We have a handful of checkpoint firewalls deployed using stateful failover. It's one of those features you tend to only get after you pay a lot of money to somebody. This means one less reason to be paying thousands a year for checkpoint software subscriptions and nokia support. Maybe it's about time to look at replacing those fellas.
HAH! Like we're going to believe the trash *that* second-rate rag prints?? I don't think you understand.... the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS has spoken!
The only thing I *can't* explain is how he can be from 2256, when everybody already knows from the last issue of Weekly World News that the second coming of christ is already upon us, and the end times are starting next thursday pending the arrival of our ancient alien camel-faced ancestors and their 500lb infants with alligator tails.
When I started working for the company I'm working for, whose name shall remain unpublished, there was a bit of funny going on with the ip addressing schemes of our various offices. Instead of fooling around with that silly private address space nonsense, they just went allocating/8 blocks devil-may-care, one for each office, and I'll just say there were more than ten of them. Oddest bit was, nobody really seemed to notice all that much, except for the few odd folks who'd try to visit their alma mater's website and met with frustration every time. 128/8 and 129/8 were mysteriously always unavailable.
So 69/8 is blacked out? Ah, big deal. At least the dba can get to Oracle's website now. 192/8 was an office with about 60 people, if you can believe that. Strange folks out there setting up networks. Shield your young.
I have to disagree with this. While it's true that being a techie is absolutely no excuse for not being able to communicate, users shouldn't generally be talking to the technical staff directly in my opinion. This is primarily because they often don't really know what questions to ask or how to interpret the response, and often they're not even entirely sure what they want from a technical perspective. Additionally, it exposes the technical staff to a slew of completely unprioritized requests, some of which have to be kicked up to the manager anyway in the event that the user is asking for something that requires a great deal of time and manpower (and maybe doesn't even realize it).
I think it's great to have a working relationship with the users, but I know that in my position, the orders come from my boss, and he filters out the things he's not willing to support and escalates the things he knows are important to the business.
To add: one thing that I think is understated in the original post is the ability to interface technical operations with the business needs of the company. Techies aren't usually entirely aware of the business needs of the company. A good IT department can get things done quickly and well, but it will still need a manager who understands both technology *and* business to direct their efforts in a productive way. Getting an old tech grunt in as a manager by no means guarantees you an effective staff. You have to have a guy that can understand and take advantage of your technical potential and apply it effectively to what your business is trying to do. That means knowing both sides very, very well.
I can't tell you what to buy, but I can tell you that I bought a Viewsonic PS775 about 3 years ago on advice from a friend who had good experiences with them, and I've been very happy with it. Another friend of mine got a similar model on my advice and was also very happy. Stick with a reputable brand and don't try to save $50 on a monitor you're going to use for the next three to five years. Get something you'll like looking at.
No no, there is a subtle difference, you see. The last article was about how Sun was *likely* to use Opteron chips in their upcoming server. This article is about how Sun is officially *considering* using Opteron chips in their upcoming server? See?
I thought about this a lot too over the last year or so, and based on my experience, it's simply that despite all of the security risks, most companies aren't losing that much money on lack of security.
I work for a company that has a good bit of Microsoft, some Sun and some linux deployed. Now, without getting into any religious wars over who's more secure, I'll simply say that the Microsoft servers have been compromised on more than one occassion. The Microsoft servers also got hit very hard by Code Red and Nimda.
When I see stuff like that, I just shake my head, because it seems insane to me that the company considers that acceptable. But then I thought about it, and here's why I think they're okay with it: with all of the exploits, all of the headaches, and all of the patching, it really didn't affect anybody above the admin level one iota. We didn't lose any money because of the compromises (sure, we served up a lot of movies and so forth), we didn't pay extra money to clean up afterward, and we didn't lose any data. As far as management was concerned, we got hit full on with evil crackers, and it just didn't matter that much.
Now, I'll grant you that some companies have a lot to lose with poor security. Anybody who's stocking personal information or credit card numbers or whatnot should be very concerned. Financial institutions and military organizations (people who are being specifically targetted for their data) should be more concerned. But I think the majority of companies who are just serving up information on corporate websites, running some basic services, etc. just haven't been hit by security holes hard enough for it to warrant a change in their philosophy.
