Repeated corruption of the driver files that coincided with massive corruption on the primary hard drive? I think you need a little heads up.
There are a lot of ATI problems posted here, and I could add one of my own (Radeon 9700 All-in-Wonder). But... I don't think you're having a driver issue. That is a classic bad hard drive scenario right there. Corrupted files even after zero-filling the drive and formatting? That should never happen. Unless you have installed either multiple antivirus applications (that's conflict central right there) or shitty system utilities (Norton SystemWorks comes to mind here), then I'd seriously advise you to download Hitachi's Drive Fitness Utility and/or the drive testing software from the manufacturer.
It's vaguely possible that a PCI Radeon might not play nice with the southbridge's PCI bus mastering. If that's the case, then updating the motherboard chipset drivers might help. An AGP card, however, wouldn't be affected by this issue.
And you, with your bleating self-sacrifice, embody all that is pathetic. Humanity is a seething cancerous blob on this planet, and the slim chance of mass termination or significant evolution is the only (admittedly, frail) hope for sentient life in this solar system.
You even go so far as to contradict yourself, with the grace and style of a tittering twit. If this existence is "utterly pointless" as you claim, then what is your concern with self-actualization or nobility in man? If it is truly pointless, then why care about the comfort or suffering of others?
I'll answer these questions for you as a courtesy. If existence is pointless--a claim that you yourself made and I never did--then the only reason to pursue these goals is your personal desire to do so. This is as selfish a motive as the one you use to impugn me, albeit one which will be more welcome among the rest of humanity seeing as they will benefit from your espoused benevolence.
The alternative to this moral quandary is to admit that existence is not entirely pointless, which collapses your argument entirely. I have already shown how a pointless existence makes you no better than me--or anyone else, for that matter--but I have not yet shown what existence with a purpose implies. Suppose there is purpose; it is irrelevant at the moment whether it is inherent given the nature of the universe or it is clearly derived from rational principles. If there is a purpose, anyone acting in pursuit of this higher purpose can claim moral superiority over anyone who is not. Would you care to guess what I say next? Pause here and ponder.
If you did pause to consider the question, you probably realized that I intend to claim a purpose. I assert the moral high ground. Oh yes, the irony... I'm sure it is striking right now. From your perspective, the irony must be quite overwhelming.
With respect to the present medium, I will attempt to be brief, which unfortunately means my argument may lose some of its formal validity. The advancement of sentient life is a valid purpose, and it is the only valid purpose to which I have been exposed through either experience or rational consideration. Sentient thought represents the next level of organization in a universe that is manifesting increasing complexity (i.e., cosmic and biological evolution). Preservation and propagation of sentience is obviously the primary goal in light of this purpose. Contrary to the indications at the superficial level of analysis, this does mesh well with my previous post.
This planet has an abundance of Homo sapiens organisms, and the vast majority of these organisms are destroying the ability of their ecosphere to support them at an astounding pace. If I have to choose between advancing science and preserving a few scattered specimens that represent a net loss to the only known source of sentience, then my choice should be clear. For any given level of technology, this planet has a specific carrying capacity, and by this I mean a maximum human population that it can sustain without depleting resources at a rate greater than they are replenished. (Caveat: this naturally excludes solar energy, as we do not know of a renewal process for this resource.) Once the human population exceeds this carrying capacity, it is effective, practical, and desirable to terminate humans until we are once again below the threshhold and implement policies to ensure we do not exceed it again in the future. I'll note that this is a consideration which your rather obnoxious "values" utterly fail to address.
The price of this research is paid somewhat by the developing firm and somewhat by the human test subjects. The benefit of the research is received somewhat by the developing firm and somewhat by humanity as a whole. As in a morally righteous war, there are casualties lost in pursuit of the higher purpose (or the greater good, whichever term you prefer). Considering this case in particular, the loss of life when the population is in excess
If Microsoft is going to start from scratch with a new kernel (by this, I mean new to them) then why wouldn't they do it using a kernel developed in-house?
Microsoft switching to Linux would totally undermine their method of gaining and maintaining marketshare, which is to make everything interoperate with everything else (as long as it's all their stuff).
As long as it means I get effective drugs without risking my neck as a test subject, it is in my own best interest to pursue this method of testing.
And, no, this post is not a troll. Deem me "cold-hearted" if you will, but I am most serious in admitting my joy that others will be exposed to the danger while I am able to reap the benefits.
The BIOS would have to support booting from AoE. OS support from the vendor is irrelevant, as the AoE driver makes the disk accessible in the same manner as an internal ATA disk.
Since most x86 BIOSes only support PXE as their network boot protocol, I doubt it will work out of the box. Something would have to provide block-level access to the HD in order for the OS to bootstrap, and PXE doesn't do that.
Coraid (or someone else) would have to make a bootable floppy, CD, or flash drive image that could add this functionality.
Alternatively, a CF card with an IDE adapter could work as an internal solution. With a sufficiently large CF card, you could even install the OS onto the card and use the AoE drive for user profiles, applications, and storage (don't know about performance when swapping though... even with GigE, you might just want to do this on a system that has 2+ GB RAM). This is still technically diskless, and it is feasible with existing hardware and software. If you really want a diskless system now, this is my recommendation.
It's a place of employment, not a public forum for discussing social policy. Posting personal opinions on a company network is asking for trouble.
Also... people... read the article. It indicates her "security badge was revoked". If the government yanked or suspended her security clearance, she would no longer be able to access classified material or work on classified projects. If this is indeed what happened (the wording is a bit vague), then her employer had no choice but to fire her, as she was no longer able to perform her duties. BAE Systems is mostly a government defense contractor, so all of their programming positions may have required security clearance.
