I highly recommend AppleCare if you're getting a laptop from Apple.
Alternately, you could just learn the law regarding faulty goods. I'm not sure how it is stateside, but here in the UK you'd get all of these faults fixed at no cost, regardless of any extended warranties you've purchaced. All new goods must *work*, and this goes beyond the "manufacturers one year warranty" they throw in your face at the first sign of a fault, it's up to six years for some goods. One mention of "Sale of Goods Act" and it changes to "we'll get that fixed for you sir".
I'm not familiar with Apple Care, does it give 24-hour replacements and the like? I did purchace the same deal for my mobile, no hastle next day replacement via courier. Quick turnaround is the only reason I can see for an extended warranty, other than providing commission to the sales person;-)
Sleep deprivation, loud music, harassment are all forms of torture, ones that are freely admitted to. Somehow your nation has it in your heads that if it doesn't involve blood, then it's not torture. Psychological torture is a lot harder to recover from than a few bruises. There is also a lot of evidence that various drugs and other forms of sedation are in use. Hell, there is evidence of that going on in the regular US national penal system already.
The pictures from Abu Graib speak for themself.
As for objectivity, the woman army officer in charge of the Iraqi prisons has been quite verbal over it. She claimed that the inteligence agencies basically came in and took over the place, and that it was systematic abuse at all of the sites. She is on record saying these things. What is her motive? Why does she hate America?
OK, another traditionally pro-US person: "In Iraq, what happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples." - Al Gore
The photos seen by the public were the tip of the iceberg. There were far worse scenes included in the original set, child rape and so on. Quote:
"Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men. The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'
"Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out." - Seymour Hersh (one of those who brought the events to the public eyes)
Now, if keeping your head in the sand and pretending that this isn't going on helps you to sleep at night, then more power to you. It won't change anything however, and it's people like you who allow these things to happen via your apathy.
Please understand my motives here, I don't "hate america" etc. In fact, I used to have a lot of respect for your country and I've visited many times. There is a lot of nasty shit going on and the US population is oblivious to it. That scares me, as the historic precidents are clear on where that road leads.
Every time I see a post by you, it's filled with unsubstantiated speculations and assertions that border on lies, and easily reach the level of hyperbole.
If you feel that way, please point out the lies and we will discuss them. You however won't get away from the fact that your country has been routinely torturing and commiting all sorts of evil acts for decades. The methods reported to be in use in Gitmo and Abu Graib are all standard documented techniques. There are numerous experiments showing how ordinary 'good' people can be coerced into commiting torture, e.g. the Milton Experiment. What makes Americans immune to this? Why do you believe that you are in someway 'better' than everyone else? This is a very dangerous road to be traveling along.
I'm getting my info from history books. My only news media these daysis the BBC, the only network left with even an element of objectiviity. I read no leftist publications nor do I read tinfoil hat type quackery. I'm forming my opinions via past behavour and historical context. South America, the Middle East, the world is full of your victims. Just because Hollywood portrays you as the saviour, it doesn't make it historically acurate. Nor does your leaders continued use of the word 'god' make him just.
I can see nothing in my original post that is even debatable. Either knock yourself out trying to disprove them or shut up. A third option would be to pick up a history book and start reading. Find out why people hate you to the point of killing civilians. I'll give you a hint...it has nothing to do with hating democracy and freedom.
It's nothing to do with humour, this is politics. Being the funny party gets you a mention in the "and finally..." section of the news, it's a statement as opposed to a movement. If they were called something more responsible, they might actually get someone older than 20 voting for them and actually achieve something more useful than a funny soundbite.
They could just be testing the water, this sort of thing might catch on with other small parties.
My experience is honestly quite different to yours. I've installed Windows (95/98/2000/XP), Debian (2002ish - present), Red-Hat (6 & 7), Solaris (7, 8 & 9) plus a few others and I've always found the Windows ones to be the easiest. The OS install asks one important question of the user, partitioning. On Windows, this is always a doddle, unless you dual-boot but even then it's not hard. Linux depends on how "good" you want the install, e.g. separate/var/log partition etc. Solaris, eech, that's a hairy one at times, and I've been on Sun training on that OS./dev/rdsk/cod1s0p4 somehow makes sense to me now.
Agreed, most users see Windows out the box. But someone did had to build that image (been there, done that). There are only two things that require drivers during the OS install really, SCSI and SATA. XP (first edition) supports my Adapetec SCSI card out-the-box, so no hastle there. SATA wasn't around at the time. The need for drivers was so rare (at the time) that it was far from polished, sure. I guess you could call it lazyness, but it sounds like normal software development to me.;-)
I don't know what you mean on cards coming with CD-ROMs, that's not my experience at all. CD-ROM drivers come with consumer equiptment, such as 3D cards and the like, where it's expected there is a CD in the PC. Many business machines don't have CD-ROMs, though with the current prices for drives, dropping them isn't as cost saving as it used to be. Mostly I just download them anyway, the media is usually out of date by the time it gets to you in the box.
if the battery dies, I not only lost my mp3 player, but I lost my phone, my video game machine, my address book etc.
Agreed, I do find this an annoyance. However, instead of carrying an extra device or two, I just carry a spare battery. If I'm away for a few days, I also bring the USB charger. My backpack is way lighter than yours!;-)
Also, when I go to an event where my toys may be put at risk(say out drinking) I usually only carry my phone with me.
