You're not a moron, you were recommending a good solution.
I have an RL800 and it's awesome. Can't imagine you could part together anything nearly as good or as safe. My lawn always looks good and I have to say it's a real joy sitting on the porch watching the neighbors out on their mowers when it's blazing hot outside.
There's a very good review of the 800 on epinions that even has a howto video for the setup.
Maybe they're planning on squashing the publication of the unlocking mechanism by calling it a DMCA violation that's skirting a security feature.
It does seem strange that Intel would do something that will certainly drive the technical hobby market to AMD without much benefit to them that I can see.
Who knows. Corporate behavior doesn't always make sense.
It's bad enough to have the police video taping an event like anti-war or gay pride rally but now they could potentially stop everyone leaving the same rally and demand identification. Or require identification from everyone headed to a particular event or entering a particular building, even a public building. Will they? Not if they're smart, but if something can be abused it will be at some point, when there's enough perceived justification for it.
This is tough because a lot of my friends are cops and I see both sides of the dispute. But as much as I like them I know they'll push whatever limits they're given. Many times there will be political pressure to push the limits. The police are not our enemy, but an excess of police power, for any justification, is the enemy of a free people. I think we're far enough down the police power road now that our claim to the title "home of the free" could reasonably be disputed.
...that you'd be able to turn the tables on an interviewer but it's not so easy when you're hit with the TV cameras without time to mentally prepare. Thinking that fast on your feet isn't as easy as you might imagine reading about someone elses experience.
Along the same lines I'm noticing is that it seems like more companies are recording their conversations, especially in one-party states. Unfortunately gaurding what you say is becoming a full time practice.
France can wave the nationalistic flag, reduce their dependence on an American brainshare product and thumb their nose at MSFT all in one event.
We've worked hard at making ourselves abhorrent to the rest of the world the last four years, so efforts like these get a boost from political ill will. The fact they're getting a more stable and secure OS platform with a lower overall TCO is merely a bonus. I don't think the political climate alone would justify the transition costs, but that coupled with MSFT's own corporate malfeasance is enough to get them over the hump.
I could be wrong but I'm guessing there's more than technical considerations playing into this.
Except what I was thinking about were networks like the one you describe that could discover and connect to one another. Sort of a spontaneous mini-Internet, but not connected to the outside Internet.
Couldn't figure out how to build it in such a way that the networks could connect to one another and exchange information but keep it from being connected to the outside.
Interesting idea, though. And I think in the right places they could be very effective. College campus comes to mind. A neighborhood net around the college, or the entertainment district in a downtown area.
There's a flip side to this. If one side uses software to determine a transit route, the other side can use the same software to guess where enemy combatants might try to transit. Position dusters, quad 50's and claymores as appropriate and remember that the side marked FRONT TOWARD ENEMY points away from you.
I would avoid any path a computer marked out for me the same reason it's a good idea to avoid trails.
I've used Xandros since January and it is a breeze to install. Also very easy to install a printer and connect to a Windows network. It runs okay at a basic level but software installation can be a challenge sometimes.
The bad: A subscription for software upgrades for paying customers is a BAD idea. I don't think getting CrossOver in paid bundle is all that big of a bonus. IE and media player don't run worth crap on CrossOver. I'd rather they dropped CrossOver and included the software subscription. Although it's great if you need to run any Office products on a Linux box.
The license does suck. Very unfortunate they chose to handicap what would otherwise be a good distro with that EULA.
If they don't drop the software upgrade subscription for paying useres I'm not going buy another copy. I'll find a distro with a more liberal license and broader support.
It seems like with Windows you always end up reinstalling at some point. Not long ago I had to reinstall Win2K when the print que got corrputed. And the near endless patch-o-rama.
My Linux box just runs and runs. I push the button, it comes on. Reliably, consistently, efficiently. And when the virus infected Email comes in I can open it up and look at the code. Quite sophisticated. Try that with Winblows.
Product registration is another issue I don't like. Back stabbing EULA, no right of first sale, lack of security. The list is actually quite long.
And we're going to trust them to regulate content? What happens when the sites simply change names and move somewhere else? There will be a trail of used IP's blocked in their wake that may be switched to different uses. How does the new owner know they were previously blocked?
You think the ISP's are going to go back through and make sure the original sites they blocked are still being used for the same purpose? HAHAHAHA! Then you've never dealt with tech support on some of the bigger ISP's. Yesterday I couldn't spell ethernet, today I is a tech support pro-fessional.
