I should have said "I would expect" rather than "I would guess" that some sort of file is created. I was responding to how foolish it would be for one to be curious about what was in the file, if one expects that there should not be anything in there in the first place. Then again, for all we know, the FBI is simply the official investigative arm of the government. I am much more concerned about the conclusions government (aka corporate interests) might draw by analyzing the digital trail we leave, especially since all medical records are increasingly being digitized, even if only as a scanned image.
I wonder if the mere act of requesting your FBI file will cause them to open one. I'm sure it must be of interest to the Bureau that somebody is curious what the FBI has on them.
I was wondering why VisionTek stopped making NVidia products. Perhaps they had sensed that the company had finally strayed too far from its 3Dfx roots. It puzzled me at the time because FX was getting such publicity. VisionTek is known for leading quality manufacturing, so it makes sense that they would want to support the chipset that allows them to make the most compatible and blazing fast video cards.
Nobody will ever read this, since this reply comes 7 days late, but the real reason that the rave/orgy scene, along with Neo and Trinity's copulation, makes no sense is that we were just told that the machines are very close to breaking through Zion's defenses. After the Cave speech, I was expecting people to get ready for war. The only way this scene begins to make sense is that the people of Zion expect that it's the natural order of things that their civilization will be destroyed (for the sixth time!) and that they want to live it up before their (virtual?) world ends. Trinity and Neo on the other hand have a very real need to get it on.
As for Agent Smith, notice that it was the body of the supposed human that he infected which was lying on the examination table across from Neo's when the movie closed. I predict that once this Instance of Smith finds out that Neo has betrayed the Matrix, the relationship between the two will change. I am not sure if they will work together, but there is a certain "bonding" that has occurred and we need not limit our thinking to Male / Female copulation. Programs have no sex, unless they are anthropomorphized.
Don't forget, though, that knowing a mediocre developer and even helping that developer, gives you an "in" for consulting opportunities in the future because you pose no threat to those with greater ambitions. But you also have a distinct value proposition in your ability to apply your technical prowess without using other skills (e.g., social networking) to gain an advantage.
Your nail hit the head! One of my ambitions is to help others come out of their shells, because I believe the answer to the doldrums lies greatly in mobilizing talented programmers into small businesses. They've already been kicked out of corporate IT, so they might as well pursue more stable work. The networking then becomes higher value due to the fact that in small business, who you know will get you the job even more quickly than in mid-to-large corporations. Then, of course, we have to rely on the small businesses to get project work. That's another story.
Ever since participating in the Google Compute's aggregate team for the Folding@HOME project, I have noticed myself checking every morning and night to see the statistics and find out how I am progressing in the team and individual rankings. This sounds similar to what a Progress Quest player would do.
Now, if we could tie the computing work being done by the Google Toolbar's GoogleFahCore_65.exe with a game such as Progress Quest, we might be able to give the masses of users a more compelling reason to "donate" CPU time to such worthy causes! This might be the tip of the iceberg.
Hushmail.com has a feature for premium subscribers that automatically filters all email that is not encrypted. They claim it is 99% effective. However, that would work well for strictly human interaction, assuming you have enough friends and colleagues who either also use Hushmail or are savvy enough to know how to integrate PGP with their email. For mailing lists, etc., how can you avoid having maintaining a whitelist?
Hushmail.com has a feature for premium subscribers that automatically filters all email that is not encrypted. They claim it is 99% effective. However, that would work well for strictly human interaction, assuming you have enough friends and colleagues who either also use Hushmail or are savvy enough to know how to integrate PGP with their email. For mailing lists, etc., how can you avoid having maintaining a whitelist?
Hushmail.com has a feature for premium subscribers that automatically filters all email that is not encrypted. They claim it is 99% effective. However, that would work well for strictly human interaction, assuming you have enough friends and colleagues who either also use Hushmail or are savvy enough to know how to integrate PGP with their email. For mailing lists, etc., how can you avoid having maintaining a whitelist?
I hope this gets mod'ed up. I came late to the party on this one, but I would really enjoy replies. I did not intend to sound like my mind was made up completely. Sometimes I can't help myself.
I hope we can all agree that most people, the majority being non-technical, believe there is more to life than troubleshooting OS problems. However, it usually takes a traumatic experience to incite a user to make the switch. Most of the MAC television ads that I have seen on the tube (not the Net) focus on such OS crashes.
It's interesting that the themes expressed in the recent MAC do not apply to the latest incarnation of Windows, XP. Apple is targeting users of Windows Me and earlier releases (since most home users never ran Win2k). Those early Windows revs do crash regularly, but OS-switching takes a certain level of sophistication that the mass market of PC-users does not possess. Apple of course is not offering an OS upgrade to Windows users, but a complete hardware/software platform switch. Apple has a fair infrastructure in place to support their platform.