She made a dumb move by flagrantly criticizing the organization that contracted her employer. I know there are more than a few places where I would have gotten into severe trouble for doing exactly what she did. I'm not saying I'm sure I would have been fired, but it's something to at least think about first. Sniping at the organization that hired your employer is *never* wise, and I honestly wonder what was going through this woman's head. In the race to scream about censorship, I think some of us are forgetting that her decision was ill-advised by professional standards.
On the other hand, I would question the thought process of whomever decided to pull her security clearance. Was this decision subject to the normal procedure or review? Did the government overseer overreact (or intentionally respond) in a way that forced BAE to fire her without good cause, or was this another incident in a long line of discontented grumblings that made it look like her political attitudes went against the contracting agency? If this is the case, it may have been wise to yank her clearance. Having people work with organizations they despise is not particularly prudent, especially when it involves exposure to sensitive issues. This could be knee-jerk management, it could be pettiness, or it could be a prudent handling of an employee whose attitude was increasingly hostile to the organization for which she was employed. Without further details, I'm not sure there is a way to figure out which of these it is.
Right now, cars can BURST INTO FLAMES during an accident. And cars already have electrical systems capable of electrocuting people. 12V at hundreds of amps can definitely be fatal, and defective ignition circuits have started fires (and this is without involving any gasoline from the engine or fuel tank).
Also, the batteries are almost as much of a fire hazard as gasoline. Google around for what can happen to defective lithium ion batteries.
All vehicles are dangerous machines, and it has always been that way. Hell, back in the day you rode a horse that could decide to kick or throw you on a whim. There has always been a danger, and this is nothing new. As the technology goes into use with a wide range of manufacturers and a wide range of users, the safety issues will be exposed and worked out just as with any other transportation technology.
Microsoft occupies the king of the hill position, which gives it... how shall we say... superior hunting rights? This is why it refuses to be killed off.
Executives chase marketshare because marketshare is an advantage. It's word-of-mouth, mindshare, strategic partnerships, tie-ins, and cross promotions in addition to being more able to set the standards and influence customer expectations. I'll say it now: being able to change people's expectations is probably the biggest advantage, with effective partnerships coming in as a close second.
The whole battle between open source and closed source is taking longer than most FOSS advocates believed, largely due to the fact that they underestimate these "other" factors. I would hazard a guess that they do not account for these factors mainly because programmers, admins, and engineers don't deal with the non-technical concerns in depth--at least not on a regular basis--because that is what management and marketing are supposed to do.
He said the *users* couldn't update Firefox, which is true. Standard users don't have write access to the default installation directory of *any* program. Unless an admin does something monumentally stupid, users cannot install or update apps.
Hell, a Windows admin with half a clue will disable ActiveX (or allow only ActiveX controls to function on internal/approved sites) and block the installation of even certified drivers, so the OP's comment about kind-of-sort-of fudging an install wouldn't work either. The only class of vulnerabilities that can't be mitigated easily on Windows are cross-site/cross-zone IE attacks, most of which execute with the permissions of the current user (although there were a few notable ones that allowed system privileges prior to XP SP2... not sure if there are any post-SP2 without researching).
Also, your assertion that Windows does not provide a centralized auto-update feature is patently wrong. Be knowledgeable before criticizing. You make open source advocates look like ignorant, frothing zealots when you blow up into a clueless rant. Google for Software Update Services (or SUS). It is exactly what you claim does not exist, and it works for all of the mainline MS products (Windows, Office, IE, and their server products).
Microsoft actually has tightened up a bit since the Win9x days, although there is still a lot of room for improvement. If you want to be taken seriously in a discussion that affects a feature on the their current OS, however, at least keep your criticisms up to date. The biggest security threats on Windows now are, in my opinion:
IE integration (there's better security than before, but it's still Dumb By Design)
Weak firewall
Poor default security stance for home users (business security should be a matter of domain and group policies)
Now there are some legitimate criticisms. Use those if you want to rag on MS. But for the love of Bob Almighty, stop ranting about things that half-trained Windows admin already knows how to deal with. It only casts the open source and Linux advocates in a bad light when you don't educate yourself before attempting to educate others.
Actually, most older games will work under a limited account if you give all users read/write permissions to the directory "C:\Program Files\Game Directory". This is true of most older software.
While there is naturally a security risk in giving all users the ability to write to files that will also be run by privileged users, there are so few viruses on the loose that attempt to infect old games and Win9x apps that I wouldn't worry about it.
Every game I've seen released since mid-2001 has had no problem running on a limited account. The only possible exception I can think of is MMORPGs that require patching before connecting to the server. User preferences and savegames are now saved in the %userprofile%\My Documents\My Games\Name of Game folder.
If you're playing 90s-era games and apps, you have to duplicate the environment they were assumed to run under. The simple measure of adjusting filesystem permissions and setting OS emulation for the executable accounts for the vast majority of older games that I've tried. You have to be an administrator to do it, but once it's done it works under any account.
I believe the percentage refers to number of bits providing redundancy relative to the original data set. Hence, RAID 5 would use approximately 10% more bits than the size of a to write that file to disk. This equates to using about three of 24 drives for parity data. Standard RAID 1 with two mirrored disks would be rate as being 100% redundant because it writes 100% more bits to disk than the file contains.
This is the oddest method of measuring redundancy that I've heard, but it's the only way I can read that post and have it make any sense. Personally, I usually measure redundancy the quick and dirty way... by saying what proportion of drives can fail before data loss occurs, which is what most people are interested in anyway. Knowing that you can lose 1/3 or 2/5 drives (or whatever the actual ratio is) gives them something concrete to chew on.
