doesn't have any other way of sending e-mail and can't install any other software, then you've achieved the same thing.
Without TPM, that's impossible. You can't yet stop people from installing other software... at least without crippling the functionality of your system.
For example, TPM means that a corporation could send emails to an employee's home PC, and still have guarantees that he won't view it with any unapproved software. Today, if a corp wants that degree of control over software employees use, they must sacrifice flexibility and become less economically competitive.
No, no you don't. That is the WHOLE danger with trusted computing. There is a key known only to the hardware vendor, which the end user is not allowed to see.
If you don't know about that key, then it's understandable that you wouldn't grasp the implications of Trusted Computing at all.
With the Linux implementation, you get the keys.
No. Major computer vendors get the keys, and they sign OSes with them to guarrantee that the system is crippled so that music files can't be copied. Then when you run Linux, the RIAA can see that you aren't using an approved OS, and will forbid you from downloading their content. (And then later on, all publishers will do that, even just HTML websites)
Prehaps there will be some Linux distros that cripple their file copying and get that keysigning stamp of approval. But if you edit the source code even slightly, and even for an irrelevant bugfix, you can no longer play your WMA songs.
For that intended meaning, use "freeze" instead of "fix". The only way "freeze" can be ambiguously interpreted is by leading to jokes about overclocked CPUs.
No, because Windows has had all of those inotify features for about 9 years now.
No. A few years ago at least, there was a moderately low limit on the number of file notifications that could be active at once. It was easy for a big directory to exceed the quantity that could be watched. (Maybe this has been fixed in XP, but that's fewer than 9 years old)
Unlike a binary kernel, you can remove code you don't like, and the rest of the kernel will work without it (if you remove it cleanly).
Wrong. If I remove code I don't like, the kernel will still boot, but it will no longer match the keysigning checked by the Trusted chip on the motherboard. So when I use this kernel to download a video I've bought online, it will refuse to play. Thus, the system is no longer completely working.
(An alternative interpretation is that the system is still working as advertised, but that the goals it is working towards are against the desires of the end-user)
When somebody figures out the link between the number of comments, trusted computing, and the "bad old days,"
It wasn't a very useful thing to say, but the reasoning is like this:
There were 286 comments.
The "286" model of Intel CPUs was widely used 25 years ago. It was incapable of running Linux.
25 years ago, there was little progress in Free Software. PC operators had little choice but to execute programs written by a far-away company, and had no power to make small alterations to make the software serve you better. If a program included a feature which was intentionally hostile to the user, you had few other options. Trusted Computing is an attempt to reclaim some of the control of PC software that has filtered out to end-users over that time.
Also 25 years ago, there was no high speed Internet access or CD-R drives. Widespread infringement of Intellectual Property was difficult and slow. The "Napster effect" couldn't happen then. Trusted Computing is an attempt to go back to before it was easy to send any digital file across the planet.
If you have access to it, you can forward it, unless your e-mail client doesn't allow forwarding... which has nothing to do with the TPM.
No, you need to think it through.
If a person's email client doesn't allow forwarding, she will get a replacement, more functional client. But as you've already stated, remote attestation will mean that the sender can check which email client she is using, and refuse to transmit the message except to applications that it trusts.
It's a way of forcing users to run programs that are crippled in one or more ways, which they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do.
Re:WoW is still for the casual player.
on
MMOG Market Mutterings
·
· Score: 2, Informative
AC: Only difference now is that ganker might screw up and kill a civilian in the low towns. Doing this is detrimental.
Wrong. Killing a civilian gives a dishonor point, but those points aren't detrimental at all. They are used for exactly nothing. It's not as if WoW subtracts Dishonor from Honor or something like that.
Before the honor system in World of Warcraft, there was no goal that a casual player couldn't eventually meet,
But if everyone can meet it, it almost doesn't qualify as a "goal" anymore- it has become an "expectation". Consider an objective in relative terms instead of absolute- and relative is really the more accurate way to measure it.
The power level of items is only really meaningful in comparison to all the other items out there. If all maxxed-out players can get the same "best" items after enough time, then it doesn't really matter what the stats on that item are- everybody's equal, so the results of who wins at combat doesn't change.
Only by restricting some people from getting those items do the items become special enough to care about.