Linux as a Market Force is so fractured, I can't imagine that all the king's horses and all the king's men could ever put it back together again. Ah, but that is the rub, Linux never really was a Mass-Market Force to be reckoned with. Macs were to some extent, but Apple dropped the ball by not focusing on the ubiquity of there OS / approach to computing hardware. Macs are still in the game but they have nary a chance of competing with Windows until you can get a MAC experience using what has been traditionally "Windows" (and now Linux) hardware. MS knows this, so here comes XP, their first attempt to bridge this gap, and it is succeeding.
The Linux/Unix world's best chance right now to compete is to make the Linux-based (or is Unix-based?) Mac OS X marketable to users of Windows XP, which means getting the likes of Dell and Gateway to create a Mac experience with their own hardware. Then there is still the hurdle of applications. This is not likely to succeed if it ever gets off the ground.
The Linux world's best chance in the future is to predict the paradigm shift and make it happen, but this too will not happen. The shift I am referring to is the inevitable move to 100% mobile computing. The Tablet PC is the first step in that direction and Microsoft has a large head start on this, although I think I read that some vendors were loading a flavor of Linux on a tablet or two.
Linux was not developed with the Market in mind. Money did not motivate Linus Torvalds and I quite frankly don't believe Linux will ever be able to succeed in a Capitalist marketplace (on the Desktop) UNLESS it is evolved by developers and project managers who give a @#$@! about the marketplace. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Bringing software (let alone an OS) to market and having it succeed is daunting, regardless of how good it is. Witness BeOS, which I was very interested in until I saw that it essentially was castrated in the marketplace.
That is of course why the antitrust proceedings against MS were so important. Unfortunately the outcome of that case and the move towards more conservative government in the U.S. will make it that much more difficult to compete.
I could go on, but there is truly is more to life, and clearly I need to get one.
I am using this new feature and I agree that Google's implementation is great. The only downside in my view is that it runs in the current user's process memory space. This requires that a user remains logged on at all times. I am also curious how this feature will behave with Windows XP Fast User Switching, where multiple users can be logged on at the same time.
Check out the NY Times Op-Ed column from Sept. 10, 2002, by the Economist Paul Krugman.
You have to log in, but it's free...
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/opinion/10KRUG.h tml
This guy has a pair of big brass balls...
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This is a great use of the "Anonymous Coward" pseudonym.
I should have said "I would expect" rather than "I would guess" that some sort of file is created. I was responding to how foolish it would be for one to be curious about what was in the file, if one expects that there should not be anything in there in the first place. Then again, for all we know, the FBI is simply the official investigative arm of the government. I am much more concerned about the conclusions government (aka corporate interests) might draw by analyzing the digital trail we leave, especially since all medical records are increasingly being digitized, even if only as a scanned image.
I wonder if the mere act of requesting your FBI file will cause them to open one. I'm sure it must be of interest to the Bureau that somebody is curious what the FBI has on them.
I was wondering why VisionTek stopped making NVidia products. Perhaps they had sensed that the company had finally strayed too far from its 3Dfx roots. It puzzled me at the time because FX was getting such publicity. VisionTek is known for leading quality manufacturing, so it makes sense that they would want to support the chipset that allows them to make the most compatible and blazing fast video cards.
Please Mod this up! People need to know how important it is that Exit Polling is becoming unreliable and altogether nonexistent.
Nobody will ever read this, since this reply comes 7 days late, but the real reason that the rave/orgy scene, along with Neo and Trinity's copulation, makes no sense is that we were just told that the machines are very close to breaking through Zion's defenses. After the Cave speech, I was expecting people to get ready for war. The only way this scene begins to make sense is that the people of Zion expect that it's the natural order of things that their civilization will be destroyed (for the sixth time!) and that they want to live it up before their (virtual?) world ends. Trinity and Neo on the other hand have a very real need to get it on.
As for Agent Smith, notice that it was the body of the supposed human that he infected which was lying on the examination table across from Neo's when the movie closed. I predict that once this Instance of Smith finds out that Neo has betrayed the Matrix, the relationship between the two will change. I am not sure if they will work together, but there is a certain "bonding" that has occurred and we need not limit our thinking to Male / Female copulation. Programs have no sex, unless they are anthropomorphized.
Don't forget, though, that knowing a mediocre developer and even helping that developer, gives you an "in" for consulting opportunities in the future because you pose no threat to those with greater ambitions. But you also have a distinct value proposition in your ability to apply your technical prowess without using other skills (e.g., social networking) to gain an advantage.
Your nail hit the head! One of my ambitions is to help others come out of their shells, because I believe the answer to the doldrums lies greatly in mobilizing talented programmers into small businesses. They've already been kicked out of corporate IT, so they might as well pursue more stable work. The networking then becomes higher value due to the fact that in small business, who you know will get you the job even more quickly than in mid-to-large corporations. Then, of course, we have to rely on the small businesses to get project work. That's another story.