Likewise, and this I think is my advantage. When I'm walking home from the pub, I can pull out the headphones which is surprisingly good at stopping the rowdier drunks annoying you.
This all assumes that people will want ginormous all in one electronic devices that are phones, PDAs and MP3 players. Probably that's not a safe bet. It's been tried before and people generally don't want the cost and complexity of an all in one.
It's way too early to say that. "Enhanced" phones have been out for what, four or five years max. The present problems are size and complexity as you suggest, but both are changing.
And how much will the consumer get screwed by the cell phone company which will of course charge a huge premium for the MTV factor alone plus you're still limited by the cell phone carrier itself. We already see that most people - maybe as many as 85% never use most of the features of the picture - ringtone - video etc etc phone they already have today. What would you do with a MP3 player that could only download tunes through the cell phone's carrier for a huge premium?
Then you suck as a consumer and did not do your research. My uber-phone has no restrictions on it whatsoever. Actually, I lie, there is one...unsigned applications cannot access the phone (viruses and premium rate numbers...ouch!), but it helps me, not some exec.
Why don't they focus on the hand held video camera market which needs this kind of capacity and doesn't give too much of a crap about the iPod-Cribs-Spinners-Nerd I'm so cool I diss myself market?
They likely are. The company that makes the drives probably doesn't care where they end up. Slashdot has a weird luddite tech attitute in some areas, one of which is phones. The submission for the HD video camera story probably got passed over.
Who the hell is going to buy a more expensive 10GB hard drive over the lower power more reliable flash laternative?
I would, just for the extra space. I carry a 1GB SD card (and a 256 spare) and I'd be very able to fill it up. What would be ideal would be an SD-card compatible harddrive.
Besides, flash more reliable than HD? Not in my experience, in four years of using SD cards I've trashed way more of them than I have harddrives. I would not argue that they were reliable at all, in fact I would never put mission critical data on one. I've owned approx 10 cards and only three still work.
The HD is not more expensive, dollar per meg. By 2009, the 10GB harddrive will be a 100GB one. Flash can't keep up the size race; it will compete on it's other merits.
And if the phone/PDA/MP3 player has a GB or 2 of memory built-in (which it surely will by then), the device could spin up the drive, copy off the next few songs/videos from the disk, and then spin down the disk drive, saving tons of energy.
They already do this. Some devices can access HD-based storage over bluetooth*, and the some of the media player applications support this today. Mostly for music; I don't know how it would work for exceptionaly large files, e.g. video. Some sort of "chunk" based system I'd presume, or a dynamic cache that spools up the drive as it's emptying.
* you can also get a portable WiFi access point that can provide SMB shares if you throw a laptop drive in it. Very cool.
$18.50 a gigabyte is pretty nice for such a small device. Flash isn't near that currently, but probably will be in 6 to 12 months time. Of course flash pushers will come up with other advantages for their side I'm sure...
Battery life and reslilience. No moving parts, that's flash's one advantage that results in both benefits.
The real battle will be on the size front. I think the HDs will maybe win this one.
Do I need 10GB in a phone even? I'd prefer it in a digital camera, or tiny media player.
My phone is my digital camera / tiny media player (you insensitive clod!). I want it now!!!
Somehow these devices take the worst aspect of every platform they try to integrate and reproduce it
I disagree; there's nothing the dedicated devices do better. The only real argument is that the GUI is simpler to navigate, as they do less. In addition to the media applications, I have to cope with the inhumane world where I also have SSH, VNC, IMAPS and GPS running. Won't someone save me from the complexity, please think of the children!!;-)
Fine then. Don't buy one. What the hell is your problem? Just because you don't want it, it's a bad idea? I'd kill for 10G, my 1G SD card is always full up. Hell, I'm hoping for 80G so I can get my mp3 collection on it!
The day a phone comes out with the present features of my phone (a WiFi PDA) plus a harddrive, I'll be upgrading. Well, in honesty, I'll wait a month or two for buyer feedback and ironing out the manufacturing problems, but that's just good practice for any new tech.
Granted its cheaper than using flash but hell I would rather pay for something that isn't going to possibly be toast when it bounces once off the pavement.
Hard-drives have come a long way. When was the last time you saw a head crash? My laptops have taken a fair amount of abuse over the years, and some of them are so old the HD is only 2gig. Yet, the resilience of them is amazing, out of all the HD failures I've had (many), not one has been a laptop drive. I move them about all the time, even while the unit is running.
Did you see the IBM add where the HD realises the unit is in free-fall and prepares the drive for the inevitable impact? These drives will have similar features, it's pretty much guaranteed. I've always wondered though; what would happen if you took one on an oribiting vessel, in virtal 0G....
Has this been updated? I'm in Glasgow and it's showing my real public IP. I've not done anything deliberately to bypass NTLs proxies, any ideas what's going on? I've seen other sites list the proxy in the past as my IP (hell,/. blacklisted it once!), perhaps it's just broken at the moment? Curiouser and curiouser...
I wasn't going to reply to your post as it's futile, you fail to see my point. You know about IO addressing, you know about IRQs, lspci etc, and therefore it is possible for you to set up Linux. Have a golf-clap and give yourself a pat on the back. Then realise you represent a fraction of the market place. Windows is easier to configure for most users, end of story, I can't even believe we are having this argument. IMHO linux is 2-3 years away from being on an even keel with Windows in this respect. Sure, it will happen, just not for a bit. Automated hardware installation is where I believe it lacks; add a new network card and see what happens. Nothing most of the time...
