But I think that Americans have drawn the wrong lesson from this- they automatically assume that any problem is a technological problem first and foremost. Throw enough high technology at it, and it'll all be sorted out.
Perhaps Microsoft should include an option, like 'Prepare this computer for resale,' which utterly destroys all data."
Maybe I'm missing something here, but doesn't the format command do this already?
IMHO, if you're reselling a pre-built PC and have system recovery disks but don't wipe the HD and use the recovery disks to restore the system to the original condition, you're not doing it right.
If Apple really doesn't want to have to use DRM on it's iTunes downloads, and they write patches that are supposed to fix loopholes and these patches are easily defeated...
Is it conceivable that Apple doesn't care if the patches are easily circumvented? "Yeah, we'll fix something we don't really want, and if you happen to break it, you outfoxed us *wink wink nudge nudge*
The team of researchers, led by John Murray at the Open University, UK, estimates the submerged ice sea is about 800 by 900 kilometres in size and averages 45 metres deep.
People visiting the park weren't going to take pictures?
I think the power of the copyright has been blown WAY out of proportion. It's just plain silly to expect one to put a three-story sculpture in a public park then expect to ban photography of said sculpture.
The commerical use of photographs, yes--I can support enforcing the copyright on those, but John and Jane Public visiting from South Dakota can't take a picture of mom and junior by the big sculpture?
Makes you wonder when any public photography will be banned because you're no doubt going to get SOMETHING that SOMEBODY has copyrighted in the picture...billboard, building design, blah blah blah...
Makes me sick sometimes the greed that some of the companines in this country are coming to.
Napster is attacking Apple's iPod while promoting DRM and subscription-based music collections. Didn't Bill Gates at one time make statemaents to the effect that someday software would be a subscription-based service?
What would one say if I were to say that Napster is starting to take the attitude towards music that MS is taking towards software? Could Napster be striving to be the MS of the music download industry (without the aspects that could give its strategy muscle, like money and market share...)?
What's the difference between accepting mediocrity, and being "relaxed" about issues of quality?
When I said "relaxed" I meant relaxed as in a more calm, doesn't-get-uptight-and-panicky. "Oh, there's a problem, let's go fix it" versus "Oh, there's a problem, blame it on the user for a while until it goes away" or "Let marketing deal with it for a while."
I'll take your remark about MS vs. Linus on stable releases at face value for now since I really don't follow the Linux kernel development too closely; my observation on release timeframes are made on a general impression of the whole Linux phenomena--which very well may render my comment on MS vs. Linux releases moot since I'm not well versed in either process.
I will say this though about XP SP2: I've seen a lot of reports where SP2 has caused previously operating, stable machines to stop booting. As a percentage of the whole install base they may actually be very few, but it seems to me that those reports are too numerous for a ready product.
As far as Longhorn goes, that we won't know if the release is ready until it is actually released and real-world sress tested.
What makes you think that Linus would solve this problem? In all seriousness, look at the "stable" 2.6 kernel branch, and the attitude demonstrated by comments like "some kernels will be good, others will be bad... we'll find out which kernels are broken soon enough".
I'm not sure I see that as accepting mediocrity. I see it as more a "relaxed" approach.
Microsoft has programmers to pay, shareholders to satisfy, and all sorts of other expenses that come with being a business and, despite being a near monopoly, SHOULD be concerned with the established mediocrity and its effect on the end product. You can't do the job right if you don't have the right tools, and it sounds like Microsoft doesn't have very good tools to start.
Linux, OTOH, isn't under external pressure from a marketing department that keeps promoting superwhamodyne products by such-and-such a date. Linux is ready when it is ready, and not before.
As I calculate it and concur with previous numbers, it takes about a week of SOLID streaming, at the full 8Mbps to hit the cap. Are you really going to pull that much data 24/7?
