BIG, SLOW MOVING BLADES DO NOT CHOP THINGS UP. PERIOD
Slow moving blades? Let's see, at 126 meter diameter, that the tips of that thing are covering 359+ meters per revolution. The makers state it should typically run at 6.9 to 12.1 revolutions/minute. That's 2,729 to 4,787 meters per minute the tips are running at. (45 to 70 meters per second) (162 - 252 km/hour) (100 - 156 MPH).
I don't know about you, but I don't think 150 MPH is *slow*. That's plenty fast enough to take out birds.
Oh, I did read the article, that's how I knew it wasn't in there. The two responders just read the blurb and thought it must therefore be in the article. THEY didn't read it. Kinda like the pot calling the white-tea-set black.
Please show me where it says that in the article? It doesn't. It ONLY says it in the summary in slashdot. That's because the folks interviewed for the article understood the implications better than the slashdot submitter who wrote that part of the blurb. The submitter made the claim, the article does not.
How are they going to make a 'laser protective windshield"? You can't just filter one frequency out and call it safe. Lasers do come in more than one wavelength. If they spend the money, they can shine whatever wavelength they want at you. What are you expecting? The captain to order the crew to 'modulate the shield frequency', and if that doesn't work, 'reverse the polarity'?
I had that straight. But as Linus has no control over exactly how some snippit of code from the kernal might be taken out an used in a 3rd party app, MS has no control over how some snippit of their code is taken and used by someone else. They are just paid for use of said snippit, just as Linus get's his return-of-the-code via GPL. Neither one knows exactly what someone else has done with the code, or if it's used in a vulnerable matter. As long as they have passed on any discovered vulnerabilities to the code-users, they have done what they were responsible for.
And MS had notified all the vendors about the error in the original code. MS however, has ZERO idea how the vendor modified the code, or how the rest of their app interacts with it, and if it is a security risk or not. The vendors DO know. They are the ones that should patch their own app.
This is liked saying the since some Linux code may have been used in some 3rd party app like the Gimp (of course following the strictures that the code was correctly licensed accoring to the GPL) Linux should be responsible for checking the Gimp and any of a million and one other 3rd party apps, for any problematic code. Even tho he has no idea how the code was modified for that specific app.
So, is Linus going to put out an advisory that there may be some random explit in the Gimp that allows user level access to hackers? I know there must be some random buffer overflow in the Gimp somewhere. Linus should point this out according to your logic, shouldn't he?
Kinda silly eh?
Of course 3rd party apps might have exploits. It's up to those 3rd party vendors to supply patches. Even if the code is originally based on MS code, the 3rd party vendor may have modified it in any variety of ways and MS has no idea if those will be dangerous versions or not. MS has identified the bad code, the 3rd party vendors have been notified about it. It's up to them to tell you if their version is bad or not, and patch their software.
You are the more serious gamer who didn't want to put forth the effort. Actually I know a lot of knowledgable guys that have stopped building their own. It does take time to do the shopping around for parts etc.
Most Joe sixpacks I know go for the cheap or midrange stuff, unless you live in an area with lots of disposable cash.
The author says "why the hell is Joe Sixpack buying an Alienware or Dell XPS?"
I don't know about Joe Sixpack's near where ever he lives, but around here, they all ask me what the cheapest machine is that will do basic stuff for themselves, or their kids at school. The only ones I see running out for Alienware or Dell XPS machines are serious gamers who are either 1) too uneducated, or 2) don't want to put forth the effort, to build their own machine.
I don't know that it changes everything. I can imagine a lot of companies that might have win2k machines that are running fine doing Word, Excel, some little proprietary-in-house apps, etc, that have no need for faster CPUs or buckets of RAM to do their regular work.
Why upgrade? So the CPU can sit at 99% idle rather than 96% idle for most of the day while it waits for the next key to be pressed on the keyboard? If you have a decent admin he will already be running SUS, etc, so he's not sitting at each desktop wasting time working on a 'slow' machine.
Times are tough for a lot of companies. The option for some might be replace a fleet of computers that are working fine, or not lay-off a worker or two. Why replace machines that are functioning fine?
MS is forcing major expense because they won't fix the security in all their 'supported' OS's.
(And please don't suggest we run linux et. al. We know about OSS. We have an OpenBSD firewall. We use a number of proprietary applications (some running external hardware) that require a hardware dongle, and the apps don't run under *nix.)
First of all, amortizing is nice, but it does not magically give you a fist full of cash to go buy a new machine. Sorry.
Secondly, we are in an academic setting. I'm not being 'stupid' as you so kindly put it. We simply don't have the cash. We run SUS server, etc, to push out patches, so wasting the admin time isn't that huge of a deal.
Windows 2000 machines are quite adequate for most desk jobs. Forcing an upgrade is silly when the machines are working fine as-is and don't require that much maintenence. And as for e-machines... their failure rate is *not good* (voice of experience here).
Software protection only gets you so far. We need hardware protection too. We've got a number of old machines that were originally running NT 4, which are now running (slowly) windows 2000. XP has even higher system requirements. The systems are already maxed out on the RAM that the motherboards can handle. XP won't work. It would utterly kill those machines. So MS is trying to force folks not only to upgrade their software, but their hardware as well.
Sure, you might not get the same price Dell gets, but if you even bother to look, you can buy a copy of XP off of many dealers on pricewatch.com for a under third of what that sucker paid. It's called shopping around, try it sometime.
