thus people will have to rely on ready-to-use solutions.
There are actually a few of those existing already -- we call them "blogs". You can use something like Blogger, or you can pay for a web host and throw Wordpress on it. Either way, you can get a domain easily enough.
it is not in most companies' interests (at least not in the interest of those companies which managed to get most market share) to be interoperable.
I'll mention again: Blogs. Some even support things like Gravatar -- not perfect, but a start. Quite a lot support OpenID.
Granted, it may not be in a company's best interest if their goal is to gain enough marketshare to be the next huge walled garden. However, once that dam breaks -- once there are some services which are interoperable over open standards, and once even one of them gets significant marketshare -- that will force everyone else to either improve or die.
This has already happened, to some extent, with web browsers. The more Microsoft drags its feet, the more Firefox eats its marketshare.
But on the other hand their Virtual World wasn't the expected success, in web already dominated by other players in the MMO/virtual reality field.
My guess there was, they didn't succeed, they didn't provide anything open source, and I didn't really see any interoperability there.
Contrast this to Gmail and Gtalk, which both support open standards -- Gmail especially; it's not as though you have to convince all your friends to move to Gmail too -- and are also leaders in functionality and ease of use. Lively just wasn't that good, wasn't open, really had nothing going for it.
On a side note, I think that what I'm proposing a couple of post above (host the pictures in an off-site gallery and only publish the URL on facebook) is a nice first step toward the direction.
I see no problem with hosting it on Facebook, if they provide a reasonable way to embed it elsewhere. Otherwise, yeah, put it on something like Flickr, which has an API and an embeddable widget.
So, I've just reread my post, and I can't see where I even mentioned rape. But let's go with that, because I'm in such a trollbiting mood:
While this might be considered a legitimate reason to have an abortion, consider the statistics
So you admit that it might be a legitimate reason, except for some statistics. So let's look at them:
There are about 200 pregnancies due to rape [physiciansforlife.org] per year
In other words, you're going to tell those 200 women that they have to carry the baby to term,
So my question is: why is it okay to make abortion legal and freely available in all cases, just to make it available for the 0.00003% that may have legitimate reasons?
I don't know. Let's look at our other fundamental rights and see which ones we don't value, because they only apply to a minority.
Hell, there's only a tiny percentage of people in the US who aren't Christian, or at least Deist -- let's make it a legal requirement to believe in God!
Fuck no, the question is not one of statistics. We are about fundamental rights, in case you've forgotten. How many people in China are actually harmed by the inability to speak freely? Who gives a fuck? It's a fundamental, inalienable right.
So yeah, unless you're ready to tell those 200 women to go fuck themselves -- and very likely the other thousand or so women who don't want to admit they were raped -- I think we should let it stand.
By the way: All of that is following your assumption that only women who have been raped have a legitimate reason for getting an abortion. That seems moronic. Either abortion is baby-killing or it's not. If you're right, and it is baby-killing, then those 200 women should sit and suffer -- but I think you're an insensitive prick if you believe that. If it's not baby-killing, but fetus-aborting, then yes, every woman should have a right to it, whether she's been raped or not.
Many Americans think our economy is failing because of the Bush Administration, but they are wrong, it is because of sin. We are a very sinful nation, therefore God is against us.
And so, all that time before, when we were "sinning" as much or more, and the economy was much better? What was that? Was God taking a nap?
I mean, look at this crap:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land
How about all of the people out of work now -- people with families to feed, dipping into their savings, can't even pull much from their retirement fund because the market is shit, too -- I guarantee some of those are praying, and I doubt they're getting abortions. How hard do they have to pray before God hears them?
it is perfectly legal to murder an unborn child for convenience, maybe the mother to be says, 'It's not the right time, I must further my career', or a mother may tell her teenage daughter, 'You must get rid of the baby because you are to young. You must finish school'.