Ever since participating in the Google Compute's aggregate team for the Folding@HOME project, I have noticed myself checking every morning and night to see the statistics and find out how I am progressing in the team and individual rankings. This sounds similar to what a Progress Quest player would do.
Now, if we could tie the computing work being done by the Google Toolbar's GoogleFahCore_65.exe with a game such as Progress Quest, we might be able to give the masses of users a more compelling reason to "donate" CPU time to such worthy causes! This might be the tip of the iceberg.
Hushmail.com has a feature for premium subscribers that automatically filters all email that is not encrypted. They claim it is 99% effective. However, that would work well for strictly human interaction, assuming you have enough friends and colleagues who either also use Hushmail or are savvy enough to know how to integrate PGP with their email. For mailing lists, etc., how can you avoid having maintaining a whitelist?
Hushmail.com has a feature for premium subscribers that automatically filters all email that is not encrypted. They claim it is 99% effective. However, that would work well for strictly human interaction, assuming you have enough friends and colleagues who either also use Hushmail or are savvy enough to know how to integrate PGP with their email. For mailing lists, etc., how can you avoid having maintaining a whitelist?
Hushmail.com has a feature for premium subscribers that automatically filters all email that is not encrypted. They claim it is 99% effective. However, that would work well for strictly human interaction, assuming you have enough friends and colleagues who either also use Hushmail or are savvy enough to know how to integrate PGP with their email. For mailing lists, etc., how can you avoid having maintaining a whitelist?
I hope this gets mod'ed up. I came late to the party on this one, but I would really enjoy replies. I did not intend to sound like my mind was made up completely. Sometimes I can't help myself.
I hope we can all agree that most people, the majority being non-technical, believe there is more to life than troubleshooting OS problems. However, it usually takes a traumatic experience to incite a user to make the switch. Most of the MAC television ads that I have seen on the tube (not the Net) focus on such OS crashes. It's interesting that the themes expressed in the recent MAC do not apply to the latest incarnation of Windows, XP. Apple is targeting users of Windows Me and earlier releases (since most home users never ran Win2k). Those early Windows revs do crash regularly, but OS-switching takes a certain level of sophistication that the mass market of PC-users does not possess. Apple of course is not offering an OS upgrade to Windows users, but a complete hardware/software platform switch. Apple has a fair infrastructure in place to support their platform. Linux as a Market Force is so fractured, I can't imagine that all the king's horses and all the king's men could ever put it back together again. Ah, but that is the rub, Linux never really was a Mass-Market Force to be reckoned with. Macs were to some extent, but Apple dropped the ball by not focusing on the ubiquity of there OS / approach to computing hardware. Macs are still in the game but they have nary a chance of competing with Windows until you can get a MAC experience using what has been traditionally "Windows" (and now Linux) hardware. MS knows this, so here comes XP, their first attempt to bridge this gap, and it is succeeding. The Linux/Unix world's best chance right now to compete is to make the Linux-based (or is Unix-based?) Mac OS X marketable to users of Windows XP, which means getting the likes of Dell and Gateway to create a Mac experience with their own hardware. Then there is still the hurdle of applications. This is not likely to succeed if it ever gets off the ground. The Linux world's best chance in the future is to predict the paradigm shift and make it happen, but this too will not happen. The shift I am referring to is the inevitable move to 100% mobile computing. The Tablet PC is the first step in that direction and Microsoft has a large head start on this, although I think I read that some vendors were loading a flavor of Linux on a tablet or two. Linux was not developed with the Market in mind. Money did not motivate Linus Torvalds and I quite frankly don't believe Linux will ever be able to succeed in a Capitalist marketplace (on the Desktop) UNLESS it is evolved by developers and project managers who give a @#$@! about the marketplace. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Bringing software (let alone an OS) to market and having it succeed is daunting, regardless of how good it is. Witness BeOS, which I was very interested in until I saw that it essentially was castrated in the marketplace. That is of course why the antitrust proceedings against MS were so important. Unfortunately the outcome of that case and the move towards more conservative government in the U.S. will make it that much more difficult to compete. I could go on, but there is truly is more to life, and clearly I need to get one.
I am using this new feature and I agree that Google's implementation is great. The only downside in my view is that it runs in the current user's process memory space. This requires that a user remains logged on at all times. I am also curious how this feature will behave with Windows XP Fast User Switching, where multiple users can be logged on at the same time.
Here's the link... http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/opinion/10KRUG.h tml
Check out the NY Times Op-Ed column from Sept. 10, 2002, by the Economist Paul Krugman. You have to log in, but it's free... http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/opinion/10KRUG.h tml
This guy has a pair of big brass balls...