Vista is rapidly turning into Windows XP SP3 plus optional UI skins. Windows Defender and Microsoft Client protection extra. Some assembly required. Your functionality may vary.
Microsoft - Because you've got a nice computer here. We wouldn't want anything to happen to it. Be a shame if someone was to set fire to it...
Where? I see a Firewire and a DVI port, no composite, S-Video, 75ohm coax, or component video you'd expect for the term "dedicated TV output".
Yeah. There isn't even a switch for channel 3 or 4, and there's no tin box with a slide switch and double-sided tape for me to put in series with the rabbit ears on my Magnavox.
By the way, while you were out, TV sets have been going digital. There's this new broadcast standard, and newer sets, the ones that will handle digital signals, tend to ship with the DVI/HDMI connectors that accept the signal from the Mac Mini.
Money isn't some evil reward that only greedy people desire. Money is a measure of how much society values your time and work.
That's why my kids are going to law school! My daughter is aiming to become a top producer in the class action industry. Engineers are just here to generate actionable causes for litigation.
The MPEG-4 audio licensing is done through VIA Licensing (www.vialicensing.com).
The visual and systems stuff is done through MPEG LA (www.mpegla.com), but participation in MPEG LA by MPEG patent holders isn't required. AT&T isn't participating here, unlike other companies including Apple Computer, ETRI, Phillips, and Mitsubishi.
AT&T has patents on technology it claims are essential to MPEG-4, Part 2 and MPEG-4, Part 10 (H.264), as well as ISO/IEC 14496-2 and 14496-10.
By not placing the relevant patents in the MPEG LA patent pool and not making infringement claims for several years, AT&T has given up the right to punitive damages for past infringements, but has now gained enormous leverage in demanding royalties over what has become an increasingly popular standard.
Apple is taking advantage of their monopoly position disallowing the playing of itunes purchased music on non iPod players.
I dunno, Stimpy. I buy music through iTunes and burn it onto CDs that I can play in my car. (No MP3 car player. How retro is that?) The seem to play fine, in spite of the car and CD player not being iPods.
This means if you bought music for your iPod.. you have to stick to iPod or lose the ability to transport your music? Plus when your HDD dies.. you cant regain your music.
I'm pretty sure my audio CDs will keep working after the computer hard disk dies. And... I even have these marvels of hi-techosity called backups that I can use to restore my precious, precious data onto a shiny new hard disc drive.. What a concept, eh?
Furthermore, because Fairplay DRM is closed.. if you are a band and want to sell your music (with DRM).. you have to do it on the iTunes store.. or your music will not have the protection of DRM if it's to be put on iPods (iPod owners being a massive marketshare.. this is essential for success).
Well, there's the equally closed Microsoft WMA DRM if you want to get your music into the WalMart Music Store, or the MSN Music Store, or the National Baseball Music Store. You pays your money ad you takes your choice.
OR... You could invent your own DRM format and put your music out on your own store to play on your own devices. See, if you want to play with others, you'll have to, well, play with others. At least there is symmetry.
But right now, our system is deeply flawed. We are IDed by our Social Security # in a mass of places and financial applications - which is leading to ever increasing Identity theft. Who would have thought? A 9-10 digit number with a name attached, which one has to give out everywhere, to be used in ID theft?
Absolutely. We will all be much more secure with a RealID card, through which we will all be identified by a number with a name attached. There is no way anyone would consider using a RealID name and number for identity theft, unless, perhaps, the government and related organizations started using that data for tracking people. I'm sure the requirement for a common machine-readable technology" doesn't imply that anyone will actually be reading or collecting this information, or associating it with other personal data.
The Real ID Act says federally accepted ID cards must be "machine readable," and lets Homeland Security determine the details. That could end up being a magnetic strip, enhanced bar code, or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.
In the past, Homeland Security has indicated it likes the concept of RFID chips. They are readily scanned by proximity systems without requiring direct contact.
The card must contain, at a minimum, name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on. The address must be a physical address, and not a post office box. Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements, such as a fingerprint or retinal scan, in addition to the minimum requirements.
If you have nothing to hide, there is no reason to be concerned. The Real ID system will only serve to keep you safe and secure. http://www.aclu.org/pizza/ Remember, Citizen, The Computer is your friend!
I ran into this several months ago, when I found myself to be the only person in dress slacks and shirt, in a meeting full of folks in jeans and t-shirts. Folks who didn't know me (and amusingly, some who did) began responding to me as though I were the project manager, rather than 'one of the gang.'
It an interesting primate response. Perhaps I should dye the hair on my back silver?