That's based on two false assumptions: First, what you're calling an "unborn child", the medical community calls a "fetus". You'll find no clear scientific or religious basis for when the fetus becomes a child.
Second, you're assuming that all of this is for "convenience". That shows a profound lack of understanding of what it is like to carry and give birth to a child -- especially when, as in this case, you're likely to have to give it up for adoption anyway.
genocide that is taking place here in America everyday disguised as planned parenthood.
It's not genocide -- even if we grant that they are children, the meaning of "genocide" is very specific. I suggest you use a dictionary.
And planned parenthood is not just about abortion -- they also provide education, and contraceptives, which help avoid the problem entirely.
But again -- the economic crisis is not about abortion, no matter how much you want it to be. People who have not had abortions are suffering, and, I'm sure, people who have had abortions are finding ways to weather the storm.
And think about your core point, too:
Many Americans think our economy is failing because of the Bush Administration
Yes, it is. If you'd like us to believe that this is somehow God's punishment, fine, that means God is punishing us through the actions of the Bush administration.
Or, hey, it's possible God has nothing to do with it, and this is just our natural consequence for our stupidity in electing those assholes, not once, but twice.
We are a society, and we are not, generally, computer-savvy enough to appreciate the benefits of what you've proposed.
Yes, we are. We're just too apathetic.
I find that things like this, or OpenID, or Jabber, are actually quite easy to explain to most people. They already use at least one system that works tihs way -- email. There's nothing stopping you from starting your own mailserver -- and short of that, if Yahoo starts causing problems, you can always use Gmail, or vice versa. Or you can buy a domain, and switch at will between service providers, while retaining the same email address.
Whether or not people know this, it intuitively makes sense. And the next step, that you could have a social network be like email, is not that hard to explain, either. Bloggers are already halfway there, as are people who use blogs.
meanwhile it seems reasonable to convince people of something closer to their hearts: their breasts.
I'd use that to open the discussion, if anyone ever seemed doubtful that Myspace or Facebook would abuse their power.
Baby steps.
Except it's not really a step forward, unless you connect the ideas for them. Otherwise, while it's easy enough to understand decentralization, they might not think of it on their own. They might simply think that Facebook is being unreasonable, and consider moving back to Myspace, or looking for a third option, or worse, building their own.
I see your sarcasm, but you're exactly right. XFN, and microformats, are built around the Web itself -- HTML over HTTP, nothing fancy. Throw in some OpenID and you're done.
My point isn't that it has to be complicated or new, but that it has to actually be used. For example, there is a specification for linking to a friends' site, and declaring your relationship to them. Combine with an index (a search engine) and you can build pretty much everything people like about a social network -- including the "has x friends" statistic.
it's probably because you went to the trouble of getting a good angle and waited for the right moment, not because the woman was running through the streets topless screaming "Look at me! Look at my tits!".
And yet, presumably she cared more about feeding her baby than about covering herself. I applaud that sense of priorities, by the way, but that's a possible consequence.
'there existed, from a point in a public place, a line of sight to her underwear, which was, at the moment the picture was taken, also in a public place, so why shouldn't I be allowed to take a picture and upload it to the intertubes?' is no proper defense for such an action.
True, but it is a reason to avoid wearing skirts in such a place.
Again: I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying that there is a way to avoid it: Wear pants.
I wish to live in a world where people wouldn't have to worry about all their actions being 'photographed, stored, and indexed, for generations to come'.
I don't like it either, but it's too late for that.
Right. Question is whether the disk array is concatenating the drives somehow, or if ZFS can actually see each individual drive. I would think the latter would be much more useful.
The only way I see this working is to somehow use the openness of a Linux console as an advantage. It's like having a gaming PC, without the disadvantages of a PC (viruses/maintenance), and with all the advantages of a console (couch/controller/TV vs monitor/keyboard/mouse).
But even as a hypothetical, I can't really come up with a good example. Maybe an extensive modding community? Maybe an easy way to do this with a laptop?