But now, the top few tiers of honor system rewards are completely inaccessible to casual players because they are given out by percentage.
Hypothetically, if the Honor system was designed correctly, casual players would still benefit even though they can't participate in the race. The advantage they should see is that mobs of maxxed-out enemy players won't be zerging and ganking on them, because that kind of killing doesn't provide any honor.
Of course, the system doesn't work right yet. But if it ever does, it should discourage the kind of PVP that borders on griefing, allowing casual players to finish their quest grinding without being nuked, stunlocked, and corpse-camped.
What we need is MMORPG's that don't require monthly subscription fees. There are plenty more out there if you go looking.
So, which is it? Either we need them, or there are plenty.
Or are you saying that what we really need is a game with the expensive production values of WoW or SWG combined with the low, nonrepeating price of Guild Wars or Roma Victor? Fat chance.
The magnified icon will be at the position that the small icon was. That's why the dock "bends" when you move over icons so that this property is preserved.
Yes, that one icon will stay in the same place. All the others to the left and right of it WILL MOVE. That means that when I move the mouse off this icon to go click on one of them, it will be somewhere else by the time my cursor gets there.
System Preferences->Dock->"Position on screen"
That still leaves it centered on that edge, not bound to either side. And that means that the buttons you click on to launch applications (or the trash icon) will move around according to how many programs you currently have running. That means you can't blindly aim the mouse someplace near the corner of the screen and hit a program you want (that's called "muscle memory")- you must stop, look at where the icons have gone based on how much is running, and adjust your aim.
but the operating system is effectively the kernel with an interface, such as a commandline or GUI tool
Well, if that's how you choose to define those words, then yes. But those aren't the definitions found in English dictionaries, or in computer science textbooks- so you'd be speaking a different language than everyone else.
Many people, for example, have built useful Linux computers with neither a command line nor GUI installed.
Environment is all the extra tools
"Environment", like "system", is a hugely generic word, which by itself can mean almost anything at all.
With these trafic rules, a roundabout actually IS better.
True, if you apply a stupid rule, then anything can work badly. I can defeat Tiger Woods in golf if he's using the "One Hand Rule", but that doesn't make me a better player.
If you were drawing up your own traffic rules, you'd have two choices for both stop sign intersections and roundabouts. One of the choices requires a heavy traffic stream to pause and allow a vehicle wanting to cross it to move, and the other does not.
"Vehicles in roundabout have the right of way" means some cars may need to wait indefinately until there is nobody in the roundabout in front of them. But, if you try to "fix" this by saying that cars in the roundabout must yield to allow others to come in, you have turned it into a hazardous demolition derby.
The rule for simple intersections can be changed either way, and its actually safer with the alternating rule (because nobody is encouraged to zip across in a small opening). But a rule to protect roundabouts from persistent blockage will be more dangerous.
Well, if that were always true, then roundabouts can work. But in the real world, often one street is far more popular that the other. That is more likely to occur in a large, semi-rural nation than in a small dense one. Also, traffic patterns in a old and fully-inhabited country like Britain won't change as much as in the USA, where whole new towns are constructed far more frequently.
As I explained, roundabout only does well if the traffic levels remain the same as when it was designed. It cannot be adapted to changes as easily as a stoplight can.
- any busy road is likely to be busy in both directions
If it's only busy in both directions, then the starvation problem I described still happens. Only if all directions are busy can drivers from each direction be sure they'll be allowed to move.
plus, there is nothing to stop you putting traffic lights all over a roundabout, which allows you to control traffic artificially at busy periods.
Except that it if you were going to build lights anyhow, you don't need a roundabout whatsoever, and can use some of the saved space for buildings or sidewalks, or simply improved visibility, making the road safer.
A stoplight is more convenient for drivers, because sometimes they can pass through the intersection without slowing down and all. And, stoplights are safer and more convenient for pedestrians, because they can see cars coming in both directions, and those cars will be forced to stop some of the time. Crossing the street at a roundabout means a car may come at you from around the circle at any time- you never have a guarrantee it's been told to halt.
I don't get all the centipede bashing on here.. it's the best shooter ever made.
Centipede is fine with a trackball, or a mouse. But the problem is that it was re-released for portable devices a few years ago, and playing it with arrow keys makes no more sense than using those controls for Half-Life 2.
