That is a strange argument I hear over and over again. By sales volume, Apple is something like the #3 PC manufacturer. Apple's competition is NOT the Windows platform (THAT is the platform their competition is on). If it were, Apple would sell their OS to pre-load onto any manufacturer's computer (to compete with the Windows Platform). Apple competes on hardware sales and it is pretty clear that they choose to compete ONLY where the high profit margin is. Many PC companies choose to compete where the volume is (budget, low profit margin PCs) AS WELL AS where the high margin is: lowering their overall profit margin but boosting their volume/revenue numbers. Apple may even be the #1 PC manufacturer when it comes to profit margin (per unit and quite likely as an aggregate number).
Back to cell phones... Do you think Samsung looks at its (cell phone) competitors' numbers and says "WE" (the "we" being all manufacturers selling cell phones on the Android platform, AKA, Samsung's competition) are beating iPhone? Maybe to the press, they smile and say so but where it counts they look at sales numbers (for their competing smartphones) and compare those to their own. In the only important (to a business) end-game, revenue (for the splashy numbers to show the stock market) and profit (to succeed), are the only ways to compare to competition.
Re:How about some more *durable* flash drives?
on
16GB Flash USB Dongle
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· Score: 1
Our department just ordered usb thumbdrives for all of us from Newegg (Kingmax 1GB). These things are pretty nifty (size of a piece of Trident chewing gum... the whole thing is the usb connector). We wanted something ultra durable and something that would actually fit on a keychain (and no caps to lose) and we read reviews about how people ran these through washing machines so we gave them a try.
They've been pretty good and durable so far (about a month) and were on the cheap (under $20 a piece) but they are so little some people have lost them (make sure to loop it onto your keychain with a proper metal loop, not the included crap) and, you can put it in the usb port upside down (it fits but doesn't mount) so sometimes you have to flip it over and plug it back in again. Sorry to sound like I'm selling one of these... I'm just excited to finally have a thumbdrive small enough to put on a keychain and not have it be bigger than any of my keys.
Just looked over the PerlHP site... that's pretty sweet!
Haven't tried anything in depth with this yet but have you heard about how it fares with mod_perl (as far as turning "query arguments and cookies into global variables", as stated on the PerlHP web site)?
So right you are! I work for a semi-top tier private school (not ivy league but well respected in rankings and that sort of sphere) and I pull in a modest hourly wage (hourly is great in University land as overtime opportunities abound). My benefits are pretty decent and definitely make the lower than for profit business wages worth it.
I've also found that if you get your job done well and are a smiling face known school wide then you are all but impervious to being fired. Not that it is impossible and that those same traits won't get you far elsewhere but I think you are safer than in the corporate world.
The tuition thing varies school to school. I've worked for two universities now (one a public state school and now this private school). The public school always whined about not having $$$ and tuition waivers were more of a myth than a reality. At this private university now, it is common place and many of my coworkers take full advantage of this benefit (I certainly considered it a benefit when applying). You can have a 30 plus thousand dollar a year Master's degree tuition waived with your supervisor's magic wand.
The trick is, if you work for an university and plan to take advantage of this, become very good friends with your supervisor who can sign off for this and if your grades are a worry in applying to the school, become friends and the most responsive tech support to the admissions decision makers in the track you decide to pursue if possible. Small talk about your educational goals and giving them extra special attention can net you a courtesy admit even when you're not the most highly qualified because you have a colossal in!
Also, plan to be there for the long haul (at least a year before you start applying for admission) and don't jump ship as soon as you get your degree. There are lots of vultures doing this and they can not use the job as a reference later because their co-workers feel they were taken advantage of. University folk like to take care of their own but despise the people who crash the party for the free booze and food then leave when they've had their fill.
You can also record the music to MP3 on the computer while you're playing it on iTunes from the stereo mix and/or wave output (no burning required but, you must re-enter all the song data again). The same works with DRM'd WMA's for that matter... where there's a will, there's a way.
Yes, Apple chooses to lock you into iPod for playback of the DRM'd iTMS songs to sell their hardware (iPod). That's Apple for you, but since it's a small market share, people seldom cry monopoly on them. This is an interesting basis for a suit, but, as you indicate, there is plenty of choice so it is unlikely to hold water.
Microsoft will at least license to your hardware for a price (if you're an MP3 player manufacturer) the ability to play their WMA DRM'd files, as you indicated that Apple won't. Since Apple doesn't make money (well, any significant amounts of profit) with their music store sales, they have no interest in licensing the DRM to other hardware vendors. As indicated in another thread for this article, iTunes is just a sales tool for the iPod. It is a sales pitch for the profitable hardware as saturday morning cartoons are a sales pitch for branded toys (in most cases).
