And, for those curious, the largest prime curently known is the 40th Mersenne Prime 2 to the 20,996,011 -1, which is 6,320,430 decimal digits in length. If you're wondering what that looks like, and don't mind downloading 6.3 MB, wonder no more.
On OS X, about 2 of them, actually, I've seen 1 bug that COULD have posed a problem for me. Maybe I'm just not as big of a power user as I think I am, but I really fail to see how virtually any of the bugs/exploits/whatever that are found for OS X are any type of problem. Yes they need patched, but they almost don't seem worth mentioning except for the sheer novelty of it, and maybe as some sort of strange inferiority complex kick for Windows users, as a recent article seems to suggest.
Take this one for example, which many considered to be a "big security issue". Basically it only was a problem:
On laptops.
When someone had sudo running in Terminal.
When the computer was put to sleep.
For 10-20 SECONDS after the computer was woken up, but before the clock was updated, someone with physical access to the computer could execute code.
What a massive, gaping, goatse proportioned hole. Who knew it was a bad idea to leave your computer running sudo just laying around in Starbucks while you went to the can? And Apple still had a patch out in a week or two. And in 10.3, passwords can be required to wake the computer, further negiating this and any similar problems.
Now compare that to the 50 critical security fixes needed immediately for an install of a year old Windows XP disk. And the fact that there are about a hundred different ways to execute code in Windows, either legitimate or malicious, all across the system, even in the damn web browser.
Basically what I'm getting at here is that this is newsworth simply for the fact that it really isn't. I'd be willing to bet 0 people will have any problem with this before it is patched.
And on a personal note, "Max" sounds pretty fucking stupid and ignorent. "It appears that parts of MacOSX that didn't come from BSD are
not very well written and have significant security issues." Oh boy! I found a buffer overflow that will effect no one and that I probably didn't even bother to inform Apple about before hand! I'm a L337 haX0r bitches! Now if he just would have thrown in something about how Apple is beleaguered and BSD is dying, we could just chaulk up "Max" as a lucky troll.
And you just picked up a fan. Finally, someone who gets the damn point of everything and can see the world for what it is, not some candy coated corporate projected image. As you point out, this is a very bad first step down a long, messy road. It may not seem like much now, but let things like this go on for another 20 years, then another 50. See where society is. I can tell you, it won't be a very good place.
Ok, it's illegal to download music. You're getting something for nothing, right? Even if you download a song and listen to it a couple of times, then throw it away, you're still breaking the law. So, is it that far to say that if you get up and stop watching commercials, you're more or less stealing a TV show because you're not "paying" for it by watching the advertisments of those who are paying for it? This is a nasty slippery slope we do not want to go down.
Or no. Maybe we do. Maybe society in it's current incarnation is lost. Maybe a new, better tomorrow needs to be forged from the rotting hulk of old. It's not like it hasn't happened a thousand other times in recorded history. Hell, just in the last 100 or so years, we've seen the decline of basically all European monarchies as they became democratic, several former empires fell (the Ottoman, which was almost 500 years old, the USSR, and many colonial empires, among others) and a slew of other vast changes in society. Maybe it's about that time again. Maybe this time, revolutions will be centered around the rise of information. Maybe people will finally say to hell with all this shit about copyrights and with everything else that society is built on that makes it fail. Maybe no longer will people ignore problems, but instead look to solve them.
The environment is becoming less hospitable each year. If I live to see 100, I'll be amazed if we can still live above ground on this planet. Humans are killing this world, and anyone that doesn't think so is a moron and should be killed. But instead of paying attention to, and doing something about, our destruction of this solitary outpost of human civilization, we're worrying about this. We're not arresting people who's corporations are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, but we are getting those fuckers that share files on line. That will show them.
I look forward to the downfall of civilization. I for one welcome a new dark ages. I wasn't always like this, but I've came to the sudden realization that things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get better. One day they will. Everything dies, including corrupt and failed governments. And one day, humanity will be a better thing. Today is not that day. I've long wished that we could suddenly became a star farring race. I really don't anymore. I know we'd fuck it up. Don't worry, in 20 years, I'm sure Earth will be nearly uninhabitable, and the moon will be nearly strip mined, but hey, there's always Mars. And there will always be file sharing in one form or another. I was sharring files on floppies long ago, now it's via a modem or a ethernet card, soon I hope to do it through wireless and via the atmosphere. And don't worry, whenever some 15 year old on Mars colony does it via the intersteller network, I'm sure someone will be there to point out that he's stealing. Unless, of course, the aformentioned information revolution has fixed that, then he's not stealing, he's shareing. And after all, isn't that what your mother always told you to do?
Really, the problem steams from new technology. If it's something a society and its government doesn't understand and refuses to adapt to, it will eventually crush them. Those countries that embrace things like the open exchange of information, advances in bio-technology, and space will ultimately be the ones that surive and thrive, those that don't and instead chose to crack down on file shareing and ban stem cell research among other things... well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Did you even read the post? Well, did you? Can you understand a flow of events?
Voelker told me they COULD NOT fix my adapter, as in, it is NOT POSSIBLE in any way to fix it, but I could order a brand new one for $90, + tax and shipping of course. Also, it should be worthy of note Apple has a propritery (sp?, no, I'm not going to check it) design on their adapters where no off the shelf adapters will work properly. I never asked Apple to fix it, because I was out of warrenty and I knew they wouldn't do it anyway, Volker advertises themselves as repair specialists (also as Apple experts, though they sold my TV News teacher a G4 with 128 MB of RAM and told him FCP would work fine, though it by itself needs 128 MB of real RAM to work, but that's another topic) and as such should have been able to fix this, even if they did charge more than a new one would have been.
And no, I didn't pay him $30 for his time, he offered to do it for free, but I still floated him $10. Believe it or not, some people actually still do things just beacuse they're good, nice people, not because they're trying to get rich.
I'm postive dell and gateway wouldn't repair this same issue. I know Gateway will send you a free restore disk for $30 s & h (see journal).
And for all you dumb bastards who moded my initial post off topic and overrated, you are aware it is on topic, correct?