Therefore, many people today only remember Centipede as an unplayable cell-phone offering.
Re:"Girly" subject matter is not the answer
on
10 Gateway Games
·
· Score: 1
The equally or even more unattainable depictions of women in gaming are not targeted at women, but at male players, with the purpose of being strictly a sexual fantasy object. See the difference in tone?
How can you know they're not aspirational? It has been noted that the photography in mens' and womens' magazines are both dominated by airbrushed women in revealing garments. Only by the gender-specific text alongside does an underlying explanation of why she is dressed that way come through.
"Wouldn't you look great if you looked like this?"
Often translated as "I am very sexy"
"I look like this solely to make you want to fuck me."
Often translated as "I am very sexy"
This tone dissuades women from playing such games and game in general because it informs women that the consumers of such entertainment may very well objectify them, too.
As you already mentioned, a girl in a tight evening gown may be either aspirational or objectified. Bloodrayne has nothing gender-specific in its storyline or text addressed to the player- the only way that you could come to that conclusion is by being sexist yourself, and deciding that content relating to violent combat is inherently male.
Re:"Girly" subject matter is not the answer
on
10 Gateway Games
·
· Score: 1
And some games are historical games in environments where there were simply no women around, like pretty much all WWII games.)
False. In WWII, the army of the USSR made heavy use of female soldiers, who got rifles like everyone else. Other nations, such as France, recruited women to a lesser extent.
For an example in movies, look at Iron Cross. Or for an anti-exmple, look at Enemy At The Gates, where a woman who had really been a sniper was changed into a clerk, because USA audiences wouldn't believe a girl could shoot Nazis.
There is a term for what you are describing: "Separation of Layers"
False. The term she was describing is the Rule of Modularity. "Separation of Layers" is a special case, which requires that the modules are ordered in a hierarchial pattern. Designs which cannot be described in an acyclical graph may still be modular.
Furthermore, a google search on "separation of layers" produces nothing similar to what she was describing.
roundabouts are the greatest traffic controlling device ever.
No. Except in very limited scenarios of traffic flow variations, they are worse than square intersections. The fundamental problem is that they're not scalable.
A stop-sign can be upgraded to a traffic light if usage has grown too high. Then, that traffic light can have its stop/go periods adjusted to compensate for varying rates of incoming cars throughout the day.
A roundabout is completely nonadjustable. There is a little circle, and that's all. If traffic rate is very low, then a stop sign could've worked, and its a waste. If traffic is very high, then a roundabout would be overwhelmed, and you need electric lights (or a police officer).
The roundabout structure creates the same algorithmic flaw computer scientists call "starvation" in a multitasking operating system. Suppose I have streets A and B crossing each other. And suppose that as new towns are built on either side, the traffic flow of A grows to be 300 times greater than on B. (That exact thing has happened at several places in the USA, which is why roundabouts are being removed in that country).
If there is a stop sign, then cars strictly alternate: one from A, one from B, one from A, etc. Both streets can move. If there is a stop light or traffic officer, then it may alternate like that, or it may be a more complex pattern, such as 50 cars from A, 4 from B. Even in a traffic jam situation, where vehicles might be backed up for 5 kilometers, traffic keeps flowing through both streets at a steady rate.
But if there's a roundabout, and it's very crowded, then cars driving on B simply cannot cross A at all. Because of the traffic jam, there is an effectively infinite supply of cars moving down A. According to the rule, "Vehicles in the roundabout have the right of way". Therefore, as long as cars from A keep coming, people waiting on B can't move at all. It is illegal for them to attempt to cross. They can wait 500 cars or 5000 cars, it doesn't matter.
Conclusion: roundabouts are bad. If traffic is low, a stop sign can do the job with less construction costs. If traffic is high, then a roundabout can't work fairly to all drivers, and electric lights are needed.
And then don't bother connecting to the internet either, because no web-site operators will let you view their pages without Trusted Computing enabled.
Otherwise, you might republish their copyrighted works without compensation... that's just too much of a risk. Or you could execute many other forms of abusive programs to disrupt the experiences of their other users.
Really, untrusted PCs are just too dangerously unpredictable to allow out in public.
Trusted computing as a whole is a good thing, with one componant that is a very bad thing: Remote attestation.