This really doesn't have anything to do with kiddie porn. It's a question about who decides where we can go on the Internet and who makes the call about what constitutes objectionable content.
And, as usual, it's only going to stop the honest people. Anyone wanting to get to a site bad enough will figure out a way to proxy around the block.
There are other sources of plant oil that could be used to make biodiesel. Oil producing algae is one option. Calcuations from this site:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.htm l
Indicate we could replace almost all our transportation oil needs with about 11,000 square miles of the Senora Desert, which is about 240,000 square miles.
We couldn't really grow enough soy but if it means cutting our dependence on foreign oil then the desert rattlesnakes will just have to learn to get along on the 229,000 other acres of the Senora Desert.
You are free to not use credit cards, get loans, etc., if you don't want to. Hell you can go become a hermit somewhere out in the mountains if you want to. But for the rest of us, it is worth the small loss of privacy.
Why does that make that data public? Why does the fact I have a credit card or what I buy with it qualify as public knowledge? I happen to think that what I buy is no one's damn business but mine. Even property records give away too much information in my opinion. I shouldn't have to be a hermit not to have any jackass with an Internet connection having access to my purchase records, credit rating or anything else. I think it's time the definition of privacy was updated to take into account large databases than keep individual records indefinitely.
Privacy doesn't disappear in one big event...9/11 aside and John Ashcroft aside...it slips away a little at a time. And at every little slip, every step, there's someone arguing that the little bit of privacy invasion is justified by the convenience. Well, just think if we have just one big round of house to house drug searches. We could put a big dent in the drug problem all at once. The greater good would certainly be served by the minor inconvenience to people's privacy. With that kind of logic you can justify any abuse.
Then it's time we had another look at what constitutes public information because I think there's way too much of it out there with far too few controls on who has access to it and why.
I don't believe the police should be able to troll the records of millions of innocent people looking for few troublemakers anymore than they should be allowed to randomly search homes. It's not that big of a step from one to the other. Probable cause should apply everywhere. In your home, your car, your data, including utility records, credit card transactions, bank records, everything. The cops have enough to do dealing with the problems we know about, we don't need them out data fishing.
Besides, it's useless. In years of working with databases I can tell you that the best way to solve a crime is still pounding the beat on a street.
And while I'm at it, why is he touting complexity as a good thing? AFAIK the more parts there are, the bigger the chance of something breaking down. New security holes, here we come.
That's a profound observation I see played out over and over across my customer base. The longer I'm in IT, the more I encourage my customers to keep their data systems simple and build them on open standards. Then some rep will come in with some dribble about the "development stack" (I've never figured out what that was) and "information transparancy" (my personal favorite useless buzz phrase) and a demo and pretty soon UPS will be wheeling in some boxes. Nevermind if it can talk to the other systems and fits in with the integration plan. And what platform does it run on? Who's going to administer the box? Who is going to be the customer owner? No thought at all. It looks pretty let's get that.
And the best part is the vendor will blame IT if it doesn't work right. We're obviously not following "best practices" however the f' they happen to be defining those at the moment. Hey, has anyone seen the big book of Best Practices anywhere? Crap, someone keeps borrowing mine.
...software piracy was costing honest users billions of dollars and product activation was going to fix all that.
Consumers to the burden of proof, added their personal information to the cost of using MSFT's software, and software prices went down across the board, right? Quite the contrary, you now get the burden of proof, a hoop you have to jump through every time you change hardware, AND higher prices.
Hey, as long as the MSFT sheeple keep taking it up the pooper you can't get mad because Redmond takes advantage of the situation.
Just got done isolating the last Windows machine on my network so it can't access the Internet. That's a Win2K box. The last piece of MS crapware I purchased at home since...2001. Wow, time flies when you're having fun instead of spending all you time patching Windows.
And I have to say it feels good when stories like this and the virus of the day come by. Not that I'd ever taunt the sheep by saying something like NEENER, NEENER, NEENER. And though I might be tempted to think they're technology LOOOOOOSSSEERRRS, manners would prevent me from saying so out loud. Instead I'd pretend to be sympathetic and understanding and wait until their back is turned and they're a polite distance out of earshot to start laughing.
It's sort of the intellectual version of offshoring our manufacturing. That's resulted in a gradual shift in assest allocation for businesses over the years. Today upwards of 85% of most company assets are intangible. One could argue that's efficient, one could also argue that's all well and good until the shit hits the fan, then intangible assets aren't worth much.
