My video card certainly isn't a bad one. However, from what I observe from reading MS's literature on system requirements, one really needs some pretty recent, almost gaming-level, video cards along with dual cores and all that jazz to fully take advantage of just it's user interface. Which is utterly insane as I was running Ubuntu with Beryl doing all of it's incredibly (although equally useless) funky window manipulation very smoothly on much lesser hardware. Vista is pure code bloat, and what I detect they attempt to do is use the two GB of very fast RAM which one needs to run Vista as a kind of cache so that things seem smooth. Whereas Linux and XP just *is*.
On my 2.66Ghz P4 with 1.5GB RAM and 7200 rpm HDD, XP runs like a rocket, allowing me to be productive and creative. With Vista it is a complete dog and fights against me as I try to do useful work.
Indeed - that minimal configuration is enough to run XP quite nicely in my experience. And I've tried Vista under what was essentially the middle configuration - what a waste of time. I did only try it on a spare hard drive and leave my main installation drive intact thank doG, and my system with XP, a 2.66Ghz P4 with 1.5 GB RAM totally r0x0rZ speedwise. So exactly *why* would I upgrade?
You make a very good point. In fact, the reason the "IBM compatible" PC became the desktop of choice in the 90s was that most people used one at work, and once they became affordable to the ordinary worker bee they took off. And it follows that as Linux permeates the corporation the familiarity will start to trickle down.
And lets not ignore the halls of learning. Large computer corporations make huge donations of hardware and software to academic institutions in order to breed familiarity. As Linux starts making inroads into the educational market we'll see youth growing up with it, and it will become even more acceptable.
All companies of this size engage in these sorts of games, and always have. It's not considered "evil" by even the most ostensibly ethical of organisations, but a means of maximizing profits or even simple survival in the case of industries with very tight profit margins.
To these corporations the cost of "getting caught" worth it for what they save in taxes in the long run. Sometimes it's cheaper to get a parking ticket than to pay for a parking slot in a large garage when certain things are factored in.
There have been occasional calls by noisemaking politicians about cracking down on what they claim to be tax cheats who suffle their capital offshore to centres such as Bermuda, but you will notice that nothing ever comes of such legislation. This is because the politicians know damn well that a lot of the affected companies would either find other ways of skirting tax laws or in some cases simply cease doing business altogether with the resultant loss of jobs and local tax revenue. In other words, it's better to take the relatively small amount of tax revenue that these companies do generate than to scare them off altogether and get nothing at all.
Cheers
Re:Easier way to colonize the universe
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
Ever read Lord of the Flies?
Re:Easier way to colonize the universe
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
These are my thoughts exactly. First there's the problem of raising them with discipline and all that jazz that really only a human parent could do.
Then there's the problem of loyalty to mother Earth, which would be a completely abstract concept to them. However, the 700-year bio-rocket concept with multiple generations would have the same problem with loyalty.
What the human race does isn't "evil". Evil is a word we give to some peoples' obeyance of our most basic animalistic instincts and reactions. When we go to war with eachother, we're simply acting out Darwinian behaviour, in that one group is attempting to prove that their group is physically stronger and is therefore better suited to withstand the rigors of living on the land. Also that their superior genetic material should be passed along to future generations.
It only gets bad when our behaviour is ultimately self-destructive, as we have here on earth with the creation of weapons which could conceivably destroy all life many times over.
Indeed, in some of the rejected books of the bible, the youthful Jesus was portrayed as a vengeful, even murderous little bastard towards those other kids who pissed him off. But apparently he resurrected his victims. So I guess He should then be fitting as the one all of those gangsta rappers tend to thank when they win in those award shows.
I've always got the impression that DRM was only considered a necessary evil by the content providers such as Apple and even Microsoft, meant to appease the record companies cocaine-induced paranoia about us inherently evil people who, by the very dint of being computer savvy, are inherently prone to raping and pillaging their vaults.
DRM only makes their programming more complex and costly for music distribution and playback applications which they essentially give away for free. They only play ball with the studios because their rights to distribute the content are threatened if they don't use DRM.
Apologies if I'm interpreting your comment incorrectly, but if you're saying that you believe there is such a thing as an unhackable web site, then I can truly say that I'd *never* hire you in an IT capacity. Like an army general who truly believes his forces are invincible, by the very expression of that belief you are defeated before even going into battle.
*Always* assume you are vulnerable. Be paranoid. And spend time snooping and hanging around in the areas where the crackers (to use the *correct* terminology) hang out and catch all the chatter. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how those systems you thought secure really aren't.
Thanks, those are very interesting insights. Indeed all of those things are what should be done, unfortunately I think some coders get themselves caught short by budget and time constraints which compromise security. So one might have a great IT team who desperately want to adhere to best practices, but due to the above limitations and perhaps a pointy-haired boss thrown into the mix (I'd bet that's more of a reason that any corporation is likely to admit) have to do the best they can and pray that the bad guys don't find any vulnerabilities.
And if a hacker does breach the system, who goes down? Hint: it ain't the pointy-haired one...