Nuclear bombs are on a whole good things, with one componant that is a very bad thing: widespread death.
You can't admit that the single motivating factor of a system is bad, but then say that the afterthoughts and bonus utilities somehow make up for it. And if you don't believe remote attestation was the driving factor to create Trusted Computing, just look at its history of sponsors.
Already, we see software design flaws. Just because you mention there are multiple things tells us that it's not a clean system, and that it ignores the traditional Unix dictate: "Do one thing, and do it well".
You list the user blocking unsigned programs from running, and you also list hardware-accelerated encryption. Those are two entirely different features, and there is no good reason why they should be part of the same system. If I desire either of those, I should be able to install it individually.
More importantly, you ignored the most important feature of Trusted Computing: remote attestation. Indeed, it is to support RA that "Trusted" hardware will be built at all- if it was just about the OS not running unsigned programs, that could be implemented in pure software. And the encryption-accelerator is just a bonus feature they tossed in, "As long as we're stamping new chips anyhow". RA says you can prove to remote individuals that you are only running software signed by them, so content publishers can prohibit the use of 3rd party programs to view their data.
AC: It isn't usefull by itself, but if you combine it with ExecShield and SELinux it could be a useful security layer.
Or, you could just combine ExecShield and SELinux by themselves and have a useful security layer, without needing Trusted Computing at all.
Brushing aside the minor side-features, Trusted Computing is really about tamper-resistant hardware enforcing the signatures of software on the PC. The main use of that is preventing the legal and physical owner of that PC from hacking programs on his own computer, so that RIAA music publishers can continue to trust it.
I'm buggered if I can find an answer to this, but if anyone is using Konqueror 3.4 with famd,
No, I doubt anybody is using famd. At least, someone who uses removable media (like cdroms) can't very well run it, because it will keep directories open and prevent umounting.
Maybe once linux 2.6.12 brings out the new inotify things, famd will become tolerable to run continually, and it'll start getting bugfixes in.
Slashdot Mirror
doesn't have any other way of sending e-mail and can't install any other software, then you've achieved the same thing.
Without TPM, that's impossible. You can't yet stop people from installing other software... at least without crippling the functionality of your system.
For example, TPM means that a corporation could send emails to an employee's home PC, and still have guarantees that he won't view it with any unapproved software. Today, if a corp wants that degree of control over software employees use, they must sacrifice flexibility and become less economically competitive.
With the Linux implementation, you get the keys.
No, no you don't. That is the WHOLE danger with trusted computing. There is a key known only to the hardware vendor, which the end user is not allowed to see.
If you don't know about that key, then it's understandable that you wouldn't grasp the implications of Trusted Computing at all.
With the Linux implementation, you get the keys.
No. Major computer vendors get the keys, and they sign OSes with them to guarrantee that the system is crippled so that music files can't be copied. Then when you run Linux, the RIAA can see that you aren't using an approved OS, and will forbid you from downloading their content. (And then later on, all publishers will do that, even just HTML websites)
Prehaps there will be some Linux distros that cripple their file copying and get that keysigning stamp of approval. But if you edit the source code even slightly, and even for an irrelevant bugfix, you can no longer play your WMA songs.
Sorry, I was ambiguous.
For that intended meaning, use "freeze" instead of "fix". The only way "freeze" can be ambiguously interpreted is by leading to jokes about overclocked CPUs.
No, because Windows has had all of those inotify features for about 9 years now.
No. A few years ago at least, there was a moderately low limit on the number of file notifications that could be active at once. It was easy for a big directory to exceed the quantity that could be watched. (Maybe this has been fixed in XP, but that's fewer than 9 years old)
Unlike a binary kernel, you can remove code you don't like, and the rest of the kernel will work without it (if you remove it cleanly).
Wrong. If I remove code I don't like, the kernel will still boot, but it will no longer match the keysigning checked by the Trusted chip on the motherboard. So when I use this kernel to download a video I've bought online, it will refuse to play. Thus, the system is no longer completely working.
(An alternative interpretation is that the system is still working as advertised, but that the goals it is working towards are against the desires of the end-user)
When somebody figures out the link between the number of comments, trusted computing, and the "bad old days,"
It wasn't a very useful thing to say, but the reasoning is like this:
There were 286 comments.
