Obviously, if a documentary is made about something people should believe as gospel truth.
And never expect the situation to change. Apple, being a "corporation" is unable to find well advertised flaws in a product and change corporate policies in response. Therefore, a problem that existed 3 years ago must still exist today.
Conversely, if that flaw does not exist today, it is empiricaly obvious that the flaw never existed, and anyone who says it did is a big fat liar.
The "documentary" includes a recorded segment from the tech support call. Obviously it could have been faked, but what is the motivation for the documentary makers to fake that call? It could have been a stunt to pad their resume (they were film students), it could have been a stealth ad campaign by Apple to spread the word about the existance of those replament battery programs, it might have been a campaign by the alternative battery companies, which seemed to have products out pretty quickly. At this point any evidence either way could be easily faked, and it boils down to the only people who would care are those that might have paid for the refurbished units; which seem oddly quiet on the whole thing.
Will Fiber stand the test of time like copper has... copper has been on the go for over 100 years. Copper is now being used over 1000 times it's specification when it was designed (3kHz back then, way over 5MHz for VSDL etc).
The copper that was laid 100 years ago isn't that cat5e stuff thats supporting 1Gbps today. Copper oxidizes, which makes it prone to cracking, raises it resistance, and other bad stuff. When high frequencies are run accross it, signals tend to "hop", creating interference. The copper infrastructure is a nightmare, poorly labeled, etc. Check out the phone closet in a 30 year old building that has had some good turnover and you'll thank god that isn't your job...
Asimov was a brilliant writer. He's done all sorts of books, including some really interesting history. But keep in mind, Asimov has pretty much stated that he doesn't edit his books, tweaking them until they are perfect. Volume (over 465 books per Amazon) over quality.
That said, I'm surpised no one has mentioned The Foundation series, which was pretty cool.
I like your theory. O'Neill and Teal'c don't want anyone to know they know a good bit about the ancients language, and nobody but them knows they know it. All they had to do was not mention that they learned it during that last cycle ["Dr Jackson translated it on another cycle" they said] an nobody comes bugging them every time theres some ancient text that needs translating, leaving more time for fishing.
(If you think Star Trek is at all realistic, you don't know anything about science.)
First, I don't think any Sci Fi show is realistic, that wasn't my point. A Sci-Fi show establishes its universe; Magic is real, communism works, Reagan caused the fall of the Soviet Union, whatever. Once it establishes this "reality", it should try to remain consistent with it. I don't care that Zat guns stun with one shot, kill with two, and make things disappear with three. Thems the rules, don't bore me with how Steinberg-Theta energy disrupts the milecular bonds of the atoms without generating any heat. Star Trek was doing well if it held to its rules, realistic or not, through a single episode.
I just think it would be fun to include this ability in a show. The character Col. Jack O'Neill isn't dumb, quite the opposite. Given his background in special ops (I even choose to overlook the fact that the Air Force doesn't really have a Special Ops group like the SEALS), he likely already knows a few other languages. Teal'c definately knows at least two. (I also overlook the fact that humans on other planets except one all speak english (that exception being the now eradicated Egypt-world of the original movie
Not neccessarily. I have the ability to travel in space. While it is easy for me to cross the room to get a drink of water, it is difficult for me to cross the Atlantic ocean to get a proper beer. I would assume that time travel works similarly, the further in time you wish to go, the more energy you expend getting there
I don't think they *could* use their knowledge because it was lost. Once the time loop was stopped, it was as if it never happened.
No, this very specifically is not what happened. The Tokra made a comment becoming concerned that they could not reach Earth, and were becoming concerned enough that they almost sent a ship to investigate. So Earth and everywhere else involved "snapped back" to the present. It was the download knowledge of the Ancients that was erased from Jack's brain; this was learned naturally.
Mostly I just love how the series blindly ignores these paradoxes with a wave of the hand, and occasionally a wink. We got more entertaining things to do that come up with midiclorian theories. Stuff just is.
Ah, one of my favorite episodes ever. I'm a little disappointed that they never used Jack O'Neill's and Teal'c knowledge of the ancient language again. They reached the point that they knew it better than Danny boy, after all, since they were effectively the ones who translated the inscriptions.
I've been patiently waiting for Mr. Jackson to start struggling with a translation and Jack walk up and say "No, that's 'keep your arms and legs inside the tram car while gating'" then look over to Teal'c for his confirmation, where he'd get the little head nod and "indeed."