The best technical medium should be *user selectable*. end of story. In every Linux disto I have worked with you could at least choose between Floppy/CD/harddrive/ZIP (on floppy, IDE or SCSI bus, and then USB and FireWire as soon as these interface where out)/FTP/HTTP/Samba/TFTP and NFS.
So, in order to keep you happy, any hardware device should come with either a choice of driver medium, or all of them? Have you any idea what that would do to the cost per unit? You're $10 NIC card jumps to $15 just to throw in a CD, to keep what, less than 1% of users happy? Even offering a choice of medium will bump up the price of both options, that's how manufacturing works. Making only one different model, but many many times is the most efficient way. Floppies are the lowest common denomenator.
The linux distros are available on different medium as you write it yourself, usually using dd and the like. At least, that's how debian does it (what I use personally). You can't compare this to hardware provided drivers, which have to be dupicated and tested (time counsuming).
Windows on the other hand only accepts floppies. Even MS-DOS (and current DOS clones like FreeDOS) let you enter full paths during installation for installation sources (and let you interrupt the installation process, load the drivers to access this special medium (like ATAPI drivers, Dos USB drivers or network drivers) and then restart installation).
That certainally is a failing; you should be able to use other medium for this. Again, consider this history of these. MS-DOS did this because it came in different configs. There were CD-ROMs available, weren't there? Likewise, on Linux, you can install from a local apt server (my debian personal choice), from a local path, or from CD. This wasn't done through feature creep, it was a neccesity due to the different hardware that Linux will deploy to. Win XP on the otherhand expects a PC98 base machine, you will have a floppy, CD-ROM and maybe a NIC. It's not an ideal situation, but you can see how it arose.
IIRC, the problem occurs only if you move the console while the disk is running. Folk change between vertical while on the shelf to horizontal use on the carpet. Any 16x drive or faster will have the same problems. You canny change the laws of physics; that disk is going to want to remain vertical and it will have quite a lot of gyroscopic energy in it at those spin rates. While chiping xboxen and PS devices (something I used to do now and then for friends), I always used a demo disk as the test media as movement of the drive when in use caused some nasty radial scratches on the disk. I ruined a couple over the years due to this.
If this is the case, then it's largely user error. The box has an HD in it, don't move it while its on!!
Part of the problem is that radial scratches are the worst damage a cd-rom based technology can take. The error correction data is in stored adjacent to the data, so a circular scratch completely destroys all of the data in that region. A scratch from the outside in will on damage a narrow stripe, whereby there is enough data in the track on either side to determine it's contents. This is why you should always wipe a disk from the inside to the outside; any scratches you cause (or greasey fingerprint you spread!) won't impact anything.
PS I used to work in electronics manufacture for a large, generally respected, tech company. One piece of advice: avoid the first production run of anything new. Microsofts problems here are common across the industry, nothing special.
Exactly, so saying "all I had to do was enter the WEP" was a lie. Setting up a wireless NIC in Windows is not as easy as you originally claimed.
No, I'd already used the wired lan to apply all security patches and SP2 to get the firewall, before I let it loose on WiFi. This is Windows we are talking about here! So, with respect to the WiFi, it was literally plug in and enter the WEP.
That's not what you said before; you said that every computer has a floppy drive connector.
That's just splitting hairs. My mobile is essentially a computer and there is no floppy in sight. So, let me rephrase that to "almost every i386 based system comes with a floppy based drive, and 99.9% of them ship with the drive".
Well, now you have. [link to IBM X40 laptop]
The X40 has NO drives, that's the point. It's built for size and billed as "the thinnest and lightest IBM ultraportable ever". Of course there are exceptions to the floppy rule, but it's extremely rare in the i386 world. This will not go on forever, they will be phased out completely, probably within 5 years.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no floppy zealot, just saying there is still a use for them. Ever installed an OS entirely from floppies? Believe me, I have no love for them!!:-)
How, pray tell, did you download the WiFi drivers off the Internet if the WiFi wasn't working yet, if "all [you had] to do was enter the WEP?" Since that precludes setting up any kind of wired connection first, you must have used magic pixie dust, right?
Wired LAN?? It wasn't all that difficult. Even if it had no NIC, I'd pop in a PCMCIA nic card and on XP it would work out the box, drivers included in the OS. Ever tried setting up PCMCIA on linux? Then the myrad of third party NICs and accessories? Look, these are things that I've done, and they weren't easy or intuative a lot of the time.
I've never owned a laptop that did not come with a floppy drive, so as a last resort I could have gotten the drivers on that way. It's the base, bog-standard medium that all i386 PCs have. I've seen plenty of business machines with floppies and no-cd rom, but not the other way around. I don't build with floppies myself, but I don't see it as a failure of the OS when it's install bootloader requires that medium for additional drivers.
Usually, you only really resort to floppies for NIC drivers, as once you are on the network, that's the medium of choice. Bootloaders and installers are the other exception, though it rarely comes up. SATA is just one of those "too recent" technologies. Remember that XP is now serveral years old; how may linux installers handled SATA from the same period?