What is monopolistic is not even being able to burn a CD or even change the encoding of a particular piece of music because of DRM, such as WMA.
Really? Compare the terms of Apple's iTunes (search in that page for the "Usage Rules" several paragraphs down from the top of the page) to those of MSN Music (DRM'd WMA files)... it seems they are the same. You can burn a CD from DRM'd WMA files and then rip to MP3 (though that is against the terms of both services, there is nothing yet enabled to programatically stop you from doing so with either music service). Actually, one difference is, there is no policy limit (in the MSN service content usage rules) to the amount of burned to Audio CD playlists in MSN Music vs. a limit of 7 in iTunes.
While it is technically possible to deny the burning of CD's from WMA DRM'd music, current competition with iTunes stops that DRM feature from being used (at the moment). I still don't see how this is monopolistic in comparison to Apple's iTunes (Apple may decide (or be forced) to forbid burning of their DRM'd iTunes songs to Audio CD to stop "piracy" if music labels decide they don't want to allow it anymore):
So I download musinc from iTunes, burn it to a CD, then rip it as an MP3. That doesn't sound like lock-in to me -- it sounds like Apple had to accomadte the demands of the labels in order to even begin to sell the music in the first place!
It all depends on the RIAA monopoly and what they decide are "fair" terms for them to impose on consumers. Read the copyright on any RIAA label audio CD... you didn't buy the music, just a license to use it. All you own is the piece of plastic the music resides on. Just my $0.02
The fifth amendment of the US Constitution reads: (Source:)
"Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Person is explicitly stated here, so I'm not sure that it would be a problem to use your property as evidence against you. This could be somewhat ambigous (possibly in the future) if someone has, for instance, a prosthetic limb that collects data and that limb is compelled to give "testimony" (divulge data stored within it). That's, of course, assuming that a prosthetic limb is now or in the future legally considered a part of your body (anyone know for sure?), then it'd certainly be an interesting argument.
I don't think a car would be considered a part of one's self so, it wouldn't necessarily infringe on your fifth amendment rights to use data from the Black Box in your car as a "witness" against you (much like a murderer's gun can be used as evidence to forensically trace it to bullets in a victim). IANAL, nor do I play one on tv... heck I don't even watch people play them on tv, so this is just my opinion, for what that's worth.
In all fairness, I don't think the Black Box was the damning evidence here. Police forensics can pretty much do some calculations and figure out how fast the car was going. I mean, not to be insensitive, but a human being's remains hit by a car going 98 miles per hour will NOT look the same (all things being equal, mass of the car, etc.) as the those after being hit by the same car going 30 miles per hour. The impact alone must have propelled the victim an incredible distance or practically shattered his body (I didn't read if he was clipped by the car or hit full on).
The Black Box, in this case, may only show new information that the police may have been unable to prove beyond a doubt (as noted in another post), they probably had a good idea of the speed, but may not have been able to prove that the driver didn't try to break and that he had the accelerator to the floor (which would certainly affect the severity of the punishment / crime).
My hardware and software includes (I know, not the latest and greatest, but
not a slouch either):
Windows XP Pro (all latest patches... this computer has not crashed in over
2 years... is not continously on, but does not crash when I use it for over
2 years)
AMD Athlon XP 1900+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.6GHz
512MB DDR 266 RAM
ATI Radeon 8500 128MB (DirectX 8 Support)
DirecX 9.0b (4.09.0000.0902)
Creative Soundblaster Live! 5.1 PCI
Clearly, I meet the 'minimum requirements'... according to the game's
accompanying readme.txt, the minumum requirements are:
A 1.5GHz Pentium3/Athlon or faster.
512MB of RAM (or more)
A Geforce4Ti (or higher) or ATI Radeon8500 (or higher) graphics card
supporting pixel shaders 1.3, preferably with 128MB or more of VRAM.
Some kind of sound hardware
DirectX 9.0b
These requirements were not kidding... the game runs extremely slowly on my
hardware. It was chugging along at, I'd guess, 10-15 frames per second
(I'm not sure what resolution it was running at or color depth, but I run Windows
at 1024x768x32bpp). The game was ok looking, visually, in some aspects was better
looking than the original Unreal game, in others, not as good. Gameplay
was not particularly exciting... though, at 10-15 frames per second, it might
not be anyhow, but I only played it for about 2 minutes.
After 2 minutes, the game crashed and crashed Windows as well... Probably a
result of it being 'beta' software, but nevertheless, a rare occurence
on my particular Windows XP PC. As noted above, it's been over 2 years
since anything caused Windows XP to crash on me! Not sure if my hardware
was overwhelmed, the game being buggy, or if DirectX just killed it, but that's what happened.