Now, I'm only posting this here one time, but I'm sure it will handle all replies to this and my previous post: Comment Reply Policy
My shitty Apple related experience wasn't with an iPod, but rather the power adapter on my PowerBook G4. Over time, mostly due to accidently stepping on the cord moving my comp. from my bed to my desk, the cord came out of the back of the portion of the adapter that plugs into the comp. I called the local Apple reseller, Voelker Research, and asked if they could fix it. They said it wasn't possible, but gladly offered to order me a new one for $90, plus tax and shipping. I politely told them to piss off and called my grandpa's friend who is incredibly handy with electronics. Within 3 hours, my adapter was as good as new. About a month later I had my CompUSA debacle (see journal) and got a new adapter anyway. So, while not Apple directly, their reseller did fuck me around, and I'd be willing to guess it was probably a general Apple policy to tell people adapters cannot be repaired. While I love Apple and their support is usually steller, they damn sure make up for it with crap like this sometimes.
Ok, I'll take back all the bad things I said about Germans over the whole Iraq thing just for this:
From this page at why-war.com: How to get the files: Note that the location of the documents may change, but this page will always have the current links. In case Diebold takes down this page, bookmark cultcom.com/mirror.html, a mirror being hosted in Germany of direct links to the memos.
Now, who wants to take bets as to how big of an election fraud it will take for the Feds to officailly knock the shit out of Diebold? I'm saying 2 Senator and 5 House elections in a single year.
While interesting, this isn't the first time a company has done this. In April, 1999 a company called Ravenswood sold 1,150,000 shares online in an IPO auction. Several other companies since have, including Salon.com and Andover.net. Here's a summary of how they went.
Maybe this is like a Sun spot, but for Juipter. I'm not sure, but I think Sun spots have something to do with the magnetic field of our star acting up, so maybe this is a side effect of Jupiter's magnetic field doing wierd things. I also read somewhere long ago that if Jupiter would have got 10 times bigger, nuclear fusion would have started, and we'd be a binary system. Maybe Jupiter's firing up thanks to Galileo. Probably not, but maybe. Stranger things have happened... wait... no they haven't. Oh well.
Agreed, but I'm talking about the big internet companies whose entire business plan was basically to generate as many hits as their hardware would allow, then sale ads based on those numbers. The ones who would then do shit like buy $90,000 sports cars and have them painted with their "edgy" color schemes and give 3 away a day for a month and other dumb crap. (Maybe not a true example, but not far from base). A lot of sites got away with doing the ads only thing for a while, but unless they either stayed very small (think in terms of overhead. Slashdot, for example, seems to get a good financial kick from adds, but they don't really offer a huge amount of services or have a huge number of employees making making mega salaries, or piss off insane amounts of money on adds), or branched out to other, stable revenue generating ideas (Yahoo, where everything was once free, now has their hands in about 10 different cash generators), they died (most everything else).
'only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser'
I saw this and thought back to the mid/late '90s. Remember all of those big internet companies? The ones who survived off advertisements online? No? Me neither. I don't think I'd promote the fact my company is the world's biggest advertiser online. We've been down that road that's littered with the corpses of about a thousand defunct new e-conomy companies who either; A) Didn't turn a profit after spending huge amounts of money advertising online (as is the case here), or B) Who's sites were abandoned by said failed business plans and then folded with no positive cash flow coming in.
Maybe a stupid question, maybe not. Say we ultimatly just give the colony ship idea a try (LONG way off probably, but still), what would the effects of micro-gravity be if humans existed in it for several generations? Just a thought.
Well, the solution of sueing to stop piracy is still the wrong avenue to take, but at least now the music industry is sueing someone that can afford (to the extent of ability to pay, not ability to survive through, as I imagine a several million $ judgement would bankrupt most companies) the insane award they'll probably be granted. Even though ISPs cannot be expected to restrict and monitor their users as the industry would like, since it would raise about a million free speech/privacy/etc concerns. But hey, that's where the money is, right guys?
Now, in my opinion, the way to curtail piracy is by giving the customer something. And by something, I don't mean 9 shitty songs with the same beat, different lyrics, all of which rhyme with love or fire, and that lasts for half an hour, for $20. I mean truly adding value to a purchase. For example, Marilyn Manson's The Golden Age Of Grotesque and ATB's Addicted to Music. I ripped the MP3's from a friend, listened, and once I got some money, bought the CDs. I could have very well just never got the CD's, but I did. First, while I know it won't make a difference to these two groups, I do feel they are worth supporting. I do the same with NIN and Zombie and a few others. Like the music or not, at least it's not the same recycled shit for the 143853092847th time. Secondly, the actual value of these CDs. Both CD's cost something around $16-20 when I got them. Both have 13 songs, so about a $1.25 or so a song. Both last at least an hour (1.2 in ATB's case). Both include lyrics (for songs that need it), which is an absolute rarity these days. Jesus, for $20, I at least expect to be able to get lyrics, but most groups/"artists" just give me a picture and some credits thanking god, their boyfriend, producers, etc. Both CD's also have some decent pictoral work. And, both come with a DVD that has videos/documentries on it. So good music, LYRICS (I really, really hate no lyrics), A DVD!!!, and some pretty pictures, for less then the cost of the latest from Britany (your prices/milage may vary).
So, what did we learn today class?
If you can't get blood from a turnip, might as well sue the ground the turnip grows in for its delicious, abundent neutrients.
To avoid piracy, give us something worth buying. Yeah, piracy is technically wrong, but so fucking what? We refuse to pay $20 for a shitty CD to get 2 songs that aren't available on a single. (Which is why iTunes does so well, but that's another post).
Lyrics, at least give us lyric inserts. And a DVD with some videos or something never hurt.
Class is over. Now get the hell out and do something productive.
How do you actually use them though? I use my mac often for work, entertainment, etc. and love it. They really are great machines. I'm well aware it is a tool to get things done, but it feels more than such. Every person I've personally talked to, hates Windows XP for various reasons. Only complaints I've ever heard about Apple's are if they're to old. Apple has zealots for a reason. You don't see many Windows zealots...