And no, Linux is still harder to set up than windows. The GUI just isn't there, and when you are just beginning in learning computing, the GUI is essential. Sure, if you know about subnetting and firewalls, you could add a NIC to a linux box, modprobe it, configure it's IP settings, set it as the default route, then you are on the net. Contrast windows; you just plug it in and it works. There are two flavours of the config, 95 style and NT style, should you have to make anything non-default. On linux there are a dozen different GUIs for setting up IP. This is just one example. Provide me with one where setting up Linux is easier, if you can...it's a great OS, but saying it's easier to admin than windows is a tad off-the-mark.
To keep up to date with the security patches? Hands up all those still running Redhat 6.0? Anyone? Bueller? Didn't think so...
98 etc has gone end-of-life, the same will happen to XP. If you intend to use the MS OS based software, Vista will be essential in, say e.g. five years time.
when I went to install Windows XP-64 on my system, it requires a ***FLOPPY*** disk in order to supply drivers for my SATA drive. My system doesn't have a floppy drive. WTF!? It's the year 2006, and a 64bit operating system that was released what, 4 months ago, requires a god damned floppy drive to install it? WTF is that about?
Skipping the obvious remarks about floppies being the best technical medium for drivers (well supported, the drives themselves never need drivers) and that everyone should have them, I need to ask something....did you honestly change your desktop OS because you couldn't be bothered to throw in a floppy drive? If you were a true geek you wouldn't even have the case on your computer!!;-)
Every computer has floppy drive connectors. Not every computer has USB, especially in servers (USB is actually a vunerability there). Not every CD drive works without drivers. Besides, if you have a SATA adapter you are trying to configure, how exactly would you get the drivers onto the system? Install an IDE CD-ROM? WHat if the system has no IDE bus (many new ones don't)? How is that any different to temporarilly installing a floppy?
Bottom line on why floppies are used, in your own words: "it just works". I'd add "for everyone" to the end of that though.
It seems like there's always some stupid fucking annoyance whenever I try to deal with Windows.
This is where the decent into la-la land really begins. Are you fucking serious? Are you, even for a minute, trying to suggest that Linux is easier to setup than Windows? Bull-----shit. When I came to Linux, I found it relatively easy, because of one important thing...I'd used Sun OS's a lot in the past. I knew what/etc/fstab did. I understood the rc.d system. And yet it still took me over a week to get WiFi working (this was four years ago, things are better now). It involved kernel recompiles, discovering and logging bugs in the various drivers and countless hours spent trying to get WEP to work. And this was top-of-the-line Cisco gear, which they had actually provided their own Linux drivers, in addition to the third-party OSS ones available.
The Windows laptop I was preparing the WiFi for (using the linux box as a router) was set up in 10 minutes. It downloaded the drivers from the net for me. All I have to do was enter the WEP.
OK, so that's just one anecdote, but it's consistent with all my other experience on the platforms. The only hastles I ever have with Windows are driver ones, and 9 times out of 10 a safe-mode visit will fix them. 99% of Windows cock-ups are pilot error (installing weatherbar type malware etc), and Linux would have the same issues if it's users were as equally as clueless as the Windows average user.
Interesting how the Chinese government goes all out on pornography, but does absolutely nothing to try to stem the rampant software and video piracy that takes place there.
Hang on a minute, lets drop the scitsofrenic slashdot attitute for a moment so I can get this straight. Our piracy alright, fair-use blah blah, bittorrent rulzes!!1!, but China is "teh evil". Having visited there, I can tell you that piracy isn't really anymore rampant than here in the west. The primary difference is that the legal market over there is pretty non-existent and the prices are too high for most of the populations living wage. Sure, some shops sell pirate wares, but here in Glasgow, Scotland, I have two brick and mortar shops selling pirate warzes and numerous markets all within a five mile radi of my home. Not that I'd pay money to these folks, but I'm just pointing out that they are there, and nothing is being done about them, other than token efforts from the authoritites, who frankly have more important things to deal with, like say real crime where people get hurt. One of the shops is called "the jolly rodger" and offers the "top 40 albums for £10". There is no semi-legal illusion, everyone knows the score.
I need hardly mention the millions of machines spewing spam out into the internet.
More spam comes from the US, this has been proven time and time again. Zombies are the current source of spam and frankly they don't care about our borders. Blaming one country for spam is becoming less and less relevant nowadays, and I believe this will continue.
I wonder whether the rest of the world would be for the better if China was completely segregated from the rest of the internet, with the only access through safe "portals" supervised by the government.
The mind boggles. Do you actually feel like that? The only positive imact I can see for "everyone else" is less spam according to the (incorrect) China spam problem. You'd sacrifice the web allowing the Chinease people to overthrow their dictatorship via knowledge and information, for a little less spam? Wow. You think spam is that much of a problem? Moreso than the worlds largest population being ruled by dictators?
Why do people act surprised when the technical capabilities of surveilence are discussed? Echelon has been acknowledged as being in operation by numerous goverenments that have been involved in it.
Right now, your email, telephone, faxes, text messages and so on are all being monitored for keywords. There are no court warrants involved and there never has been. The recent news on Bush doing this is a farce. So what? It's being going on for decades. It's estimated to intercept three billion messages every day.
Echelon works through a variety of systems. They have taps in place at all of the main junction nodes of the telephone network. The big domed receivers, such as those at Menwith Hill pick up scatter from satelite links. The domes are used because a) the receivers can be damaged by weather and b) so you cannot tell where they are pointing.