If you have a computer, less than 1 year old, with the latest hardware and loaded
with RAM, this game will probably work for you. It doesn't work
too well for the minimum requirements (in my experience, YMMV).
Interesting that they can pull this off in such a small package and trying
out to see how it works for you. My $0.02.
From my understanding, it's related to the player itself... for instance, QuickTime under Windows and Mac integrates with Flash player that can (and does) open links. Realplayer has a similar mechnaism, though I'm less up on the technical details of that one.
As with anything, it depends on the player application and the OS. In Linux the player applications, most likely, ignore these (probably undocumented, or just inherently unreproducable at this time in a Linux GUI) ways to open a browser after or during playback of a movie.
That way, you've got as many as you want, $150 each, running Linux... life is good! Get a decent switch and away you go! And, they don't take up too much room or make too much noise... just get a table and stack 'em.
Windows Media Player seems to have the startling ability to launch IE to view websites which are somehow embedded in (at least) video files. An ambitious coder could embed a link in a video file to a site which exploits a vulnerability and run arbitrary code.
So does Quicktime player and Real Player. What's your point? On Windows, if the default browser is IE, pretty much anything has the ability to launch a website that runs exploits. There are various ways to work around this, even in IE (including making use of trusted and untrusted zones, disabling ActiveX controls, etc.), but perhaps on of the easiest is to disable IE (Norton Internet Security, for instance, can just block its ability to access the Internet) and use browsers that are safer and less exploitable like (insert your favorite non-MS web browser here) as your "default browser" in Windows.
Of course, you can always switch from Windows to something else (but that is not necessarily the easiest thing to do if you are using Windows extensively and have a large collection of programs that you don't care to part with that won't fully work with Wine/Codeweavers, Win4Lin, etc.).
Windows 2000, isn't what I would describe as multi-user
That is simply not true. Windows NT (be it 4.0, 5.0 (Windows 2000), 5.1 (XP), 5.2 (Windows 2003)) is a multi-user operating system. What you are describing is logging into multiple accounts through a GUI. Fast user switching, what you are referring to being in Windows XP and being hack and slash, is actually opening a Graphical Terminal Windows to connect to a locally running Terminal Services as another user in Windows (both (or more) users are simultaneously logged on as different users running with different credentials, permissions, groups, etc.)
This is great for a desktop computer, but is just one of the characteristics of "multi-user" operating systems IMHO. Another characteristic of "multi-user" operating systems present in Windows NT, is that you can run services (somewhat equivalent in concept and practice to *nix daemons) as users. You can run, for instance, Apache for Windows as a service under any username you want (you can create a user and Apache's documentation explains this in detail) with little to no system privileges and run Apache's service explicitly as that user. What happens is that, depending on how little access the user has to the machine, Apache, likewise, has little to no privilege to files, folders, reading, writing, executing, etc. on that machine.
Clearly versions of Windows running the Windows NT kernel, love it or hate it, are "multi-user" operating systems as IBM indicates in their article.
BTW, timothy, just so you know - when inserting a clarifying phrase into a quote, one encloses it in square brackets and not normal brackets.
Actually, if you'd read the article, that is how the quote appears in the original article text. So, this isn't Timothy's fault, but the author of the article's (ALLISON LINN, AP Business Writer).
While we're talking about that wonderfully sensationalist quote, it'd be interesting if journalists would stick to unaltered quotes (this one has been cut to appear particularly imflammatory, hence the... (the quote probably was in full context as well, but those of us who weren't there don't get the whole quote in context, only Allison's edited version of the quote)).
I wish that journalists would put full quotes in articles without any editing to make the quotes fit with their sensationalist stories (let the stories speak for themselves, without having to guide the audience toward their conclusions (you expect that in commentary, not news)). But, then, can you trust journalist integrity when advertising dollars are at stake (as in, the advertising keeps the journalist's publication afloat, so the more sensationalist, the better)?
Re:it's not thermite
on
Thebroken Videos
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· Score: 4, Insightful
And they're idiots. not only was their premise of "destroy your data" poorly thought out (it's a switch sticking out the side of the laptop, with no safety), but it also probably didn't even damage the hard drive platters.
Dude,
It's a joke! If you've seen the rest of the episodes with Ramzi (he's in all of them so far), any segments with him in it are a joke (as in on purpose to get a laugh or two).