XP: Double click "My Documents" on the Desktop.
OS X: Click Finder icon in Dock, click Home/Favourites/whatever in toolbar.
This will open a user's individual docs on either OS, but not ALL the files on a hard drive, as you can by clicking on a disk image in Mac (Pick your OS). It sounds like you work a lot in a networked environment. Just saying, that's how your understanding of OS X and XP seem to be. Granted, I'm making this assumption based on 1 comment, but still. That's not a bad thing, but it means you don't seem to know the finer points of it. I can carry on a decent conversation about cars and their engine sizes, hp, torque, what not. But once people start throwing around terms like displacement ratios, I'm dead in the water. Same thing.
And really, a big bulk of my usability argument is prevalance of virii on Windows, with 0 non Microsoft viruses on OS X. I don't care if OS X is more secure or more obscure, nothing changes that fact. And virus infection rate, to me at least, is a absolutly huge component of usability. But I think I've meandered off to a completly different land of topics. Didn't this whole story have something about Sun in it somewhere?
How XP can even be mentioned in a way that suggets it's even in the same usability tier as OS X? People who use OS X, love OS X. People who use XP, absolutly hate XP. Not to mention XP has that wonderus task based system where it takes, by my count last time I used a PC, 5 steps to even be able to see your files. It takes 1 on OS X, and I don't have to dig through system control panels to do it. Look, maybe this is a bit flamey, but more than anything it's true. OS X is, by far, the easiest, most powerful OS I have ever personally used. A open sourced, Unix core, no known viruses that are not for a Microsoft program, and just ease and intuitive of use. I de-wormed 7 PCs during the last Windows worm outbreak, I last de-virused a Mac 4 years ago. That's a big usability point to me
But hey, so far as the story goes, I don't know if this will or won't even be around next year, especially given Sun's seemingly forever questionable financial status (I once owned Sun stock, I'm intensely familiar with this). All I do know is, one more alternative on the desktop is not a bad thing, especially when it is something basically brand new.
Throw a birthday party for a foreign dignitary, of course.:) Just use your imagination. I'm sure you can come up with some truly amazing possibilites for orbital use of tethered, tactical nukes. Actually, it's a quote from Andromeda. The whole quote is:
"Requested items: One Mark V ECM unit, 1000 km of fullerene cable, one low yield nuclear warhead. Stated purpose: birthday party for foreign dignitary."
--Argosy Special Operations Service requisition form,
CY 9512
I think it sums up my general views of how foreign policy should be executed nicely.
While this does seem like a very practical, important, and just plain cool use of GPS, I do see the one big, ominous problem of the US jamming/degrading the GPS system in the event of another war. As well they should, but this could be leathal for this technology.
The GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) uses the C/A-code component of the GPS L1 signal which is transmitted on 1575.42 MHz. The C/A-code, which stands for coarse/acquisition-code, is a pseudorandom noise code which the GPS receiver uses to determine the distance to a satellite. The distance is determined by aligning the received code with a replica of the code generated in the receiver. By measuring at least four such distances to different satellites simultaneously and knowing where the satellites are from the navigation messages they transmit, the receiver can figure out where it is. The C/A-code is a relatively short code which repeats every millisecond and a GPS receiver can easily lock onto or acquire it.
The military's GPS capability is known as the Precise Positioning Service (PPS). It relies on a much longer code called the P-code (for precise or precision) which is transmitted on both the L1 frequency and the L2 frequency at 1227.60 MHz. The P-code is encrypted (and it's then called the Y-code) so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized users. Encryption also prevents a military GPS receiver from being fooled or spoofed by a fake GPS signal transmitted by an enemy. The encryption process is known as Anti-Spoofing. Military GPS receivers have decryption capabilities which permit them to recover the P-code.
Each satellite's unique P-code segment is one week long. In order to determine the distance to a satellite using the P-code, the receiver must align a replica of the code it generates with the arriving code.
Prior to 2 May 2000, the accuracy afforded users of the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) was purposefully degraded through a policy and technique known as Selective Availability (SA). The use of SA gave military users of GPS a position accuracy advantage - one it did not wish to share with potential adversaries. SA was effected by manipulating or dithering the output of each GPS satellite's active atomic clock. This clock controls the generation of all of the satellite's signals and hence the measurements made by a GPS receiver. SA was imposed at a level which would yield a stated SPS horizontal (latitude and longitude) accuracy of 100 metres or better 95 percent of the time for any point in the world during a measurement interval of one day. On 2 May 2000, by presidential decree, the level of SA was set to zero. SPS users immediately saw a quantum jump in positioning accuracy with factors of 5 to 10 improvements. Even a simple handheld receiver can now often yield horizontal position accuracies of 5 metres.
Now remember, we've more or less been fighting 3rd world countries as far as their military capabilities go, so their use of GPS against us was highly unlikely. But say we go to war with a real military anytime soon. A country like China could sustain a global conflict for a while, and has the technology to make effective use of GPS against us. It wouldn't suprise me then if the (useful) SPS signal soon after the start of a conflict of that scope became non-exist.
So, back to the point of this, unless the US gives the Indian government military grade GPS gear, there could be a disaster waiting to happen. Granted, the chances are low, but still something to think about. But even given this, I personally think this should be a good model for other advanced railway systems to look at.
I agree it is interesting how much press this is getting for such a basically non-existant chance of a collision. However, I have to think anything that causes the public, especially the American public, to take any sort of intrest in space is a good thing. We've fallen a long way from our glorious Apollo and Gemini roots. I really hope China, the EU or anyone else just makes massive strides into space to force our government to seriously look up again to space. Or, alternatively, I'd be willing to risk a 1 in 10 colllision to make us at least get out there to crush asteroids. Though I have a strange feeling it would just result in most rich people/nations finding ways to survive an impact, instead of defending against it.
We seem to have lost touch with the stars and became much more focused on more trivial, Earth-centric problems recently. Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm all for saving the environment and national defense and all that, but all it would take is a good, massive impact to solve all of our problems here and leave our ruins for some alien civilization to possibly come across. Here's to the future...