How many spyware-laden applications are developed for Linux users? Stuff like Morpheus, Kazaa, and Comet Cursor? My guess would be: not many. And if there were any, the average Linux user knows better than to install that crap.
Most spyware comes from "free" applications and IE exploits. The former is avoidable with a measure of prudence, and the latter is avoidable by using a safer browser.
And lest I be accused of forgetting the notorious Windows worms, I'll simply note that a firewall would have stopped them all. Even the minimalist Windows Firewall would have been sufficient, nevermind Kerio, Tiny, Zone Alarm, or any of the other free personal firewalls.
If unauthorized hosts are able to communicate with your kernel or daemons/services, you're at risk of being hosed no matter what OS you run. Retarded default packages like IIS and IE are a problem for ignorant users, but they can both be replaced (by FOSS, even). While the MS security model is boneheaded, it is workable when the system is configured properly. Ultimately, the user is responsible for system configuration, and when most of them don't know what root or administrator rights are in the first place, there isn't a way for then to choose the appropriate ease-of-use vs security tradeoff for their needs.
The vast majority of Windows users prefer to remain ignorant of their operating system, Microsoft picks what it thinks is the most desirable balance between security and functionality, and this is the result.
Imagine a population of drivers that doesn't understand basic car maintenance. No oil changing, no tire inflation, no gas refills (not until they get stuck on the highway once or twice anyway). Would you expect a car to run well with that level of attention? That's the perfect representation of the typical Windows user. Apathy and ignorance on their part is the ultimate cause of this mess. Microsoft is partially to blame for catering to them, but I've witnessed the unflinching refusal of users to dedicate even the slightest shred of effort toward learning anything about a PC firsthand, time and time again. I spent my time in technician's purgatory serving the masses, and I can guarantee that most of them know far more about the details of their favorite football team or their soap opera than they ever will about computers.
Am I blaming the users for the security problems we see today? Yes, I am. And they probably deserve worse.
If Microsoft charges twice as much and pays the labels twice as much, why on earth would the labels continue to support iTunes?
They could easily refuse Apple access to their full catalog if Apple refuses to adjust prices again, and as long as MS plays along with them they won't hurt too bad. People might even start switching over once this happens just because "the PlaysForSure players can get all the songs" while the iPod only gets selected tracks.
If I worked for MS, this is how I would do it:
Talk to the record companies off the record. Let them know that you're trying to kill iTunes, which is a thorn in their sides already because of its refusal to increase prices.
This part is what the article is about... Get free or low-cost music "license transfers" for your users in order to gain initial marketshare. The record companies will expect to receive some benefit (i.e., profit) from agreeing, so keep on reading.
As you start the service, keep a pricing structure competitive with that of iTunes, and keep your DRM restrictions as loose or looser.
Once you have sufficient marketshare, give in to the record companies on pricing and DRM restrictions (which was probably part of the agreement with them from day 1).
As the changes are introducted over time, your profit margins and record company profits increase. Just be careful not to make large changes all at once that will upset your users, and they'll stay along for the ride.
Recording industry, MS, and MS PlaysForSure partners win. Apple and consumers lose.
This is what I would do if I were in charge of Microsoft. You and your partners all make out like bandits. Once PlaysForSure becomes the DRM standard, you have the mp3 manufacturers in your back pocket for good. The only people you don't pwn are the record companies, so you buy them off initially and promise to give them what they want later.
Once PlaysForSure dominates the market, you can probably rein them back in... maybe not as well as Apple did, but as long as you can find a way to pass the cost on to the consumers it's not really your problem. Now that Apple has done the hard work of popularizing online distribution and establishing it as part of people's lifestyles, you can dominate that industry and make it more expensive without losing a large mass of people who are set in the habit of "pay, download, play".
I'd be interested in knowing at which point in this little scenario there is an unreasonable choice being made by either Microsoft, the record companies, or the consumers (who only see the nice up-front deal, not the whole plan). Unless there's a severe flaw from any of their perspectives, it's an ambitious yet viable plan that will make boatloads of money if successful. I don't see how Microsoft could be shooting for anything less.
Punitive fines can exceed the amount of profit gained by criminal actions, and this is in addition to seizure of assets acquired illegally. Furthermore, it is possible for victims to file civil suits, although I wouldn't want to guess at what their outcomes might be.
It is quite possible to ensure that crime does pay with current laws if that is your only concern. I suspect that the two year minimum is applied to less severe offences.
Also note, from the article: aggravated identity theft "is defined as the use of a stolen identity to commit other crimes". Therefore, they're already being accused of other crimes in addition to this offence (and, if the description is accurate, cannot be guilty of this offence if they are not found guilty of another offence as well). The sentence for this crime will in addition to any other sentences they receive.
I wouldn't have a problem with WGA if it were flagged as anything other than "critical". This update is not critical in any respect other than Microsoft's bottom line, and this is where Microsoft pisses me off.
If MS wants to make WGA validation required for any updates that add features (WMP 11, DirectX 10, etc), then I'm all for it. They add something to the product, they get to pick the terms under which they make it available to existing users. It's not in line with the free software philosophy, but it is reasonable from any perspective that recognizes private property. In this case, they deliberately add an applet that may drastically affect the operation of the machine through no fault of the user, and they introduce with what I feel is a deceptive inducement. If they threw it under the sections for optional updates with a note that it must be installed before any other optional update, I would blow this article off as random anti-MS zealotry. This is completely contrary to the interests of fair, honest, and clear communication with their end users.