All this talk of surveilence without a court order makes me want to scream "wake the fuck up people".
You know why media reports about Gitmo have been scarce lately?
Perhaps in your "bought and paid for" journalism, but believe me, Gitmo has been in the news quite a bit lately. Last week it was the second-running story on BBC video news broadcasts.
Just because your propaganda (your presidents words, not mine) doesn't mention things that are going on, it doesn't mean that it's not.
You people are incapable of a sense of proportion, aren't you?
No, it is you who is incapabe of being objective. I really could not give a fuck about what China is doing, I can't do anything about that. However, when my OWN government is party to this sort of behaviour, you are fucking right I'm going to say something about it.
The US's attitude these days seems to be "well, China is worse, so what's your problem?". Discussions of Gitmo have no relevance to China in any way whatsoever, and bringing it up only makes you look bad. If you go around invading countries under a banner of rightousness, then you really should expect to have that facaide ripped down when it becomes apparent that it's all a lie.
You might be able to sleep at night believeing that they are all "evildoers", but I really suggest some reading on how many of these people got arrested. Some were named during torture. Some were named because of local feuding in Afganistan. Don't like the Montagues? Tell the CIA they are dodgy!! Some were named for profit; the US paid rewards for "information". And MANY are now being released as they are being found to be completely innocent.
You are torturing innocent people. You lost the righteous battle a long time ago.
Like it or not the word piracy has picked up the added meaning of copyright infringement. Get over it.
It hasn't "picked up" anything, it's a clear newspeak campaign. The word pirate was expressly choosen because of it's negative connotations. The "pirate" label has been moved from unlicensed radio, to organized fakers, to organized copiers (not fakes, buyers know what they are getting) to the modern p2p downloader.
I think I'll redefine the word "genocidal" to describe any slashdot posters I don't like. Yeah, that'll work!
This is DIRECTLY akin to saying that phone companies want to provide better phone quality if you call another user on their network.
No, it's directly akin to deliberately downgrading the quality if you connect to a competing network. The bandwidth is there, they just seek to charge more for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Alternately, you could just learn the law regarding faulty goods. I'm not sure how it is stateside, but here in the UK you'd get all of these faults fixed at no cost, regardless of any extended warranties you've purchaced. All new goods must *work*, and this goes beyond the "manufacturers one year warranty" they throw in your face at the first sign of a fault, it's up to six years for some goods. One mention of "Sale of Goods Act" and it changes to "we'll get that fixed for you sir".
I'm not familiar with Apple Care, does it give 24-hour replacements and the like? I did purchace the same deal for my mobile, no hastle next day replacement via courier. Quick turnaround is the only reason I can see for an extended warranty, other than providing commission to the sales person ;-)
The pictures from Abu Graib speak for themself.
As for objectivity, the woman army officer in charge of the Iraqi prisons has been quite verbal over it. She claimed that the inteligence agencies basically came in and took over the place, and that it was systematic abuse at all of the sites. She is on record saying these things. What is her motive? Why does she hate America?
OK, another traditionally pro-US person: "In Iraq, what happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples." - Al Gore
The photos seen by the public were the tip of the iceberg. There were far worse scenes included in the original set, child rape and so on. Quote:
Now, if keeping your head in the sand and pretending that this isn't going on helps you to sleep at night, then more power to you. It won't change anything however, and it's people like you who allow these things to happen via your apathy.
Please understand my motives here, I don't "hate america" etc. In fact, I used to have a lot of respect for your country and I've visited many times. There is a lot of nasty shit going on and the US population is oblivious to it. That scares me, as the historic precidents are clear on where that road leads.
If you feel that way, please point out the lies and we will discuss them. You however won't get away from the fact that your country has been routinely torturing and commiting all sorts of evil acts for decades. The methods reported to be in use in Gitmo and Abu Graib are all standard documented techniques. There are numerous experiments showing how ordinary 'good' people can be coerced into commiting torture, e.g. the Milton Experiment. What makes Americans immune to this? Why do you believe that you are in someway 'better' than everyone else? This is a very dangerous road to be traveling along.
I'm getting my info from history books. My only news media these daysis the BBC, the only network left with even an element of objectiviity. I read no leftist publications nor do I read tinfoil hat type quackery. I'm forming my opinions via past behavour and historical context. South America, the Middle East, the world is full of your victims. Just because Hollywood portrays you as the saviour, it doesn't make it historically acurate. Nor does your leaders continued use of the word 'god' make him just.
I can see nothing in my original post that is even debatable. Either knock yourself out trying to disprove them or shut up. A third option would be to pick up a history book and start reading. Find out why people hate you to the point of killing civilians. I'll give you a hint...it has nothing to do with hating democracy and freedom.
They could just be testing the water, this sort of thing might catch on with other small parties.
Agreed, most users see Windows out the box. But someone did had to build that image (been there, done that). There are only two things that require drivers during the OS install really, SCSI and SATA. XP (first edition) supports my Adapetec SCSI card out-the-box, so no hastle there. SATA wasn't around at the time. The need for drivers was so rare (at the time) that it was far from polished, sure. I guess you could call it lazyness, but it sounds like normal software development to me. ;-)
I don't know what you mean on cards coming with CD-ROMs, that's not my experience at all. CD-ROM drivers come with consumer equiptment, such as 3D cards and the like, where it's expected there is a CD in the PC. Many business machines don't have CD-ROMs, though with the current prices for drives, dropping them isn't as cost saving as it used to be. Mostly I just download them anyway, the media is usually out of date by the time it gets to you in the box.