Your download speed might be able to hit 8Mbps, but is the server and interconnecting datapath going to send you the data that fast? My Comcast account (when I had one) was capped at 3Mbps (or 366Kbps if I figure it right, feel free to double check) but I almost never saw anything higher than 250-300Kbps, and that was a minority of the time.
Lament the cap all you want, but ask yourself: is it really a barrier you're in danger of hitting? If you really need to pull that much data, it sounds to my untrained ear that you have small-business-type bandwidth requirements and shouldn't be relying on a residential ISP anyway.
If you object to the cap purely on principle, then that's your own business.
Some antivirus firms say that I have no moral right to do it, but...almost all ex-members and current members of 29A are employed in the antivirus and information technology security industry.
Does this strike anybody else as a "wolf guarding the henhouse" scenario?
In order to see a laser beam, or any light beam for that matter, some of the light must hit something and bounce back to your eyes. The stars are too far away to reflect anything, so unless it's a particularly foggy (or dusty) night, you won't see anything and you'd be better off pointing with a stick!
How often do you work with lasers outdoors at night? I ask not to imply that you don't know what you're talking about, but because I don't know the answer and have to believe that if you have used a green laser at night outdoors, you would see what I mean.
And yes, I realize that the light has to hit something to see the beam. There's enough dust and moisture in the air at night to make the beam clearly visible against the black sky. The beam does eventually fade out several hundred feet in the sky, but it does make for a good pointer as long as you are carful with it. It can't be too foggy out, or else there's nothing to point out since the fog would obscure the stars.
It works. I've seen it done. I've done it myself. Astronomy catalogs will list green lasers because they work better than red ones.
Yes, received power falls as 1/r^2, but you missed the 4pi factor and antenna gain and your using bizarre units.
P=(Pt*Gt)/(4*pi*r^2)
While watts/sq. mile is a valid unit for power density, I can't say I've ever seen power density measured over square miles. Usually I see it in terms of mW/cm^2.
It also looks like you're trying to state power per unit distance using units of area, not distance.
Forty miles isn't so odd, really. I was at a microwave seminar once that covered the idea of upper atmospheric ducting. Cellphone signals get trapped in the upper atmosphere and are ducted over long distances where consitions are right for the signal to return to a ground station.
The presenter was working the problem as Nextel was having trouble with customers latching onto cell towers in Michigan...from Wisconsin, across Lake Michigan, when conditions were just right. That's 80+ miles.
Part of it may also have been a significant drop in interference from other sources.
The passive form of threat... "I am threatened" is not the same as the active form of threat "He is threatening me."
I consider being painted late at night walking through the park an active threat, same as if I was being mugged by a guy carrying what he implies to be a handgun but is really a hairbrush in the pocket.
Actually, yes I have, and green laser pointers are quite effective at it. Any amateur astronomer will tell you that the green ones are much better than red ones for pointing out the stars.
That sounds about right. Mind you, I'm playing Devil's Advocate here.
Use or threat of force: a laser painting a target could be a threat of force; how does the target know it's "some dumbass" and not a black-market laser-guided missile? If you're walking late at night through a park and you get painted with a laser, how do you know it's some young punk kid out for kicks and not a crazed gunman with a laser sight and a finger on the trigger?
Also, as you pointed out, it's with the intention of intimidating, not necessarily succeeding. Nor does it have to be for political or ideological reason, but often it is that goal.
As I said before, does it appear that tossing the phrase "terrorism" into the mix seem outlandish? Absolutely. But it's not absolutely impossible, either. That was my point.
Right...the power drops off as the square of the distance, when you are operating in the far field.
The far field of an antenna starts at a point where the radiated wavefront is practically flat. One such measure of this distance is
2* D^2 R = ----------
wavelength
where D is the largest dimension of the antenna. With a satellite dish, this is the reflector diameter typically; with a monopole ("stick") antenna it is the antenna length. There are other measures that are also used to calculate the start of the far field, but I can't recall them now; I will say that whichever one yields the furthest distance is the thumbrule used.