Of course, it merely highlights the fact that clear communication about their products is not a priority, and money is. If this causes enough monetary loss then maybe WGA will lighten up a little (I'd never go so far as to suggest it would go away). Somehow, I have my doubts.
To prevent this in the future, you can run the following command:
sc config wuauserv start= disabled
Follow this with either net stop wuauserv or a reboot. (Yes, there was a space after the equal sign, and it needs to be there.)
For businesses where disabling automated updating is not feasible, deploy SUS throughout the domain. Note that the client's update settings are irrelevant if SUS is properly deployed. This may be one of the causes of some of these otherwise inexplicable updates.
Disclaimer: IANAL, I Have Not Seen Your Network, and I Might Still Wet The Bed If I'm Really, Really, Scared. And I still think WGA sucks, but there is a way to prevent it from touching your systems if you're vigilant. The need for such vigilance around a vendor... that's where I see the real problem.
You can't be an ISP because most terms of service for residential accounts prohibit anything of the sort.
In the US, this can get your account cancelled by virtually every one of the major providers.
Unless they think this will actually make them more money by encouraging more people to switch to wireless broadband as their primary means of connecting to the net. Then there will be much looking the other way.
An interesting idea, and one that I would join if there were a point out in the armpit of the country where I presently reside.
If you really want to get technical, subpeonas and other court documents are a matter of public record, unless sealed by a judge. The accessibility of these documents is one reason why the Bush administration wanted military tribunals for accused terrorists; they did not want any classified information or intelligence agency procedure to become a part of the publicly-available court proceedings.
If a judge's order is violated, there are laws covering contempt and other sorts of malfeasance besides the DMCA.
While I understand the DMCA is evil according to slashdot, it's not the only law on the books (and certainly not the only stupid one).
If the NAS saves $8/month in electricity at the wall, that will add $10-15/month savings on AC during the summer months depending on the efficiency of the AC unit. Plus space savings, if applicable. Since the NAS box can probably fit comfortably under an inkjet printer or in some other miscellaneous location, his wife can get rid of the PC's desk/hutch/counter/corner-of-the-storage-closet and use it for whatever she wants.
Saving approximately $150-200/year, conserving energy, freeing up space in the house.... finances, environment, and convenience are all wins... if he can't sell her on the idea then there must be something wrong with her. And this doesn't even count the money or goodwill they can get from selling or donating the decommissioned file server.
An order of magnitude is quite a bit of exaggeration. Good desktop HDs get around 40 MB/sec sustained read speeds. At an order of magnitude difference, you're claiming laptop drives get 4 MB/sec? That's slower than most CD-ROMs (for reference, that's approx. 28X CD).
I understand faster laptop HDs might not be worth the expense, heat, and battery life, but still... they can't possibly be that bad. Even on a desktop, faster HDs rarely make a noticeable difference for standard apps unless you're doing video encoding. This assumes sufficient RAM, as paging makes faster HDs immediately noticeable on just about any PC. I got a nice speed bump for encoding switching from standard 7200 RPM SATA desktop HDs to 10K RPM WD Raptors (I'm too cheap to go SCSI). Seeking for previews, preliminary pass for bitrate determination, transcoding, effects application, you name it... they're all a hair faster. Since the speed increase from 5400 to 7200 and from 7200 to 10000 are the same, about 40%, this example should even suffer in comparison due to diminishing returns.
If you're not using your computer in a way that hammers the HD with constant activity, then I would agree a faster HD will almost never be noticeable. Most interactive apps load necessary libraries, images, textures, etc into memory when they start and attempt to perform any further disk access in the background before it is strictly necessary, specifically to prevent noticeable slowdown due to the HD. Just because you don't need and cannot derive a benefit from it, though, doesn't mean that others cannot.
Although I probably should shoot myself if I had to do video work on a laptop anyway. Slower HDs (never going below 10K RPM again!), lower maximum RAM capacity, small screens, and those annoying touchpads (or even worse, the eraser nub things in the middle of the keyboard). Give me a giant honking workstation with a monitor that outweighs me and a high-perf PC over a laptop any day.
MySpace was told to require credit card verification by no one who had any authority over them.
If there was a law regarding identity verification that they failed to follow, then and only then are they at fault.
Suppose this girl got dropped off at the mall to hang out with some friends, and she met this guy there. Should we sue the mall for its role in the situation? How is the mall doing anything differently from what MySpace does?
Parents should teach their children not to run off alone with strangers, particularly older ones. The responsibility is shared between the guy for being a worthless piece of scum, the girl for being stupid, and her parents for not teaching her any better. If anyone should be sued, it is the guy... you know, the one who actually acted with malicious intent.
But wait, he probably doesn't have any money, and that's what this is all about.
Embryonic stems cell are harvested from fertilized embryos. An unfertilized egg doesn't undergo cell division, so you were correct. I don't know where the notion that these might be unfertilized comes from.
Not that I agree with your values on this issue... but your grasp of the facts is correct.
I mean, I can see that yes, MS can set the standard for what they want to see for a "true" Vista PC. Personally, I'd up the requirements for CPU and Ram to see it flow instead of crawl. So why do they require good video and audio output?
The reason for this is simple once you look at the big picture.
The low "standard" requirements show that the OS will run on older computers, including Coppermine PIIIs and Socket A Athlons. This encourages people with computers that are a few years old to upgrade.
The lack of CPU requirements on new Vista Premium PCs is due to market reality: the only CPUs you can buy anymore that are less than 2 GHz are the AMD-64 and Intel Core processors, which undoubtedly offer sufficient performance. Why list a requirement for new Vista Premium PCs when it will already be met by every new PC on the market?
The ethernet requirement is somewhat of a mystery, considering I can't even find a motherboard without integrated ethernet anymore.