Agreed, I do find this an annoyance. However, instead of carrying an extra device or two, I just carry a spare battery. If I'm away for a few days, I also bring the USB charger. My backpack is way lighter than yours! ;-)
Also, when I go to an event where my toys may be put at risk(say out drinking) I usually only carry my phone with me.
Likewise, and this I think is my advantage. When I'm walking home from the pub, I can pull out the headphones which is surprisingly good at stopping the rowdier drunks annoying you.
It's way too early to say that. "Enhanced" phones have been out for what, four or five years max. The present problems are size and complexity as you suggest, but both are changing.
And how much will the consumer get screwed by the cell phone company which will of course charge a huge premium for the MTV factor alone plus you're still limited by the cell phone carrier itself. We already see that most people - maybe as many as 85% never use most of the features of the picture - ringtone - video etc etc phone they already have today. What would you do with a MP3 player that could only download tunes through the cell phone's carrier for a huge premium?
Then you suck as a consumer and did not do your research. My uber-phone has no restrictions on it whatsoever. Actually, I lie, there is one...unsigned applications cannot access the phone (viruses and premium rate numbers...ouch!), but it helps me, not some exec.
Why don't they focus on the hand held video camera market which needs this kind of capacity and doesn't give too much of a crap about the iPod-Cribs-Spinners-Nerd I'm so cool I diss myself market?
They likely are. The company that makes the drives probably doesn't care where they end up. Slashdot has a weird luddite tech attitute in some areas, one of which is phones. The submission for the HD video camera story probably got passed over.
I would, just for the extra space. I carry a 1GB SD card (and a 256 spare) and I'd be very able to fill it up. What would be ideal would be an SD-card compatible harddrive.
Besides, flash more reliable than HD? Not in my experience, in four years of using SD cards I've trashed way more of them than I have harddrives. I would not argue that they were reliable at all, in fact I would never put mission critical data on one. I've owned approx 10 cards and only three still work.
The HD is not more expensive, dollar per meg. By 2009, the 10GB harddrive will be a 100GB one. Flash can't keep up the size race; it will compete on it's other merits.
They already do this. Some devices can access HD-based storage over bluetooth*, and the some of the media player applications support this today. Mostly for music; I don't know how it would work for exceptionaly large files, e.g. video. Some sort of "chunk" based system I'd presume, or a dynamic cache that spools up the drive as it's emptying.
* you can also get a portable WiFi access point that can provide SMB shares if you throw a laptop drive in it. Very cool.
Battery life and reslilience. No moving parts, that's flash's one advantage that results in both benefits.
The real battle will be on the size front. I think the HDs will maybe win this one.
Do I need 10GB in a phone even? I'd prefer it in a digital camera, or tiny media player.
My phone is my digital camera / tiny media player (you insensitive clod!). I want it now!!!
Somehow these devices take the worst aspect of every platform they try to integrate and reproduce it
I disagree; there's nothing the dedicated devices do better. The only real argument is that the GUI is simpler to navigate, as they do less. In addition to the media applications, I have to cope with the inhumane world where I also have SSH, VNC, IMAPS and GPS running. Won't someone save me from the complexity, please think of the children!! ;-)
Fine then. Don't buy one. What the hell is your problem? Just because you don't want it, it's a bad idea? I'd kill for 10G, my 1G SD card is always full up. Hell, I'm hoping for 80G so I can get my mp3 collection on it!
The day a phone comes out with the present features of my phone (a WiFi PDA) plus a harddrive, I'll be upgrading. Well, in honesty, I'll wait a month or two for buyer feedback and ironing out the manufacturing problems, but that's just good practice for any new tech.
Granted its cheaper than using flash but hell I would rather pay for something that isn't going to possibly be toast when it bounces once off the pavement.
Hard-drives have come a long way. When was the last time you saw a head crash? My laptops have taken a fair amount of abuse over the years, and some of them are so old the HD is only 2gig. Yet, the resilience of them is amazing, out of all the HD failures I've had (many), not one has been a laptop drive. I move them about all the time, even while the unit is running.
Did you see the IBM add where the HD realises the unit is in free-fall and prepares the drive for the inevitable impact? These drives will have similar features, it's pretty much guaranteed. I've always wondered though; what would happen if you took one on an oribiting vessel, in virtal 0G....
Has this been updated? I'm in Glasgow and it's showing my real public IP. I've not done anything deliberately to bypass NTLs proxies, any ideas what's going on? I've seen other sites list the proxy in the past as my IP (hell, /. blacklisted it once!), perhaps it's just broken at the moment? Curiouser and curiouser...
The best technical medium should be *user selectable*. end of story. In every Linux disto I have worked with you could at least choose between Floppy/CD/harddrive/ZIP (on floppy, IDE or SCSI bus, and then USB and FireWire as soon as these interface where out)/FTP/HTTP/Samba/TFTP and NFS.
So, in order to keep you happy, any hardware device should come with either a choice of driver medium, or all of them? Have you any idea what that would do to the cost per unit? You're $10 NIC card jumps to $15 just to throw in a CD, to keep what, less than 1% of users happy? Even offering a choice of medium will bump up the price of both options, that's how manufacturing works. Making only one different model, but many many times is the most efficient way. Floppies are the lowest common denomenator.
