Quite possibly. Targeting kids would do nothing to enhance Google's image. Matter of fact, in our current political climate it would stupid for any company to do that.
You first need to be able to connect to Windows Update though.
Sure, but it's relatively rare that XP doesn't have a useable driver for laptop's network interface. If that fails, you can try a PC-Card or even a USB-Ethernet converter (which has saved me a couple of times.) I was just impressed that Toshiba had kept WindowsUpdate so completely up-to-date.
You need to know which drivers apply to the hardware you have.
Well, if you must explain the obvious. My point was that Sony didn't even offer the requisite drivers on their site. It was either use the OEM disc or nothing, and since the individual I was helping out had lost that CD it was a pain in the neck.
Which is interesting, since the Google Terms of Service supposedly prohibit the use of Services by anyone 'not of legal age.'
That's not remotely interesting. This is just a patent, one of many that companies like Google hold, for a variety of reasons. Now, if Google implements this capability, especially in violation of their own Terms of Service... that would be interesting. But for now it's just a curiosity.
Given the history and values upon which the United States was founded, it's ironic in the extreme that the word "freedom" gets bandied about so often by the very people enabling the erosion of individual liberties.
Y'know, some users would consider your choice of software to be little difference.
I know I would, but that's because I already have my own preferences. If a shop (or a hardware vendor) wanted to play this straight, they'd ship the machines clean and provide a disc, thumbdrive or even a second hard drive partition containing setup sets for their particular choices of bloat. Give the user an icon clearly labeled "Install All Bloat", or let him or her choose the particular items of bloat they want, including none at all if that's what they want.
Presumably Sony is flashing all these laptops from a master hard disk image, so here's a question. When one orders a machine without the crap, are they simply using an image of a clean install... or are they running some kind of script that actually removes the preinstalled software? If it's the latter, you'd be better of reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows yourself.
If that were to happen, I predict a thriving business in little solenoid-operated flaps that cover the lens until you press a button on your easy chair, stay open long enough for you to make the requisite moves, and then close again.
Write-once-run-anywhere is really true for consoles:
No it is not: you don't understand the term. At best you mean "Plug N' Play" or something similar. Write Once means I can write this code and it will run intact on multiple platforms. You can't run software written for a Playstation on an X-Box, the architectures and software tools are entirely incompatible. Sure, the same game may exist across different platforms, but under the hood it's different software.
The economics of a $300 device are wildly different from a $2500 multipurpose tool.
Are they? PCs don't cost $2,500 anymore, don't know where you pulled that number from. A decent low-end PC (sufficient for office work and light gaming) can be had for a few hundred dollars. Spend another $200 for a decent video card and they're comparable, game-wise. The only difference is that the PC vendor is actually turning a profit on that sale, rather than selling at a loss and hoping future software sales will make up the difference. Well, that's true for Sony and Microsoft: Nintendo plays a much straighter hand in that regard. Oddly enough, Nintendo has no interest in converging anything: they just make consoles, even though their business model is the most PC-like (they turn a profit on every console sold.) It's Sony and Microsoft that keep making noises about "convergence" and replacing PCs and disc players and the rest of the home-entertainment center's repertoire.
I specifically used the term "convergence", which is what Microsoft (and Sony) would like to see happen. That's where the "console" turns into an entertainment center and a home computer. IF (and that's a big 'if') that actually happens, you will see consoles become malware targets. Furthermore, if the convergence between PC and console does happen, you'll find that it won't be so easy or desirable to "reset" your console, for much the same reason that "resetting" a PC is such a pain.
I think they will tend to stick to consoles especially when consoles don't have all the problems with malware and viruses that PCs do.
That, I suspect, will change as online gaming becomes ever more popular. Furthermore, if the "convergence" that Microsoft is always harping on comes about (with consoles being used for more and more computer-like functions) you'll see consoles becoming targets as well. Hell, even the handhelds have resident Web browsers and WiFi capability, and probably a metric fuckton of security holes just waiting for the right blackhat to take advantage of them. Gaming systems are sophisticated network-aware computers in their own right, are regularly being plugged into home networks which also contain PCs and other IP-based devices. That's a potential risk in and of itself, and I'm sure it will eventually be exploited.