The audio and video requirements, on the other hand, make a lot of sense. With the focus on the visual experience and audio/video playback, it would be good to ensure that OEMs discontinue their use of cheap integrated graphics and offer surround sound capability. These are actually the only requirements that make sense to me because they require OEMs to include something that they might otherwise attempt to cheap out on. And something that consumers might benefit from, even though they often don't understand technology enough to ask about it or realize it.
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Repeated corruption of the driver files that coincided with massive corruption on the primary hard drive? I think you need a little heads up.
There are a lot of ATI problems posted here, and I could add one of my own (Radeon 9700 All-in-Wonder). But... I don't think you're having a driver issue. That is a classic bad hard drive scenario right there. Corrupted files even after zero-filling the drive and formatting? That should never happen. Unless you have installed either multiple antivirus applications (that's conflict central right there) or shitty system utilities (Norton SystemWorks comes to mind here), then I'd seriously advise you to download Hitachi's Drive Fitness Utility and/or the drive testing software from the manufacturer.
It's vaguely possible that a PCI Radeon might not play nice with the southbridge's PCI bus mastering. If that's the case, then updating the motherboard chipset drivers might help. An AGP card, however, wouldn't be affected by this issue.
And you, with your bleating self-sacrifice, embody all that is pathetic. Humanity is a seething cancerous blob on this planet, and the slim chance of mass termination or significant evolution is the only (admittedly, frail) hope for sentient life in this solar system.
You even go so far as to contradict yourself, with the grace and style of a tittering twit. If this existence is "utterly pointless" as you claim, then what is your concern with self-actualization or nobility in man? If it is truly pointless, then why care about the comfort or suffering of others?
I'll answer these questions for you as a courtesy. If existence is pointless--a claim that you yourself made and I never did--then the only reason to pursue these goals is your personal desire to do so. This is as selfish a motive as the one you use to impugn me, albeit one which will be more welcome among the rest of humanity seeing as they will benefit from your espoused benevolence.
The alternative to this moral quandary is to admit that existence is not entirely pointless, which collapses your argument entirely. I have already shown how a pointless existence makes you no better than me--or anyone else, for that matter--but I have not yet shown what existence with a purpose implies. Suppose there is purpose; it is irrelevant at the moment whether it is inherent given the nature of the universe or it is clearly derived from rational principles. If there is a purpose, anyone acting in pursuit of this higher purpose can claim moral superiority over anyone who is not. Would you care to guess what I say next? Pause here and ponder.
If you did pause to consider the question, you probably realized that I intend to claim a purpose. I assert the moral high ground. Oh yes, the irony... I'm sure it is striking right now. From your perspective, the irony must be quite overwhelming.
With respect to the present medium, I will attempt to be brief, which unfortunately means my argument may lose some of its formal validity. The advancement of sentient life is a valid purpose, and it is the only valid purpose to which I have been exposed through either experience or rational consideration. Sentient thought represents the next level of organization in a universe that is manifesting increasing complexity (i.e., cosmic and biological evolution). Preservation and propagation of sentience is obviously the primary goal in light of this purpose. Contrary to the indications at the superficial level of analysis, this does mesh well with my previous post.
This planet has an abundance of Homo sapiens organisms, and the vast majority of these organisms are destroying the ability of their ecosphere to support them at an astounding pace. If I have to choose between advancing science and preserving a few scattered specimens that represent a net loss to the only known source of sentience, then my choice should be clear. For any given level of technology, this planet has a specific carrying capacity, and by this I mean a maximum human population that it can sustain without depleting resources at a rate greater than they are replenished. (Caveat: this naturally excludes solar energy, as we do not know of a renewal process for this resource.) Once the human population exceeds this carrying capacity, it is effective, practical, and desirable to terminate humans until we are once again below the threshhold and implement policies to ensure we do not exceed it again in the future. I'll note that this is a consideration which your rather obnoxious "values" utterly fail to address.
The price of this research is paid somewhat by the developing firm and somewhat by the human test subjects. The benefit of the research is received somewhat by the developing firm and somewhat by humanity as a whole. As in a morally righteous war, there are casualties lost in pursuit of the higher purpose (or the greater good, whichever term you prefer). Considering this case in particular, the loss of life when the population is in excess
If Microsoft is going to start from scratch with a new kernel (by this, I mean new to them) then why wouldn't they do it using a kernel developed in-house?
Microsoft switching to Linux would totally undermine their method of gaining and maintaining marketshare, which is to make everything interoperate with everything else (as long as it's all their stuff).
As long as it means I get effective drugs without risking my neck as a test subject, it is in my own best interest to pursue this method of testing.
And, no, this post is not a troll. Deem me "cold-hearted" if you will, but I am most serious in admitting my joy that others will be exposed to the danger while I am able to reap the benefits.
The BIOS would have to support booting from AoE. OS support from the vendor is irrelevant, as the AoE driver makes the disk accessible in the same manner as an internal ATA disk.
Since most x86 BIOSes only support PXE as their network boot protocol, I doubt it will work out of the box. Something would have to provide block-level access to the HD in order for the OS to bootstrap, and PXE doesn't do that.
Coraid (or someone else) would have to make a bootable floppy, CD, or flash drive image that could add this functionality.
Alternatively, a CF card with an IDE adapter could work as an internal solution. With a sufficiently large CF card, you could even install the OS onto the card and use the AoE drive for user profiles, applications, and storage (don't know about performance when swapping though... even with GigE, you might just want to do this on a system that has 2+ GB RAM). This is still technically diskless, and it is feasible with existing hardware and software. If you really want a diskless system now, this is my recommendation.