-- April 1, 2008 -- A new closed captioning system for home video use was announced. The device is capable of writing arbitrary bit streams into various lines of the vertical blanking interval data, to allow the addition or modification of closed caption data for personal use and home viewing.
Note that posession of this device within the United States is a felony punishible by exile to the New York or Los Angeles Maximum Security Prisons.
Oh, I'm sure it's just an oversight in a draft regulatory filing created by a newly hired employee who did not understand the company's legal obligations under the 2002 antitrust settlement.
It might not be a threat. It could be a promise...
Perhaps it's time to dig out my old gear. The oldest system in the Garage of Doom is currently:
Intellec 8 8008 development system with the 8080 upgrade card, FDOS in ROM. Dual Frugal Floppy drive. 2 8" drives and controller in a compact 17" rack mount case. ASR33 Teletype, with the big yellow paper roll, and that oh-so-convenient 1" paper tape punch. (Hi, Bill! Want a copy of a BASIC interpreter?)
Copper wiring is cheap. The most expensive part would be quality connectors (just like cat5). Gold plated connectors might be a good idea, if only to avoid oxidation. But even those can be had cheap.
Heh. Not to a real 'Golden Ear' audiophile. Aeons ago, while in the service, I worked part time selling to audiophiles. It kept my family off food stamps. A good peaker cables and interconnects sale put food on the table for quite a while.
There are considerably higher priced custom cables, including a custom open busbar setup of certified monocrystalline oxygen free silver plated copper on glass standoff insulators, for around $200/foot.
Never mind that us mere mortals can't tell the difference between this stuff and a 50 cent roll of zip cord. A Golden Ear will claim to hear the difference, except in double-blind tests where the 'stress' of being under test will cancel out his abilities.
A viral marketing scheme for the SciFi Channel's next big Saturday Night Epic. What with the dolphin special effects budget, though, they might not be able to hire Bruce "The Chin" Campbell. Perhaps they can get Austin Jordan, the amazing actor from "Mansquito." Or not...
Seriously, though, did anyone bother to check out Leo Sheridan? This investigator is noteworthy for his declaring that any dead dolphins, whether on a Mediterranean beach, in San Diego, or the Gulf of Mexico, were killed to cover up the existence of a secret government program. In one case he even claimed the dolphins were deserters and were killed by explosive collars.
Jesus Fuckpudding Christ, no wonder they're so slow and ineffectual.
Yes, it sort of reminds me of the bank practice of making every branch manager a vice president. Of course, "vice president" at Microsoft is really just a mid-level manager. They also have Group Vice Presidents, Corporate Vice Presidents, and Senior Vice Presidents, who get their own special restrooms.
Some of these Vice Presidents are also considered to be Executive Officers. Others are mere Officers.
You've got a project at risk, scheduling and production issues, so the fix is to re-organize and add executive and middle-management incentives, as in:
If they meet incentive goals, the 120 or so vice-presidents will receive an eye-popping $1 million in salary a year, and general managers, the next level down, will get $350,000 to $550,000, according to a high-ranking source. But the rest of the staff is paid at market rates. -- Business Week
Granted, this upcoming train wreck will provide a certain amount of entertainment, but it will be pretty unpleasant to work through. Over a year of Death March time so your boss can get the Big Bucks. Eccch.
Water. Regardless of which train of thought you follow, it covers over seventy-five percent of our planet's surface. And the atmosphere, also a fluid, covers the entire surface. The difference is why. While flat-Earthers know that the ocean is really just a large bowl, (with great sheets of ice around the edges to hold the ocean back), and the atmosphere is contained by a large dome, the backwards "round-Earth" way of thinking would have you believe that all those trillions of gallons of water and air just "stick" to the planet's surface.
Conventional thinking would suggest that the water would just run down the sides of the Earth (to use the analogy again, like droplets running down the sides of a beach ball) and fall into outer space, while the air would dissipate. Using the earlier mentioned idea of "gravitational charge" gives some credibility to the theory. If the fluids were static, then exposure to the gravitational field for a long enough period of time would allow their molecules to align themselves with and be pulled in by the field.
But fluids are not static, especially not in the atmosphere and oceans. Great ocean currents run both at the surface and deep below, carrying water across huge basins, keeping the solution far from stagnant. Jet streams of air travel at hundreds of miles per hour through the atmosphere. And windblown rainclouds carry vast quantities of evaporated seawater across miles of ground, releasing their load far from its starting point. Water or air that (according to "round-Earth" theory) starts on one side of the planet could end up completely on the other side in a matter of only a few days. With all this turbulence and motion, if the world were round, the oceans should all fall "down" into the sky, leaving the planet dry and barren, and the atmosphere would simply float away. Why, just look at the moon. It is round, like a ball, and yet it has no atmosphere at all.