Also, the whole thing kinda mildly mixes (some) tech reality with humorous stereotypes of Hackers (the dudes drink beer throughout the whole show... every show). Most conversations I've had with "real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue" would probably make extremely boring tv (Not to say that it isn't possible (never say never) to have a good show with real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue, but imho, it is less likely).
Since this is an unofficial spin-off of TechTV's "Dark Tips" with Kevin Rose (Kevin in TheBroken), they are instinctively trying to be entertaining (sparing those who just want a laugh from a seminar in hacking windows (not to mention, sparing themselves from DMCA implications of getting that specific... everything is kinda vague on purpose)). I suspect that most of their regular viewers are also regular TechTV viewers (and probably not "real" hackers (no matter how bizzarly spelled)).
With the exception of the Intel 3D "extreme" video card (maybe the same, but probably less desireable than the eMac's Radeon 7500) and the lack of standard DVD-ROM drive on the Dell (but it's only $30 extra by selecting this option: Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive [add $30 or $1/month1]) the Dell, for is definitely a comparable (probably a better) value for the hardware, dollar for dollar. Now, if we're talking $499 after a rebate for the Dell vs. $799 for the Apple, that's a $300 Apple premium on a low-end Apple vs. a low-end PC (by today's standards).
Putting $799 total into a PC would definitely get you far closer to today's cutting edge than $799 would in an Apple. CLEARLY, Apples ARE comparatively expensive (even the lowest end Apple IS expensive compared to a low end PC). Of course, Apple folks don't tend to buy them for the cheap prices so my post clearly just addresses purely monetary values you brought up (and comparison is how one generally determines what "expensive" means).
What strikes me is that, for the most part, Apples use more or less the same commodity hardware PC parts that drove PC prices into the gutter (except motherboards, processors, and special Apple versions of graphics cards (probably VERY similar to PC brehteren)) but they just cost more. Unless Apple is using uber-cool american master craftsmen to hand assemble these beauties (they are perty), which I somehow doubt... their origin is most likely very geographically similar to their PC brehteren, how can anyone call them any
Another, option (for those in the know on editing Win2k/XP Local Security Policies, etc) is to check out this guide on MS's web site.
With that guide, you're on your way to creating a template for your family, friends, etc. that you can easily email to them (then they just right click on the file and "Install" from the right click menu). With some configuration in creating one of these templates, you can keep your family, friends, etc., that have no admin backgrounds a bit more locked down than the default for Windows (pants down). Why not help them pull Windows pants back up;)
May I just take this opportunity to say that Bill and Steve have ENTIRELY too much time on their hands! They spent all that time filming the spoof.
Don't they have an empire to run and stuff? I'm surprised they didn't make Agent Smith be Linus or Larry Ellison (that one's probably more appropriate, though, they think of Linux as a virus, so Linus is probably more what they wanted to use).
Seriously, and I thought I slacked at work! These guys sit around shooting spoofs;)
Republicans reboot more than Democrats, details at 11...
But seriously, uptime is an interesting measure of the consecutive seconds / minutes / hours / days a system or service is available, but... I'd find more useful, particularly when searching for a web hosting company, detailed statistics of how long they are down! Do they take 10 minutes to reboot or half a day, for instance!
Some of the lower priced hosting companies, for instance, often have occasional enormous downtimes, though their system may have a stellar uptime record between reboots!
Heck even more useful, though I don't know how anyone would be able to get the real facts on this, how many of the downtimes are system crashes vs. hardware or software maintenance / updates / upgrades or just quick reboots to implement patches / moving services to another machine, etc. Of course, that would require some sort of reporting by ISP's and, the shoddier ones would undoubtedly lie about their problems.
Because, as an "Anonymous Coward" you don't get any mod points. Obviously, if you had mod points, you could have modded this up (which particularly entertained you).
True that! On Windows, when you install Mozilla, a little dinosaur should pop up and eat all the IE icons on the screen, then regurgitate eggs in where the IE icons used to be that hatch into little baby dinosaurs that exponentially go eating up the little Blue E's and reproducing on the desktop! They'll undoubtedly gobble up the end user, in the end though:(
And, realistically, I betcha most of those huge companies have Linux (at this point in time) only in the Server Room (in large distribution). Most of the desktops running corporate-wide are probably still running MS.
The disturbing thing is that some bean counters out there will be persuaded that a $300 Microsoft Tax for Windows is more cost-effective than the potential $699 SCO Tax for Linux. Sigh...
Maybe Microsoft will prove everyone wrong and if SCO wins their court case(s), MS might simply jack the Tax on Windows all the way up to the SCO level (to be competitive on price). Anyone feeling queasy yet?