The "286" model of Intel CPUs was widely used 25 years ago. It was incapable of running Linux.
25 years ago, there was little progress in Free Software. PC operators had little choice but to execute programs written by a far-away company, and had no power to make small alterations to make the software serve you better. If a program included a feature which was intentionally hostile to the user, you had few other options. Trusted Computing is an attempt to reclaim some of the control of PC software that has filtered out to end-users over that time.
Also 25 years ago, there was no high speed Internet access or CD-R drives. Widespread infringement of Intellectual Property was difficult and slow. The "Napster effect" couldn't happen then. Trusted Computing is an attempt to go back to before it was easy to send any digital file across the planet.
If you have access to it, you can forward it, unless your e-mail client doesn't allow forwarding... which has nothing to do with the TPM.
No, you need to think it through.
If a person's email client doesn't allow forwarding, she will get a replacement, more functional client. But as you've already stated, remote attestation will mean that the sender can check which email client she is using, and refuse to transmit the message except to applications that it trusts.
It's a way of forcing users to run programs that are crippled in one or more ways, which they otherwise wouldn't be willing to do.
AC: Only difference now is that ganker might screw up and kill a civilian in the low towns. Doing this is detrimental.
Wrong. Killing a civilian gives a dishonor point, but those points aren't detrimental at all. They are used for exactly nothing. It's not as if WoW subtracts Dishonor from Honor or something like that.
Before the honor system in World of Warcraft, there was no goal that a casual player couldn't eventually meet,
But if everyone can meet it, it almost doesn't qualify as a "goal" anymore- it has become an "expectation". Consider an objective in relative terms instead of absolute- and relative is really the more accurate way to measure it.
The power level of items is only really meaningful in comparison to all the other items out there. If all maxxed-out players can get the same "best" items after enough time, then it doesn't really matter what the stats on that item are- everybody's equal, so the results of who wins at combat doesn't change.
Only by restricting some people from getting those items do the items become special enough to care about.
But now, the top few tiers of honor system rewards are completely inaccessible to casual players because they are given out by percentage.
Hypothetically, if the Honor system was designed correctly, casual players would still benefit even though they can't participate in the race. The advantage they should see is that mobs of maxxed-out enemy players won't be zerging and ganking on them, because that kind of killing doesn't provide any honor.
Of course, the system doesn't work right yet. But if it ever does, it should discourage the kind of PVP that borders on griefing, allowing casual players to finish their quest grinding without being nuked, stunlocked, and corpse-camped.
What we need is MMORPG's that don't require monthly subscription fees. There are plenty more out there if you go looking.
So, which is it? Either we need them, or there are plenty.
Or are you saying that what we really need is a game with the expensive production values of WoW or SWG combined with the low, nonrepeating price of Guild Wars or Roma Victor? Fat chance.
The magnified icon will be at the position that the small icon was. That's why the dock "bends" when you move over icons so that this property is preserved.
Yes, that one icon will stay in the same place. All the others to the left and right of it WILL MOVE. That means that when I move the mouse off this icon to go click on one of them, it will be somewhere else by the time my cursor gets there.
System Preferences->Dock->"Position on screen"
That still leaves it centered on that edge, not bound to either side. And that means that the buttons you click on to launch applications (or the trash icon) will move around according to how many programs you currently have running. That means you can't blindly aim the mouse someplace near the corner of the screen and hit a program you want (that's called "muscle memory")- you must stop, look at where the icons have gone based on how much is running, and adjust your aim.
but the operating system is effectively the kernel with an interface, such as a commandline or GUI tool
Well, if that's how you choose to define those words, then yes. But those aren't the definitions found in English dictionaries, or in computer science textbooks- so you'd be speaking a different language than everyone else.
Many people, for example, have built useful Linux computers with neither a command line nor GUI installed.
Environment is all the extra tools
"Environment", like "system", is a hugely generic word, which by itself can mean almost anything at all.
Why would tsunami be more scientifically accurate?
Tsunamis are bigger than tidal waves, and users of the idiom were trying to refer to the largest possible movement of water.
With these trafic rules, a roundabout actually IS better.
True, if you apply a stupid rule, then anything can work badly. I can defeat Tiger Woods in golf if he's using the "One Hand Rule", but that doesn't make me a better player.