I think it's much the same for desktop users. There are a lot of Windows vulnerabilities out there and a lot of unpatched machines, but I don't know of anybody who's really felt any pain because of microsoft security holes. I'm certain there are some, but actual exploits are not nearly as epidemic as the vulnerabilities they exploit.
Now, if one of these things ever got any legs and started wiping out hard drives or corrupting data, and if millions of people were affected, and if millions of actual, tangible dollars (not time, effort, etc.) were lost, I think it would suddenly become a very different ballgame. But the fact is, at least for now, that despite the rampant security problems, the business community as a whole isn't suffering enough to worry, and neither are the home users.
I'm not saying it's right, but I know that my boss and his boss don't care if it doesn't cost the company anything.
Actually, I would have loved to go with FreeBSD. I started out with FreeBSD and linux actually came along a while after for me, and I still use it whenever and wherever I can. The reason linux is replacing solaris instead of FreeBSD is purely for support and certification reasons. Management wants those company-backed assurances before they put the okay on a project or a migration.
We're in the same boat as you guys. We had a slew of Sun hardware that just didn't need to be Sun hardware. I like working with Sun, and I like working with Solaris, but I just can't recommend Sun for most things in our environment. The fact of the matter is that we get fantastic deals from Dell on x86 servers, and using linux, we can (and will) replace most Sun pieces in our infrastructure.
Like I said, I've got nothing against Sun. I like working with their hardware. But when my boss asks me 'how much will it cost?', Sun leaves me in a real bad spot. Now they've realized how much they've priced themselves out of markets like ours, and they're working on putting out reasonably-priced systems these days with things like this amd deal or by using standard-registered dimms that you can buy from third parties on the cheap. But it's too late, I think. We started migrating away from Sun a while back, and we're not going to swap vendors again now.
The bottom line is this: What is Sun going to offer me in the linux/x86 world that Dell (or insert your vendor here) isn't? Better support? Lower prices? Better hardware integration? Sorry, we've got all of that. Our core applications will continue to run on Sun hardware for the forseeable future, but the low/mid-range stuff is already long down the road of x86 and linux, and Sun was just way too late to the game.
The RIAA is actually on pretty solid ground after coming off of a success with Napster. They've established that evil young ones share their music, that it's illegal, and that they're within their rights in trying to shut it all down. I doubt they're doing that badly in the court of public opinion either (slashdot aside, of course). So I don't think the courts are going to consider all of this frivolous just yet.
It's fairly obvious that the guy had a lot of mp3s and was facilitating trading of mp3s. Now legally (as the article points out), I think he's going to do okay. But nobody's going to take the RIAA to task for coming after this guy. If (hopefully when) he gets off, if the public takes any notice at all, they'll most likely see him as a guilty student getting out on a technicality. The RIAA will probably come out looking legitimate either way, so they won't be losing face with this suit.
All of this is from a purely objective standpoint, of course. Personally, I'd love for the RIAA to get cooked in court *and* in public opinion.
I would think a lot of people are watching this case, to be honest. It's distinct in that the RIAA is targeting a student directly and is asking for damages that would financially cripple this guy for the rest of his life. They're trying to send the message now that they're coming after you the student with an army of lawyers and punitive damages so large that you'll wish you'd never even heard of music.
College campuses are significant too, at least in the reasoning of the RIAA. It's the right demographic mixed with the right networking infrastructure, and huge amounts of mp3 swapping occur there. I don't know about most universities, but the one I attended had an Internet2 link, and that just made the flood of mp3s all the more epic. I think there's a reasonable case to be made that intra-university mp3 trading is a pretty large piece of the pie.
I'm drawing on my own experience a lot here, but I remember we never thought much about the RIAA a few years ago, but that was because they were too preoccupied with Napster at the time. I do know a few people who had pretty large shared collections, though, and I know that they would have been watching this unfold with a great deal of concern.