Slashdot Mirror
That is a strange argument I hear over and over again. By sales volume, Apple is something like the #3 PC manufacturer. Apple's competition is NOT the Windows platform (THAT is the platform their competition is on). If it were, Apple would sell their OS to pre-load onto any manufacturer's computer (to compete with the Windows Platform). Apple competes on hardware sales and it is pretty clear that they choose to compete ONLY where the high profit margin is. Many PC companies choose to compete where the volume is (budget, low profit margin PCs) AS WELL AS where the high margin is: lowering their overall profit margin but boosting their volume/revenue numbers. Apple may even be the #1 PC manufacturer when it comes to profit margin (per unit and quite likely as an aggregate number).
Back to cell phones... Do you think Samsung looks at its (cell phone) competitors' numbers and says "WE" (the "we" being all manufacturers selling cell phones on the Android platform, AKA, Samsung's competition) are beating iPhone? Maybe to the press, they smile and say so but where it counts they look at sales numbers (for their competing smartphones) and compare those to their own. In the only important (to a business) end-game, revenue (for the splashy numbers to show the stock market) and profit (to succeed), are the only ways to compare to competition.
Our department just ordered usb thumbdrives for all of us from Newegg (Kingmax 1GB). These things are pretty nifty (size of a piece of Trident chewing gum... the whole thing is the usb connector). We wanted something ultra durable and something that would actually fit on a keychain (and no caps to lose) and we read reviews about how people ran these through washing machines so we gave them a try.
They've been pretty good and durable so far (about a month) and were on the cheap (under $20 a piece) but they are so little some people have lost them (make sure to loop it onto your keychain with a proper metal loop, not the included crap) and, you can put it in the usb port upside down (it fits but doesn't mount) so sometimes you have to flip it over and plug it back in again. Sorry to sound like I'm selling one of these... I'm just excited to finally have a thumbdrive small enough to put on a keychain and not have it be bigger than any of my keys.
Just looked over the PerlHP site... that's pretty sweet!
Haven't tried anything in depth with this yet but have you heard about how it fares with mod_perl (as far as turning "query arguments and cookies into global variables", as stated on the PerlHP web site)?
So right you are! I work for a semi-top tier private school (not ivy league but well respected in rankings and that sort of sphere) and I pull in a modest hourly wage (hourly is great in University land as overtime opportunities abound). My benefits are pretty decent and definitely make the lower than for profit business wages worth it.
I've also found that if you get your job done well and are a smiling face known school wide then you are all but impervious to being fired. Not that it is impossible and that those same traits won't get you far elsewhere but I think you are safer than in the corporate world.
The tuition thing varies school to school. I've worked for two universities now (one a public state school and now this private school). The public school always whined about not having $$$ and tuition waivers were more of a myth than a reality. At this private university now, it is common place and many of my coworkers take full advantage of this benefit (I certainly considered it a benefit when applying). You can have a 30 plus thousand dollar a year Master's degree tuition waived with your supervisor's magic wand.
The trick is, if you work for an university and plan to take advantage of this, become very good friends with your supervisor who can sign off for this and if your grades are a worry in applying to the school, become friends and the most responsive tech support to the admissions decision makers in the track you decide to pursue if possible. Small talk about your educational goals and giving them extra special attention can net you a courtesy admit even when you're not the most highly qualified because you have a colossal in!
Also, plan to be there for the long haul (at least a year before you start applying for admission) and don't jump ship as soon as you get your degree. There are lots of vultures doing this and they can not use the job as a reference later because their co-workers feel they were taken advantage of. University folk like to take care of their own but despise the people who crash the party for the free booze and food then leave when they've had their fill.
You can also record the music to MP3 on the computer while you're playing it on iTunes from the stereo mix and/or wave output (no burning required but, you must re-enter all the song data again). The same works with DRM'd WMA's for that matter... where there's a will, there's a way.
Yes, Apple chooses to lock you into iPod for playback of the DRM'd iTMS songs to sell their hardware (iPod). That's Apple for you, but since it's a small market share, people seldom cry monopoly on them. This is an interesting basis for a suit, but, as you indicate, there is plenty of choice so it is unlikely to hold water.
Microsoft will at least license to your hardware for a price (if you're an MP3 player manufacturer) the ability to play their WMA DRM'd files, as you indicated that Apple won't. Since Apple doesn't make money (well, any significant amounts of profit) with their music store sales, they have no interest in licensing the DRM to other hardware vendors. As indicated in another thread for this article, iTunes is just a sales tool for the iPod. It is a sales pitch for the profitable hardware as saturday morning cartoons are a sales pitch for branded toys (in most cases).