It's a place of employment, not a public forum for discussing social policy. Posting personal opinions on a company network is asking for trouble.
Also... people... read the article. It indicates her "security badge was revoked". If the government yanked or suspended her security clearance, she would no longer be able to access classified material or work on classified projects. If this is indeed what happened (the wording is a bit vague), then her employer had no choice but to fire her, as she was no longer able to perform her duties. BAE Systems is mostly a government defense contractor, so all of their programming positions may have required security clearance.
She made a dumb move by flagrantly criticizing the organization that contracted her employer. I know there are more than a few places where I would have gotten into severe trouble for doing exactly what she did. I'm not saying I'm sure I would have been fired, but it's something to at least think about first. Sniping at the organization that hired your employer is *never* wise, and I honestly wonder what was going through this woman's head. In the race to scream about censorship, I think some of us are forgetting that her decision was ill-advised by professional standards.
On the other hand, I would question the thought process of whomever decided to pull her security clearance. Was this decision subject to the normal procedure or review? Did the government overseer overreact (or intentionally respond) in a way that forced BAE to fire her without good cause, or was this another incident in a long line of discontented grumblings that made it look like her political attitudes went against the contracting agency? If this is the case, it may have been wise to yank her clearance. Having people work with organizations they despise is not particularly prudent, especially when it involves exposure to sensitive issues. This could be knee-jerk management, it could be pettiness, or it could be a prudent handling of an employee whose attitude was increasingly hostile to the organization for which she was employed. Without further details, I'm not sure there is a way to figure out which of these it is.
Right now, cars can BURST INTO FLAMES during an accident. And cars already have electrical systems capable of electrocuting people. 12V at hundreds of amps can definitely be fatal, and defective ignition circuits have started fires (and this is without involving any gasoline from the engine or fuel tank).
Also, the batteries are almost as much of a fire hazard as gasoline. Google around for what can happen to defective lithium ion batteries.
All vehicles are dangerous machines, and it has always been that way. Hell, back in the day you rode a horse that could decide to kick or throw you on a whim. There has always been a danger, and this is nothing new. As the technology goes into use with a wide range of manufacturers and a wide range of users, the safety issues will be exposed and worked out just as with any other transportation technology.
Microsoft occupies the king of the hill position, which gives it... how shall we say... superior hunting rights? This is why it refuses to be killed off.
Executives chase marketshare because marketshare is an advantage. It's word-of-mouth, mindshare, strategic partnerships, tie-ins, and cross promotions in addition to being more able to set the standards and influence customer expectations. I'll say it now: being able to change people's expectations is probably the biggest advantage, with effective partnerships coming in as a close second.
The whole battle between open source and closed source is taking longer than most FOSS advocates believed, largely due to the fact that they underestimate these "other" factors. I would hazard a guess that they do not account for these factors mainly because programmers, admins, and engineers don't deal with the non-technical concerns in depth--at least not on a regular basis--because that is what management and marketing are supposed to do.
He said the *users* couldn't update Firefox, which is true. Standard users don't have write access to the default installation directory of *any* program. Unless an admin does something monumentally stupid, users cannot install or update apps.
Hell, a Windows admin with half a clue will disable ActiveX (or allow only ActiveX controls to function on internal/approved sites) and block the installation of even certified drivers, so the OP's comment about kind-of-sort-of fudging an install wouldn't work either. The only class of vulnerabilities that can't be mitigated easily on Windows are cross-site/cross-zone IE attacks, most of which execute with the permissions of the current user (although there were a few notable ones that allowed system privileges prior to XP SP2... not sure if there are any post-SP2 without researching).
Also, your assertion that Windows does not provide a centralized auto-update feature is patently wrong. Be knowledgeable before criticizing. You make open source advocates look like ignorant, frothing zealots when you blow up into a clueless rant. Google for Software Update Services (or SUS). It is exactly what you claim does not exist, and it works for all of the mainline MS products (Windows, Office, IE, and their server products).
Microsoft actually has tightened up a bit since the Win9x days, although there is still a lot of room for improvement. If you want to be taken seriously in a discussion that affects a feature on the their current OS, however, at least keep your criticisms up to date. The biggest security threats on Windows now are, in my opinion:
Now there are some legitimate criticisms. Use those if you want to rag on MS. But for the love of Bob Almighty, stop ranting about things that half-trained Windows admin already knows how to deal with. It only casts the open source and Linux advocates in a bad light when you don't educate yourself before attempting to educate others.
Actually, most older games will work under a limited account if you give all users read/write permissions to the directory "C:\Program Files\Game Directory". This is true of most older software.
While there is naturally a security risk in giving all users the ability to write to files that will also be run by privileged users, there are so few viruses on the loose that attempt to infect old games and Win9x apps that I wouldn't worry about it.
Every game I've seen released since mid-2001 has had no problem running on a limited account. The only possible exception I can think of is MMORPGs that require patching before connecting to the server. User preferences and savegames are now saved in the %userprofile%\My Documents\My Games\Name of Game folder.
If you're playing 90s-era games and apps, you have to duplicate the environment they were assumed to run under. The simple measure of adjusting filesystem permissions and setting OS emulation for the executable accounts for the vast majority of older games that I've tried. You have to be an administrator to do it, but once it's done it works under any account.
I believe the percentage refers to number of bits providing redundancy relative to the original data set. Hence, RAID 5 would use approximately 10% more bits than the size of a to write that file to disk. This equates to using about three of 24 drives for parity data. Standard RAID 1 with two mirrored disks would be rate as being 100% redundant because it writes 100% more bits to disk than the file contains.