He makes a lot of good points, and the gist of it is that the RIAA's case is pretty poorly made. But that's something that most people already know, maybe even including the RIAA. Thing is, they don't have to win in order to be effective. They could get creamed in court and it still wouldn't matter. All they have to do is scare the living bejezus out of a handful of people and they'll get what they're after. Aiming a multi-billion dollar lawsuit at one student has a pretty sobering effect on anybody that's nearby and watching, and the RIAA has the resources to file suit all day and night, win or lose.
Of course, based on some of the numbers that have been coming out over the last few years, they might actually stand to gain more by collecting the $96 billion from this one guy than by ending file sharing.
Putting all of the upfront analysis aside for a second, what could Microsoft be up to here? Hmmm... what does Microsoft want? I think everybody can agree that it isn't to give linux a hand, right? They're always trying to dominate some market, so it's a safe bet without even reading into it that they're probably thinking a few moves ahead with that end in mind.
So then, reading into it, it looks to me like Microsoft is licensing some proprietary technology out to a market they can't compete well in. So whether you're running Microsoft embedded or linux embedded, you're still using Microsoft's format, right? And a few years from now, everybody's using Microsoft's proprietary format in their various devices. Microsoft would have the keys to the kingdom at that point.
It's really hard to ignore Microsoft's history when I look at stuff like this. They want to be in this market, and they see that linux has legs in this market. It's silly to think that they're knuckling under or doing this out of charity, or even doing it just for the licensing profits. They've never done business like that. They want the whole enchilada.
The Samba site actually mentions that an active exploit is already out there. Hopefully most people are running Samba in hard-to-reach places, but this definitely is a large problem. This is one I wouldn't let slide for more than oh, say... the next 30 minutes.
I doubt this is very accurate for marking photos as hits or misses directly. This kind of thing may be useful more for detecting the lack of life rather than the presence of it. If compression rates are low, maybe you don't have to look at this photo so much. If they're high, maybe you want to examine it more closely. If you're dealing with truck loads of data and you're looking for a needle in a haystack, a mechanism for ruling out uninteresting data is invaluable.
That having been said, it sounds good in theory that 'organisms are highly patterned and therefore compress better', but then why would you use gzip? Why not take that theory and build something a little more adept at locating particular types of patterns you're interested in, or ruling out the ones you know are going to create false positives?
So, THAT having been said, I'm forced to wonder if somebody forgot that March has 31 days. Lord knows I can never keep track.
I think it'll come... just give it time. At least in the meantime these films are getting some press. If nothing else, millions of Oscars viewers (minus those who got up to get pretzels during the best animated picture award) are seeing some clips and getting some exposure. If Spirited Away had to compete with non-animated movies today, it would have very little chance of being recognized at all. That isn't because it's not as good (I happen to think it holds its own against every nomination in either category), but because people just aren't ready to treat the medium seriously yet. Lots of Disney-inflicted stereotypes to undo first.
According to the icon, this is an AMD story, so if I don't get MacOS X on an AMD chip in June, you're getting my therapy bill.
Actually, to say something at least on topic, my fiancee got a 12" powerbook today, and while it really hits the pocketbook hard, I have to admit it's pretty slick. Just keep the good stuff coming, and maybe I'll buy one next. Once we recover financially, that is...
I'm really glad to see that they won. Spirited Away was an excellent, excellent movie, beautifully drawn and positively enthralling in my opinion. I was certain Lilo & Stitch would take this category simply because it was the headline Disney release this year. Kudos to Miyazaki on an absolutely fantastic piece, and kudos to the academy for recognizing it. Bet Disney wasn't expecting this...
Not true. There are forces from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Australia at least. I think there are actually more, but those are the ones that I know of (See General Frank's press conference from yesterday).
Again, you are correct. There are several other nations participating in combat based on that. However, ask yourself if US action was every really contingent upon their cooperation. Even though they did come on board, and they did commit troops, it is still only a matter of convenience as far as US policy-making is concerned. The decision to go to war was not made collectively with these nations, they just happened to support the decision after it was made.
By the same token, US policy should not be held hostage by a single foreign power. France is the only permanent member of the Security Council that consistantly threatened a veto, even including a threat of veto of ANY resolution that authorized the use of force under ANY circumstances. By the reasoning of the French, the Iraqis could have launched a risen attack againt Saudi Arabia and they would still have vetoed a resolution authorizing the use of force.