Really? Compare the terms of Apple's iTunes (search in that page for the "Usage Rules" several paragraphs down from the top of the page) to those of MSN Music (DRM'd WMA files)... it seems they are the same. You can burn a CD from DRM'd WMA files and then rip to MP3 (though that is against the terms of both services, there is nothing yet enabled to programatically stop you from doing so with either music service). Actually, one difference is, there is no policy limit (in the MSN service content usage rules) to the amount of burned to Audio CD playlists in MSN Music vs. a limit of 7 in iTunes.
While it is technically possible to deny the burning of CD's from WMA DRM'd music, current competition with iTunes stops that DRM feature from being used (at the moment). I still don't see how this is monopolistic in comparison to Apple's iTunes (Apple may decide (or be forced) to forbid burning of their DRM'd iTunes songs to Audio CD to stop "piracy" if music labels decide they don't want to allow it anymore):
It all depends on the RIAA monopoly and what they decide are "fair" terms for them to impose on consumers. Read the copyright on any RIAA label audio CD... you didn't buy the music, just a license to use it. All you own is the piece of plastic the music resides on. Just my $0.02
The fifth amendment of the US Constitution reads: (Source:)
Person is explicitly stated here, so I'm not sure that it would be a problem to use your property as evidence against you. This could be somewhat ambigous (possibly in the future) if someone has, for instance, a prosthetic limb that collects data and that limb is compelled to give "testimony" (divulge data stored within it). That's, of course, assuming that a prosthetic limb is now or in the future legally considered a part of your body (anyone know for sure?), then it'd certainly be an interesting argument.
I don't think a car would be considered a part of one's self so, it wouldn't necessarily infringe on your fifth amendment rights to use data from the Black Box in your car as a "witness" against you (much like a murderer's gun can be used as evidence to forensically trace it to bullets in a victim). IANAL, nor do I play one on tv... heck I don't even watch people play them on tv, so this is just my opinion, for what that's worth.
In all fairness, I don't think the Black Box was the damning evidence here. Police forensics can pretty much do some calculations and figure out how fast the car was going. I mean, not to be insensitive, but a human being's remains hit by a car going 98 miles per hour will NOT look the same (all things being equal, mass of the car, etc.) as the those after being hit by the same car going 30 miles per hour. The impact alone must have propelled the victim an incredible distance or practically shattered his body (I didn't read if he was clipped by the car or hit full on).
The Black Box, in this case, may only show new information that the police may have been unable to prove beyond a doubt (as noted in another post), they probably had a good idea of the speed, but may not have been able to prove that the driver didn't try to break and that he had the accelerator to the floor (which would certainly affect the severity of the punishment / crime).
My hardware and software includes (I know, not the latest and greatest, but not a slouch either):
Clearly, I meet the 'minimum requirements'... according to the game's accompanying readme.txt, the minumum requirements are:
supporting pixel shaders 1.3, preferably with 128MB or more of VRAM.
These requirements were not kidding... the game runs extremely slowly on my hardware. It was chugging along at, I'd guess, 10-15 frames per second (I'm not sure what resolution it was running at or color depth, but I run Windows at 1024x768x32bpp). The game was ok looking, visually, in some aspects was better looking than the original Unreal game, in others, not as good. Gameplay was not particularly exciting... though, at 10-15 frames per second, it might not be anyhow, but I only played it for about 2 minutes.
After 2 minutes, the game crashed and crashed Windows as well... Probably a result of it being 'beta' software, but nevertheless, a rare occurence on my particular Windows XP PC. As noted above, it's been over 2 years since anything caused Windows XP to crash on me! Not sure if my hardware was overwhelmed, the game being buggy, or if DirectX just killed it, but that's what happened. If you have a computer, less than 1 year old, with the latest hardware and loaded with RAM, this game will probably work for you. It doesn't work too well for the minimum requirements (in my experience, YMMV).
Interesting that they can pull this off in such a small package and trying out to see how it works for you. My $0.02.
From my understanding, it's related to the player itself... for instance, QuickTime under Windows and Mac integrates with Flash player that can (and does) open links. Realplayer has a similar mechnaism, though I'm less up on the technical details of that one.
As with anything, it depends on the player application and the OS. In Linux the player applications, most likely, ignore these (probably undocumented, or just inherently unreproducable at this time in a Linux GUI) ways to open a browser after or during playback of a movie.
That way, you've got as many as you want, $150 each, running Linux... life is good! Get a decent switch and away you go! And, they don't take up too much room or make too much noise... just get a table and stack 'em.