I agree about Sony. I've not had good luck with their laptops when it comes to OS reinstallation.
Like a lot of people here I've installed numerous varieties of Windows on just about every make of laptop out there over the years. What really matters is whether or not the manufacturer makes drivers readily available for download, or insists that you use a customized "recovery disc", or worse, leaves you dependent upon a "recovery partition." That sucks bigtime when your hard drive fails or you blow the partition table.
So it goes both ways. I've installed Windows XP on a couple of Toshibas and I'll be damned if WindowsUpdate didn't have a driver for every device. Conversely, I tried to put XP Pro on a Vaio a couple years ago and found Sony's site was decidedly unfriendly in that regard. WindowsUpdate was no help either. Perhaps that situation has improved, but at this point I don't trust Sony to support their equipment properly. Recently I installed XP Pro on an older IBM ThinkPad R40 (pre-Lenovo) and IBM's site had every driver ever released for it there for the taking. Just the way it should be.
Ergo, it's not on the market yet (until some kind of weird unfolding tech comes out, or people use projectors, or something like that).
Think holojectors, dude. Three-dimensional holojectors, that's the ticket. Toss that puppy onto a table in front of you and see a beautiful 3-D desktop floating in midair. I know they can do it if they want to... I've seen them on Stargate SG-1!
there has never been a single successful remote attack on the OS.
Put it this way: a really successful remote attack is one which nobody ever learns about, so it's ridiculous to claim that any given operating system has never been exploited. I guarantee that Macs have been cracked at some point in their history. I think it doesn't happen more often because Mac owners don't have anything on them that anyone would want.
Like anything in the US, it's fixed to serve the rich, what else is new?
Why pick on us? Like everything else in the world it's fixed to serve the rich, and will always be fixed to serve the rich. At least the Founders made more of an attempt to serve the citizen than most. But that time is over, I can agree to that.
And most Americans would agree saying "why would you block the camera if you didn't have something to hide?"
I doubt that. We are talking the living room here. Presumably even judges get a little action in front of the TV set now and then, and very few people want their sexual activities visible to anyone, whether or not they have anything to "hide". Not everything which is deliberately hidden from the public's (or law enforcement's) view is criminal, you know... something that more people should understand. And they will, as we move inexorably towards a true surveillance state.
The FCC isn't stupid, they know who is going to do productive things with the airwaves
Which is kind of a silly remark. The hares in the U.S. (i.e. the big cellular outfits) have done far less with the spectrum they have than their counterparts in other countries. The very last people I want in charge of our rate of progress are the goddamn Telcos, whose sole motivation is to squeeze any threatening innovators out of the market, and then squeeze their existing infrastructure (and us!) for every last drop of blood. That's precisely what this auction was all about, no more and no less. I'm glad the Google got those open access rules in place for some pieces of spectrum, but the reality is that the Telcos know they can pretty much just ignore it and do business as usual. The Feds have teeth, true, but when it comes to the telephone companies they refuse to bite.
Actually, if it's about the blue LED it goes further than just DVD players. The things are used in all kinds of products, from printers to medical equipment to PDAs. It would be huge, which I'm sure is why the manufacturers have been blowing her off (unless, of course, the patent isn't valid, but if that were they case they should have gone to court before this and invalidated it.) If a large number of foreign corporations simply chose to market their products with clear knowledge they were in violation of a legitimate U.S. patent (something they do every day) it would undermine the court's authority even more to simply stifle an American inventor and throw control of her invention to the infringing corporations. Not much point in having a patent system, in that case. We'll see what happens: probably the State Department will get involved and try to negotiate a license fee that everyone can agree upon, something like that. It's not like this hasn't happened before, times without number.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite possibly. Targeting kids would do nothing to enhance Google's image. Matter of fact, in our current political climate it would stupid for any company to do that.
You first need to be able to connect to Windows Update though.
Sure, but it's relatively rare that XP doesn't have a useable driver for laptop's network interface. If that fails, you can try a PC-Card or even a USB-Ethernet converter (which has saved me a couple of times.) I was just impressed that Toshiba had kept WindowsUpdate so completely up-to-date.
You need to know which drivers apply to the hardware you have.