On the other hand, I find it somewhat ridiculous that you would not object to showing whatever it is you're showing, in public, to a handful of strangers, but you would suddenly object if it was shown, over the Internet, to a few more strangers.
I don't know what the law should be -- it always bothered me when some video shown on TV has various faces blurred out, because they never got that person to sign some sort of waiver. On the other hand, if you're going to snap a photo of someone, and then turn that into an international ad campaign, I'd argue you should have to get their consent, and probably pay them for the privilege.
But regardless of what the law should be, common sense now dictates that if you are in public, you should assume that anything you do might be photographed and broadcast. It's like sex tapes -- sure it was just for the boyfriend, but why do that unless you either wanted it public, or knew the guy well enough to trust him with that? Or piracy -- I won't defend copyright infringement, but assume that very smart people will succeed in pirating your stuff and sharing it with the world, and build your business model with that in mind.
It's only as infinite as peoples' ability to keep track of multiple sites.
We have an answer for that, and its name is Google. There are very few sites that I know by heart, or have bookmarked -- if I need to find something, I STFW.
But back to the social networking concept:
If I duplicate Facebook's site and change only the breast policy, do you think that people will switch, even though the new one is better?
I think that just goes to show how stupid and dangerous it is to allow a central authority to gain such control, especially when there are other alternatives. I consider it a critical flaw in most social networking sites that they don't support things like XFN, meaning that even if you do start to dislike Facebook, as TFA says, you can't carry your network with you.
With a distributed system, you would own a URL ($10/year buys you a domain), which you could carry to any service you wanted, and keep your network.
It is offensive that breasts are regarded as indecent. What's wrong with trying to change minds?
Nothing wrong with it. I just think that your solution -- convince Facebook -- is short-sighted, although easier. For example: I consider it offensive that nudity is always "indecent", and that sex is "vulgar" -- we're as bad as the Victorians.
No, the real (but difficult) solution is to convince Facebook's users to start building a truly distributed social network, so that there is no one entity which gets to decide what's acceptable and what isn't -- so that we can all decide for ourselves, just like with the rest of the Internet.
My laptop's internal keyboard handles nine before it dies. This Apple Aluminum only handles five.
Still, I'm finding it hard to imagine how I'd hit even five at once. I suppose I might get four, with ctrl+space and two directions -- which would correspond to a diagonal crouch-jump (or long jump) in Half-Life.
I play an MMO, and it tends to do things not through combinations of keypresses, but through sequences.
What games would require more keypresses than that?
Even if they were new, five are Linux distributions. And that's not counting Android.
Yeah, Linux is cool, distributions are cool, but you'd think they would show some variety. Coolest one I've seen all year -- that is new -- is Archaeopteryx. Perhaps not a big deal, but weren't they doing the 10 coolest projects, not the 10 most important projects?
No, look again -- if you agree with my post, you should also agree that this in no way sounds like a virus. Perhaps calling them an idiot is uncalled for...
Sorry to be pedantic, but it just bothers me when so many people manage to misspell such a simple word. All phonetic, too -- none of those tricky English spellings. Say it with me -- oo boon too. Not oo boon tah.
And yes, I'm pretty sure you're talking about popularity-contest, which I mentioned. I don't actually participate in those, by the way.
I had to explain she can press forward and right at the same time to move at an angle, but pressing forward and backward at the same time does nothing.
In other words: It's hard for the same reasons an NES controller is hard, and could really only be improved by a joystick, not by a special "gaming keyboard".
The polite answer is, the only thing that's "intuitive" is a nipple. You had to learn to drive a car, too, and you certainly weren't born knowing how to type. If nothing else, WASD makes sense as long as QWERTY does -- it's what people know, if anything. Better something that some people are familiar with and others have to learn, than something no one is familiar with. (Disclaimer: I use Dvorak.)