If you were drawing up your own traffic rules, you'd have two choices for both stop sign intersections and roundabouts. One of the choices requires a heavy traffic stream to pause and allow a vehicle wanting to cross it to move, and the other does not.
"Vehicles in roundabout have the right of way" means some cars may need to wait indefinately until there is nobody in the roundabout in front of them. But, if you try to "fix" this by saying that cars in the roundabout must yield to allow others to come in, you have turned it into a hazardous demolition derby.
The rule for simple intersections can be changed either way, and its actually safer with the alternating rule (because nobody is encouraged to zip across in a small opening). But a rule to protect roundabouts from persistent blockage will be more dangerous.
Have you ever seen a roundabout in action?
Go visit the "Sagamore Rotary" in the USA. (Google Maps satellite view)
you NEVER wait 5000 cars at a roundabout
Well, if that were always true, then roundabouts can work. But in the real world, often one street is far more popular that the other. That is more likely to occur in a large, semi-rural nation than in a small dense one. Also, traffic patterns in a old and fully-inhabited country like Britain won't change as much as in the USA, where whole new towns are constructed far more frequently.
As I explained, roundabout only does well if the traffic levels remain the same as when it was designed. It cannot be adapted to changes as easily as a stoplight can.
- any busy road is likely to be busy in both directions
If it's only busy in both directions, then the starvation problem I described still happens. Only if all directions are busy can drivers from each direction be sure they'll be allowed to move.
plus, there is nothing to stop you putting traffic lights all over a roundabout, which allows you to control traffic artificially at busy periods.
Except that it if you were going to build lights anyhow, you don't need a roundabout whatsoever, and can use some of the saved space for buildings or sidewalks, or simply improved visibility, making the road safer.
A stoplight is more convenient for drivers, because sometimes they can pass through the intersection without slowing down and all. And, stoplights are safer and more convenient for pedestrians, because they can see cars coming in both directions, and those cars will be forced to stop some of the time. Crossing the street at a roundabout means a car may come at you from around the circle at any time- you never have a guarrantee it's been told to halt.
I don't get all the centipede bashing on here.. it's the best shooter ever made.
Centipede is fine with a trackball, or a mouse. But the problem is that it was re-released for portable devices a few years ago, and playing it with arrow keys makes no more sense than using those controls for Half-Life 2.
Therefore, many people today only remember Centipede as an unplayable cell-phone offering.
The equally or even more unattainable depictions of women in gaming are not targeted at women, but at male players, with the purpose of being strictly a sexual fantasy object. See the difference in tone?
How can you know they're not aspirational? It has been noted that the photography in mens' and womens' magazines are both dominated by airbrushed women in revealing garments. Only by the gender-specific text alongside does an underlying explanation of why she is dressed that way come through.
"Wouldn't you look great if you looked like this?"
Often translated as "I am very sexy"
"I look like this solely to make you want to fuck me."
Often translated as "I am very sexy"
This tone dissuades women from playing such games and game in general because it informs women that the consumers of such entertainment may very well objectify them, too.
As you already mentioned, a girl in a tight evening gown may be either aspirational or objectified. Bloodrayne has nothing gender-specific in its storyline or text addressed to the player- the only way that you could come to that conclusion is by being sexist yourself, and deciding that content relating to violent combat is inherently male.
And some games are historical games in environments where there were simply no women around, like pretty much all WWII games.)
False. In WWII, the army of the USSR made heavy use of female soldiers, who got rifles like everyone else. Other nations, such as France, recruited women to a lesser extent.
For an example in movies, look at Iron Cross. Or for an anti-exmple, look at Enemy At The Gates, where a woman who had really been a sniper was changed into a clerk, because USA audiences wouldn't believe a girl could shoot Nazis.
There is a term for what you are describing:
"Separation of Layers"
False. The term she was describing is the Rule of Modularity. "Separation of Layers" is a special case, which requires that the modules are ordered in a hierarchial pattern. Designs which cannot be described in an acyclical graph may still be modular.
Furthermore, a google search on "separation of layers" produces nothing similar to what she was describing.
roundabouts are the greatest traffic controlling device ever.
No. Except in very limited scenarios of traffic flow variations, they are worse than square intersections. The fundamental problem is that they're not scalable.