So does Quicktime player and Real Player. What's your point? On Windows, if the default browser is IE, pretty much anything has the ability to launch a website that runs exploits. There are various ways to work around this, even in IE (including making use of trusted and untrusted zones, disabling ActiveX controls, etc.), but perhaps on of the easiest is to disable IE (Norton Internet Security, for instance, can just block its ability to access the Internet) and use browsers that are safer and less exploitable like (insert your favorite non-MS web browser here) as your "default browser" in Windows.
Of course, you can always switch from Windows to something else (but that is not necessarily the easiest thing to do if you are using Windows extensively and have a large collection of programs that you don't care to part with that won't fully work with Wine/Codeweavers, Win4Lin, etc.).
That is simply not true. Windows NT (be it 4.0, 5.0 (Windows 2000), 5.1 (XP), 5.2 (Windows 2003)) is a multi-user operating system. What you are describing is logging into multiple accounts through a GUI. Fast user switching, what you are referring to being in Windows XP and being hack and slash, is actually opening a Graphical Terminal Windows to connect to a locally running Terminal Services as another user in Windows (both (or more) users are simultaneously logged on as different users running with different credentials, permissions, groups, etc.)
This is great for a desktop computer, but is just one of the characteristics of "multi-user" operating systems IMHO. Another characteristic of "multi-user" operating systems present in Windows NT, is that you can run services (somewhat equivalent in concept and practice to *nix daemons) as users. You can run, for instance, Apache for Windows as a service under any username you want (you can create a user and Apache's documentation explains this in detail) with little to no system privileges and run Apache's service explicitly as that user. What happens is that, depending on how little access the user has to the machine, Apache, likewise, has little to no privilege to files, folders, reading, writing, executing, etc. on that machine.
Clearly versions of Windows running the Windows NT kernel, love it or hate it, are "multi-user" operating systems as IBM indicates in their article.
Actually, if you'd read the article, that is how the quote appears in the original article text. So, this isn't Timothy's fault, but the author of the article's (ALLISON LINN, AP Business Writer).
While we're talking about that wonderfully sensationalist quote, it'd be interesting if journalists would stick to unaltered quotes (this one has been cut to appear particularly imflammatory, hence the ... (the quote probably was in full context as well, but those of us who weren't there don't get the whole quote in context, only Allison's edited version of the quote)).
I wish that journalists would put full quotes in articles without any editing to make the quotes fit with their sensationalist stories (let the stories speak for themselves, without having to guide the audience toward their conclusions (you expect that in commentary, not news)). But, then, can you trust journalist integrity when advertising dollars are at stake (as in, the advertising keeps the journalist's publication afloat, so the more sensationalist, the better)?
Dude,
It's a joke! If you've seen the rest of the episodes with Ramzi (he's in all of them so far), any segments with him in it are a joke (as in on purpose to get a laugh or two).
Also, the whole thing kinda mildly mixes (some) tech reality with humorous stereotypes of Hackers (the dudes drink beer throughout the whole show... every show). Most conversations I've had with "real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue" would probably make extremely boring tv (Not to say that it isn't possible (never say never) to have a good show with real hackers/geeks/anyonewithaclue, but imho, it is less likely).
Since this is an unofficial spin-off of TechTV's "Dark Tips" with Kevin Rose (Kevin in TheBroken), they are instinctively trying to be entertaining (sparing those who just want a laugh from a seminar in hacking windows (not to mention, sparing themselves from DMCA implications of getting that specific... everything is kinda vague on purpose)). I suspect that most of their regular viewers are also regular TechTV viewers (and probably not "real" hackers (no matter how bizzarly spelled)).
Not to mention, he (somehow) has money left over to shovel hundreds, if not thousands into spam related purchases per year?
Is he secretely married to Paris Hilton (perhaps as a result of a great spam offer) and just leeching off of her family's $$$ ?
Why is it then, that Apple's least expensive offering, the base eMac uses the G4 1 Ghz processor that debuted in Apples just over 2 years ago (January 28, 2002) and costs $799, while $599 on a Dell Dimension 2400 ($100 mail-in rebate brings final price to $499) gets you a processor (Pentium 4 2.66 Ghz) that debuted 1-1/2 years ago (August 26, 2002)?