The French threat of veto was not quite that broad, in my opinion. Yes, they did say they would veto any resolution that authorized the use of force against Iraq, but they said that in the context of a US push to begin operations immediately. Even before the US decided not to pursue a UN vote, France was pushing a longer timeline (3 months) that would ultimately end in the use of force if Iraq failed to comply. France did come off sounding stubborn, but only because they felt that they were defending the popular position and because the US was being equally stubborn in its push to go to war.
The UN security council is an incredibly ineffective body. it has had over 200 resolutions vetoed since the 1960s.
You could use the same argument to say that US lawmaking is inefficient because the president holds veto power and uses it at will. This veto power is important, because it (ideally) forces a nation like the US to make an overwhelming case for the invasion of a country like Iraq. Had the US been able to put rock-solid evidence on the table, France would have had little choice but to agree to a new resolution (or face significant diplomatic pressure in the future). They were only able to wield their veto power so effectively because to most of the world, they seemed justified in doing it based on the available evidence. Just like the US system, veto power may unfortunately lead to inaction in some cases, but its contributions in checking the legislative (or resolution-building, in the UN case) process is so important that it outweighs.
If France were to invade all of her neighbors and sink Europe into a nuclear winter, a resolution to invoke force to stop her would never pass due to France's position as a permanent member of the SC.
The permanent members of the security council are permanent members because they are stable, responsible nations that generally have little to gain by doing something as destabilizing as invading Europe. However, if for some reason that were to occur, I'm comfortable that the security council (which would be crippled at that point anyway) would adjust appropriately, if for no other reason than the fact that other global agreements (NATO, for example) would absolutely demand the use of force in a situation like that.
The UN is frequently frustrating because it requires us to give up a piece of our sovereignty to the will of the global community. But we should consider that in the future, as the world becomes a smaller and smaller place, this type of international body may become more and more necessary, and we will undoubtably have to ask other nations to consider our needs when making their foreign policy. Often, individual US states experience this same frustration when being forced to yield to federal law which may not align with their own interests. That is the price we pay to have a unifying government for all fifty states.
That is absolutely correct. This is technically not unilateral because of the 45 or so nations who have come on board.
However, in every sense *other* than purely technical, I think this is (and many see it as) a unilateral military action. That's because even if every single one of these 45 nations had stood against the US, it would not have changed a single thing. The decision to go to war was made regardless of the participation of other nations, and even the UK, which in my understanding is the only other nation contributing forces to the war, was on the brink of saying no to this war right up until the day it started. Had the UK voted the other way, would it have kept the US from attacking? According to everything we've heard coming out of Washington, not a chance.
Unilateral and multilateral only matter with regard to their application to how policy is made. In this case, the policy was made unilaterally, and other nations came on board after the fact. They were convenient, but entirely unnecessary as far as the US was concerned. So while you are correct that by definition, this is a multilateral action, I think that in every sense that matters, the world will (correctly) view it as a US action.
As for why UN backing matters, I think many people feel that we're going to need the support of other nations to pursue our own global interests in the future. It's getting to be a much smaller world, and we can't afford to act as though the input of other powerful nations is meaningless or that our actions have no diplomatic consequences. Clearly the US can't tie themselves down to acting only at the discretion of the UN, but in all but the most dire of circumstances, global policy ought to be driven by the global community.
Soon they'll just be estimating the cost in lost sales at 'All the Money in the World' each year. If they were smart, they'd just start making their movies eight thousand times longer, and then it'd be like old times again.
"Back... and to the left... back... and to the left... back....... and to the left..."
I did one about 5 or 6 years ago. Funny thing is, I didn't even watch TV for most of the week. I wrote down shows that I liked more than other shows. So take it from me, those things ain't all that accurate.
Slashdot Mirror
We have a handful of checkpoint firewalls deployed using stateful failover. It's one of those features you tend to only get after you pay a lot of money to somebody. This means one less reason to be paying thousands a year for checkpoint software subscriptions and nokia support. Maybe it's about time to look at replacing those fellas.