A stop-sign can be upgraded to a traffic light if usage has grown too high. Then, that traffic light can have its stop/go periods adjusted to compensate for varying rates of incoming cars throughout the day.
A roundabout is completely nonadjustable. There is a little circle, and that's all. If traffic rate is very low, then a stop sign could've worked, and its a waste. If traffic is very high, then a roundabout would be overwhelmed, and you need electric lights (or a police officer).
The roundabout structure creates the same algorithmic flaw computer scientists call "starvation" in a multitasking operating system. Suppose I have streets A and B crossing each other. And suppose that as new towns are built on either side, the traffic flow of A grows to be 300 times greater than on B. (That exact thing has happened at several places in the USA, which is why roundabouts are being removed in that country).
If there is a stop sign, then cars strictly alternate: one from A, one from B, one from A, etc. Both streets can move. If there is a stop light or traffic officer, then it may alternate like that, or it may be a more complex pattern, such as 50 cars from A, 4 from B. Even in a traffic jam situation, where vehicles might be backed up for 5 kilometers, traffic keeps flowing through both streets at a steady rate.
But if there's a roundabout, and it's very crowded, then cars driving on B simply cannot cross A at all. Because of the traffic jam, there is an effectively infinite supply of cars moving down A. According to the rule, "Vehicles in the roundabout have the right of way". Therefore, as long as cars from A keep coming, people waiting on B can't move at all. It is illegal for them to attempt to cross. They can wait 500 cars or 5000 cars, it doesn't matter.
Conclusion: roundabouts are bad. If traffic is low, a stop sign can do the job with less construction costs. If traffic is high, then a roundabout can't work fairly to all drivers, and electric lights are needed.
If you don't need protection, don't turn it on.
And then don't bother connecting to the internet either, because no web-site operators will let you view their pages without Trusted Computing enabled.
Otherwise, you might republish their copyrighted works without compensation... that's just too much of a risk. Or you could execute many other forms of abusive programs to disrupt the experiences of their other users.
Really, untrusted PCs are just too dangerously unpredictable to allow out in public.
Trusted computing as a whole is a good thing, with one componant that is a very bad thing: Remote attestation.
Nuclear bombs are on a whole good things, with one componant that is a very bad thing: widespread death.
You can't admit that the single motivating factor of a system is bad, but then say that the afterthoughts and bonus utilities somehow make up for it. And if you don't believe remote attestation was the driving factor to create Trusted Computing, just look at its history of sponsors.
This is some of the things you can expect:
Already, we see software design flaws. Just because you mention there are multiple things tells us that it's not a clean system, and that it ignores the traditional Unix dictate: "Do one thing, and do it well".
You list the user blocking unsigned programs from running, and you also list hardware-accelerated encryption. Those are two entirely different features, and there is no good reason why they should be part of the same system. If I desire either of those, I should be able to install it individually.
More importantly, you ignored the most important feature of Trusted Computing: remote attestation. Indeed, it is to support RA that "Trusted" hardware will be built at all- if it was just about the OS not running unsigned programs, that could be implemented in pure software. And the encryption-accelerator is just a bonus feature they tossed in, "As long as we're stamping new chips anyhow". RA says you can prove to remote individuals that you are only running software signed by them, so content publishers can prohibit the use of 3rd party programs to view their data.
Vendor lock-in and beyond.
AC: It isn't usefull by itself, but if you combine it with ExecShield and SELinux it could be a useful security layer.
Or, you could just combine ExecShield and SELinux by themselves and have a useful security layer, without needing Trusted Computing at all.
Brushing aside the minor side-features, Trusted Computing is really about tamper-resistant hardware enforcing the signatures of software on the PC. The main use of that is preventing the legal and physical owner of that PC from hacking programs on his own computer, so that RIAA music publishers can continue to trust it.
I'm buggered if I can find an answer to this, but if anyone is using Konqueror 3.4 with famd,
No, I doubt anybody is using famd. At least, someone who uses removable media (like cdroms) can't very well run it, because it will keep directories open and prevent umounting.
Maybe once linux 2.6.12 brings out the new inotify things, famd will become tolerable to run continually, and it'll start getting bugfixes in.
PS. I am only 30% joking.