The somewhat less polite answer is a question: Is your girlfriend an idiot? Just what did she expect to happen when you press forward and backward at the same time? That her character would fly straight up?
I'm really glad my iPod has never locked up.. (like 20 times or so).
What makes this such an epic fail is not just that it's "locked up" -- no, it's completely unusable. There is a fix which involves taking it half apart to perform a "hard reset", after which it will work -- until you try to plug it into a computer, which will kill it again.
That, and the fact that everyone's 30 gig Zune, everywhere, seems to be having the same problem. I certainly don't remember that ever happening to even a single line of iPods.
the more complex the machine, the more chances it has to break.
That is a cop-out. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that despite problems like this, people keep buying Microsoft products -- so what incentive do they have to spend the extra time/money to get it right the first time?
Microsoft is certainly not the only one, though they are the most visible. Case in point: People bought new computers with Vista. Worse than that, a surprising number of tech-conscious people bought Vista itself.
And we all know that no Microsoft product has ever failed for a reason other than a security issue? (*cough* BSOD!)
No, it really doesn't sound like a virus. Sorry, but there's no way that many Zunes got infected all at once -- and what's more, there's not really a lot of incentive to develop such a virus. A simple bug is more likely.
Slashdot Mirror
If you bet the farm on some hippy software from Finland, at the first sign of trouble, the blame arrow points to you and you get the axe.
If you get the axe for the very first mistake you ever make, that's probably not a job or a company you want to keep anyway, even in a recession.
thus people will have to rely on ready-to-use solutions.
There are actually a few of those existing already -- we call them "blogs". You can use something like Blogger, or you can pay for a web host and throw Wordpress on it. Either way, you can get a domain easily enough.
it is not in most companies' interests (at least not in the interest of those companies which managed to get most market share) to be interoperable.
I'll mention again: Blogs. Some even support things like Gravatar -- not perfect, but a start. Quite a lot support OpenID.
Granted, it may not be in a company's best interest if their goal is to gain enough marketshare to be the next huge walled garden. However, once that dam breaks -- once there are some services which are interoperable over open standards, and once even one of them gets significant marketshare -- that will force everyone else to either improve or die.
This has already happened, to some extent, with web browsers. The more Microsoft drags its feet, the more Firefox eats its marketshare.
But on the other hand their Virtual World wasn't the expected success, in web already dominated by other players in the MMO/virtual reality field.
My guess there was, they didn't succeed, they didn't provide anything open source, and I didn't really see any interoperability there.
Contrast this to Gmail and Gtalk, which both support open standards -- Gmail especially; it's not as though you have to convince all your friends to move to Gmail too -- and are also leaders in functionality and ease of use. Lively just wasn't that good, wasn't open, really had nothing going for it.
On a side note, I think that what I'm proposing a couple of post above (host the pictures in an off-site gallery and only publish the URL on facebook) is a nice first step toward the direction.
I see no problem with hosting it on Facebook, if they provide a reasonable way to embed it elsewhere. Otherwise, yeah, put it on something like Flickr, which has an API and an embeddable widget.
So, I've just reread my post, and I can't see where I even mentioned rape. But let's go with that, because I'm in such a trollbiting mood:
While this might be considered a legitimate reason to have an abortion, consider the statistics
So you admit that it might be a legitimate reason, except for some statistics. So let's look at them:
There are about 200 pregnancies due to rape [physiciansforlife.org] per year
In other words, you're going to tell those 200 women that they have to carry the baby to term,
So my question is: why is it okay to make abortion legal and freely available in all cases, just to make it available for the 0.00003% that may have legitimate reasons?
I don't know. Let's look at our other fundamental rights and see which ones we don't value, because they only apply to a minority.
Hell, there's only a tiny percentage of people in the US who aren't Christian, or at least Deist -- let's make it a legal requirement to believe in God!
Fuck no, the question is not one of statistics. We are about fundamental rights, in case you've forgotten. How many people in China are actually harmed by the inability to speak freely? Who gives a fuck? It's a fundamental, inalienable right.