They also created the mini-disc which has no loss when copied. Sony created it so it's ok.
Actually, the Minidisc uses DRM, that why its OK. It spectacularly lame, in that its basically a do not copy bit, and I believe the RIAA gets a piece of blank media sales. This was enough to satisfy the RIAA when it was introduced twenty years ago (almost), so now they are kind of stuck with it.
However even though this uses MS middleware, it could still be a good thing as it might make MSN/Yahoo/AIM less likely to break their protocols just to stymie the open source clients. Maybe not, maybe they will just tell MS to update their middleware, but no way to tell just yet.
Unless MS is paying them for access to their protocols, I doubt anything will change. I actually think that even if MS is paying for access to their protocols, they will still want the software broken every so often by the other guys, since it forces users to buy the software subscription, while they remain innocent.
Let's see - if you don't know the full story about what is going on, there are some alternatives that are pretty clear:
Shoot hijacked plane down, everyone dies. Maybe some more people on the ground.
Follow plane, maybe hijackers crash it and kill everyone on board.
Hiackers land plane (somewhere>?) and a few passengers get killed.
Those were the rules until about 9:30 9/11/01. Once the second plane hit it bacame very clear very fast that we were not dealing with accidents.
Hijackings are not coin flips, if you've seen three hijacked planes flown into landmarks in one morning, the odds are not the historical 3 in 1,000 chance of the plane being used as a weapon, the odds are infintely close to 1 in 1. I doubt we will ever see another hijacking in the traditional sense, because nobody can risk allowing an aircraft like landing at an airport near a city, and I imagine in the face of such an attempt pilots are likely to dump their fuel and enter a terminal dive before allowing a Terrorist to take over and use their plane as a WMD.
This program doesn't infect other programs, it just runs as a separate program placed in your Windows\system directory.
Wouldn't that qualify it as a "Trojan Horse" then? Generally a Trojan Horse is a program that tricks the user into running by appearing as something it is not (hence the double extension trick). Of course the classic Trojan Horse appears to be one thing (like a weather program, or an clock syncronizer) but while it does that thing it secretly does something else, like install keyloggers, adware, etc.
Admittedly, the AV makers have been trying to pollute the definitions, calling these e-mail Trojans "worms" in a PC attempt to avoid assigning blame to the users, but I've always felt these three definitions to be pretty clear and well defined.
Every workstation we buy from Dell has a line item: $50 for Windows XP Professional NTFS
$50 is the cost to you for upgrading from Windows XP Home (included in the base price of the system) to Windows XP Professional, not the price for the entire OS.
It ain't no test, just the usual amount of freedom of movement Dell grant to their partners.
I don't get any of this. Dell's been offering Linux on its servers and Precision Workstations for about three years, partnered with RedHat. Some time ago in the US they created an "N series" line which shipped with no OS, with Linux as an option. Dell has employed developers to work on improving Linux's stability and compatibility. Dell has been very good about Linux in general, even having agents for its Open Manage software that run on Red Hat.
Admittedly they don't heavily advertise what is really a niche product, but they have http://www.dell.com/linux plus a page that is dedicated to these alternative OS desktops; Their support pages typically have several variation of Linux listed for downloading drivers, etc.
Seriously, how much Linux support do you want from them? Are you waiting for the Dell guy to announce "Dude, you're getting a Gentoo Dell!"
in essence, you paid for two chip and were only using one. Yes it was deceptive. The users beleived they had a cpu and a seperate expensive add-on doing the math.
Let me see. Users paid the price for two chip solution that would actually be slower than the single chip solution. Users actually got the faster single chip solution. Instead of forcing users to pay full price for a 486DX, they offered a mislabeled 486DX that they sold to users who already had a 486SX at a large discount.
Yes, lets curse those bastards! Never buy anything from a vendor that gives you more than you paid for!
Yo know, I heard a rumor that Intel is still up to these tricks! Appearantly, all P4 Northwood CPU's are identical, cut from the same slice of Silicon even, burned from the same mask! and they have the gall to sell "3.2" Ghz parts for hundreds more that "2.4" Ghz parts.
Cripes people! It costs about 50cents to actually produce the chips, billions to design the damned things, and this causes some weirdness in the marketing of them. AMD does this as well, the test only enough parts to meet the "demand" for the high speed parts, everything else gets tested at the next lowest speed. There are hundreds of "Overclocking" sites that point this out all over the web. Are you going to accuse Intel of ripping you off because that 2.4Ghz chip could have run at 3.2Ghz? You paid for a level of performance, you got that level of performance.