And that's the way it is, for September 6, 2005...
they're paid the same wages (adjusted to cost of living for that region)
Nice out, that. I'm sure the MSFT hiring managers would be happy to hire folks with a Masters in CS and 5-10 years experience within the US if they could only get them to work for 21,200 USD/year. (Starting salary in China for a BS in CS was 13,300 USD/year from the 2003 EE Survey.)
"If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." -- Dave Thomas, former chief of computer intrusion investigations at FBI headquarters
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/215 "Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none."
Clippy: "I see that you are attempting to apply the brakes. The Microsoft Brakes 2006 feature is not currently Installed. Please insert Microsoft Automotive Disk #7 in order to Install Microsoft Brakes 2006."
At one time, we ordered 18 identical Gateway machines. A new OS build booted and ran flawlessly on 12 of the machines, and behaved 'badly' on 6 of them. We tracked the difference down to a change in the graphics cards. A new board layout was introducing timing problems at higher resolution VESA modes. Same chips. They just changed the board layout to reduce layers, making the boards slightly cheaper. "What? You needed that ground plane?"
I don't think an OS vendor would care to deal with this sort of debugging and support for a cracked OS.
Slashdot Mirror
Noticed that, didja?
Vista is rapidly turning into Windows XP SP3 plus optional UI skins. Windows Defender and Microsoft Client protection extra. Some assembly required. Your functionality may vary.
Microsoft - Because you've got a nice computer here. We wouldn't want anything to happen to it. Be a shame if someone was to set fire to it...
Because there are some things that just can't be done outside of 16 bit 80286 operating modes...
It looks like EMM setup and the wonderful world of segment registers are safe for a few more years.
Yaay. Tiny, small, medium, compact, large, and huge mode models forever. So, what will we call 64 bit addressing mode? Ginormous?
Yo, Microsoft. The 1980s called. They want their x86 addressing models back.
Where? I see a Firewire and a DVI port, no composite, S-Video, 75ohm coax, or component video you'd expect for the term "dedicated TV output".
Yeah. There isn't even a switch for channel 3 or 4, and there's no tin box with a slide switch and double-sided tape for me to put in series with the rabbit ears on my Magnavox.
By the way, while you were out, TV sets have been going digital. There's this new broadcast standard, and newer sets, the ones that will handle digital signals, tend to ship with the DVI/HDMI connectors that accept the signal from the Mac Mini.
Money isn't some evil reward that only greedy people desire. Money is a measure of how much society values your time and work.
That's why my kids are going to law school! My daughter is aiming to become a top producer in the class action industry. Engineers are just here to generate actionable causes for litigation.
Intellec 8, ASR-33 teletype, and DUAL 8" Frugal Floppies (The first floppy drive under $1000. WooHoo!)
s t=1&c=754
I did add the 8080 upgrade card. Unfortunately, the PROM programmer card smoked several years ago. Anyone have a spare?
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?
The MPEG-4 audio licensing is done through VIA Licensing (www.vialicensing.com).
The visual and systems stuff is done through MPEG LA (www.mpegla.com), but participation in MPEG LA by MPEG patent holders isn't required. AT&T isn't participating here, unlike other companies including Apple Computer, ETRI, Phillips, and Mitsubishi.
AT&T has patents on technology it claims are essential to MPEG-4, Part 2 and MPEG-4, Part 10 (H.264), as well as ISO/IEC 14496-2 and 14496-10.
By not placing the relevant patents in the MPEG LA patent pool and not making infringement claims for several years, AT&T has given up the right to punitive damages for past infringements, but has now gained enormous leverage in demanding royalties over what has become an increasingly popular standard.
Apple is taking advantage of their monopoly position disallowing the playing of itunes purchased music on non iPod players.
.. you have to stick to iPod or lose the ability to transport your music? Plus when your HDD dies .. you cant regain your music.
.. if you are a band and want to sell your music (with DRM) .. you have to do it on the iTunes store .. or your music will not have the protection of DRM if it's to be put on iPods (iPod owners being a massive marketshare .. this is essential for success).
I dunno, Stimpy. I buy music through iTunes and burn it onto CDs that I can play in my car. (No MP3 car player. How retro is that?) The seem to play fine, in spite of the car and CD player not being iPods.