"If you are seriously claiming that you could 'hack' any host running any software to get arbitrary permissions, or a shell session, or access an arbitrary file"
Holy crap, did I manage to somehow insert invisible text in my message that only *you* can read? Christ, I'm better than I thought...
If not, then I'll just say that what was meant that all sites are theoretically hackable to *some* degree, whether a simple defacement or other relatively innocuous hack. Actually you knew that's what I meant, but chose to misconstrue it in order to mouth off about something when you really should be working on creating the perfect, unhackable website. And when you do, let us all know so we can submit your name for the Nobel Prize in Network Administration, K?
Cheers
Oh and by the way, it is not "tosh". More like "dillinger". Sheesh...
I've been trying Pearpc, but it's doggie slow, and mainly emulates a PowerPC platform. It does run though. Qemu is damned difficult to figure out for my dim brain...
Doh - I meant to say that I've got XP virutalised on Linux installed on that system, and the specs of that system aren't especially great either. Yet a P4 here running the same configuration is rather a drag. Go figure...
That's the comment I got from various American youths. The music they are interested in has no long term value, unlike the Beatles/Stones/et al. Partly this has to do with the fact that most of modern pop is programmed on a cold computer and utterly devoid of real feeling; I get the feeling that while the kids are diggin' modern music at the same time they are unable to form a true connection to it, in the same way a human can't truly fall in love with a computer, because one knows it's an inanimate object at the end of the day. (And yes, I have read Isaac Asimov's robot story on the subject)
When I listen to music I'm partly looking to be wowed by the performance of at least some part of the piece. Current electronically generated and produced pop has no real performances to speak of, or if there is one can't be sure whether it's a sample of some old record thrown into the mix.
The point to all of this is that people now feel no reason to want to own the tracks they think they like (so that they can be listened to years down the road with fond memories) as music has become as commoditized and disposable as Gillette razors - only meant to be used for a certain period of time before being chucked in the bin.
There's a lot more to the problem of course, but the above does play an important part. The record companies need to produce artists (and they are out there) who produce real music and do it well. Fiddling with MIDI settings all day isn't producing music - it's computer programming.
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pH33r me
With this new update, no longer will spotty fourteen year olds be able to crack the AACS code. Instead it will take spotty fifteen year olds.
My video card certainly isn't a bad one. However, from what I observe from reading MS's literature on system requirements, one really needs some pretty recent, almost gaming-level, video cards along with dual cores and all that jazz to fully take advantage of just it's user interface. Which is utterly insane as I was running Ubuntu with Beryl doing all of it's incredibly (although equally useless) funky window manipulation very smoothly on much lesser hardware. Vista is pure code bloat, and what I detect they attempt to do is use the two GB of very fast RAM which one needs to run Vista as a kind of cache so that things seem smooth. Whereas Linux and XP just *is*.
On my 2.66Ghz P4 with 1.5GB RAM and 7200 rpm HDD, XP runs like a rocket, allowing me to be productive and creative. With Vista it is a complete dog and fights against me as I try to do useful work.
Nuff said...
Indeed - that minimal configuration is enough to run XP quite nicely in my experience. And I've tried Vista under what was essentially the middle configuration - what a waste of time. I did only try it on a spare hard drive and leave my main installation drive intact thank doG, and my system with XP, a 2.66Ghz P4 with 1.5 GB RAM totally r0x0rZ speedwise. So exactly *why* would I upgrade?
They should send Chris Hansen instead of the girl to the trial - that'll scare 'em...
Don't assume it's a bad thing either. It's just a thing. That happens. When you power up a computer with Linux installed. Wheeeeee!
You make a very good point. In fact, the reason the "IBM compatible" PC became the desktop of choice in the 90s was that most people used one at work, and once they became affordable to the ordinary worker bee they took off. And it follows that as Linux permeates the corporation the familiarity will start to trickle down.
And lets not ignore the halls of learning. Large computer corporations make huge donations of hardware and software to academic institutions in order to breed familiarity. As Linux starts making inroads into the educational market we'll see youth growing up with it, and it will become even more acceptable.
Cheers
So we can watch news programs that report on billion dollar wastes of money like this silly coupon program.
Cheers
It appears to be quite stable and be the equal of the Windows version. Which is to say it's absolute rubbish. But for SL addicts its there for ya...
...he was attacked by a bat when he was a sbool boy?
[Obligatory geek Monty Python reference]
All companies of this size engage in these sorts of games, and always have. It's not considered "evil" by even the most ostensibly ethical of organisations, but a means of maximizing profits or even simple survival in the case of industries with very tight profit margins.
To these corporations the cost of "getting caught" worth it for what they save in taxes in the long run. Sometimes it's cheaper to get a parking ticket than to pay for a parking slot in a large garage when certain things are factored in.
There have been occasional calls by noisemaking politicians about cracking down on what they claim to be tax cheats who suffle their capital offshore to centres such as Bermuda, but you will notice that nothing ever comes of such legislation. This is because the politicians know damn well that a lot of the affected companies would either find other ways of skirting tax laws or in some cases simply cease doing business altogether with the resultant loss of jobs and local tax revenue. In other words, it's better to take the relatively small amount of tax revenue that these companies do generate than to scare them off altogether and get nothing at all.