Factories and machines have a certain intrinsic value. A factory can be retooled to make a different product. But we're turning into a country that makes...nothing. Entertainment products like movies and music, and mind share products like software. Mind share products run the risk of being commoditized over time and are significantly easier to offshore. No factory to move.
Makes me wonder just what products we're counting on for future economic growth? We're becoming a nation that consumes much and produces less and less. When Boeing's next assembly facility is built in Singapore or South America, when your doctor is from India consulting with a neurologist in Pakistan and typing notes on a PDA made in China with software written in Russia. Just what job are you going back to when you
get out of hospital?
He didn't author it and at least he's not afraid to admit the time for that type of legislation has passed and change course. Sometimes changing your mind is a GOOD thing and, where the Patriot Act is concerned, changing it is way overdue. It's really okay for the same legislators who voted for the Patriot to vote against extending it.
The twinks in the White House have to go. After that we can resume our partisan dickering, already in progress. I just can't believe that Naziesque jerk ever got elected to ANY public office.
Now this connector will be available to anyone building a desktop bundle for Linux.
Bold move. And it comes at a time those type of corporate jewels are in short supply.
I'm just glad to see someone...anyone...stepping up changing the game. And it's kind of satisfying to see MSFT assaulted from so many different directions. Sort of reminds me of the toppling of the Berlin Wall, only it'll take MSFT a lot longer to collapse.
Basically, a guild would be a trusted network of friends with whom we share work, files, and so on.
Not to name any names [insert innocent look] but there might already have been people doing this. Say a group of friends who have known each other personally, all sharing their CD collections, but not with the masses on p2p networks. With each other, through disks in the mail, or password protected, PGP encrypted files. And say this group coordinated their purchases so no one ever bought the same CD. A group like that could build up quite a music collection.
All the focus on file sharing got me to starting thinking about making my own music, which turned out to be more fun and better than crap I was buying.
The harder corporate entities try to lock up what people do with media...music and movies, the more of a market it spawns for individuals and groups providing material without all the restrictions. If big media somehow got the idea that the world owes them a living, I think they're in for a big surprise.
It's Linux and OSS in general. Open source is a more efficient business model.
It's kind of fun to watch the NBM'ers hemorrhage last week's statistics when they're confronted with the obvious.
Open source will win, not because of any moral issues but because of economics. Individual markets can defy gravity for a while, but sooner or later the more effecient model comes out on top. And it's not MSFT.
I've watched Linux make huge strides over the last couple years and my perception is the pace of improvement is accelerating. MSFT simply can't move that fast. The change will happen on the business desktop first because business doesn't care about multimedia and gaming. The fact that Linux doesn't play every media stream or load every crap piece of spyware is a bonus in the workplace. Plus it gives businesses a lot of power and flexibility in managing their desktops.
The combination of freedom and flexibility would win out on their own, the cost savings are just a bonus. Take this quote:
"For large organizations looking to reduce the costs of the desktop significantly, Star Office looks compelling. Siemens did a trial project to test the Ximian/OpenOffice/Linux combination with office staff in Germany last year. (Open Office has some minor differences to StarOffice, such as fewer fonts and graphics) Siemens concluded that changing to Linux and StarOffice was no more expensive than a Windows upgrade - in terms of training. On top of that, it saved 20 to 30 per cent in administration costs, 50 per cent in hardware costs and 80 per cent in licensing costs. Pretty compelling when you think about it."
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I have an RL800 and it's awesome. Can't imagine you could part together anything nearly as good or as safe. My lawn always looks good and I have to say it's a real joy sitting on the porch watching the neighbors out on their mowers when it's blazing hot outside.
There's a very good review of the 800 on epinions that even has a howto video for the setup.
It does seem strange that Intel would do something that will certainly drive the technical hobby market to AMD without much benefit to them that I can see.
Who knows. Corporate behavior doesn't always make sense.
This is tough because a lot of my friends are cops and I see both sides of the dispute. But as much as I like them I know they'll push whatever limits they're given. Many times there will be political pressure to push the limits. The police are not our enemy, but an excess of police power, for any justification, is the enemy of a free people. I think we're far enough down the police power road now that our claim to the title "home of the free" could reasonably be disputed.
Along the same lines I'm noticing is that it seems like more companies are recording their conversations, especially in one-party states. Unfortunately gaurding what you say is becoming a full time practice.
If there's no life on Mars why can't we colonize it?
Wonder if their little spyware trojan would self-install on my Linux machine?
Hehe.