Buy laptops with broken screens and just rip off the top. You can hook the back VGA port up to any external monitor you have around whenever you actually need a head on the machine.
Slashdot Mirror
Slow moving blades? Let's see, at 126 meter diameter, that the tips of that thing are covering 359+ meters per revolution. The makers state it should typically run at 6.9 to 12.1 revolutions/minute. That's 2,729 to 4,787 meters per minute the tips are running at. (45 to 70 meters per second) (162 - 252 km/hour) (100 - 156 MPH).
I don't know about you, but I don't think 150 MPH is *slow*. That's plenty fast enough to take out birds.
Does it matter? My pr0n! All my precious pr0n!!!
Umm, it's not exactly a windshield when you block all light. It's just another totally opaque part of the hull of the aircraft at that point.
I'm guessing we get bronze. I only really like the single-player stuff, so that's ok by me. Counterstrike fans are gonna be bummed tho I think.
Oh, I did read the article, that's how I knew it wasn't in there. The two responders just read the blurb and thought it must therefore be in the article. THEY didn't read it. Kinda like the pot calling the white-tea-set black.
Apparently YOU didn't bother to read the article.
It was ONLY in the summary. Not in the article.
How are they going to make a 'laser protective windshield"? You can't just filter one frequency out and call it safe. Lasers do come in more than one wavelength. If they spend the money, they can shine whatever wavelength they want at you. What are you expecting? The captain to order the crew to 'modulate the shield frequency', and if that doesn't work, 'reverse the polarity'?
Watch it online then...
The Elegant Universe
As another poster earlier in the thread mentioned, Microsoft were hardly the only ones doing this. Netscape/Mozilla were also affected.
I had that straight. But as Linus has no control over exactly how some snippit of code from the kernal might be taken out an used in a 3rd party app, MS has no control over how some snippit of their code is taken and used by someone else. They are just paid for use of said snippit, just as Linus get's his return-of-the-code via GPL. Neither one knows exactly what someone else has done with the code, or if it's used in a vulnerable matter. As long as they have passed on any discovered vulnerabilities to the code-users, they have done what they were responsible for.
This is liked saying the since some Linux code may have been used in some 3rd party app like the Gimp (of course following the strictures that the code was correctly licensed accoring to the GPL) Linux should be responsible for checking the Gimp and any of a million and one other 3rd party apps, for any problematic code. Even tho he has no idea how the code was modified for that specific app.
Kinda silly eh?
Of course 3rd party apps might have exploits. It's up to those 3rd party vendors to supply patches. Even if the code is originally based on MS code, the 3rd party vendor may have modified it in any variety of ways and MS has no idea if those will be dangerous versions or not. MS has identified the bad code, the 3rd party vendors have been notified about it. It's up to them to tell you if their version is bad or not, and patch their software.
Sooooo, how exactly is MS responsible for all 3rd party DLLs?
You are the more serious gamer who didn't want to put forth the effort. Actually I know a lot of knowledgable guys that have stopped building their own. It does take time to do the shopping around for parts etc.
Most Joe sixpacks I know go for the cheap or midrange stuff, unless you live in an area with lots of disposable cash.
I don't know about Joe Sixpack's near where ever he lives, but around here, they all ask me what the cheapest machine is that will do basic stuff for themselves, or their kids at school. The only ones I see running out for Alienware or Dell XPS machines are serious gamers who are either 1) too uneducated, or 2) don't want to put forth the effort, to build their own machine.
Why upgrade? So the CPU can sit at 99% idle rather than 96% idle for most of the day while it waits for the next key to be pressed on the keyboard? If you have a decent admin he will already be running SUS, etc, so he's not sitting at each desktop wasting time working on a 'slow' machine.
Times are tough for a lot of companies. The option for some might be replace a fleet of computers that are working fine, or not lay-off a worker or two. Why replace machines that are functioning fine?
MS is forcing major expense because they won't fix the security in all their 'supported' OS's.
(And please don't suggest we run linux et. al. We know about OSS. We have an OpenBSD firewall. We use a number of proprietary applications (some running external hardware) that require a hardware dongle, and the apps don't run under *nix.)
Secondly, we are in an academic setting. I'm not being 'stupid' as you so kindly put it. We simply don't have the cash. We run SUS server, etc, to push out patches, so wasting the admin time isn't that huge of a deal.
Windows 2000 machines are quite adequate for most desk jobs. Forcing an upgrade is silly when the machines are working fine as-is and don't require that much maintenence. And as for e-machines... their failure rate is *not good* (voice of experience here).
Software protection only gets you so far. We need hardware protection too. We've got a number of old machines that were originally running NT 4, which are now running (slowly) windows 2000. XP has even higher system requirements. The systems are already maxed out on the RAM that the motherboards can handle. XP won't work. It would utterly kill those machines. So MS is trying to force folks not only to upgrade their software, but their hardware as well.
I think that should read 'Half-Life engine'.
It's not illegal as long as you also buy hardware from them, even if it's a tiny cheap piece of hardware.
Sure, you might not get the same price Dell gets, but if you even bother to look, you can buy a copy of XP off of many dealers on pricewatch.com for a under third of what that sucker paid. It's called shopping around, try it sometime.
Buy laptops with broken screens and just rip off the top. You can hook the back VGA port up to any external monitor you have around whenever you actually need a head on the machine.
But you were just being an ignorant putz, weren't you.
And no offense, but they are the ones that really matter.