Cirrus. There was once a point when installing linux on a laptop was about as hard as it got driver-wise, it's only in the last two or three years that's it's gotten pretty good.
When buying a laptop, always check out their online support and driver availability. You don't want to be using the restore/ship build of the OS, it's usually full of crap you don't need/want.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, lets put our bookmarks on the web. That way Google will never find them! ;-)
Generally, transport encryptions don't have passwords/pins, it's unneccessary. Public/private keys are just fine. If it was purely for transport encryption, they'd just use SSL or something similar.
Data's data. If you hold a reference to it, it will always be there. You can hold a reference in hashtables and other such things. You don't have to worry about garbage collection (any more ;-), but you still should know how to program.
Perhaps all rookie programmers should restrict themselves to the old pitfall days and limit the memory headroom to 1 or 2k in order to learn the basics of memory management. :-)
They probably arrived at the figure by assuming that every call made through the hackers was a lost sale. Sound familiar? ;-)
On the other hand, I can't think of a better alternative, other than basic audio jacks that are rotationally symetrical. But that design usually has issues with leaving contacts exposed when the wire is unplugged, something USB is pretty good at dealing with.
Several times? They've been continously at war with some one since the fifties. With the exception of a couple of McCarthyism wars in asia, all of the USA's wars have been ecconomic in nature.
Someone once said that "war is armed robbery, writ large". It's just a hostile takeover of someone elses interests.
I use the comments stuff heavilly myself though, very useful to mark and annotate work-in-progress.
However, there are some great ones that I have already paid for. Fatboy Slims "Praise You" (Spike Jonze) is a brilliant example of guerilla filming. Aphex Twins "Window Licker" (again Spike Jonze) is a classic. De-lites "Groove is in the Heart" makes EVERYONE smile everytime. The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch up" exposes the inner-sexist in the viewer. The Beastie Boy's "Sabotage" (yet another Spike Jonze one) is utterly brilliant and still holds up. And there are lots more, Bjork, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and many other groups generally put out videos that stand well above "commerical" status.
No. Simply drag and drop the new stuff onto the drive. The "ideal" mp3 player can be mounted as a drive. Couldn't be simpler. Having to import to some music db just to copy across is a bit much IMHO.
Are you kidding? I set up a pals iPod for her, dropping 20gig onto it. If I could have dragged and dropped it would have been way easier and done overnight. Instead it took three days and a lot of manual effort.
You could do a couple of useful things to this. It could provide a means to upload files or change configuration settings. A messaging interface could be useful, letting you use the phones inbox on a PC. With things like WiFi and bluetooth, there are possiblities.
And as the parent poster says, running a webserver (etc) on a mobile/pda isn't all that new.
Add the phrase "informed electorate" and you aren't far off.
So what does a two party system have to do with democracy in your view?
It offers little in the way of genuine choice. What tends to happen is that people exercise strategic votes to get someone out rather than voting in. Also, two parties cannot represent anyone really. If you are anti-abortion and vote based on that issue, you need to accept everything that the Replublicans also support. Anti-abortion and pro-war...that's a strange mix if you ask me.
I fully expect things to polarise further in the US, with the Republicans picking up all of the Christian vote, with the Democrats getting what's left.
I think I prefer our relitively stable version of democracy with two parties. Parlamentary systems with all that dissovling parlament, sacking ministers on a whim and declaring elections every time you figure you can win is just too chaotic for my tastes.
Under our system, those responsible for the mistakes in Iraq would be held accountable. Converserly we have a system in the US where failure leads to promotion and medals. I think there is a happy middle ground there somewhere.
The idea of choosing when to have the election....well, I'm against that as well. However, the US style fixed elections will be abused in 2008 when a mysterious terror threat causes the elections to be posponed. That would leave the ruling party in power for the next four years as there is no fallback alternative should the election not happen.
The rest of the world does not care for Democrats or Republican, we just see "America". Blaming the other side might be a nice way to win arguments interally, but externally it just makes you look ridiculous.
PS No sane person can argue that a two-party system is a democratic means of government. If you really want to sort US politics, this Republican/Democrat thing must stop.