Frankly, I'm surprised at all the negative reaction to the Segway... it's very innovative, compact, somewhat cheap, enviro-safe, etc.... And yet you get the mommy-types bitching about it promoting laziness, dangerous on sidewalks, etc. So nay-sayers, correct my misunderstanding: how exactly will the world be worse if Segways become massively popular?
I actually agree with you about the various merits of the Segway, yet I can say I abso-fucking-lutly hate it. Not because of what it is, but because of what it was made out to be. And I suspect my reaction is the same as many people, especially us/.ers.
Personally, I only think good can come from the Segway and future rivals going into widespread use. I mean, at the very least it isn't really going to ever hurt anything even if they all fall by the side as a technological curiosity. However, I'm pissed because of the hope I had. I remember in the months before the Segway came out, it was hyped as IT. It was going to more or less revolutionize some major facit of modern life, if not all of it. The inventor, Dean Kamen, is a very intelligent man, and if anyone could live up to his own predictions for a device of his design, it would be him. So when he said stuff like, "It will change the way cities are built. They will be built around IT." (Or something like that, he did say it would forever change city design) I really believed him, and I think so did most of us, hence the hatred for the Segway. I personally was thinking, "Ok, it sounds REALLY far-fetched, but what if this is something really bad ass? What if this is cheap and easy nuclear fusion, teleportation, a viable personal air transport, (or any of a hundred other things I've only dreamed of)." IT really got my hopes up. And then the big day of the unveiling comes up and, anxiously I awaited, only to find out IT_IS_A_FUCKING_SCOOTER!? This had to be, by far, the absolute biggest let down of a product in the (at least recent) history of mankind. After months of hype and hope, we get an advanced toy/novelty that's over priced any damn way.
So really, I think the deep, intense hatred of the Segway is not a product of the product, but rather a product of the crushed dreams brought on by the hype of the product. Had we only known Steve Jobs' initial reaction, I think the let down may have been softer and the backlash much easier.
Now Jill, don't get your panties in a wad. Intel is shit. Pure, unremarkable shit. As is MS. They are examples of marketing prevailing over engineering. Intel's P4 is still slower than the highest end G4s and AMDs, and G5s hand P4s their asses. And for the record, I also could give a shit less about AMD, I'm more of an Apple zealot. But more than that, I also am willing to except the truth. I still contend back in the early 90's Apple was crap, and first gen design iMacs (Monitor and CPU in one case) are very flakey. I just hope one day you will stop getting all of your techinal info from Intel press releases. Good to see you still avoided responding to most of my post, pussy. Seriously, I will give you $100 US or (sucker) Canadian if you agree to swear off technology forever and become a hermit. Also, I will no longer reply to any posts on this topic unless it is a post negotiating your hermit surrender terms. Jobber.
You are one piece of WinTel marketing work, Pentium Girl. Faster clocks does not a faster processor make. Ok, let's just fucking forget the 5 GHz thing for a minute, since you can't quite wrap your brain around slightly dry humor, or the fact this means a P4 would probably have a pipeline somewhere in the area of, oh fuck, I don't care, I'm not going to have an attack over it like you, let's just say 1 million stages, and half the time it will have to throw away pre-fetched intsructions, slowing it realistically to 2.5 GHz. Perhaps you are Joe... no, no, fuck that, Jill Idiot.
Just keep plugging away on a 32 bit "fast P4" while we're all using horribly slow 64 bit G5's (Which, even NASA says are faster) and Athlon 64s. Me thinks you may have been one of the real 7337 (or whatever the hell HaX0r girls write instead of Leet) early adopters who probably owns a Itanium and are upset you don't have a real 64 bit processor.
And fuck it all. I have a +5, you're a 1. Normally this is meaningless to me, except here for me to say that yes, I am better. And, as the AC attached to your comment has pointed out, why the hell aren't we all using 10 GHz 16 bit processors, or fuck, why not 1 THz 2 bit processors? I don't care. Give me a 233 MHz G3 over any InHell pile of steaming dog shit any day of the week. Just my.02 Pentium Jill. And now to reply to your actual waste of precious disk space, that is now causing me to waste time responding to your waste:
Clue: Umm, 5GHz processor...It _would_ be faster, rocket surgeon.
Clue: Umm, Rocket_Surgeon... You are an idiot.
Maybe "Joe Idiot" is a bad choice of names since he seems to be a little smarter than you think.
No, he's not. Otherwise Winblows would not have ~95% of the OS market and Intel would not have ~85% of the processor market.
A real 'Joe Idiot' thinks a 64-bit processor is somehow going to be faster, when in fact it will do aboslutely nothing for 'Joe Idiot', or for most people with desktop machine.
Going back to the 5 GHz thing, since you've had some time to comprehend the things I wrote earlier and calm down some, or hell, just using the current 3 GHz or whatever those piles of refuse ship at now. And average Joe Idiot has a use for a clock speed near 3 GHz or higher for typical Joe Idiot style tasks how again? He fucking doesn't. Average NASA Rocket_Scientist (Hey, those do exist) likes the 64 bit thing. As will anyone else. Oh no, God Help Us! A company is giving us a real performance boost instead of dumbass clock speed increases! Whatever shall we do! You get me a 5 GHz P4, or better yet, use P3s since they are better (tell me I'm wrong Jill, it will fall on not caring about your dumb assumption ears) and a 5 GHz G5 or Athlon 64, and I promise the 64 bitters will smoke the 32s without any sort of re-writes to any modern day OS. Except maybe Windows, because nothing works on that. And then you may procede to smoke Robert Blair's jones. That, by the way, was an inside joke, and I couldn't give a fuck less if you get it or not. I'd actually prefer if you didn't and instead just swore of technology forever and became a hermit in the northen most reaches of the Yukon for the rest of your days. Yeah, that would be nice.
Actually, Intel does have the 64 bit Itanium processor for "enterprise solutions". Though based on the last half of your post, you were wondering about desktop processors, in which case the answer probably goes something to the effect of, "Apple has had the G5 for about a month now, AMD will have the Athlon 64 in a month and a half, and we have nothing. Better up the P4 clock rate to 5 GHz in the next 6 months and pray Joe Idiot still thinks it's faster." Just my assumption at the next Intel marketing move.