HAH! Like we're going to believe the trash *that* second-rate rag prints?? I don't think you understand.... the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS has spoken!
The only thing I *can't* explain is how he can be from 2256, when everybody already knows from the last issue of Weekly World News that the second coming of christ is already upon us, and the end times are starting next thursday pending the arrival of our ancient alien camel-faced ancestors and their 500lb infants with alligator tails.
When I started working for the company I'm working for, whose name shall remain unpublished, there was a bit of funny going on with the ip addressing schemes of our various offices. Instead of fooling around with that silly private address space nonsense, they just went allocating /8 blocks devil-may-care, one for each office, and I'll just say there were more than ten of them. Oddest bit was, nobody really seemed to notice all that much, except for the few odd folks who'd try to visit their alma mater's website and met with frustration every time. 128/8 and 129/8 were mysteriously always unavailable.
So 69/8 is blacked out? Ah, big deal. At least the dba can get to Oracle's website now. 192/8 was an office with about 60 people, if you can believe that. Strange folks out there setting up networks. Shield your young.
I have to disagree with this. While it's true that being a techie is absolutely no excuse for not being able to communicate, users shouldn't generally be talking to the technical staff directly in my opinion. This is primarily because they often don't really know what questions to ask or how to interpret the response, and often they're not even entirely sure what they want from a technical perspective. Additionally, it exposes the technical staff to a slew of completely unprioritized requests, some of which have to be kicked up to the manager anyway in the event that the user is asking for something that requires a great deal of time and manpower (and maybe doesn't even realize it).
I think it's great to have a working relationship with the users, but I know that in my position, the orders come from my boss, and he filters out the things he's not willing to support and escalates the things he knows are important to the business.
To add: one thing that I think is understated in the original post is the ability to interface technical operations with the business needs of the company. Techies aren't usually entirely aware of the business needs of the company. A good IT department can get things done quickly and well, but it will still need a manager who understands both technology *and* business to direct their efforts in a productive way. Getting an old tech grunt in as a manager by no means guarantees you an effective staff. You have to have a guy that can understand and take advantage of your technical potential and apply it effectively to what your business is trying to do. That means knowing both sides very, very well.
Monitors are for people with weak memories.
I can't tell you what to buy, but I can tell you that I bought a Viewsonic PS775 about 3 years ago on advice from a friend who had good experiences with them, and I've been very happy with it. Another friend of mine got a similar model on my advice and was also very happy. Stick with a reputable brand and don't try to save $50 on a monitor you're going to use for the next three to five years. Get something you'll like looking at.
I guess I need to work on my delivery... :)
Jesus... I could even put the swap space ON THE RAMDISK! Think about how fast that'd be!
No no, there is a subtle difference, you see. The last article was about how Sun was *likely* to use Opteron chips in their upcoming server. This article is about how Sun is officially *considering* using Opteron chips in their upcoming server? See?
No?
Hmm.. me neither, I guess...
I thought about this a lot too over the last year or so, and based on my experience, it's simply that despite all of the security risks, most companies aren't losing that much money on lack of security.
I work for a company that has a good bit of Microsoft, some Sun and some linux deployed. Now, without getting into any religious wars over who's more secure, I'll simply say that the Microsoft servers have been compromised on more than one occassion. The Microsoft servers also got hit very hard by Code Red and Nimda.
When I see stuff like that, I just shake my head, because it seems insane to me that the company considers that acceptable. But then I thought about it, and here's why I think they're okay with it: with all of the exploits, all of the headaches, and all of the patching, it really didn't affect anybody above the admin level one iota. We didn't lose any money because of the compromises (sure, we served up a lot of movies and so forth), we didn't pay extra money to clean up afterward, and we didn't lose any data. As far as management was concerned, we got hit full on with evil crackers, and it just didn't matter that much.
Now, I'll grant you that some companies have a lot to lose with poor security. Anybody who's stocking personal information or credit card numbers or whatnot should be very concerned. Financial institutions and military organizations (people who are being specifically targetted for their data) should be more concerned. But I think the majority of companies who are just serving up information on corporate websites, running some basic services, etc. just haven't been hit by security holes hard enough for it to warrant a change in their philosophy.