We've worked hard at making ourselves abhorrent to the rest of the world the last four years, so efforts like these get a boost from political ill will. The fact they're getting a more stable and secure OS platform with a lower overall TCO is merely a bonus. I don't think the political climate alone would justify the transition costs, but that coupled with MSFT's own corporate malfeasance is enough to get them over the hump.
I could be wrong but I'm guessing there's more than technical considerations playing into this.
The updates will come out a month after the exploits appear on the Internet.
Couldn't figure out how to build it in such a way that the networks could connect to one another and exchange information but keep it from being connected to the outside.
Interesting idea, though. And I think in the right places they could be very effective. College campus comes to mind. A neighborhood net around the college, or the entertainment district in a downtown area.
I would avoid any path a computer marked out for me the same reason it's a good idea to avoid trails.
I'd say the odds were pretty much zero.
The only thing that could save MSFT now is a fully operational death star.
The bad: A subscription for software upgrades for paying customers is a BAD idea. I don't think getting CrossOver in paid bundle is all that big of a bonus. IE and media player don't run worth crap on CrossOver. I'd rather they dropped CrossOver and included the software subscription. Although it's great if you need to run any Office products on a Linux box.
The license does suck. Very unfortunate they chose to handicap what would otherwise be a good distro with that EULA.
If they don't drop the software upgrade subscription for paying useres I'm not going buy another copy. I'll find a distro with a more liberal license and broader support.
My Linux box just runs and runs. I push the button, it comes on. Reliably, consistently, efficiently. And when the virus infected Email comes in I can open it up and look at the code. Quite sophisticated. Try that with Winblows.
Product registration is another issue I don't like. Back stabbing EULA, no right of first sale, lack of security. The list is actually quite long.
You think the ISP's are going to go back through and make sure the original sites they blocked are still being used for the same purpose? HAHAHAHA! Then you've never dealt with tech support on some of the bigger ISP's. Yesterday I couldn't spell ethernet, today I is a tech support pro-fessional.
This really doesn't have anything to do with kiddie porn. It's a question about who decides where we can go on the Internet and who makes the call about what constitutes objectionable content.
And, as usual, it's only going to stop the honest people. Anyone wanting to get to a site bad enough will figure out a way to proxy around the block.
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.htm l
Indicate we could replace almost all our transportation oil needs with about 11,000 square miles of the Senora Desert, which is about 240,000 square miles.
This store was previously published on /. here:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05 /25/1838201&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=13 4
We couldn't really grow enough soy but if it means cutting our dependence on foreign oil then the desert rattlesnakes will just have to learn to get along on the 229,000 other acres of the Senora Desert.
Why does that make that data public? Why does the fact I have a credit card or what I buy with it qualify as public knowledge? I happen to think that what I buy is no one's damn business but mine. Even property records give away too much information in my opinion. I shouldn't have to be a hermit not to have any jackass with an Internet connection having access to my purchase records, credit rating or anything else. I think it's time the definition of privacy was updated to take into account large databases than keep individual records indefinitely.
Privacy doesn't disappear in one big event...9/11 aside and John Ashcroft aside...it slips away a little at a time. And at every little slip, every step, there's someone arguing that the little bit of privacy invasion is justified by the convenience. Well, just think if we have just one big round of house to house drug searches. We could put a big dent in the drug problem all at once. The greater good would certainly be served by the minor inconvenience to people's privacy. With that kind of logic you can justify any abuse.
I don't believe the police should be able to troll the records of millions of innocent people looking for few troublemakers anymore than they should be allowed to randomly search homes. It's not that big of a step from one to the other. Probable cause should apply everywhere. In your home, your car, your data, including utility records, credit card transactions, bank records, everything. The cops have enough to do dealing with the problems we know about, we don't need them out data fishing.
Besides, it's useless. In years of working with databases I can tell you that the best way to solve a crime is still pounding the beat on a street.
That's a profound observation I see played out over and over across my customer base. The longer I'm in IT, the more I encourage my customers to keep their data systems simple and build them on open standards. Then some rep will come in with some dribble about the "development stack" (I've never figured out what that was) and "information transparancy" (my personal favorite useless buzz phrase) and a demo and pretty soon UPS will be wheeling in some boxes. Nevermind if it can talk to the other systems and fits in with the integration plan. And what platform does it run on? Who's going to administer the box? Who is going to be the customer owner? No thought at all. It looks pretty let's get that.
And the best part is the vendor will blame IT if it doesn't work right. We're obviously not following "best practices" however the f' they happen to be defining those at the moment. Hey, has anyone seen the big book of Best Practices anywhere? Crap, someone keeps borrowing mine.