This means if you bought music for your iPod
I'm pretty sure my audio CDs will keep working after the computer hard disk dies. And... I even have these marvels of hi-techosity called backups that I can use to restore my precious, precious data onto a shiny new hard disc drive.. What a concept, eh?
Furthermore, because Fairplay DRM is closed
Well, there's the equally closed Microsoft WMA DRM if you want to get your music into the WalMart Music Store, or the MSN Music Store, or the National Baseball Music Store. You pays your money ad you takes your choice.
OR... You could invent your own DRM format and put your music out on your own store to play on your own devices. See, if you want to play with others, you'll have to, well, play with others. At least there is symmetry.
But right now, our system is deeply flawed. We are IDed by our Social Security # in a mass of places and financial applications - which is leading to ever increasing Identity theft. Who would have thought? A 9-10 digit number with a name attached, which one has to give out everywhere, to be used in ID theft?
Absolutely. We will all be much more secure with a RealID card, through which we will all be identified by a number with a name attached. There is no way anyone would consider using a RealID name and number for identity theft, unless, perhaps, the government and related organizations started using that data for tracking people. I'm sure the requirement for a common machine-readable technology" doesn't imply that anyone will actually be reading or collecting this information, or associating it with other personal data.
The Real ID Act says federally accepted ID cards must be "machine readable," and lets Homeland Security determine the details. That could end up being a magnetic strip, enhanced bar code, or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.
In the past, Homeland Security has indicated it likes the concept of RFID chips. They are readily scanned by proximity systems without requiring direct contact.
The card must contain, at a minimum, name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on. The address must be a physical address, and not a post office box. Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements, such as a fingerprint or retinal scan, in addition to the minimum requirements.
If you have nothing to hide, there is no reason to be concerned. The Real ID system will only serve to keep you safe and secure. http://www.aclu.org/pizza/ Remember, Citizen, The Computer is your friend!
Well, you would have had to read the article. And since this IS SlashDot...
The good news is that there will be fiber-optic lines to every home.
The bad news is that most of the bandwidth will be used for outbound traffic from the telescreens in every room...
It's true.
I ran into this several months ago, when I found myself to be the only person in dress slacks and shirt, in a meeting full of folks in jeans and t-shirts. Folks who didn't know me (and amusingly, some who did) began responding to me as though I were the project manager, rather than 'one of the gang.'
It an interesting primate response. Perhaps I should dye the hair on my back silver?
I though you were dead.
Yeah, you and everybody else.
-- April 1, 2008 --
A new closed captioning system for home video use was announced. The device is capable of writing arbitrary bit streams into various lines of the vertical blanking interval data, to allow the addition or modification of closed caption data for personal use and home viewing.
Note that posession of this device within the United States is a felony punishible by exile to the New York or Los Angeles Maximum Security Prisons.
Oh, I'm sure it's just an oversight in a draft regulatory filing created by a newly hired employee who did not understand the company's legal obligations under the 2002 antitrust settlement.
It might not be a threat. It could be a promise...
Perhaps it's time to dig out my old gear. The oldest system in the Garage of Doom is currently:
Intellec 8 8008 development system with the 8080 upgrade card, FDOS in ROM.
Dual Frugal Floppy drive. 2 8" drives and controller in a compact 17" rack mount case.
ASR33 Teletype, with the big yellow paper roll, and that oh-so-convenient 1" paper tape punch. (Hi, Bill! Want a copy of a BASIC interpreter?)
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~hl/c.Intellec8.html
Copper wiring is cheap. The most expensive part would be quality connectors (just like cat5). Gold plated connectors might be a good idea, if only to avoid oxidation. But even those can be had cheap.
0 04Y2VO/102-9647861-9570554?v=glance
Heh. Not to a real 'Golden Ear' audiophile. Aeons ago, while in the service, I worked part time selling to audiophiles. It kept my family off food stamps. A good peaker cables and interconnects sale put food on the table for quite a while.
Here's an audiophile's cheap mass-market speaker cable, only $199 for 15 feet:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00
There are considerably higher priced custom cables, including a custom open busbar setup of certified monocrystalline oxygen free silver plated copper on glass standoff insulators, for around $200/foot.
Never mind that us mere mortals can't tell the difference between this stuff and a 50 cent roll of zip cord. A Golden Ear will claim to hear the difference, except in double-blind tests where the 'stress' of being under test will cancel out his abilities.
Do you mean true audiophiles, or the clowns who buy power cables for a grand?
* YES *
A viral marketing scheme for the SciFi Channel's next big Saturday Night Epic. What with the dolphin special effects budget, though, they might not be able to hire Bruce "The Chin" Campbell. Perhaps they can get Austin Jordan, the amazing actor from "Mansquito." Or not...