Slashdot Mirror
And, for those curious, the largest prime curently known is the 40th Mersenne Prime 2 to the 20,996,011 -1, which is 6,320,430 decimal digits in length. If you're wondering what that looks like, and don't mind downloading 6.3 MB, wonder no more.
Take this one for example, which many considered to be a "big security issue". Basically it only was a problem:
- On laptops.
- When someone had sudo running in Terminal.
- When the computer was put to sleep.
- For 10-20 SECONDS after the computer was woken up, but before the clock was updated, someone with physical access to the computer could execute code.
What a massive, gaping, goatse proportioned hole. Who knew it was a bad idea to leave your computer running sudo just laying around in Starbucks while you went to the can? And Apple still had a patch out in a week or two. And in 10.3, passwords can be required to wake the computer, further negiating this and any similar problems.Now compare that to the 50 critical security fixes needed immediately for an install of a year old Windows XP disk. And the fact that there are about a hundred different ways to execute code in Windows, either legitimate or malicious, all across the system, even in the damn web browser.
Basically what I'm getting at here is that this is newsworth simply for the fact that it really isn't. I'd be willing to bet 0 people will have any problem with this before it is patched.
And on a personal note, "Max" sounds pretty fucking stupid and ignorent. "It appears that parts of MacOSX that didn't come from BSD are not very well written and have significant security issues." Oh boy! I found a buffer overflow that will effect no one and that I probably didn't even bother to inform Apple about before hand! I'm a L337 haX0r bitches! Now if he just would have thrown in something about how Apple is beleaguered and BSD is dying, we could just chaulk up "Max" as a lucky troll.
And you just picked up a fan. Finally, someone who gets the damn point of everything and can see the world for what it is, not some candy coated corporate projected image. As you point out, this is a very bad first step down a long, messy road. It may not seem like much now, but let things like this go on for another 20 years, then another 50. See where society is. I can tell you, it won't be a very good place.
Ok, it's illegal to download music. You're getting something for nothing, right? Even if you download a song and listen to it a couple of times, then throw it away, you're still breaking the law. So, is it that far to say that if you get up and stop watching commercials, you're more or less stealing a TV show because you're not "paying" for it by watching the advertisments of those who are paying for it? This is a nasty slippery slope we do not want to go down.
Or no. Maybe we do. Maybe society in it's current incarnation is lost. Maybe a new, better tomorrow needs to be forged from the rotting hulk of old. It's not like it hasn't happened a thousand other times in recorded history. Hell, just in the last 100 or so years, we've seen the decline of basically all European monarchies as they became democratic, several former empires fell (the Ottoman, which was almost 500 years old, the USSR, and many colonial empires, among others) and a slew of other vast changes in society. Maybe it's about that time again. Maybe this time, revolutions will be centered around the rise of information. Maybe people will finally say to hell with all this shit about copyrights and with everything else that society is built on that makes it fail. Maybe no longer will people ignore problems, but instead look to solve them.
The environment is becoming less hospitable each year. If I live to see 100, I'll be amazed if we can still live above ground on this planet. Humans are killing this world, and anyone that doesn't think so is a moron and should be killed. But instead of paying attention to, and doing something about, our destruction of this solitary outpost of human civilization, we're worrying about this. We're not arresting people who's corporations are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, but we are getting those fuckers that share files on line. That will show them.
I look forward to the downfall of civilization. I for one welcome a new dark ages. I wasn't always like this, but I've came to the sudden realization that things are going to have to get a lot worse before they get better. One day they will. Everything dies, including corrupt and failed governments. And one day, humanity will be a better thing. Today is not that day. I've long wished that we could suddenly became a star farring race. I really don't anymore. I know we'd fuck it up. Don't worry, in 20 years, I'm sure Earth will be nearly uninhabitable, and the moon will be nearly strip mined, but hey, there's always Mars. And there will always be file sharing in one form or another. I was sharring files on floppies long ago, now it's via a modem or a ethernet card, soon I hope to do it through wireless and via the atmosphere. And don't worry, whenever some 15 year old on Mars colony does it via the intersteller network, I'm sure someone will be there to point out that he's stealing. Unless, of course, the aformentioned information revolution has fixed that, then he's not stealing, he's shareing. And after all, isn't that what your mother always told you to do?
Really, the problem steams from new technology. If it's something a society and its government doesn't understand and refuses to adapt to, it will eventually crush them. Those countries that embrace things like the open exchange of information, advances in bio-technology, and space will ultimately be the ones that surive and thrive, those that don't and instead chose to crack down on file shareing and ban stem cell research among other things... well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Not quite showtime! I guess even Big O had to come from somewhere...
Did you even read the post? Well, did you? Can you understand a flow of events?
Voelker told me they COULD NOT fix my adapter, as in, it is NOT POSSIBLE in any way to fix it, but I could order a brand new one for $90, + tax and shipping of course. Also, it should be worthy of note Apple has a propritery (sp?, no, I'm not going to check it) design on their adapters where no off the shelf adapters will work properly. I never asked Apple to fix it, because I was out of warrenty and I knew they wouldn't do it anyway, Volker advertises themselves as repair specialists (also as Apple experts, though they sold my TV News teacher a G4 with 128 MB of RAM and told him FCP would work fine, though it by itself needs 128 MB of real RAM to work, but that's another topic) and as such should have been able to fix this, even if they did charge more than a new one would have been.
And no, I didn't pay him $30 for his time, he offered to do it for free, but I still floated him $10. Believe it or not, some people actually still do things just beacuse they're good, nice people, not because they're trying to get rich.
I'm postive dell and gateway wouldn't repair this same issue. I know Gateway will send you a free restore disk for $30 s & h (see journal).
And for all you dumb bastards who moded my initial post off topic and overrated, you are aware it is on topic, correct?