I suspect the real ability he has is his hand buzzer reaction time. If I recall, you can't buzz in as soon as the question is answered, you have to wait until Alex reads the question, then a signal light is turned on off camera. Pushing the button before the light comes on triggers a two second lockout. So you have time to decide if you are going for it, then concentrate on buzzing in. Like drag racing, its knowing more questions to answers, it being first off the line so you have more opportunities.
And as far as the record goes, an important factor is that until recently after 5 wins a champion was retired, and would only come back for a tournament of champions. So he's the first "champion" to be given this opportunity.
Which is not to imply that he's not preternaturally smart, just that there's more to it than just trivia capacity.
It takes a fair amount of time to stock the sales channel. This means that before you see the latest digital camera on the shelf at the local camera store, it has to go through a three or four hands.
A good point, but I think it's balanced by the lack of advertising and promotion most cameras get. Unlike Video cards, there isn't the rush of salvitating maniacs aching to get their hands on the latest and greatest; its much closer to a commodity market where most folks walk into their favorite retailer thinking "I want to spend about $300 on a camera". Most advertising I've seen is far more "Brand" focused than "Model" focused.
If you are running a retail store, you can easily get stuck with product that is obsolete but can't be sold for cost.
Another good point. Nikon I think has the right answer; when a new model is released the offer a rebate on the old model, so far this has been a pretty compelling lure.
Since most of these updates are minor tweaks, rapid product cycles help remove that sales lag that hits about 9 months after a product is released; I dont want to buy now becaus enext years model is due soon.
Of course, this plays havoc with review readers, since by the time a product is reviewed, a new batch of products is out...
What you are misssing is that knowing his watch wasn't allowed on premises at work, he continued wearing it every day. Why? Was he hoping one day they wouldn't notice him, so then he could sneak out company secrets? Did he think he was making some sort of statement to the security guard about the policy, besides "I'm a troublemaker who ought to be fired"? Was it important that he had the USB storage handy on the drive home? Could he not afford a $20 Timex, but he needed a watch handy for the walk from his car to the security desk?
I have to wonder if, at some point, the Windows coders will have to move some of the GUI stuff into userspace to improve kernel reliability and speed.
Considering them moved some video stuff out of the user space and into the kernel space to improve video speed when the went from NT 4.0 to NT 5.0 (Oops, thats Windows 2000), Its not likely.
The problem is MS is trying to merge their desktop OS (Windows 95/98/Me) with their server OS (Windows NT 3.x/4.0). The first try was the stillborn Win2k, which went out the door with only some of the "merged" capability ready. Win XP is the realization of that dream, though it was largely accomplished by waiting for hardware capability to acheive the speed required.
So now the real question is: Given a choice between implementing something in a way to maximize speed or stability/security, which method gets implemented?
If you couldn't find the tapes for $50 you haven't looked in a while, or didn't look very well. Insight
and
Dell both had them for under $50 each, I imagine I could have gone to a local vendor as well since in the past I've had good luck with getting my local vendor to match prices on items such as Bulk tape orders, not to mention any of the other large online vendors such CDW.
Slashdot Mirror
And never expect the situation to change. Apple, being a "corporation" is unable to find well advertised flaws in a product and change corporate policies in response. Therefore, a problem that existed 3 years ago must still exist today.
Conversely, if that flaw does not exist today, it is empiricaly obvious that the flaw never existed, and anyone who says it did is a big fat liar.
The "documentary" includes a recorded segment from the tech support call. Obviously it could have been faked, but what is the motivation for the documentary makers to fake that call? It could have been a stunt to pad their resume (they were film students), it could have been a stealth ad campaign by Apple to spread the word about the existance of those replament battery programs, it might have been a campaign by the alternative battery companies, which seemed to have products out pretty quickly. At this point any evidence either way could be easily faked, and it boils down to the only people who would care are those that might have paid for the refurbished units; which seem oddly quiet on the whole thing.
The copper that was laid 100 years ago isn't that cat5e stuff thats supporting 1Gbps today. Copper oxidizes, which makes it prone to cracking, raises it resistance, and other bad stuff. When high frequencies are run accross it, signals tend to "hop", creating interference. The copper infrastructure is a nightmare, poorly labeled, etc. Check out the phone closet in a 30 year old building that has had some good turnover and you'll thank god that isn't your job...