Bad analogy. If they had left credit cards by mistake, would it be OK for you to use them? Also, under UK law personal data is protected and by posting it online he is breaking that law.
To the best of my knowledge it's not supported by any Windows Mobile / Smartphone. The latest offical media player is Windows Media 10. MS have never offered a Windows Media upgrade to their phones although some operators have released updated ROM images for the phones that took them from 9 to 10.
That's highly unlikely. Firstly, Canada would be a better choice to do that. Secondly, there are a dozen easier ways. Sail in on a private charter, cargo ship, or a cruise with false tourist visas. Similar tricks can be done with air traffic to smaller airports. The walk from Mexico is through a desert and the end is guarded by rednecks with dogs & guns. Tough choice...
Yes, they do. The same part of the bible that says gay sex is a sin also has similarly strong words for those who eat shellfish. Quote the book itself:
This is where "kosher" comes from. It's food that follows the laws stated in The Old Testiment. If you don't follow them, you will burn in hell aparently. Things like kosher and halal may seem silly to some, but they are no more silly than anything else in religion.
How is that any good for "an iTunes consumer" as I mentioned? You miss the point of this whole proposed law it seems. It's NOTHING to do with iPods. It's everything to do with iTunes and the increasing sales of downloaded digital media.
In fact, you can use iTunes and use any other MP3 player for that fact. It just won't sync up as nice.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Music purchased through iTunes is infected with DRM and can only be played on preauthroized machines. You need to crawl to Apple and hope they haven't changed their policy everytime you get a new PC. And you can ONLY use an iPod for portable aac + "fairplay" formats.
It's a monopoly. And it's Apples. Has your mind imploded yet or are you still in denial?
"France Considers Anti-DRM 'iPod Law'" is the article title. Urge is US-only. Maybe that's why? ;-) Of course, the "iPod Law" bit was undoubtably a creation of Apple's fabulous PR facilities, up there with the likes of "Patriot Act". It's all in the name...
I understand France's position on this but people still have a choice.
What choice? If you are an iTunes consumer and your when you iPod breaks or you fancy an upgrade, you are SOL. You have no choice but to buy Apple. This proposed law says that the manufactures should work together. To give YOU choice.
And when did MTV only require IE now to view their video content?
It's probably part of their contract that they have to use WMV with DRM on their whole operation, when they sold their soul to MS. If MTV has a soul, I believe it died about the time they stopped the whole "Music" part of that and ceased to be relevant.
Do you not understand that this works in the opposite way? The adage you mention (which I've heard many times before) is about more lethal weapons. Using combat droids is the complete opposite, which is my whole point that I seem to be failing to get across. It just got more palitable to the population that must back the war in a democracy. Expect more war and more "combat operations" in other locations.
"Guarded"? Is this by the Department of Defence? And if I recall correctly, that film was partly set in Cuba, a country that has never attacked the USA, yet has been attacked by you on several occasions for purely idealogical reasons. Iraq has never attacked America. The Talliban has never attacked America, in fact they were allies & business partners until very recently. Their faux-pa was to demand evidence before handing over a suspect. We have supported and continue to support far more represive regimes than them.
I understand the point you are making, but when you are usually the agressor the rhetoric is a little paper-thin.
Wrong. Not in a democracy. We could invade Saudi Arabia tomorrow if we wanted, economically it would work out. What's preventing it is public opinion. The current US administration has been trying to invade Iraq since 1998, they practically got elected to achieve this goal. What gave them the ability to pull it off was the public opinion and fear from 9/11.
Though I appreciate your mickey mouse belief that enough deaths will mean an end to war.
I never said that. Just because the old adage about machine guns stopping war is false, it doesn't mean that the opposite is also false. As I've repeatively said, the one thing that changes public opinion on war is bodies coming home. We don't care about the civilian cost, nor the enemy fighters (sorry, "terrorists"), and sadly we don't give a shit about soldiers getting injured either.
Why is it always a scenario where you come to the rescue of the little poor guy? :-) That's hollywood, not the past 40 years of reality...not passing judgement, we've been at it for hundreds of years on this side of the pond.