Your orientation to the radiating antenna also plays a role. A "stick" antenna (dipole or monopole) has more energy radiated perpendicular to the mast than along the mast axis. In free space with no reflections, you can stand at either end of a stick antenna and not receive squat, as long as you are in the far field. Thus, you must also consider the gain of your antenna in the direction of interest. A stick antenna has about 3dB gain perpendicular to it, and negative infinity gain along the antenna axis.
The actual equation to get the power density Pr when distance r from the source is:
Pt * Gt Pr = ----------
4pi*r^2
Pt = Power radiated Gt = Gain of your antenna
That's why the change in power to distance isn't linear. May have been long-winded but I spent most of the afternoon doing power density calculations so it was fresh in my head.
I'll grant you that tossing the word "terrorist" into this case is a bit of a stretch, but let's consider two points:
(1) He shined it at an aircraft one night; and
(2) He did it AGAIN two days later, at a police helicopter no less. It wasn't a one-time fluke that he was painting aircraft.
Now, another story I read recently stated that the FBI/DHS/whomever does not suspect that terrorists are behind this, but then again a laser doesn't have to guide a missile to bring down an airplane, just distract the aircrew or cause them to take evasive action for a non-existent shoulder-launched missile attack.
Nor does a terrorist have to be a citizen of a country other than the US (as in Timothy McVeigh). Does this guy have a prior criminal record? The story doesn't say. Nor does it say if the laser simply hit the aircraft for a split second or if it traced its path through the sky.
So, if one thinks about it a little, antiterrorism charges aren't necessarily as far out as one might think. Do I think they are pretty far out? Sure, but not impossible either.
My BlackBerry 7100i can be used as a wireless GPRS modem connected to my notebook via the USB cable. It works; I *know* it works, because:
(1) I've read the forums where people tell how they got it to work (after getting T-Mobile to unblock some ports); and
(2) I've done it to send/receive e-mail via Outlook when I enable their t-zones service.
Now for the question:
When the products the carriers promote have these capabilities, why do they not support them? I would be willing to pay for the service if T-Mobile would admit that it works and support it. If a Treo 650 can handle WiFi, that's a selling point and likely to result in more sales.
Pardon my ignorance, but hasn't been running Firefox from a single executable without installing always been an easy option?
I remember the beta versions that would unzip to a single directory, and clicking the executable would run the browser without running any form of setup.exe or other installation file.
Has the program changed that much where special tweaks and hacks are required to make it a standalone executable?
What exactly are you alledging here? If the employee is inept, he/she should be fired. There are more effective means of testing ineptitude than evaluating email transcripts.
This is true; however, as the previous post stated, it implies carelessness and/or ineptitude.
On the other hand, if the intended recipient is "careless", and by "careless" you really mean lazy or too busy to write in complete sentences, but the intended recipient still understands the message then who cares?
The content of the message is the important part. However, using proper lauguage and writing technique ensures that the message is received as intended, since a common set of rules are used to write and read the message.
There's also a question of formality and how the writer intends the message to be taken. Example: if I write an email message to a co-worker with spelling errors galore and no punctuation, he may think it's an informal message and not to be taken seriously. If I write it in proper language with the correct spelling and structure, it's going to be taken more seriously.
Consider respect for the reader. If you write just to get the message across without using proper structure, the reader may take that to mean that the reader wasn't worth the time to properly construct a sentence. "I wasn't worth the 20 extra seconds to check grammer, so why should I take the message seriously?"
If you're going to expect me to take the time to read it, I'm going to expect you to take the time to write it properly.
Slashdot Mirror
First it was in the local paper, then on CNN's website, now here. I didn't realize that the mystery behind popcorn was such an issue.
(Yes, that's sarcasm you are smelling)
They're not solar panels, they are radiators. The shuttle must have the cargo doors open while in orbit to radiate the excess heat generated onboard.
But I think that Americans have drawn the wrong lesson from this- they automatically assume that any problem is a technological problem first and foremost. Throw enough high technology at it, and it'll all be sorted out.