So yeah, unless you're ready to tell those 200 women to go fuck themselves -- and very likely the other thousand or so women who don't want to admit they were raped -- I think we should let it stand.
By the way: All of that is following your assumption that only women who have been raped have a legitimate reason for getting an abortion. That seems moronic. Either abortion is baby-killing or it's not. If you're right, and it is baby-killing, then those 200 women should sit and suffer -- but I think you're an insensitive prick if you believe that. If it's not baby-killing, but fetus-aborting, then yes, every woman should have a right to it, whether she's been raped or not.
I'm going to regret this...
Many Americans think our economy is failing because of the Bush Administration, but they are wrong, it is because of sin. We are a very sinful nation, therefore God is against us.
And so, all that time before, when we were "sinning" as much or more, and the economy was much better? What was that? Was God taking a nap?
I mean, look at this crap:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land
How about all of the people out of work now -- people with families to feed, dipping into their savings, can't even pull much from their retirement fund because the market is shit, too -- I guarantee some of those are praying, and I doubt they're getting abortions. How hard do they have to pray before God hears them?
it is perfectly legal to murder an unborn child for convenience, maybe the mother to be says, 'It's not the right time, I must further my career', or a mother may tell her teenage daughter, 'You must get rid of the baby because you are to young. You must finish school'.
That's based on two false assumptions: First, what you're calling an "unborn child", the medical community calls a "fetus". You'll find no clear scientific or religious basis for when the fetus becomes a child.
Second, you're assuming that all of this is for "convenience". That shows a profound lack of understanding of what it is like to carry and give birth to a child -- especially when, as in this case, you're likely to have to give it up for adoption anyway.
genocide that is taking place here in America everyday disguised as planned parenthood.
It's not genocide -- even if we grant that they are children, the meaning of "genocide" is very specific. I suggest you use a dictionary.
And planned parenthood is not just about abortion -- they also provide education, and contraceptives, which help avoid the problem entirely.
But again -- the economic crisis is not about abortion, no matter how much you want it to be. People who have not had abortions are suffering, and, I'm sure, people who have had abortions are finding ways to weather the storm.
And think about your core point, too:
Many Americans think our economy is failing because of the Bush Administration
Yes, it is. If you'd like us to believe that this is somehow God's punishment, fine, that means God is punishing us through the actions of the Bush administration.
Or, hey, it's possible God has nothing to do with it, and this is just our natural consequence for our stupidity in electing those assholes, not once, but twice.
We are a society, and we are not, generally, computer-savvy enough to appreciate the benefits of what you've proposed.
Yes, we are. We're just too apathetic.
I find that things like this, or OpenID, or Jabber, are actually quite easy to explain to most people. They already use at least one system that works tihs way -- email. There's nothing stopping you from starting your own mailserver -- and short of that, if Yahoo starts causing problems, you can always use Gmail, or vice versa. Or you can buy a domain, and switch at will between service providers, while retaining the same email address.
Whether or not people know this, it intuitively makes sense. And the next step, that you could have a social network be like email, is not that hard to explain, either. Bloggers are already halfway there, as are people who use blogs.
meanwhile it seems reasonable to convince people of something closer to their hearts: their breasts.
I'd use that to open the discussion, if anyone ever seemed doubtful that Myspace or Facebook would abuse their power.
Baby steps.
Except it's not really a step forward, unless you connect the ideas for them. Otherwise, while it's easy enough to understand decentralization, they might not think of it on their own. They might simply think that Facebook is being unreasonable, and consider moving back to Myspace, or looking for a third option, or worse, building their own.
I see your sarcasm, but you're exactly right. XFN, and microformats, are built around the Web itself -- HTML over HTTP, nothing fancy. Throw in some OpenID and you're done.