Well, if you must explain the obvious. My point was that Sony didn't even offer the requisite drivers on their site. It was either use the OEM disc or nothing, and since the individual I was helping out had lost that CD it was a pain in the neck.
Which is interesting, since the Google Terms of Service supposedly prohibit the use of Services by anyone 'not of legal age.'
... that would be interesting. But for now it's just a curiosity.
That's not remotely interesting. This is just a patent, one of many that companies like Google hold, for a variety of reasons. Now, if Google implements this capability, especially in violation of their own Terms of Service
Given the history and values upon which the United States was founded, it's ironic in the extreme that the word "freedom" gets bandied about so often by the very people enabling the erosion of individual liberties.
It's not so much irony as it is hypocrisy.
Y'know, some users would consider your choice of software to be little difference.
I know I would, but that's because I already have my own preferences. If a shop (or a hardware vendor) wanted to play this straight, they'd ship the machines clean and provide a disc, thumbdrive or even a second hard drive partition containing setup sets for their particular choices of bloat. Give the user an icon clearly labeled "Install All Bloat", or let him or her choose the particular items of bloat they want, including none at all if that's what they want.
Presumably Sony is flashing all these laptops from a master hard disk image, so here's a question. When one orders a machine without the crap, are they simply using an image of a clean install ... or are they running some kind of script that actually removes the preinstalled software? If it's the latter, you'd be better of reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows yourself.
My teenage daughter just suggested the idea of using a screen projector to show the same vedio on the side a building; Now THAT is just sick.
I agree. I think you need to sit her down and have a long heart-to-heart.
If that were to happen, I predict a thriving business in little solenoid-operated flaps that cover the lens until you press a button on your easy chair, stay open long enough for you to make the requisite moves, and then close again.
Write-once-run-anywhere is really true for consoles:
No it is not: you don't understand the term. At best you mean "Plug N' Play" or something similar. Write Once means I can write this code and it will run intact on multiple platforms. You can't run software written for a Playstation on an X-Box, the architectures and software tools are entirely incompatible. Sure, the same game may exist across different platforms, but under the hood it's different software.
The economics of a $300 device are wildly different from a $2500 multipurpose tool.
Are they? PCs don't cost $2,500 anymore, don't know where you pulled that number from. A decent low-end PC (sufficient for office work and light gaming) can be had for a few hundred dollars. Spend another $200 for a decent video card and they're comparable, game-wise. The only difference is that the PC vendor is actually turning a profit on that sale, rather than selling at a loss and hoping future software sales will make up the difference. Well, that's true for Sony and Microsoft: Nintendo plays a much straighter hand in that regard. Oddly enough, Nintendo has no interest in converging anything: they just make consoles, even though their business model is the most PC-like (they turn a profit on every console sold.) It's Sony and Microsoft that keep making noises about "convergence" and replacing PCs and disc players and the rest of the home-entertainment center's repertoire.
Perhaps that's an acceptable issue today, but in a century when we have millions of miles of fiber-optics undersea, it may not.
Hopefully by then we'll have better robotics (or better manned equipment) able to deal with that problem.
Change back to PCs, you mean?
I specifically used the term "convergence", which is what Microsoft (and Sony) would like to see happen. That's where the "console" turns into an entertainment center and a home computer. IF (and that's a big 'if') that actually happens, you will see consoles become malware targets. Furthermore, if the convergence between PC and console does happen, you'll find that it won't be so easy or desirable to "reset" your console, for much the same reason that "resetting" a PC is such a pain.
I think they will tend to stick to consoles especially when consoles don't have all the problems with malware and viruses that PCs do.
That, I suspect, will change as online gaming becomes ever more popular. Furthermore, if the "convergence" that Microsoft is always harping on comes about (with consoles being used for more and more computer-like functions) you'll see consoles becoming targets as well. Hell, even the handhelds have resident Web browsers and WiFi capability, and probably a metric fuckton of security holes just waiting for the right blackhat to take advantage of them. Gaming systems are sophisticated network-aware computers in their own right, are regularly being plugged into home networks which also contain PCs and other IP-based devices. That's a potential risk in and of itself, and I'm sure it will eventually be exploited.
I agree about Sony. I've not had good luck with their laptops when it comes to OS reinstallation.