You mean like e-voting? (dons flak jacket)
Perhaps Microsoft should include an option, like 'Prepare this computer for resale,' which utterly destroys all data."
t e.shtml/ to do the wiping.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but doesn't the format command do this already?
IMHO, if you're reselling a pre-built PC and have system recovery disks but don't wipe the HD and use the recovery disks to restore the system to the original condition, you're not doing it right.
In any case, there are free tools http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedele
Maybe I'm missing the obvious.
(and no, I don't know how to properly insert URLs)
Just some food for thought...
If Apple really doesn't want to have to use DRM on it's iTunes downloads, and they write patches that are supposed to fix loopholes and these patches are easily defeated...
Is it conceivable that Apple doesn't care if the patches are easily circumvented? "Yeah, we'll fix something we don't really want, and if you happen to break it, you outfoxed us *wink wink nudge nudge*
Just a thought.
...to the term "spyware."
I didn't think so either...
The team of researchers, led by John Murray at the Open University, UK, estimates the submerged ice sea is about 800 by 900 kilometres in size and averages 45 metres deep.
People visiting the park weren't going to take pictures?
I think the power of the copyright has been blown WAY out of proportion. It's just plain silly to expect one to put a three-story sculpture in a public park then expect to ban photography of said sculpture.
The commerical use of photographs, yes--I can support enforcing the copyright on those, but John and Jane Public visiting from South Dakota can't take a picture of mom and junior by the big sculpture?
Makes you wonder when any public photography will be banned because you're no doubt going to get SOMETHING that SOMEBODY has copyrighted in the picture...billboard, building design, blah blah blah...
Makes me sick sometimes the greed that some of the companines in this country are coming to.
Here's a thought that came to mind...
Napster is attacking Apple's iPod while promoting DRM and subscription-based music collections. Didn't Bill Gates at one time make statemaents to the effect that someday software would be a subscription-based service?
What would one say if I were to say that Napster is starting to take the attitude towards music that MS is taking towards software? Could Napster be striving to be the MS of the music download industry (without the aspects that could give its strategy muscle, like money and market share...)?
Just a thought...
What's the difference between accepting mediocrity, and being "relaxed" about issues of quality?
When I said "relaxed" I meant relaxed as in a more calm, doesn't-get-uptight-and-panicky. "Oh, there's a problem, let's go fix it" versus "Oh, there's a problem, blame it on the user for a while until it goes away" or "Let marketing deal with it for a while."
I'll take your remark about MS vs. Linus on stable releases at face value for now since I really don't follow the Linux kernel development too closely; my observation on release timeframes are made on a general impression of the whole Linux phenomena--which very well may render my comment on MS vs. Linux releases moot since I'm not well versed in either process.
I will say this though about XP SP2: I've seen a lot of reports where SP2 has caused previously operating, stable machines to stop booting. As a percentage of the whole install base they may actually be very few, but it seems to me that those reports are too numerous for a ready product.
As far as Longhorn goes, that we won't know if the release is ready until it is actually released and real-world sress tested.
What makes you think that Linus would solve this problem? In all seriousness, look at the "stable" 2.6 kernel branch, and the attitude demonstrated by comments like "some kernels will be good, others will be bad... we'll find out which kernels are broken soon enough".
I'm not sure I see that as accepting mediocrity. I see it as more a "relaxed" approach.
Microsoft has programmers to pay, shareholders to satisfy, and all sorts of other expenses that come with being a business and, despite being a near monopoly, SHOULD be concerned with the established mediocrity and its effect on the end product. You can't do the job right if you don't have the right tools, and it sounds like Microsoft doesn't have very good tools to start.
Linux, OTOH, isn't under external pressure from a marketing department that keeps promoting superwhamodyne products by such-and-such a date. Linux is ready when it is ready, and not before.
My non-programming two cents...
C'mon people let's keep the cap in perspective...