My point isn't that it has to be complicated or new, but that it has to actually be used. For example, there is a specification for linking to a friends' site, and declaring your relationship to them. Combine with an index (a search engine) and you can build pretty much everything people like about a social network -- including the "has x friends" statistic.
When it appears on the Internet it's out of your control, all strangers can see it, and possibly abuse it.
I'm curious -- what does it mean that they would be abused?
I don't disagree with your main point, I'm just curious about what you mean here.
it's probably because you went to the trouble of getting a good angle and waited for the right moment, not because the woman was running through the streets topless screaming "Look at me! Look at my tits!".
And yet, presumably she cared more about feeding her baby than about covering herself. I applaud that sense of priorities, by the way, but that's a possible consequence.
'there existed, from a point in a public place, a line of sight to her underwear, which was, at the moment the picture was taken, also in a public place, so why shouldn't I be allowed to take a picture and upload it to the intertubes?' is no proper defense for such an action.
True, but it is a reason to avoid wearing skirts in such a place.
Again: I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying that there is a way to avoid it: Wear pants.
I wish to live in a world where people wouldn't have to worry about all their actions being 'photographed, stored, and indexed, for generations to come'.
I don't like it either, but it's too late for that.
Right. Question is whether the disk array is concatenating the drives somehow, or if ZFS can actually see each individual drive. I would think the latter would be much more useful.
Over two thousand days of consecutive uptime?
Sounds like someone doesn't patch their kernel. Not a good idea, unless the machine's sole purpose was to set an uptime record.
...why?
I'm sure there's a good reason, but... He's using dtrace, right? Thus implying Solaris? Thus implying ZFS?
If you've got ZFS, why would you do JBOD?
Or did I just mis-hear him?
The only way I see this working is to somehow use the openness of a Linux console as an advantage. It's like having a gaming PC, without the disadvantages of a PC (viruses/maintenance), and with all the advantages of a console (couch/controller/TV vs monitor/keyboard/mouse).
But even as a hypothetical, I can't really come up with a good example. Maybe an extensive modding community? Maybe an easy way to do this with a laptop?
On the other hand, I find it somewhat ridiculous that you would not object to showing whatever it is you're showing, in public, to a handful of strangers, but you would suddenly object if it was shown, over the Internet, to a few more strangers.
I don't know what the law should be -- it always bothered me when some video shown on TV has various faces blurred out, because they never got that person to sign some sort of waiver. On the other hand, if you're going to snap a photo of someone, and then turn that into an international ad campaign, I'd argue you should have to get their consent, and probably pay them for the privilege.
But regardless of what the law should be, common sense now dictates that if you are in public, you should assume that anything you do might be photographed and broadcast. It's like sex tapes -- sure it was just for the boyfriend, but why do that unless you either wanted it public, or knew the guy well enough to trust him with that? Or piracy -- I won't defend copyright infringement, but assume that very smart people will succeed in pirating your stuff and sharing it with the world, and build your business model with that in mind.
The Internet looks infinite, but it's not.
No, it's only very, very large.
It's only as infinite as peoples' ability to keep track of multiple sites.
We have an answer for that, and its name is Google. There are very few sites that I know by heart, or have bookmarked -- if I need to find something, I STFW.
But back to the social networking concept:
If I duplicate Facebook's site and change only the breast policy, do you think that people will switch, even though the new one is better?
I think that just goes to show how stupid and dangerous it is to allow a central authority to gain such control, especially when there are other alternatives. I consider it a critical flaw in most social networking sites that they don't support things like XFN, meaning that even if you do start to dislike Facebook, as TFA says, you can't carry your network with you.
With a distributed system, you would own a URL ($10/year buys you a domain), which you could carry to any service you wanted, and keep your network.
It is offensive that breasts are regarded as indecent. What's wrong with trying to change minds?
Nothing wrong with it. I just think that your solution -- convince Facebook -- is short-sighted, although easier. For example: I consider it offensive that nudity is always "indecent", and that sex is "vulgar" -- we're as bad as the Victorians.