I think it's much the same for desktop users. There are a lot of Windows vulnerabilities out there and a lot of unpatched machines, but I don't know of anybody who's really felt any pain because of microsoft security holes. I'm certain there are some, but actual exploits are not nearly as epidemic as the vulnerabilities they exploit.
Now, if one of these things ever got any legs and started wiping out hard drives or corrupting data, and if millions of people were affected, and if millions of actual, tangible dollars (not time, effort, etc.) were lost, I think it would suddenly become a very different ballgame. But the fact is, at least for now, that despite the rampant security problems, the business community as a whole isn't suffering enough to worry, and neither are the home users.
I'm not saying it's right, but I know that my boss and his boss don't care if it doesn't cost the company anything.
Actually, I would have loved to go with FreeBSD. I started out with FreeBSD and linux actually came along a while after for me, and I still use it whenever and wherever I can. The reason linux is replacing solaris instead of FreeBSD is purely for support and certification reasons. Management wants those company-backed assurances before they put the okay on a project or a migration.
We're in the same boat as you guys. We had a slew of Sun hardware that just didn't need to be Sun hardware. I like working with Sun, and I like working with Solaris, but I just can't recommend Sun for most things in our environment. The fact of the matter is that we get fantastic deals from Dell on x86 servers, and using linux, we can (and will) replace most Sun pieces in our infrastructure.
Like I said, I've got nothing against Sun. I like working with their hardware. But when my boss asks me 'how much will it cost?', Sun leaves me in a real bad spot. Now they've realized how much they've priced themselves out of markets like ours, and they're working on putting out reasonably-priced systems these days with things like this amd deal or by using standard-registered dimms that you can buy from third parties on the cheap. But it's too late, I think. We started migrating away from Sun a while back, and we're not going to swap vendors again now.
The bottom line is this: What is Sun going to offer me in the linux/x86 world that Dell (or insert your vendor here) isn't? Better support? Lower prices? Better hardware integration? Sorry, we've got all of that. Our core applications will continue to run on Sun hardware for the forseeable future, but the low/mid-range stuff is already long down the road of x86 and linux, and Sun was just way too late to the game.
The RIAA is actually on pretty solid ground after coming off of a success with Napster. They've established that evil young ones share their music, that it's illegal, and that they're within their rights in trying to shut it all down. I doubt they're doing that badly in the court of public opinion either (slashdot aside, of course). So I don't think the courts are going to consider all of this frivolous just yet.
It's fairly obvious that the guy had a lot of mp3s and was facilitating trading of mp3s. Now legally (as the article points out), I think he's going to do okay. But nobody's going to take the RIAA to task for coming after this guy. If (hopefully when) he gets off, if the public takes any notice at all, they'll most likely see him as a guilty student getting out on a technicality. The RIAA will probably come out looking legitimate either way, so they won't be losing face with this suit.
All of this is from a purely objective standpoint, of course. Personally, I'd love for the RIAA to get cooked in court *and* in public opinion.
I would think a lot of people are watching this case, to be honest. It's distinct in that the RIAA is targeting a student directly and is asking for damages that would financially cripple this guy for the rest of his life. They're trying to send the message now that they're coming after you the student with an army of lawyers and punitive damages so large that you'll wish you'd never even heard of music.
College campuses are significant too, at least in the reasoning of the RIAA. It's the right demographic mixed with the right networking infrastructure, and huge amounts of mp3 swapping occur there. I don't know about most universities, but the one I attended had an Internet2 link, and that just made the flood of mp3s all the more epic. I think there's a reasonable case to be made that intra-university mp3 trading is a pretty large piece of the pie.
I'm drawing on my own experience a lot here, but I remember we never thought much about the RIAA a few years ago, but that was because they were too preoccupied with Napster at the time. I do know a few people who had pretty large shared collections, though, and I know that they would have been watching this unfold with a great deal of concern.