Now, I'm only posting this here one time, but I'm sure it will handle all replies to this and my previous post: Comment Reply Policy
My shitty Apple related experience wasn't with an iPod, but rather the power adapter on my PowerBook G4. Over time, mostly due to accidently stepping on the cord moving my comp. from my bed to my desk, the cord came out of the back of the portion of the adapter that plugs into the comp. I called the local Apple reseller, Voelker Research, and asked if they could fix it. They said it wasn't possible, but gladly offered to order me a new one for $90, plus tax and shipping. I politely told them to piss off and called my grandpa's friend who is incredibly handy with electronics. Within 3 hours, my adapter was as good as new. About a month later I had my CompUSA debacle (see journal) and got a new adapter anyway. So, while not Apple directly, their reseller did fuck me around, and I'd be willing to guess it was probably a general Apple policy to tell people adapters cannot be repaired. While I love Apple and their support is usually steller, they damn sure make up for it with crap like this sometimes.
Also (in both 10.2.x and 10.3.x): Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/Manage SMTP Servers.scpt
Who is the most corrupt corporation of them all?
Ok, I'll take back all the bad things I said about Germans over the whole Iraq thing just for this:
From this page at why-war.com: How to get the files: Note that the location of the documents may change, but this page will always have the current links. In case Diebold takes down this page, bookmark cultcom.com/mirror.html, a mirror being hosted in Germany of direct links to the memos.
Now, who wants to take bets as to how big of an election fraud it will take for the Feds to officailly knock the shit out of Diebold? I'm saying 2 Senator and 5 House elections in a single year.
While interesting, this isn't the first time a company has done this. In April, 1999 a company called Ravenswood sold 1,150,000 shares online in an IPO auction. Several other companies since have, including Salon.com and Andover.net. Here's a summary of how they went.
Maybe this is like a Sun spot, but for Juipter. I'm not sure, but I think Sun spots have something to do with the magnetic field of our star acting up, so maybe this is a side effect of Jupiter's magnetic field doing wierd things. I also read somewhere long ago that if Jupiter would have got 10 times bigger, nuclear fusion would have started, and we'd be a binary system. Maybe Jupiter's firing up thanks to Galileo. Probably not, but maybe. Stranger things have happened... wait... no they haven't. Oh well.
Agreed, but I'm talking about the big internet companies whose entire business plan was basically to generate as many hits as their hardware would allow, then sale ads based on those numbers. The ones who would then do shit like buy $90,000 sports cars and have them painted with their "edgy" color schemes and give 3 away a day for a month and other dumb crap. (Maybe not a true example, but not far from base). A lot of sites got away with doing the ads only thing for a while, but unless they either stayed very small (think in terms of overhead. Slashdot, for example, seems to get a good financial kick from adds, but they don't really offer a huge amount of services or have a huge number of employees making making mega salaries, or piss off insane amounts of money on adds), or branched out to other, stable revenue generating ideas (Yahoo, where everything was once free, now has their hands in about 10 different cash generators), they died (most everything else).
'only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser'
I saw this and thought back to the mid/late '90s. Remember all of those big internet companies? The ones who survived off advertisements online? No? Me neither. I don't think I'd promote the fact my company is the world's biggest advertiser online. We've been down that road that's littered with the corpses of about a thousand defunct new e-conomy companies who either; A) Didn't turn a profit after spending huge amounts of money advertising online (as is the case here), or B) Who's sites were abandoned by said failed business plans and then folded with no positive cash flow coming in.
Just a thought.
Maybe a stupid question, maybe not. Say we ultimatly just give the colony ship idea a try (LONG way off probably, but still), what would the effects of micro-gravity be if humans existed in it for several generations? Just a thought.
Now, in my opinion, the way to curtail piracy is by giving the customer something. And by something, I don't mean 9 shitty songs with the same beat, different lyrics, all of which rhyme with love or fire, and that lasts for half an hour, for $20. I mean truly adding value to a purchase. For example, Marilyn Manson's The Golden Age Of Grotesque and ATB's Addicted to Music. I ripped the MP3's from a friend, listened, and once I got some money, bought the CDs. I could have very well just never got the CD's, but I did. First, while I know it won't make a difference to these two groups, I do feel they are worth supporting. I do the same with NIN and Zombie and a few others. Like the music or not, at least it's not the same recycled shit for the 143853092847th time. Secondly, the actual value of these CDs. Both CD's cost something around $16-20 when I got them. Both have 13 songs, so about a $1.25 or so a song. Both last at least an hour (1.2 in ATB's case). Both include lyrics (for songs that need it), which is an absolute rarity these days. Jesus, for $20, I at least expect to be able to get lyrics, but most groups/"artists" just give me a picture and some credits thanking god, their boyfriend, producers, etc. Both CD's also have some decent pictoral work. And, both come with a DVD that has videos/documentries on it. So good music, LYRICS (I really, really hate no lyrics), A DVD!!!, and some pretty pictures, for less then the cost of the latest from Britany (your prices/milage may vary).
So, what did we learn today class?
- If you can't get blood from a turnip, might as well sue the ground the turnip grows in for its delicious, abundent neutrients.
- To avoid piracy, give us something worth buying. Yeah, piracy is technically wrong, but so fucking what? We refuse to pay $20 for a shitty CD to get 2 songs that aren't available on a single. (Which is why iTunes does so well, but that's another post).
- Lyrics, at least give us lyric inserts. And a DVD with some videos or something never hurt.
Class is over. Now get the hell out and do something productive.How do you actually use them though? I use my mac often for work, entertainment, etc. and love it. They really are great machines. I'm well aware it is a tool to get things done, but it feels more than such. Every person I've personally talked to, hates Windows XP for various reasons. Only complaints I've ever heard about Apple's are if they're to old. Apple has zealots for a reason. You don't see many Windows zealots...
XP: Double click "My Documents" on the Desktop.
OS X: Click Finder icon in Dock, click Home/Favourites/whatever in toolbar.