Consumers to the burden of proof, added their personal information to the cost of using MSFT's software, and software prices went down across the board, right? Quite the contrary, you now get the burden of proof, a hoop you have to jump through every time you change hardware, AND higher prices.
Hey, as long as the MSFT sheeple keep taking it up the pooper you can't get mad because Redmond takes advantage of the situation.
Just got done isolating the last Windows machine on my network so it can't access the Internet. That's a Win2K box. The last piece of MS crapware I purchased at home since...2001. Wow, time flies when you're having fun instead of spending all you time patching Windows.
And I have to say it feels good when stories like this and the virus of the day come by. Not that I'd ever taunt the sheep by saying something like NEENER, NEENER, NEENER. And though I might be tempted to think they're technology LOOOOOOSSSEERRRS, manners would prevent me from saying so out loud. Instead I'd pretend to be sympathetic and understanding and wait until their back is turned and they're a polite distance out of earshot to start laughing.
Factories and machines have a certain intrinsic value. A factory can be retooled to make a different product. But we're turning into a country that makes...nothing. Entertainment products like movies and music, and mind share products like software. Mind share products run the risk of being commoditized over time and are significantly easier to offshore. No factory to move.
Makes me wonder just what products we're counting on for future economic growth? We're becoming a nation that consumes much and produces less and less. When Boeing's next assembly facility is built in Singapore or South America, when your doctor is from India consulting with a neurologist in Pakistan and typing notes on a PDA made in China with software written in Russia. Just what job are you going back to when you get out of hospital?
He's no savior.
He didn't author it and at least he's not afraid to admit the time for that type of legislation has passed and change course. Sometimes changing your mind is a GOOD thing and, where the Patriot Act is concerned, changing it is way overdue. It's really okay for the same legislators who voted for the Patriot to vote against extending it.
The twinks in the White House have to go. After that we can resume our partisan dickering, already in progress. I just can't believe that Naziesque jerk ever got elected to ANY public office.
Bold move. And it comes at a time those type of corporate jewels are in short supply.
I'm just glad to see someone...anyone...stepping up changing the game. And it's kind of satisfying to see MSFT assaulted from so many different directions. Sort of reminds me of the toppling of the Berlin Wall, only it'll take MSFT a lot longer to collapse.
Not to name any names [insert innocent look] but there might already have been people doing this. Say a group of friends who have known each other personally, all sharing their CD collections, but not with the masses on p2p networks. With each other, through disks in the mail, or password protected, PGP encrypted files. And say this group coordinated their purchases so no one ever bought the same CD. A group like that could build up quite a music collection.
All the focus on file sharing got me to starting thinking about making my own music, which turned out to be more fun and better than crap I was buying.
The harder corporate entities try to lock up what people do with media...music and movies, the more of a market it spawns for individuals and groups providing material without all the restrictions. If big media somehow got the idea that the world owes them a living, I think they're in for a big surprise.
It's kind of fun to watch the NBM'ers hemorrhage last week's statistics when they're confronted with the obvious.
Open source will win, not because of any moral issues but because of economics. Individual markets can defy gravity for a while, but sooner or later the more effecient model comes out on top. And it's not MSFT.
I've watched Linux make huge strides over the last couple years and my perception is the pace of improvement is accelerating. MSFT simply can't move that fast. The change will happen on the business desktop first because business doesn't care about multimedia and gaming. The fact that Linux doesn't play every media stream or load every crap piece of spyware is a bonus in the workplace. Plus it gives businesses a lot of power and flexibility in managing their desktops.
The combination of freedom and flexibility would win out on their own, the cost savings are just a bonus. Take this quote:
"For large organizations looking to reduce the costs of the desktop significantly, Star Office looks compelling. Siemens did a trial project to test the Ximian/OpenOffice/Linux combination with office staff in Germany last year. (Open Office has some minor differences to StarOffice, such as fewer fonts and graphics) Siemens concluded that changing to Linux and StarOffice was no more expensive than a Windows upgrade - in terms of training. On top of that, it saved 20 to 30 per cent in administration costs, 50 per cent in hardware costs and 80 per cent in licensing costs. Pretty compelling when you think about it."
Source: http://www.theregister.com/2004/04/29/staroffice_r eaches_maturity/
Compelling, duplicatable and inevitable. Hopefully you didn't get a second mortgage for those .NET classes.
I for one welcome our new networked parking meter overlords.