As I calculate it and concur with previous numbers, it takes about a week of SOLID streaming, at the full 8Mbps to hit the cap. Are you really going to pull that much data 24/7?
Your download speed might be able to hit 8Mbps, but is the server and interconnecting datapath going to send you the data that fast? My Comcast account (when I had one) was capped at 3Mbps (or 366Kbps if I figure it right, feel free to double check) but I almost never saw anything higher than 250-300Kbps, and that was a minority of the time.
Lament the cap all you want, but ask yourself: is it really a barrier you're in danger of hitting? If you really need to pull that much data, it sounds to my untrained ear that you have small-business-type bandwidth requirements and shouldn't be relying on a residential ISP anyway.
If you object to the cap purely on principle, then that's your own business.
I foud this tidbit a bit interesting...
Some antivirus firms say that I have no moral right to do it, but...almost all ex-members and current members of 29A are employed in the antivirus and information technology security industry.
Does this strike anybody else as a "wolf guarding the henhouse" scenario?
Yes it's available here in the states, and my car stereo has RDS capability.
In order to see a laser beam, or any light beam for that matter, some of the light must hit something and bounce back to your eyes. The stars are too far away to reflect anything, so unless it's a particularly foggy (or dusty) night, you won't see anything and you'd be better off pointing with a stick!
How often do you work with lasers outdoors at night? I ask not to imply that you don't know what you're talking about, but because I don't know the answer and have to believe that if you have used a green laser at night outdoors, you would see what I mean.
And yes, I realize that the light has to hit something to see the beam. There's enough dust and moisture in the air at night to make the beam clearly visible against the black sky. The beam does eventually fade out several hundred feet in the sky, but it does make for a good pointer as long as you are carful with it. It can't be too foggy out, or else there's nothing to point out since the fog would obscure the stars.
It works. I've seen it done. I've done it myself. Astronomy catalogs will list green lasers because they work better than red ones.
Yes, received power falls as 1/r^2, but you missed the 4pi factor and antenna gain and your using bizarre units.
P=(Pt*Gt)/(4*pi*r^2)
While watts/sq. mile is a valid unit for power density, I can't say I've ever seen power density measured over square miles. Usually I see it in terms of mW/cm^2.
It also looks like you're trying to state power per unit distance using units of area, not distance.
Forty miles isn't so odd, really. I was at a microwave seminar once that covered the idea of upper atmospheric ducting. Cellphone signals get trapped in the upper atmosphere and are ducted over long distances where consitions are right for the signal to return to a ground station.
The presenter was working the problem as Nextel was having trouble with customers latching onto cell towers in Michigan...from Wisconsin, across Lake Michigan, when conditions were just right. That's 80+ miles.
Part of it may also have been a significant drop in interference from other sources.
The passive form of threat... "I am threatened" is not the same as the active form of threat "He is threatening me."
I consider being painted late at night walking through the park an active threat, same as if I was being mugged by a guy carrying what he implies to be a handgun but is really a hairbrush in the pocket.
Actually, yes I have, and green laser pointers are quite effective at it. Any amateur astronomer will tell you that the green ones are much better than red ones for pointing out the stars.
That sounds about right. Mind you, I'm playing Devil's Advocate here.
Use or threat of force: a laser painting a target could be a threat of force; how does the target know it's "some dumbass" and not a black-market laser-guided missile? If you're walking late at night through a park and you get painted with a laser, how do you know it's some young punk kid out for kicks and not a crazed gunman with a laser sight and a finger on the trigger?
Also, as you pointed out, it's with the intention of intimidating, not necessarily succeeding. Nor does it have to be for political or ideological reason, but often it is that goal.
As I said before, does it appear that tossing the phrase "terrorism" into the mix seem outlandish? Absolutely. But it's not absolutely impossible, either. That was my point.
Right...the power drops off as the square of the distance, when you are operating in the far field.