This will open a user's individual docs on either OS, but not ALL the files on a hard drive, as you can by clicking on a disk image in Mac (Pick your OS). It sounds like you work a lot in a networked environment. Just saying, that's how your understanding of OS X and XP seem to be. Granted, I'm making this assumption based on 1 comment, but still. That's not a bad thing, but it means you don't seem to know the finer points of it. I can carry on a decent conversation about cars and their engine sizes, hp, torque, what not. But once people start throwing around terms like displacement ratios, I'm dead in the water. Same thing.
And really, a big bulk of my usability argument is prevalance of virii on Windows, with 0 non Microsoft viruses on OS X. I don't care if OS X is more secure or more obscure, nothing changes that fact. And virus infection rate, to me at least, is a absolutly huge component of usability. But I think I've meandered off to a completly different land of topics. Didn't this whole story have something about Sun in it somewhere?
How XP can even be mentioned in a way that suggets it's even in the same usability tier as OS X? People who use OS X, love OS X. People who use XP, absolutly hate XP. Not to mention XP has that wonderus task based system where it takes, by my count last time I used a PC, 5 steps to even be able to see your files. It takes 1 on OS X, and I don't have to dig through system control panels to do it. Look, maybe this is a bit flamey, but more than anything it's true. OS X is, by far, the easiest, most powerful OS I have ever personally used. A open sourced, Unix core, no known viruses that are not for a Microsoft program, and just ease and intuitive of use. I de-wormed 7 PCs during the last Windows worm outbreak, I last de-virused a Mac 4 years ago. That's a big usability point to me
But hey, so far as the story goes, I don't know if this will or won't even be around next year, especially given Sun's seemingly forever questionable financial status (I once owned Sun stock, I'm intensely familiar with this). All I do know is, one more alternative on the desktop is not a bad thing, especially when it is something basically brand new.
Throw a birthday party for a foreign dignitary, of course. :) Just use your imagination. I'm sure you can come up with some truly amazing possibilites for orbital use of tethered, tactical nukes. Actually, it's a quote from Andromeda. The whole quote is:
"Requested items: One Mark V ECM unit, 1000 km of fullerene cable, one low yield nuclear warhead. Stated purpose: birthday party for foreign dignitary."
--Argosy Special Operations Service requisition form, CY 9512
I think it sums up my general views of how foreign policy should be executed nicely.
From the same company that not all to long ago tried a scam to steal away domain names from their initial registrars, and is now being sued class-action style and being investigated by the FTC?
While this does seem like a very practical, important, and just plain cool use of GPS, I do see the one big, ominous problem of the US jamming/degrading the GPS system in the event of another war. As well they should, but this could be leathal for this technology.
From gge.unb.ca:
The GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) uses the C/A-code component of the GPS L1 signal which is transmitted on 1575.42 MHz. The C/A-code, which stands for coarse/acquisition-code, is a pseudorandom noise code which the GPS receiver uses to determine the distance to a satellite. The distance is determined by aligning the received code with a replica of the code generated in the receiver. By measuring at least four such distances to different satellites simultaneously and knowing where the satellites are from the navigation messages they transmit, the receiver can figure out where it is. The C/A-code is a relatively short code which repeats every millisecond and a GPS receiver can easily lock onto or acquire it.
The military's GPS capability is known as the Precise Positioning Service (PPS). It relies on a much longer code called the P-code (for precise or precision) which is transmitted on both the L1 frequency and the L2 frequency at 1227.60 MHz. The P-code is encrypted (and it's then called the Y-code) so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized users. Encryption also prevents a military GPS receiver from being fooled or spoofed by a fake GPS signal transmitted by an enemy. The encryption process is known as Anti-Spoofing. Military GPS receivers have decryption capabilities which permit them to recover the P-code.
Each satellite's unique P-code segment is one week long. In order to determine the distance to a satellite using the P-code, the receiver must align a replica of the code it generates with the arriving code.
Prior to 2 May 2000, the accuracy afforded users of the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) was purposefully degraded through a policy and technique known as Selective Availability (SA). The use of SA gave military users of GPS a position accuracy advantage - one it did not wish to share with potential adversaries. SA was effected by manipulating or dithering the output of each GPS satellite's active atomic clock. This clock controls the generation of all of the satellite's signals and hence the measurements made by a GPS receiver. SA was imposed at a level which would yield a stated SPS horizontal (latitude and longitude) accuracy of 100 metres or better 95 percent of the time for any point in the world during a measurement interval of one day. On 2 May 2000, by presidential decree, the level of SA was set to zero. SPS users immediately saw a quantum jump in positioning accuracy with factors of 5 to 10 improvements. Even a simple handheld receiver can now often yield horizontal position accuracies of 5 metres.
Now remember, we've more or less been fighting 3rd world countries as far as their military capabilities go, so their use of GPS against us was highly unlikely. But say we go to war with a real military anytime soon. A country like China could sustain a global conflict for a while, and has the technology to make effective use of GPS against us. It wouldn't suprise me then if the (useful) SPS signal soon after the start of a conflict of that scope became non-exist.
So, back to the point of this, unless the US gives the Indian government military grade GPS gear, there could be a disaster waiting to happen. Granted, the chances are low, but still something to think about. But even given this, I personally think this should be a good model for other advanced railway systems to look at.
FP NIGGGGGA. Suckaaaa.
I agree it is interesting how much press this is getting for such a basically non-existant chance of a collision. However, I have to think anything that causes the public, especially the American public, to take any sort of intrest in space is a good thing. We've fallen a long way from our glorious Apollo and Gemini roots. I really hope China, the EU or anyone else just makes massive strides into space to force our government to seriously look up again to space. Or, alternatively, I'd be willing to risk a 1 in 10 colllision to make us at least get out there to crush asteroids. Though I have a strange feeling it would just result in most rich people/nations finding ways to survive an impact, instead of defending against it.
We seem to have lost touch with the stars and became much more focused on more trivial, Earth-centric problems recently. Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm all for saving the environment and national defense and all that, but all it would take is a good, massive impact to solve all of our problems here and leave our ruins for some alien civilization to possibly come across. Here's to the future...
Frankly, I'm surprised at all the negative reaction to the Segway... it's very innovative, compact, somewhat cheap, enviro-safe, etc. ... And yet you get the mommy-types bitching about it promoting laziness, dangerous on sidewalks, etc. So nay-sayers, correct my misunderstanding: how exactly will the world be worse if Segways become massively popular?