The linux distros are available on different medium as you write it yourself, usually using dd and the like. At least, that's how debian does it (what I use personally). You can't compare this to hardware provided drivers, which have to be dupicated and tested (time counsuming).
Windows on the other hand only accepts floppies. Even MS-DOS (and current DOS clones like FreeDOS) let you enter full paths during installation for installation sources (and let you interrupt the installation process, load the drivers to access this special medium (like ATAPI drivers, Dos USB drivers or network drivers) and then restart installation).
That certainally is a failing; you should be able to use other medium for this. Again, consider this history of these. MS-DOS did this because it came in different configs. There were CD-ROMs available, weren't there? Likewise, on Linux, you can install from a local apt server (my debian personal choice), from a local path, or from CD. This wasn't done through feature creep, it was a neccesity due to the different hardware that Linux will deploy to. Win XP on the otherhand expects a PC98 base machine, you will have a floppy, CD-ROM and maybe a NIC. It's not an ideal situation, but you can see how it arose.
If this is the case, then it's largely user error. The box has an HD in it, don't move it while its on!!
Part of the problem is that radial scratches are the worst damage a cd-rom based technology can take. The error correction data is in stored adjacent to the data, so a circular scratch completely destroys all of the data in that region. A scratch from the outside in will on damage a narrow stripe, whereby there is enough data in the track on either side to determine it's contents. This is why you should always wipe a disk from the inside to the outside; any scratches you cause (or greasey fingerprint you spread!) won't impact anything.
PS I used to work in electronics manufacture for a large, generally respected, tech company. One piece of advice: avoid the first production run of anything new. Microsofts problems here are common across the industry, nothing special.
No, I'd already used the wired lan to apply all security patches and SP2 to get the firewall, before I let it loose on WiFi. This is Windows we are talking about here! So, with respect to the WiFi, it was literally plug in and enter the WEP.
That's not what you said before; you said that every computer has a floppy drive connector.
That's just splitting hairs. My mobile is essentially a computer and there is no floppy in sight. So, let me rephrase that to "almost every i386 based system comes with a floppy based drive, and 99.9% of them ship with the drive".
Well, now you have. [link to IBM X40 laptop]
The X40 has NO drives, that's the point. It's built for size and billed as "the thinnest and lightest IBM ultraportable ever". Of course there are exceptions to the floppy rule, but it's extremely rare in the i386 world. This will not go on forever, they will be phased out completely, probably within 5 years.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no floppy zealot, just saying there is still a use for them. Ever installed an OS entirely from floppies? Believe me, I have no love for them!! :-)
Wired LAN?? It wasn't all that difficult. Even if it had no NIC, I'd pop in a PCMCIA nic card and on XP it would work out the box, drivers included in the OS. Ever tried setting up PCMCIA on linux? Then the myrad of third party NICs and accessories? Look, these are things that I've done, and they weren't easy or intuative a lot of the time.
I've never owned a laptop that did not come with a floppy drive, so as a last resort I could have gotten the drivers on that way. It's the base, bog-standard medium that all i386 PCs have. I've seen plenty of business machines with floppies and no-cd rom, but not the other way around. I don't build with floppies myself, but I don't see it as a failure of the OS when it's install bootloader requires that medium for additional drivers.
Usually, you only really resort to floppies for NIC drivers, as once you are on the network, that's the medium of choice. Bootloaders and installers are the other exception, though it rarely comes up. SATA is just one of those "too recent" technologies. Remember that XP is now serveral years old; how may linux installers handled SATA from the same period?
And no, Linux is still harder to set up than windows. The GUI just isn't there, and when you are just beginning in learning computing, the GUI is essential. Sure, if you know about subnetting and firewalls, you could add a NIC to a linux box, modprobe it, configure it's IP settings, set it as the default route, then you are on the net. Contrast windows; you just plug it in and it works. There are two flavours of the config, 95 style and NT style, should you have to make anything non-default. On linux there are a dozen different GUIs for setting up IP. This is just one example. Provide me with one where setting up Linux is easier, if you can...it's a great OS, but saying it's easier to admin than windows is a tad off-the-mark.
Damn IM and text-messaging are rotting the kids' brains these days.
Hmm, I used Google to spell check it, via the "did you mean" thing. Must be a lot of rotten minds out there for google to reckon it's spelt that way!!
To keep up to date with the security patches? Hands up all those still running Redhat 6.0? Anyone? Bueller? Didn't think so...
98 etc has gone end-of-life, the same will happen to XP. If you intend to use the MS OS based software, Vista will be essential in, say e.g. five years time.
Skipping the obvious remarks about floppies being the best technical medium for drivers (well supported, the drives themselves never need drivers) and that everyone should have them, I need to ask something....did you honestly change your desktop OS because you couldn't be bothered to throw in a floppy drive? If you were a true geek you wouldn't even have the case on your computer!! ;-)
Every computer has floppy drive connectors. Not every computer has USB, especially in servers (USB is actually a vunerability there). Not every CD drive works without drivers. Besides, if you have a SATA adapter you are trying to configure, how exactly would you get the drivers onto the system? Install an IDE CD-ROM? WHat if the system has no IDE bus (many new ones don't)? How is that any different to temporarilly installing a floppy?