That said, I'm surpised no one has mentioned The Foundation series, which was pretty cool.
It works for me...
First, I don't think any Sci Fi show is realistic, that wasn't my point. A Sci-Fi show establishes its universe; Magic is real, communism works, Reagan caused the fall of the Soviet Union, whatever. Once it establishes this "reality", it should try to remain consistent with it. I don't care that Zat guns stun with one shot, kill with two, and make things disappear with three. Thems the rules, don't bore me with how Steinberg-Theta energy disrupts the milecular bonds of the atoms without generating any heat. Star Trek was doing well if it held to its rules, realistic or not, through a single episode.
I just think it would be fun to include this ability in a show. The character Col. Jack O'Neill isn't dumb, quite the opposite. Given his background in special ops (I even choose to overlook the fact that the Air Force doesn't really have a Special Ops group like the SEALS), he likely already knows a few other languages. Teal'c definately knows at least two. (I also overlook the fact that humans on other planets except one all speak english (that exception being the now eradicated Egypt-world of the original movie
Not neccessarily. I have the ability to travel in space. While it is easy for me to cross the room to get a drink of water, it is difficult for me to cross the Atlantic ocean to get a proper beer. I would assume that time travel works similarly, the further in time you wish to go, the more energy you expend getting there
No, it's actually the closest, most comfortable shave you can get.
Actually, I think its the 5th car Pops Racer built for his son Speed, complete with in trunk seatbelts for Sprittle and Chim Chim...
No, this very specifically is not what happened. The Tokra made a comment becoming concerned that they could not reach Earth, and were becoming concerned enough that they almost sent a ship to investigate. So Earth and everywhere else involved "snapped back" to the present. It was the download knowledge of the Ancients that was erased from Jack's brain; this was learned naturally.
Mostly I just love how the series blindly ignores these paradoxes with a wave of the hand, and occasionally a wink. We got more entertaining things to do that come up with midiclorian theories. Stuff just is.
Do not hit golf balls through the Stargate.
Ah, one of my favorite episodes ever. I'm a little disappointed that they never used Jack O'Neill's and Teal'c knowledge of the ancient language again. They reached the point that they knew it better than Danny boy, after all, since they were effectively the ones who translated the inscriptions.
I've been patiently waiting for Mr. Jackson to start struggling with a translation and Jack walk up and say "No, that's 'keep your arms and legs inside the tram car while gating'" then look over to Teal'c for his confirmation, where he'd get the little head nod and "indeed."
But thats just me :^D
Actually, the Minidisc uses DRM, that why its OK. It spectacularly lame, in that its basically a do not copy bit, and I believe the RIAA gets a piece of blank media sales. This was enough to satisfy the RIAA when it was introduced twenty years ago (almost), so now they are kind of stuck with it.
Unless MS is paying them for access to their protocols, I doubt anything will change. I actually think that even if MS is paying for access to their protocols, they will still want the software broken every so often by the other guys, since it forces users to buy the software subscription, while they remain innocent.
Shoot hijacked plane down, everyone dies. Maybe some more people on the ground.
Follow plane, maybe hijackers crash it and kill everyone on board.
Hiackers land plane (somewhere>?) and a few passengers get killed.
Those were the rules until about 9:30 9/11/01. Once the second plane hit it bacame very clear very fast that we were not dealing with accidents.
Hijackings are not coin flips, if you've seen three hijacked planes flown into landmarks in one morning, the odds are not the historical 3 in 1,000 chance of the plane being used as a weapon, the odds are infintely close to 1 in 1. I doubt we will ever see another hijacking in the traditional sense, because nobody can risk allowing an aircraft like landing at an airport near a city, and I imagine in the face of such an attempt pilots are likely to dump their fuel and enter a terminal dive before allowing a Terrorist to take over and use their plane as a WMD.
You're right.
This program doesn't infect other programs, it just runs as a separate program placed in your Windows\system directory.
Wouldn't that qualify it as a "Trojan Horse" then? Generally a Trojan Horse is a program that tricks the user into running by appearing as something it is not (hence the double extension trick). Of course the classic Trojan Horse appears to be one thing (like a weather program, or an clock syncronizer) but while it does that thing it secretly does something else, like install keyloggers, adware, etc.