No, the real (but difficult) solution is to convince Facebook's users to start building a truly distributed social network, so that there is no one entity which gets to decide what's acceptable and what isn't -- so that we can all decide for ourselves, just like with the rest of the Internet.
Interesting.
My laptop's internal keyboard handles nine before it dies. This Apple Aluminum only handles five.
Still, I'm finding it hard to imagine how I'd hit even five at once. I suppose I might get four, with ctrl+space and two directions -- which would correspond to a diagonal crouch-jump (or long jump) in Half-Life.
I play an MMO, and it tends to do things not through combinations of keypresses, but through sequences.
What games would require more keypresses than that?
Even if they were new, five are Linux distributions. And that's not counting Android.
Yeah, Linux is cool, distributions are cool, but you'd think they would show some variety. Coolest one I've seen all year -- that is new -- is Archaeopteryx. Perhaps not a big deal, but weren't they doing the 10 coolest projects, not the 10 most important projects?
Seems the best counterargument would be to point out that it's also not bad as a USB mass storage device.
No, look again -- if you agree with my post, you should also agree that this in no way sounds like a virus. Perhaps calling them an idiot is uncalled for...
Then again, "Microsoft's iPod's"?
What is this "Ubunta" you speak of?
Sorry to be pedantic, but it just bothers me when so many people manage to misspell such a simple word. All phonetic, too -- none of those tricky English spellings. Say it with me -- oo boon too. Not oo boon tah.
And yes, I'm pretty sure you're talking about popularity-contest, which I mentioned. I don't actually participate in those, by the way.
I had to explain she can press forward and right at the same time to move at an angle, but pressing forward and backward at the same time does nothing.
In other words: It's hard for the same reasons an NES controller is hard, and could really only be improved by a joystick, not by a special "gaming keyboard".
The polite answer is, the only thing that's "intuitive" is a nipple. You had to learn to drive a car, too, and you certainly weren't born knowing how to type. If nothing else, WASD makes sense as long as QWERTY does -- it's what people know, if anything. Better something that some people are familiar with and others have to learn, than something no one is familiar with. (Disclaimer: I use Dvorak.)
The somewhat less polite answer is a question: Is your girlfriend an idiot? Just what did she expect to happen when you press forward and backward at the same time? That her character would fly straight up?
Maybe this same kind of attack is feasible given a year of time on a much bigger cluster, or something like that.
Only if it scales linearly. Remember, DES is trivially cracked, but triple-DES is still secure (last I checked).
I'm really glad my iPod has never locked up.. (like 20 times or so).
What makes this such an epic fail is not just that it's "locked up" -- no, it's completely unusable. There is a fix which involves taking it half apart to perform a "hard reset", after which it will work -- until you try to plug it into a computer, which will kill it again.
That, and the fact that everyone's 30 gig Zune, everywhere, seems to be having the same problem. I certainly don't remember that ever happening to even a single line of iPods.
the more complex the machine, the more chances it has to break.
That is a cop-out. I suspect it has more to do with the fact that despite problems like this, people keep buying Microsoft products -- so what incentive do they have to spend the extra time/money to get it right the first time?
Microsoft is certainly not the only one, though they are the most visible. Case in point: People bought new computers with Vista. Worse than that, a surprising number of tech-conscious people bought Vista itself.
It obviously did need that black eye, as people were still buying them.
And wouldn't this be a vast Right wing conspiracy, to cut Obama off from his Zune?
And we all know that no Microsoft product has ever failed for a reason other than a security issue? (*cough* BSOD!)
No, it really doesn't sound like a virus. Sorry, but there's no way that many Zunes got infected all at once -- and what's more, there's not really a lot of incentive to develop such a virus. A simple bug is more likely.
Sounds like you're an idiot to me.
You didn't figure that out from the comment about "Microsoft's iPod's"?