Of course if NK attacked the south they would be useful, if you wanted to actually clear the barrier.
The machinegun was going to end all wars. Dynamite was going to end all wars. The atom bomb was going to end all wars. Something tells me mine-clearing robots isn't going to make much of a difference one way or another in the grand calculation about whether we go to war or not.
That's my point. The whole "end all wars" thing never works. However, in a democracy the decission to go to war, especially a "prememtive strike" as we seem to be calling this one, public opinion is key to getting that. And troop deaths mean a lot.
You seem to have picked me up wrong; I'm not saying that I care any more or less than the next guy. That wasn't my point. And I appreciate your point of view having been there, seriously. I do know a couple folk that have served in Iraq (and are just now), but they don't talk about it much so I would be bullshiting to try and pretend I had a clue what it all about. But onto my point:
Why do you think it took a FOIA request to get photographs of the returning dead? Body bags coming home turn war opinion more than anything else in our culture. The civilian deaths are a sidenote, if ever mentioned. Human nature I guess.
Stalin, who was a bit of an expert on the whole buisiness of killing innocent people said: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic". To our leaders, that's what the troops are, numbers. My point is that if we start deploying robots to do more and more combat operations, we will lose the one thing that prevents a lot of war; the deaths and injury of our own troops. Ultimately that can cause leaders to fall, the same leaders who make the war.
If war becomes policially cheaper, then we will see more of it.
Oh, "flag-draped coffins" dont come in Fed-X we use DHL now. That is the dumbest remark I have ever heard. They are fly in on military planes escorted by the military.
Did you honsestly think I meant that literally? Shit, sorry, was just a figure of speach. I have seen the photos you know, you don't see many fedex planes in those colours...
9-11 was not America's fault but thanks for that once again biased history lesson.
Em, yes it was. Unless you genuinely believe the "they hate freedom" bit. Bin Ladens main personal beef was the presence of US troops on Saudi soil. This is well documented. It was a direct result of your foreign policies of the past 40 years. They aren't attacking countries like Holland or Canada. And in 2005 the first ever suicide bombing in Western Europe (a large and diverse area politically) was done by people who specificly stated the UK's involvment in Iraq as their reasoning.
With some distributions of it, yes. XP is also a business OS, but most folk are familiar with the Home edition.
If the Beta is meant to run on a very specifically configured machine, then MS should clearly state as much so that people who are reviewing the product don't waste their time.
They probably did clearly state it. MS betas aren't generally available to the public and I'd assume their beta came with a big warning. Hell, their regular software does, do you ever read the EULAs? :-)
Why didn't Microsoft tell him to abort the installation on a laptop, and obtain a "business class desktop" on which to test the installation?
Because it's beta and not polished yet. The UI on the installer will be one of the last things to get done, once everything else has been finalized. Plus, the lack of a "-f" option would just piss people off. If they want to try it out, let them.
Beta means that it's almost ready to ship, but that not enough people have had their hands on it to truly iron out all the bugs.
Betas are not to iron out bugs in the commercial model, certainly not as much as it's done in the OSS world. Google has blurred the definition of beta for most people. The real testing is taking place in Microsoft shops, sure, they'll probably be accepting bug reports, but the onus will be on the internal development and testing. A beta, in this situation, is more for user feedback and marketing rather than testing. Don't expect to get any real work done on it. It may hose your drives partitions. Have a play around, see how solitare is looking and write your blog with the screenshots. MS are probably loving the publicity. Well, maybe not the press they get round these parts... ;-)
A Beta (or near beta) OS should work on most consumer computer hardware, of which laptops now make up the majority.
Yes on the first part, but as I've said in another post in this thread (and have others), laptop drivers are not simple. Having driver problems on any OS is common, unless the vendor provides them which most do. Each vendor makes their own for the same chips bought from third-parties like S3 and Cirrus. There was once a point when installing linux on a laptop was about as hard as it got driver-wise, it's only in the last two or three years that's it's gotten pretty good.
When buying a laptop, always check out their online support and driver availability. You don't want to be using the restore/ship build of the OS, it's usually full of crap you don't need/want.