He makes a lot of good points, and the gist of it is that the RIAA's case is pretty poorly made. But that's something that most people already know, maybe even including the RIAA. Thing is, they don't have to win in order to be effective. They could get creamed in court and it still wouldn't matter. All they have to do is scare the living bejezus out of a handful of people and they'll get what they're after. Aiming a multi-billion dollar lawsuit at one student has a pretty sobering effect on anybody that's nearby and watching, and the RIAA has the resources to file suit all day and night, win or lose.
Of course, based on some of the numbers that have been coming out over the last few years, they might actually stand to gain more by collecting the $96 billion from this one guy than by ending file sharing.
Putting all of the upfront analysis aside for a second, what could Microsoft be up to here? Hmmm... what does Microsoft want? I think everybody can agree that it isn't to give linux a hand, right? They're always trying to dominate some market, so it's a safe bet without even reading into it that they're probably thinking a few moves ahead with that end in mind.
So then, reading into it, it looks to me like Microsoft is licensing some proprietary technology out to a market they can't compete well in. So whether you're running Microsoft embedded or linux embedded, you're still using Microsoft's format, right? And a few years from now, everybody's using Microsoft's proprietary format in their various devices. Microsoft would have the keys to the kingdom at that point.
It's really hard to ignore Microsoft's history when I look at stuff like this. They want to be in this market, and they see that linux has legs in this market. It's silly to think that they're knuckling under or doing this out of charity, or even doing it just for the licensing profits. They've never done business like that. They want the whole enchilada.
The Samba site actually mentions that an active exploit is already out there. Hopefully most people are running Samba in hard-to-reach places, but this definitely is a large problem. This is one I wouldn't let slide for more than oh, say... the next 30 minutes.
I doubt this is very accurate for marking photos as hits or misses directly. This kind of thing may be useful more for detecting the lack of life rather than the presence of it. If compression rates are low, maybe you don't have to look at this photo so much. If they're high, maybe you want to examine it more closely. If you're dealing with truck loads of data and you're looking for a needle in a haystack, a mechanism for ruling out uninteresting data is invaluable.
That having been said, it sounds good in theory that 'organisms are highly patterned and therefore compress better', but then why would you use gzip? Why not take that theory and build something a little more adept at locating particular types of patterns you're interested in, or ruling out the ones you know are going to create false positives?
So, THAT having been said, I'm forced to wonder if somebody forgot that March has 31 days. Lord knows I can never keep track.
I think it'll come... just give it time. At least in the meantime these films are getting some press. If nothing else, millions of Oscars viewers (minus those who got up to get pretzels during the best animated picture award) are seeing some clips and getting some exposure. If Spirited Away had to compete with non-animated movies today, it would have very little chance of being recognized at all. That isn't because it's not as good (I happen to think it holds its own against every nomination in either category), but because people just aren't ready to treat the medium seriously yet. Lots of Disney-inflicted stereotypes to undo first.
According to the icon, this is an AMD story, so if I don't get MacOS X on an AMD chip in June, you're getting my therapy bill.
Actually, to say something at least on topic, my fiancee got a 12" powerbook today, and while it really hits the pocketbook hard, I have to admit it's pretty slick. Just keep the good stuff coming, and maybe I'll buy one next. Once we recover financially, that is...
I'm really glad to see that they won. Spirited Away was an excellent, excellent movie, beautifully drawn and positively enthralling in my opinion. I was certain Lilo & Stitch would take this category simply because it was the headline Disney release this year. Kudos to Miyazaki on an absolutely fantastic piece, and kudos to the academy for recognizing it. Bet Disney wasn't expecting this...
Not true. There are forces from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Australia at least. I think there are actually more, but those are the ones that I know of (See General Frank's press conference from yesterday).
Again, you are correct. There are several other nations participating in combat based on that. However, ask yourself if US action was every really contingent upon their cooperation. Even though they did come on board, and they did commit troops, it is still only a matter of convenience as far as US policy-making is concerned. The decision to go to war was not made collectively with these nations, they just happened to support the decision after it was made.