Seriously, though, did anyone bother to check out Leo Sheridan? This investigator is noteworthy for his declaring that any dead dolphins, whether on a Mediterranean beach, in San Diego, or the Gulf of Mexico, were killed to cover up the existence of a secret government program. In one case he even claimed the dolphins were deserters and were killed by explosive collars.
Might I suggest that perhaps he needs to purchase a few of these fine items to protect himself: http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
Note: 'Day of the Dolphin,' (1974) starring George C. Scott, is not a documentary.
120 vice-presidents?
Jesus Fuckpudding Christ, no wonder they're so slow and ineffectual.
Yes, it sort of reminds me of the bank practice of making every branch manager a vice president. Of course, "vice president" at Microsoft is really just a mid-level manager. They also have Group Vice Presidents, Corporate Vice Presidents, and Senior Vice Presidents, who get their own special restrooms.
Some of these Vice Presidents are also considered to be Executive Officers. Others are mere Officers.
Suggested reading for Microsoft Management:
1 835959/103-6695899-7729413?v=glance
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Fred Brooks. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/020
You've got a project at risk, scheduling and production issues, so the fix is to re-organize and add executive and middle-management incentives, as in:
If they meet incentive goals, the 120 or so vice-presidents will receive an eye-popping $1 million in salary a year, and general managers, the next level down, will get $350,000 to $550,000, according to a high-ranking source. But the rest of the staff is paid at market rates. -- Business Week
Granted, this upcoming train wreck will provide a certain amount of entertainment, but it will be pretty unpleasant to work through. Over a year of Death March time so your boss can get the Big Bucks. Eccch.
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatea rthsociety.htm
Water. Regardless of which train of thought you follow, it covers over seventy-five percent of our planet's surface. And the atmosphere, also a fluid, covers the entire surface. The difference is why. While flat-Earthers know that the ocean is really just a large bowl, (with great sheets of ice around the edges to hold the ocean back), and the atmosphere is contained by a large dome, the backwards "round-Earth" way of thinking would have you believe that all those trillions of gallons of water and air just "stick" to the planet's surface.
Conventional thinking would suggest that the water would just run down the sides of the Earth (to use the analogy again, like droplets running down the sides of a beach ball) and fall into outer space, while the air would dissipate. Using the earlier mentioned idea of "gravitational charge" gives some credibility to the theory. If the fluids were static, then exposure to the gravitational field for a long enough period of time would allow their molecules to align themselves with and be pulled in by the field.
But fluids are not static, especially not in the atmosphere and oceans. Great ocean currents run both at the surface and deep below, carrying water across huge basins, keeping the solution far from stagnant. Jet streams of air travel at hundreds of miles per hour through the atmosphere. And windblown rainclouds carry vast quantities of evaporated seawater across miles of ground, releasing their load far from its starting point. Water or air that (according to "round-Earth" theory) starts on one side of the planet could end up completely on the other side in a matter of only a few days. With all this turbulence and motion, if the world were round, the oceans should all fall "down" into the sky, leaving the planet dry and barren, and the atmosphere would simply float away. Why, just look at the moon. It is round, like a ball, and yet it has no atmosphere at all.
And that's the way it is, for September 6, 2005...
they're paid the same wages (adjusted to cost of living for that region)
Nice out, that. I'm sure the MSFT hiring managers would be happy to hire folks with a Masters in CS and 5-10 years experience within the US if they could only get them to work for 21,200 USD/year. (Starting salary in China for a BS in CS was 13,300 USD/year from the 2003 EE Survey.)
"If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac."
-- Dave Thomas, former chief of computer intrusion investigations at FBI headquarters
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/215
"Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none."
Why, Clippy, of course.
a t/winauto/default.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/getstart/devpl
Clippy: "I see that you are attempting to apply the brakes. The Microsoft Brakes 2006 feature is not currently Installed. Please insert Microsoft Automotive Disk #7 in order to Install Microsoft Brakes 2006."
What? You'd prefer a "Johnny Cab?"
Oh, yeah. Been there, done that waaay too much.
At one time, we ordered 18 identical Gateway machines. A new OS build booted and ran flawlessly on 12 of the machines, and behaved 'badly' on 6 of them. We tracked the difference down to a change in the graphics cards. A new board layout was introducing timing problems at higher resolution VESA modes. Same chips. They just changed the board layout to reduce layers, making the boards slightly cheaper. "What? You needed that ground plane?"
I don't think an OS vendor would care to deal with this sort of debugging and support for a cracked OS.