Cheers
Ever read Lord of the Flies?
These are my thoughts exactly. First there's the problem of raising them with discipline and all that jazz that really only a human parent could do.
Then there's the problem of loyalty to mother Earth, which would be a completely abstract concept to them. However, the 700-year bio-rocket concept with multiple generations would have the same problem with loyalty.
What the human race does isn't "evil". Evil is a word we give to some peoples' obeyance of our most basic animalistic instincts and reactions. When we go to war with eachother, we're simply acting out Darwinian behaviour, in that one group is attempting to prove that their group is physically stronger and is therefore better suited to withstand the rigors of living on the land. Also that their superior genetic material should be passed along to future generations.
It only gets bad when our behaviour is ultimately self-destructive, as we have here on earth with the creation of weapons which could conceivably destroy all life many times over.
Indeed, in some of the rejected books of the bible, the youthful Jesus was portrayed as a vengeful, even murderous little bastard towards those other kids who pissed him off. But apparently he resurrected his victims. So I guess He should then be fitting as the one all of those gangsta rappers tend to thank when they win in those award shows.
I've always got the impression that DRM was only considered a necessary evil by the content providers such as Apple and even Microsoft, meant to appease the record companies cocaine-induced paranoia about us inherently evil people who, by the very dint of being computer savvy, are inherently prone to raping and pillaging their vaults.
DRM only makes their programming more complex and costly for music distribution and playback applications which they essentially give away for free. They only play ball with the studios because their rights to distribute the content are threatened if they don't use DRM.
Cheers
Apologies if I'm interpreting your comment incorrectly, but if you're saying that you believe there is such a thing as an unhackable web site, then I can truly say that I'd *never* hire you in an IT capacity. Like an army general who truly believes his forces are invincible, by the very expression of that belief you are defeated before even going into battle.
*Always* assume you are vulnerable. Be paranoid. And spend time snooping and hanging around in the areas where the crackers (to use the *correct* terminology) hang out and catch all the chatter. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how those systems you thought secure really aren't.
Cheers
Thanks, those are very interesting insights. Indeed all of those things are what should be done, unfortunately I think some coders get themselves caught short by budget and time constraints which compromise security. So one might have a great IT team who desperately want to adhere to best practices, but due to the above limitations and perhaps a pointy-haired boss thrown into the mix (I'd bet that's more of a reason that any corporation is likely to admit) have to do the best they can and pray that the bad guys don't find any vulnerabilities.
And if a hacker does breach the system, who goes down? Hint: it ain't the pointy-haired one...
Um...
"If you are seriously claiming that you could 'hack' any host running any software to get arbitrary permissions, or a shell session, or access an arbitrary file"
Holy crap, did I manage to somehow insert invisible text in my message that only *you* can read? Christ, I'm better than I thought...
If not, then I'll just say that what was meant that all sites are theoretically hackable to *some* degree, whether a simple defacement or other relatively innocuous hack. Actually you knew that's what I meant, but chose to misconstrue it in order to mouth off about something when you really should be working on creating the perfect, unhackable website. And when you do, let us all know so we can submit your name for the Nobel Prize in Network Administration, K?
Cheers
Oh and by the way, it is not "tosh". More like "dillinger". Sheesh...
Those that have been hacked and those that can be but no-one's bothered to do so yet.
Fact is that there is not such thing as an unhackable site/host, however one can at least make a network more trouble than it's worth to try to hack.
What's that old saw: Anything that the human mind can build another human mind can figure out. Or something like that...
I've been trying Pearpc, but it's doggie slow, and mainly emulates a PowerPC platform. It does run though. Qemu is damned difficult to figure out for my dim brain...
Doh - I meant to say that I've got XP virutalised on Linux installed on that system, and the specs of that system aren't especially great either. Yet a P4 here running the same configuration is rather a drag. Go figure...
I definitely see your point, but I've got XP running on an old Gateway PIII that goes like a native install. Kind of odd actually *grin*.
That's the comment I got from various American youths. The music they are interested in has no long term value, unlike the Beatles/Stones/et al. Partly this has to do with the fact that most of modern pop is programmed on a cold computer and utterly devoid of real feeling; I get the feeling that while the kids are diggin' modern music at the same time they are unable to form a true connection to it, in the same way a human can't truly fall in love with a computer, because one knows it's an inanimate object at the end of the day. (And yes, I have read Isaac Asimov's robot story on the subject)
When I listen to music I'm partly looking to be wowed by the performance of at least some part of the piece. Current electronically generated and produced pop has no real performances to speak of, or if there is one can't be sure whether it's a sample of some old record thrown into the mix.
The point to all of this is that people now feel no reason to want to own the tracks they think they like (so that they can be listened to years down the road with fond memories) as music has become as commoditized and disposable as Gillette razors - only meant to be used for a certain period of time before being chucked in the bin.
There's a lot more to the problem of course, but the above does play an important part. The record companies need to produce artists (and they are out there) who produce real music and do it well. Fiddling with MIDI settings all day isn't producing music - it's computer programming.
Cheers