This is the oddest method of measuring redundancy that I've heard, but it's the only way I can read that post and have it make any sense. Personally, I usually measure redundancy the quick and dirty way... by saying what proportion of drives can fail before data loss occurs, which is what most people are interested in anyway. Knowing that you can lose 1/3 or 2/5 drives (or whatever the actual ratio is) gives them something concrete to chew on.
So what you're basically saying is, "dude, you should have said $600 for the PS3."
He has a sales receipt that shows he paid $200. I don't see why he couldn't do just that.
O rly?
How many spyware-laden applications are developed for Linux users? Stuff like Morpheus, Kazaa, and Comet Cursor? My guess would be: not many. And if there were any, the average Linux user knows better than to install that crap.
Most spyware comes from "free" applications and IE exploits. The former is avoidable with a measure of prudence, and the latter is avoidable by using a safer browser.
And lest I be accused of forgetting the notorious Windows worms, I'll simply note that a firewall would have stopped them all. Even the minimalist Windows Firewall would have been sufficient, nevermind Kerio, Tiny, Zone Alarm, or any of the other free personal firewalls.
If unauthorized hosts are able to communicate with your kernel or daemons/services, you're at risk of being hosed no matter what OS you run. Retarded default packages like IIS and IE are a problem for ignorant users, but they can both be replaced (by FOSS, even). While the MS security model is boneheaded, it is workable when the system is configured properly. Ultimately, the user is responsible for system configuration, and when most of them don't know what root or administrator rights are in the first place, there isn't a way for then to choose the appropriate ease-of-use vs security tradeoff for their needs.
The vast majority of Windows users prefer to remain ignorant of their operating system, Microsoft picks what it thinks is the most desirable balance between security and functionality, and this is the result.
Imagine a population of drivers that doesn't understand basic car maintenance. No oil changing, no tire inflation, no gas refills (not until they get stuck on the highway once or twice anyway). Would you expect a car to run well with that level of attention? That's the perfect representation of the typical Windows user. Apathy and ignorance on their part is the ultimate cause of this mess. Microsoft is partially to blame for catering to them, but I've witnessed the unflinching refusal of users to dedicate even the slightest shred of effort toward learning anything about a PC firsthand, time and time again. I spent my time in technician's purgatory serving the masses, and I can guarantee that most of them know far more about the details of their favorite football team or their soap opera than they ever will about computers.
Am I blaming the users for the security problems we see today? Yes, I am. And they probably deserve worse.
They could easily refuse Apple access to their full catalog if Apple refuses to adjust prices again, and as long as MS plays along with them they won't hurt too bad. People might even start switching over once this happens just because "the PlaysForSure players can get all the songs" while the iPod only gets selected tracks.
If I worked for MS, this is how I would do it:
This is what I would do if I were in charge of Microsoft. You and your partners all make out like bandits. Once PlaysForSure becomes the DRM standard, you have the mp3 manufacturers in your back pocket for good. The only people you don't pwn are the record companies, so you buy them off initially and promise to give them what they want later.
Once PlaysForSure dominates the market, you can probably rein them back in... maybe not as well as Apple did, but as long as you can find a way to pass the cost on to the consumers it's not really your problem. Now that Apple has done the hard work of popularizing online distribution and establishing it as part of people's lifestyles, you can dominate that industry and make it more expensive without losing a large mass of people who are set in the habit of "pay, download, play".
I'd be interested in knowing at which point in this little scenario there is an unreasonable choice being made by either Microsoft, the record companies, or the consumers (who only see the nice up-front deal, not the whole plan). Unless there's a severe flaw from any of their perspectives, it's an ambitious yet viable plan that will make boatloads of money if successful. I don't see how Microsoft could be shooting for anything less.
Punitive fines can exceed the amount of profit gained by criminal actions, and this is in addition to seizure of assets acquired illegally. Furthermore, it is possible for victims to file civil suits, although I wouldn't want to guess at what their outcomes might be.
It is quite possible to ensure that crime does pay with current laws if that is your only concern. I suspect that the two year minimum is applied to less severe offences.
Also note, from the article: aggravated identity theft "is defined as the use of a stolen identity to commit other crimes". Therefore, they're already being accused of other crimes in addition to this offence (and, if the description is accurate, cannot be guilty of this offence if they are not found guilty of another offence as well). The sentence for this crime will in addition to any other sentences they receive.
I wouldn't have a problem with WGA if it were flagged as anything other than "critical". This update is not critical in any respect other than Microsoft's bottom line, and this is where Microsoft pisses me off.
If MS wants to make WGA validation required for any updates that add features (WMP 11, DirectX 10, etc), then I'm all for it. They add something to the product, they get to pick the terms under which they make it available to existing users. It's not in line with the free software philosophy, but it is reasonable from any perspective that recognizes private property. In this case, they deliberately add an applet that may drastically affect the operation of the machine through no fault of the user, and they introduce with what I feel is a deceptive inducement. If they threw it under the sections for optional updates with a note that it must be installed before any other optional update, I would blow this article off as random anti-MS zealotry. This is completely contrary to the interests of fair, honest, and clear communication with their end users.
Of course, it merely highlights the fact that clear communication about their products is not a priority, and money is. If this causes enough monetary loss then maybe WGA will lighten up a little (I'd never go so far as to suggest it would go away). Somehow, I have my doubts.
To prevent this in the future, you can run the following command:
sc config wuauserv start= disabled
Follow this with either net stop wuauserv or a reboot. (Yes, there was a space after the equal sign, and it needs to be there.)
For businesses where disabling automated updating is not feasible, deploy SUS throughout the domain. Note that the client's update settings are irrelevant if SUS is properly deployed. This may be one of the causes of some of these otherwise inexplicable updates.