Like a lot of people here I've installed numerous varieties of Windows on just about every make of laptop out there over the years. What really matters is whether or not the manufacturer makes drivers readily available for download, or insists that you use a customized "recovery disc", or worse, leaves you dependent upon a "recovery partition." That sucks bigtime when your hard drive fails or you blow the partition table.
So it goes both ways. I've installed Windows XP on a couple of Toshibas and I'll be damned if WindowsUpdate didn't have a driver for every device. Conversely, I tried to put XP Pro on a Vaio a couple years ago and found Sony's site was decidedly unfriendly in that regard. WindowsUpdate was no help either. Perhaps that situation has improved, but at this point I don't trust Sony to support their equipment properly. Recently I installed XP Pro on an older IBM ThinkPad R40 (pre-Lenovo) and IBM's site had every driver ever released for it there for the taking. Just the way it should be.
Ergo, it's not on the market yet (until some kind of weird unfolding tech comes out, or people use projectors, or something like that).
... I've seen them on Stargate SG-1!
Think holojectors, dude. Three-dimensional holojectors, that's the ticket. Toss that puppy onto a table in front of you and see a beautiful 3-D desktop floating in midair. I know they can do it if they want to
there has never been a single successful remote attack on the OS.
Put it this way: a really successful remote attack is one which nobody ever learns about, so it's ridiculous to claim that any given operating system has never been exploited. I guarantee that Macs have been cracked at some point in their history. I think it doesn't happen more often because Mac owners don't have anything on them that anyone would want.
HTC Shift ThinkPad X300 MacBook Air Perfect Notebook?
What the heck does this mean, anyway? And no, I don't want to read the article.
That was the point I was trying to make: this is a camera in the home.
... And if you don't have the space for both cardboard cut-outs, just combine the two... call it boob-fetts ...
Or maybe Boba-Fetish.
Like anything in the US, it's fixed to serve the rich, what else is new?
Why pick on us? Like everything else in the world it's fixed to serve the rich, and will always be fixed to serve the rich. At least the Founders made more of an attempt to serve the citizen than most. But that time is over, I can agree to that.
And most Americans would agree saying "why would you block the camera if you didn't have something to hide?"
... something that more people should understand. And they will, as we move inexorably towards a true surveillance state.
I doubt that. We are talking the living room here. Presumably even judges get a little action in front of the TV set now and then, and very few people want their sexual activities visible to anyone, whether or not they have anything to "hide". Not everything which is deliberately hidden from the public's (or law enforcement's) view is criminal, you know
Wireless Auction Ends With Mixed Feelings
... and I still hate the Telcos.
Let's see now. I kinda like Google better since they got those open-access rules in
Yep, mixed it is.
The FCC isn't stupid, they know who is going to do productive things with the airwaves
Which is kind of a silly remark. The hares in the U.S. (i.e. the big cellular outfits) have done far less with the spectrum they have than their counterparts in other countries. The very last people I want in charge of our rate of progress are the goddamn Telcos, whose sole motivation is to squeeze any threatening innovators out of the market, and then squeeze their existing infrastructure (and us!) for every last drop of blood. That's precisely what this auction was all about, no more and no less. I'm glad the Google got those open access rules in place for some pieces of spectrum, but the reality is that the Telcos know they can pretty much just ignore it and do business as usual. The Feds have teeth, true, but when it comes to the telephone companies they refuse to bite.
Pardon me, I meant "blue laser", not "blue LED".
Actually, if it's about the blue LED it goes further than just DVD players. The things are used in all kinds of products, from printers to medical equipment to PDAs. It would be huge, which I'm sure is why the manufacturers have been blowing her off (unless, of course, the patent isn't valid, but if that were they case they should have gone to court before this and invalidated it.) If a large number of foreign corporations simply chose to market their products with clear knowledge they were in violation of a legitimate U.S. patent (something they do every day) it would undermine the court's authority even more to simply stifle an American inventor and throw control of her invention to the infringing corporations. Not much point in having a patent system, in that case. We'll see what happens: probably the State Department will get involved and try to negotiate a license fee that everyone can agree upon, something like that. It's not like this hasn't happened before, times without number.
Wikipedia has a relatively clear example of the problem
I think Wikipedia is a relatively clear example of the problem.