/.ers.
I actually agree with you about the various merits of the Segway, yet I can say I abso-fucking-lutly hate it. Not because of what it is, but because of what it was made out to be. And I suspect my reaction is the same as many people, especially us
Personally, I only think good can come from the Segway and future rivals going into widespread use. I mean, at the very least it isn't really going to ever hurt anything even if they all fall by the side as a technological curiosity. However, I'm pissed because of the hope I had. I remember in the months before the Segway came out, it was hyped as IT. It was going to more or less revolutionize some major facit of modern life, if not all of it. The inventor, Dean Kamen, is a very intelligent man, and if anyone could live up to his own predictions for a device of his design, it would be him. So when he said stuff like, "It will change the way cities are built. They will be built around IT." (Or something like that, he did say it would forever change city design) I really believed him, and I think so did most of us, hence the hatred for the Segway. I personally was thinking, "Ok, it sounds REALLY far-fetched, but what if this is something really bad ass? What if this is cheap and easy nuclear fusion, teleportation, a viable personal air transport, (or any of a hundred other things I've only dreamed of)." IT really got my hopes up. And then the big day of the unveiling comes up and, anxiously I awaited, only to find out IT_IS_A_FUCKING_SCOOTER!? This had to be, by far, the absolute biggest let down of a product in the (at least recent) history of mankind. After months of hype and hope, we get an advanced toy/novelty that's over priced any damn way.
So really, I think the deep, intense hatred of the Segway is not a product of the product, but rather a product of the crushed dreams brought on by the hype of the product. Had we only known Steve Jobs' initial reaction, I think the let down may have been softer and the backlash much easier.
Now Jill, don't get your panties in a wad. Intel is shit. Pure, unremarkable shit. As is MS. They are examples of marketing prevailing over engineering. Intel's P4 is still slower than the highest end G4s and AMDs, and G5s hand P4s their asses. And for the record, I also could give a shit less about AMD, I'm more of an Apple zealot. But more than that, I also am willing to except the truth. I still contend back in the early 90's Apple was crap, and first gen design iMacs (Monitor and CPU in one case) are very flakey. I just hope one day you will stop getting all of your techinal info from Intel press releases. Good to see you still avoided responding to most of my post, pussy. Seriously, I will give you $100 US or (sucker) Canadian if you agree to swear off technology forever and become a hermit. Also, I will no longer reply to any posts on this topic unless it is a post negotiating your hermit surrender terms. Jobber.
You are one piece of WinTel marketing work, Pentium Girl. Faster clocks does not a faster processor make. Ok, let's just fucking forget the 5 GHz thing for a minute, since you can't quite wrap your brain around slightly dry humor, or the fact this means a P4 would probably have a pipeline somewhere in the area of, oh fuck, I don't care, I'm not going to have an attack over it like you, let's just say 1 million stages, and half the time it will have to throw away pre-fetched intsructions, slowing it realistically to 2.5 GHz. Perhaps you are Joe... no, no, fuck that, Jill Idiot.
.02 Pentium Jill. And now to reply to your actual waste of precious disk space, that is now causing me to waste time responding to your waste:
Just keep plugging away on a 32 bit "fast P4" while we're all using horribly slow 64 bit G5's (Which, even NASA says are faster) and Athlon 64s. Me thinks you may have been one of the real 7337 (or whatever the hell HaX0r girls write instead of Leet) early adopters who probably owns a Itanium and are upset you don't have a real 64 bit processor.
And fuck it all. I have a +5, you're a 1. Normally this is meaningless to me, except here for me to say that yes, I am better. And, as the AC attached to your comment has pointed out, why the hell aren't we all using 10 GHz 16 bit processors, or fuck, why not 1 THz 2 bit processors? I don't care. Give me a 233 MHz G3 over any InHell pile of steaming dog shit any day of the week. Just my
Clue: Umm, 5GHz processor...It _would_ be faster, rocket surgeon.
Clue: Umm, Rocket_Surgeon... You are an idiot.
Maybe "Joe Idiot" is a bad choice of names since he seems to be a little smarter than you think.
No, he's not. Otherwise Winblows would not have ~95% of the OS market and Intel would not have ~85% of the processor market.
A real 'Joe Idiot' thinks a 64-bit processor is somehow going to be faster, when in fact it will do aboslutely nothing for 'Joe Idiot', or for most people with desktop machine.
Going back to the 5 GHz thing, since you've had some time to comprehend the things I wrote earlier and calm down some, or hell, just using the current 3 GHz or whatever those piles of refuse ship at now. And average Joe Idiot has a use for a clock speed near 3 GHz or higher for typical Joe Idiot style tasks how again? He fucking doesn't. Average NASA Rocket_Scientist (Hey, those do exist) likes the 64 bit thing. As will anyone else. Oh no, God Help Us! A company is giving us a real performance boost instead of dumbass clock speed increases! Whatever shall we do! You get me a 5 GHz P4, or better yet, use P3s since they are better (tell me I'm wrong Jill, it will fall on not caring about your dumb assumption ears) and a 5 GHz G5 or Athlon 64, and I promise the 64 bitters will smoke the 32s without any sort of re-writes to any modern day OS. Except maybe Windows, because nothing works on that. And then you may procede to smoke Robert Blair's jones. That, by the way, was an inside joke, and I couldn't give a fuck less if you get it or not. I'd actually prefer if you didn't and instead just swore of technology forever and became a hermit in the northen most reaches of the Yukon for the rest of your days. Yeah, that would be nice.
Actually, Intel does have the 64 bit Itanium processor for "enterprise solutions". Though based on the last half of your post, you were wondering about desktop processors, in which case the answer probably goes something to the effect of, "Apple has had the G5 for about a month now, AMD will have the Athlon 64 in a month and a half, and we have nothing. Better up the P4 clock rate to 5 GHz in the next 6 months and pray Joe Idiot still thinks it's faster." Just my assumption at the next Intel marketing move.