By the same token, US policy should not be held hostage by a single foreign power. France is the only permanent member of the Security Council that consistantly threatened a veto, even including a threat of veto of ANY resolution that authorized the use of force under ANY circumstances. By the reasoning of the French, the Iraqis could have launched a risen attack againt Saudi Arabia and they would still have vetoed a resolution authorizing the use of force.
The French threat of veto was not quite that broad, in my opinion. Yes, they did say they would veto any resolution that authorized the use of force against Iraq, but they said that in the context of a US push to begin operations immediately. Even before the US decided not to pursue a UN vote, France was pushing a longer timeline (3 months) that would ultimately end in the use of force if Iraq failed to comply. France did come off sounding stubborn, but only because they felt that they were defending the popular position and because the US was being equally stubborn in its push to go to war.
The UN security council is an incredibly ineffective body. it has had over 200 resolutions vetoed since the 1960s.
You could use the same argument to say that US lawmaking is inefficient because the president holds veto power and uses it at will. This veto power is important, because it (ideally) forces a nation like the US to make an overwhelming case for the invasion of a country like Iraq. Had the US been able to put rock-solid evidence on the table, France would have had little choice but to agree to a new resolution (or face significant diplomatic pressure in the future). They were only able to wield their veto power so effectively because to most of the world, they seemed justified in doing it based on the available evidence. Just like the US system, veto power may unfortunately lead to inaction in some cases, but its contributions in checking the legislative (or resolution-building, in the UN case) process is so important that it outweighs.
If France were to invade all of her neighbors and sink Europe into a nuclear winter, a resolution to invoke force to stop her would never pass due to France's position as a permanent member of the SC.
The permanent members of the security council are permanent members because they are stable, responsible nations that generally have little to gain by doing something as destabilizing as invading Europe. However, if for some reason that were to occur, I'm comfortable that the security council (which would be crippled at that point anyway) would adjust appropriately, if for no other reason than the fact that other global agreements (NATO, for example) would absolutely demand the use of force in a situation like that.
The UN is frequently frustrating because it requires us to give up a piece of our sovereignty to the will of the global community. But we should consider that in the future, as the world becomes a smaller and smaller place, this type of international body may become more and more necessary, and we will undoubtably have to ask other nations to consider our needs when making their foreign policy. Often, individual US states experience this same frustration when being forced to yield to federal law which may not align with their own interests. That is the price we pay to have a unifying government for all fifty states.
That is absolutely correct. This is technically not unilateral because of the 45 or so nations who have come on board.
However, in every sense *other* than purely technical, I think this is (and many see it as) a unilateral military action. That's because even if every single one of these 45 nations had stood against the US, it would not have changed a single thing. The decision to go to war was made regardless of the participation of other nations, and even the UK, which in my understanding is the only other nation contributing forces to the war, was on the brink of saying no to this war right up until the day it started. Had the UK voted the other way, would it have kept the US from attacking? According to everything we've heard coming out of Washington, not a chance.
Unilateral and multilateral only matter with regard to their application to how policy is made. In this case, the policy was made unilaterally, and other nations came on board after the fact. They were convenient, but entirely unnecessary as far as the US was concerned. So while you are correct that by definition, this is a multilateral action, I think that in every sense that matters, the world will (correctly) view it as a US action.
As for why UN backing matters, I think many people feel that we're going to need the support of other nations to pursue our own global interests in the future. It's getting to be a much smaller world, and we can't afford to act as though the input of other powerful nations is meaningless or that our actions have no diplomatic consequences. Clearly the US can't tie themselves down to acting only at the discretion of the UN, but in all but the most dire of circumstances, global policy ought to be driven by the global community.
Soon they'll just be estimating the cost in lost sales at 'All the Money in the World' each year. If they were smart, they'd just start making their movies eight thousand times longer, and then it'd be like old times again.
"Back... and to the left... back... and to the left... back....... and to the left..."
I did one about 5 or 6 years ago. Funny thing is, I didn't even watch TV for most of the week. I wrote down shows that I liked more than other shows. So take it from me, those things ain't all that accurate.
They did give me a dollar for my effort, though.
Oh, how I wanted one so badly long ago...
It's been done badly on more than one occassion, but I was always convinced it could've been done well. Alas, it was not to be...