Admittedly, the AV makers have been trying to pollute the definitions, calling these e-mail Trojans "worms" in a PC attempt to avoid assigning blame to the users, but I've always felt these three definitions to be pretty clear and well defined.
Since they claim it requires user intervention, that would make it a virus, since worms are self-propagating.
Of course, given the accuracy I've come to expect from Slashdot summaries, it could be a new version of MS IE...
$50 is the cost to you for upgrading from Windows XP Home (included in the base price of the system) to Windows XP Professional, not the price for the entire OS.
You're right, Dell would never offer Linux in the US.
I don't get any of this. Dell's been offering Linux on its servers and Precision Workstations for about three years, partnered with RedHat. Some time ago in the US they created an "N series" line which shipped with no OS, with Linux as an option. Dell has employed developers to work on improving Linux's stability and compatibility. Dell has been very good about Linux in general, even having agents for its Open Manage software that run on Red Hat.
Admittedly they don't heavily advertise what is really a niche product, but they have http://www.dell.com/linux plus a page that is dedicated to these alternative OS desktops; Their support pages typically have several variation of Linux listed for downloading drivers, etc.
Seriously, how much Linux support do you want from them? Are you waiting for the Dell guy to announce "Dude, you're getting a Gentoo Dell!"
send an invite over to joebob@imaphost.com
Woo Hoo!
Let me see. Users paid the price for two chip solution that would actually be slower than the single chip solution. Users actually got the faster single chip solution. Instead of forcing users to pay full price for a 486DX, they offered a mislabeled 486DX that they sold to users who already had a 486SX at a large discount.
Yes, lets curse those bastards! Never buy anything from a vendor that gives you more than you paid for!
Yo know, I heard a rumor that Intel is still up to these tricks! Appearantly, all P4 Northwood CPU's are identical, cut from the same slice of Silicon even, burned from the same mask! and they have the gall to sell "3.2" Ghz parts for hundreds more that "2.4" Ghz parts.
Cripes people! It costs about 50cents to actually produce the chips, billions to design the damned things, and this causes some weirdness in the marketing of them. AMD does this as well, the test only enough parts to meet the "demand" for the high speed parts, everything else gets tested at the next lowest speed. There are hundreds of "Overclocking" sites that point this out all over the web. Are you going to accuse Intel of ripping you off because that 2.4Ghz chip could have run at 3.2Ghz? You paid for a level of performance, you got that level of performance.
And as far as the record goes, an important factor is that until recently after 5 wins a champion was retired, and would only come back for a tournament of champions. So he's the first "champion" to be given this opportunity.
Which is not to imply that he's not preternaturally smart, just that there's more to it than just trivia capacity.
A good point, but I think it's balanced by the lack of advertising and promotion most cameras get. Unlike Video cards, there isn't the rush of salvitating maniacs aching to get their hands on the latest and greatest; its much closer to a commodity market where most folks walk into their favorite retailer thinking "I want to spend about $300 on a camera". Most advertising I've seen is far more "Brand" focused than "Model" focused.
If you are running a retail store, you can easily get stuck with product that is obsolete but can't be sold for cost.
Another good point. Nikon I think has the right answer; when a new model is released the offer a rebate on the old model, so far this has been a pretty compelling lure.
Of course, this plays havoc with review readers, since by the time a product is reviewed, a new batch of products is out...
What you are misssing is that knowing his watch wasn't allowed on premises at work, he continued wearing it every day. Why? Was he hoping one day they wouldn't notice him, so then he could sneak out company secrets? Did he think he was making some sort of statement to the security guard about the policy, besides "I'm a troublemaker who ought to be fired"? Was it important that he had the USB storage handy on the drive home? Could he not afford a $20 Timex, but he needed a watch handy for the walk from his car to the security desk?
Considering them moved some video stuff out of the user space and into the kernel space to improve video speed when the went from NT 4.0 to NT 5.0 (Oops, thats Windows 2000), Its not likely.
The problem is MS is trying to merge their desktop OS (Windows 95/98/Me) with their server OS (Windows NT 3.x/4.0). The first try was the stillborn Win2k, which went out the door with only some of the "merged" capability ready. Win XP is the realization of that dream, though it was largely accomplished by waiting for hardware capability to acheive the speed required.
So now the real question is: Given a choice between implementing something in a way to maximize speed or stability/security, which method gets implemented?
Heck, Pricewatch even lists them.