The far field of an antenna starts at a point where the radiated wavefront is practically flat. One such measure of this distance is
2* D^2
R = ----------
wavelength
where D is the largest dimension of the antenna. With a satellite dish, this is the reflector diameter typically; with a monopole ("stick") antenna it is the antenna length. There are other measures that are also used to calculate the start of the far field, but I can't recall them now; I will say that whichever one yields the furthest distance is the thumbrule used.
Your orientation to the radiating antenna also plays a role. A "stick" antenna (dipole or monopole) has more energy radiated perpendicular to the mast than along the mast axis. In free space with no reflections, you can stand at either end of a stick antenna and not receive squat, as long as you are in the far field. Thus, you must also consider the gain of your antenna in the direction of interest. A stick antenna has about 3dB gain perpendicular to it, and negative infinity gain along the antenna axis.
The actual equation to get the power density Pr when distance r from the source is:
Pt * Gt
Pr = ----------
4pi*r^2
Pt = Power radiated
Gt = Gain of your antenna
That's why the change in power to distance isn't linear. May have been long-winded but I spent most of the afternoon doing power density calculations so it was fresh in my head.
Since the original link didn't work..
s er-aircraft_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-01-04-la
I'll grant you that tossing the word "terrorist" into this case is a bit of a stretch, but let's consider two points:
(1) He shined it at an aircraft one night; and
(2) He did it AGAIN two days later, at a police helicopter no less. It wasn't a one-time fluke that he was painting aircraft.
Now, another story I read recently stated that the FBI/DHS/whomever does not suspect that terrorists are behind this, but then again a laser doesn't have to guide a missile to bring down an airplane, just distract the aircrew or cause them to take evasive action for a non-existent shoulder-launched missile attack.
Nor does a terrorist have to be a citizen of a country other than the US (as in Timothy McVeigh). Does this guy have a prior criminal record? The story doesn't say. Nor does it say if the laser simply hit the aircraft for a split second or if it traced its path through the sky.
So, if one thinks about it a little, antiterrorism charges aren't necessarily as far out as one might think. Do I think they are pretty far out? Sure, but not impossible either.
Somewhat OT...
This brings up a question I want to ask T-Mobile.
My BlackBerry 7100i can be used as a wireless GPRS modem connected to my notebook via the USB cable. It works; I *know* it works, because:
(1) I've read the forums where people tell how they got it to work (after getting T-Mobile to unblock some ports); and
(2) I've done it to send/receive e-mail via Outlook when I enable their t-zones service.
Now for the question:
When the products the carriers promote have these capabilities, why do they not support them? I would be willing to pay for the service if T-Mobile would admit that it works and support it. If a Treo 650 can handle WiFi, that's a selling point and likely to result in more sales.
Pardon my ignorance, but hasn't been running Firefox from a single executable without installing always been an easy option?
I remember the beta versions that would unzip to a single directory, and clicking the executable would run the browser without running any form of setup.exe or other installation file.
Has the program changed that much where special tweaks and hacks are required to make it a standalone executable?
What exactly are you alledging here? If the employee is inept, he/she should be fired. There are more effective means of testing ineptitude than evaluating email transcripts.
This is true; however, as the previous post stated, it implies carelessness and/or ineptitude.
On the other hand, if the intended recipient is "careless", and by "careless" you really mean lazy or too busy to write in complete sentences, but the intended recipient still understands the message then who cares?
The content of the message is the important part. However, using proper lauguage and writing technique ensures that the message is received as intended, since a common set of rules are used to write and read the message.
There's also a question of formality and how the writer intends the message to be taken. Example: if I write an email message to a co-worker with spelling errors galore and no punctuation, he may think it's an informal message and not to be taken seriously. If I write it in proper language with the correct spelling and structure, it's going to be taken more seriously.
Consider respect for the reader. If you write just to get the message across without using proper structure, the reader may take that to mean that the reader wasn't worth the time to properly construct a sentence. "I wasn't worth the 20 extra seconds to check grammer, so why should I take the message seriously?"
If you're going to expect me to take the time to read it, I'm going to expect you to take the time to write it properly.