Disclaimer: IANAL, I Have Not Seen Your Network, and I Might Still Wet The Bed If I'm Really, Really, Scared. And I still think WGA sucks, but there is a way to prevent it from touching your systems if you're vigilant. The need for such vigilance around a vendor... that's where I see the real problem.
You can't be an ISP because most terms of service for residential accounts prohibit anything of the sort.
In the US, this can get your account cancelled by virtually every one of the major providers.
Unless they think this will actually make them more money by encouraging more people to switch to wireless broadband as their primary means of connecting to the net. Then there will be much looking the other way.
An interesting idea, and one that I would join if there were a point out in the armpit of the country where I presently reside.
If you really want to get technical, subpeonas and other court documents are a matter of public record, unless sealed by a judge. The accessibility of these documents is one reason why the Bush administration wanted military tribunals for accused terrorists; they did not want any classified information or intelligence agency procedure to become a part of the publicly-available court proceedings.
If a judge's order is violated, there are laws covering contempt and other sorts of malfeasance besides the DMCA.
While I understand the DMCA is evil according to slashdot, it's not the only law on the books (and certainly not the only stupid one).
If the NAS saves $8/month in electricity at the wall, that will add $10-15/month savings on AC during the summer months depending on the efficiency of the AC unit. Plus space savings, if applicable. Since the NAS box can probably fit comfortably under an inkjet printer or in some other miscellaneous location, his wife can get rid of the PC's desk/hutch/counter/corner-of-the-storage-closet and use it for whatever she wants.
Saving approximately $150-200/year, conserving energy, freeing up space in the house.... finances, environment, and convenience are all wins... if he can't sell her on the idea then there must be something wrong with her. And this doesn't even count the money or goodwill they can get from selling or donating the decommissioned file server.
An order of magnitude is quite a bit of exaggeration. Good desktop HDs get around 40 MB/sec sustained read speeds. At an order of magnitude difference, you're claiming laptop drives get 4 MB/sec? That's slower than most CD-ROMs (for reference, that's approx. 28X CD).
I understand faster laptop HDs might not be worth the expense, heat, and battery life, but still... they can't possibly be that bad. Even on a desktop, faster HDs rarely make a noticeable difference for standard apps unless you're doing video encoding. This assumes sufficient RAM, as paging makes faster HDs immediately noticeable on just about any PC. I got a nice speed bump for encoding switching from standard 7200 RPM SATA desktop HDs to 10K RPM WD Raptors (I'm too cheap to go SCSI). Seeking for previews, preliminary pass for bitrate determination, transcoding, effects application, you name it... they're all a hair faster. Since the speed increase from 5400 to 7200 and from 7200 to 10000 are the same, about 40%, this example should even suffer in comparison due to diminishing returns.
If you're not using your computer in a way that hammers the HD with constant activity, then I would agree a faster HD will almost never be noticeable. Most interactive apps load necessary libraries, images, textures, etc into memory when they start and attempt to perform any further disk access in the background before it is strictly necessary, specifically to prevent noticeable slowdown due to the HD. Just because you don't need and cannot derive a benefit from it, though, doesn't mean that others cannot.
Although I probably should shoot myself if I had to do video work on a laptop anyway. Slower HDs (never going below 10K RPM again!), lower maximum RAM capacity, small screens, and those annoying touchpads (or even worse, the eraser nub things in the middle of the keyboard). Give me a giant honking workstation with a monitor that outweighs me and a high-perf PC over a laptop any day.
MySpace was told to require credit card verification by no one who had any authority over them.
If there was a law regarding identity verification that they failed to follow, then and only then are they at fault.
Suppose this girl got dropped off at the mall to hang out with some friends, and she met this guy there. Should we sue the mall for its role in the situation? How is the mall doing anything differently from what MySpace does?
Parents should teach their children not to run off alone with strangers, particularly older ones. The responsibility is shared between the guy for being a worthless piece of scum, the girl for being stupid, and her parents for not teaching her any better. If anyone should be sued, it is the guy... you know, the one who actually acted with malicious intent.
But wait, he probably doesn't have any money, and that's what this is all about.
Embryonic stems cell are harvested from fertilized embryos. An unfertilized egg doesn't undergo cell division, so you were correct. I don't know where the notion that these might be unfertilized comes from.
Not that I agree with your values on this issue... but your grasp of the facts is correct.
I mean, I can see that yes, MS can set the standard for what they want to see for a "true" Vista PC. Personally, I'd up the requirements for CPU and Ram to see it flow instead of crawl. So why do they require good video and audio output?
The reason for this is simple once you look at the big picture.
The low "standard" requirements show that the OS will run on older computers, including Coppermine PIIIs and Socket A Athlons. This encourages people with computers that are a few years old to upgrade.
The lack of CPU requirements on new Vista Premium PCs is due to market reality: the only CPUs you can buy anymore that are less than 2 GHz are the AMD-64 and Intel Core processors, which undoubtedly offer sufficient performance. Why list a requirement for new Vista Premium PCs when it will already be met by every new PC on the market?
The ethernet requirement is somewhat of a mystery, considering I can't even find a motherboard without integrated ethernet anymore.
The audio and video requirements, on the other hand, make a lot of sense. With the focus on the visual experience and audio/video playback, it would be good to ensure that OEMs discontinue their use of cheap integrated graphics and offer surround sound capability. These are actually the only requirements that make sense to me because they require OEMs to include something that they might otherwise attempt to cheap out on. And something that consumers might benefit from, even though they often don't understand technology enough to ask about it or realize it.