Bottom line on why floppies are used, in your own words: "it just works". I'd add "for everyone" to the end of that though.
It seems like there's always some stupid fucking annoyance whenever I try to deal with Windows.
This is where the decent into la-la land really begins. Are you fucking serious? Are you, even for a minute, trying to suggest that Linux is easier to setup than Windows? Bull-----shit. When I came to Linux, I found it relatively easy, because of one important thing...I'd used Sun OS's a lot in the past. I knew what /etc/fstab did. I understood the rc.d system. And yet it still took me over a week to get WiFi working (this was four years ago, things are better now). It involved kernel recompiles, discovering and logging bugs in the various drivers and countless hours spent trying to get WEP to work. And this was top-of-the-line Cisco gear, which they had actually provided their own Linux drivers, in addition to the third-party OSS ones available.
The Windows laptop I was preparing the WiFi for (using the linux box as a router) was set up in 10 minutes. It downloaded the drivers from the net for me. All I have to do was enter the WEP.
OK, so that's just one anecdote, but it's consistent with all my other experience on the platforms. The only hastles I ever have with Windows are driver ones, and 9 times out of 10 a safe-mode visit will fix them. 99% of Windows cock-ups are pilot error (installing weatherbar type malware etc), and Linux would have the same issues if it's users were as equally as clueless as the Windows average user.
Hang on a minute, lets drop the scitsofrenic slashdot attitute for a moment so I can get this straight. Our piracy alright, fair-use blah blah, bittorrent rulzes!!1!, but China is "teh evil". Having visited there, I can tell you that piracy isn't really anymore rampant than here in the west. The primary difference is that the legal market over there is pretty non-existent and the prices are too high for most of the populations living wage. Sure, some shops sell pirate wares, but here in Glasgow, Scotland, I have two brick and mortar shops selling pirate warzes and numerous markets all within a five mile radi of my home. Not that I'd pay money to these folks, but I'm just pointing out that they are there, and nothing is being done about them, other than token efforts from the authoritites, who frankly have more important things to deal with, like say real crime where people get hurt. One of the shops is called "the jolly rodger" and offers the "top 40 albums for £10". There is no semi-legal illusion, everyone knows the score.
I need hardly mention the millions of machines spewing spam out into the internet.
More spam comes from the US, this has been proven time and time again. Zombies are the current source of spam and frankly they don't care about our borders. Blaming one country for spam is becoming less and less relevant nowadays, and I believe this will continue.
I wonder whether the rest of the world would be for the better if China was completely segregated from the rest of the internet, with the only access through safe "portals" supervised by the government.
The mind boggles. Do you actually feel like that? The only positive imact I can see for "everyone else" is less spam according to the (incorrect) China spam problem. You'd sacrifice the web allowing the Chinease people to overthrow their dictatorship via knowledge and information, for a little less spam? Wow. You think spam is that much of a problem? Moreso than the worlds largest population being ruled by dictators?
Right now, your email, telephone, faxes, text messages and so on are all being monitored for keywords. There are no court warrants involved and there never has been. The recent news on Bush doing this is a farce. So what? It's being going on for decades. It's estimated to intercept three billion messages every day.
Echelon works through a variety of systems. They have taps in place at all of the main junction nodes of the telephone network. The big domed receivers, such as those at Menwith Hill pick up scatter from satelite links. The domes are used because a) the receivers can be damaged by weather and b) so you cannot tell where they are pointing.
All this talk of surveilence without a court order makes me want to scream "wake the fuck up people".
Perhaps in your "bought and paid for" journalism, but believe me, Gitmo has been in the news quite a bit lately. Last week it was the second-running story on BBC video news broadcasts.
Most were centred around this topic:
UN concern at Guantanamo feeding
Just because your propaganda (your presidents words, not mine) doesn't mention things that are going on, it doesn't mean that it's not.
You people are incapable of a sense of proportion, aren't you?
No, it is you who is incapabe of being objective. I really could not give a fuck about what China is doing, I can't do anything about that. However, when my OWN government is party to this sort of behaviour, you are fucking right I'm going to say something about it.
The US's attitude these days seems to be "well, China is worse, so what's your problem?". Discussions of Gitmo have no relevance to China in any way whatsoever, and bringing it up only makes you look bad. If you go around invading countries under a banner of rightousness, then you really should expect to have that facaide ripped down when it becomes apparent that it's all a lie.
You might be able to sleep at night believeing that they are all "evildoers", but I really suggest some reading on how many of these people got arrested. Some were named during torture. Some were named because of local feuding in Afganistan. Don't like the Montagues? Tell the CIA they are dodgy!! Some were named for profit; the US paid rewards for "information". And MANY are now being released as they are being found to be completely innocent.
You are torturing innocent people. You lost the righteous battle a long time ago.
It hasn't "picked up" anything, it's a clear newspeak campaign. The word pirate was expressly choosen because of it's negative connotations. The "pirate" label has been moved from unlicensed radio, to organized fakers, to organized copiers (not fakes, buyers know what they are getting) to the modern p2p downloader.
I think I'll redefine the word "genocidal" to describe any slashdot posters I don't like. Yeah, that'll work!
No, it's directly akin to deliberately downgrading the quality if you connect to a competing network. The bandwidth is there, they just seek to charge more for it.
Does that work on second hand goods? I seriously doubt it.