That seems about the same, right... read on... for a comparison of the specs:
Sources: Apple Specs - Dell Specs - Dell E-Value Code: 6V212-D24TVP
Apple: 1 Ghz G4 (133mhz FSB) - Dell: 2.66 Ghz Pentium 4 (533mhz FSB)
Apple: 128 MB SDRAM (PC-133?) - Dell: 128 MB 333 Mhz DDR RAM
Apple: 40 GB HDD - Dell: 80 GB HDD (free upgrade)
Apple: 17 inch Flat CRT display (16 inch viewable) - Dell 17 inch CRT display (16 inch viewable)
Apple: ATI Radeon 7500 Integrated - Dell: Integrated Intel(R) 3D Extreme Graphics
Apple: Single Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) - Dell: Dual Drives: 48x CD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive
Apple: No charge ground shipping (two to five business days after shipment) - Dell: Free ground shipping (3-5 day)
Apple: N/A - Dell: $100 Mail in Rebate
With the exception of the Intel 3D "extreme" video card (maybe the same, but probably less desireable than the eMac's Radeon 7500) and the lack of standard DVD-ROM drive on the Dell (but it's only $30 extra by selecting this option: Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 48x CD-RW Drive [add $30 or $1/month1]) the Dell, for is definitely a comparable (probably a better) value for the hardware, dollar for dollar. Now, if we're talking $499 after a rebate for the Dell vs. $799 for the Apple, that's a $300 Apple premium on a low-end Apple vs. a low-end PC (by today's standards).
Putting $799 total into a PC would definitely get you far closer to today's cutting edge than $799 would in an Apple. CLEARLY, Apples ARE comparatively expensive (even the lowest end Apple IS expensive compared to a low end PC). Of course, Apple folks don't tend to buy them for the cheap prices so my post clearly just addresses purely monetary values you brought up (and comparison is how one generally determines what "expensive" means).
What strikes me is that, for the most part, Apples use more or less the same commodity hardware PC parts that drove PC prices into the gutter (except motherboards, processors, and special Apple versions of graphics cards (probably VERY similar to PC brehteren)) but they just cost more. Unless Apple is using uber-cool american master craftsmen to hand assemble these beauties (they are perty), which I somehow doubt... their origin is most likely very geographically similar to their PC brehteren, how can anyone call them any
Another, option (for those in the know on editing Win2k/XP Local Security Policies, etc) is to check out this guide on MS's web site.
With that guide, you're on your way to creating a template for your family, friends, etc. that you can easily email to them (then they just right click on the file and "Install" from the right click menu). With some configuration in creating one of these templates, you can keep your family, friends, etc., that have no admin backgrounds a bit more locked down than the default for Windows (pants down). Why not help them pull Windows pants back upMay I just take this opportunity to say that Bill and Steve have ENTIRELY too much time on their hands! They spent all that time filming the spoof.
;)
Don't they have an empire to run and stuff? I'm surprised they didn't make Agent Smith be Linus or Larry Ellison (that one's probably more appropriate, though, they think of Linux as a virus, so Linus is probably more what they wanted to use).
Seriously, and I thought I slacked at work! These guys sit around shooting spoofs
I didn't know they named it after him! I thought Ani believed the Death Star was insignificant when compared to the power of the force?
Republicans reboot more than Democrats, details at 11...
But seriously, uptime is an interesting measure of the consecutive seconds / minutes / hours / days a system or service is available, but... I'd find more useful, particularly when searching for a web hosting company, detailed statistics of how long they are down! Do they take 10 minutes to reboot or half a day, for instance!
Some of the lower priced hosting companies, for instance, often have occasional enormous downtimes, though their system may have a stellar uptime record between reboots!
Heck even more useful, though I don't know how anyone would be able to get the real facts on this, how many of the downtimes are system crashes vs. hardware or software maintenance / updates / upgrades or just quick reboots to implement patches / moving services to another machine, etc. Of course, that would require some sort of reporting by ISP's and, the shoddier ones would undoubtedly lie about their problems.
Why didn't this get a Score:5 Funny
Because, as an "Anonymous Coward" you don't get any mod points. Obviously, if you had mod points, you could have modded this up (which particularly entertained you).
Exactly. I though AOL users were used to having their machine reconfigured by AOL as it pleases. Isn't that what they pay AOL monthly for?
True that! On Windows, when you install Mozilla, a little dinosaur should pop up and eat all the IE icons on the screen, then regurgitate eggs in where the IE icons used to be that hatch into little baby dinosaurs that exponentially go eating up the little Blue E's and reproducing on the desktop! They'll undoubtedly gobble up the end user, in the end though :(
Your sig made my day :)
And, realistically, I betcha most of those huge companies have Linux (at this point in time) only in the Server Room (in large distribution). Most of the desktops running corporate-wide are probably still running MS.
The disturbing thing is that some bean counters out there will be persuaded that a $300 Microsoft Tax for Windows is more cost-effective than the potential $699 SCO Tax for Linux. Sigh...
Maybe Microsoft will prove everyone wrong and if SCO wins their court case(s), MS might simply jack the Tax on Windows all the way up to the SCO level (to be competitive on price). Anyone feeling queasy yet?