I've toyed around with MS's "encryption" and all I can say is the following:-
1) That password you give your administrator account on your system can be hacked off in under 5 minutes with the Emergency Boot CD EBCD . So much for encryption.
2) Files encrypted in Windows 2000 (the OS I tested then on) were still visible in their directories, despite their contents being encrypted. To me, this wasn't good enough. I wanted the whole filesystem to be encrypted, with plausible deniability that the files that certain files (or even file systems) never even existed. To add injury to insult, I could easily become administrator with the EBCD and get the encryption key easily to break the encryption anyway.
3) Built in Windows encryption isn't good enough, forcing you to get third party products to do the job right. This means that you pay through the nose if you haven't got the technical skill to set up a Linux or BSD box running free encryption modules and samba.
But come on. If MS made a perfect operating system, they wouldn't have a business model selling updates. Instead of dropping support for old products, I'm almost expecting their next OS to have a use-by date embedded in their EULA and OS to FORCE you off their old system after so many years.... or else!
Does it mean that we can not only create souls, but in fact design completely new kinds of souls, new races of people? This is both fascinating and frightening.
Well shucks. I wake up everyday, look in the mirror, and decide how I live every day of my life.
You make that sound like the hardest thing in the world.
Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter we are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself.
Wise words?
The human genetic code has evolved to this point after thousands of years of trial and error, pain, suffering, hard work, learning, love, and the will to live.
A scientist is going to replace all that with, what,.. a chemical formula?
Assuming that MS tinker with automatic Windows update so that it detects illegal installs when a user tries Widnows Update on a pirated copy, I can't see how this system is going to work.
At the moment, any user of Windows (legal or illegal) can MANUALLY find the system administrator patches easily on Microsoft's website.
Unless MS manage to work a pirate copy checking system into each and every one of their system patches, this system will be easily broken. (and even then pirates may distribute cracked patches)
My main beef with MS is that I paid for XP, but reinstalling the system just to fix it means that I have to play their stupid online registration game - which only gives me so many lives before "Game over"
Well, they made a bold push to do this by the end of 2005... so they have 1 year left to beat their own goal.
I'd say the problems they are experiencing are due course when migrating to a different platform. Sure, IE wrecked browser standards and many people had to play fiddle to Microsoft and write IE compatible pages. That's going to take a while to fix and there will be problems. Porting some of their other apps in going to be a long and painful process.
I can't see any transition to another operating system being a smooth transition. For sure there WILL be DIFFICULT problems for them.
This is just part and parcel of development, and not a reason to give up on Linux AT ALL.
Good news is that Linux will be a better platform once their present-day trials are over, and they complete what they set out to do.
This is nothing special. I remember my elementary school's Apple ][GS learning how to play 5-in-a-row or noughts and crosse s from this program called "AI".
There IS a winning strategy to rock paper scissors, but it only works when you have a round of games (say best of 3, or best of 5)
Initially, the first game is completely random, but reserachers found that if you chose the play that your opponent chose in the round before, you stand a 70% chance of winning the next round.
It has something to do with how the human brain works.
It's also something the Japanese taught me cause they play this game so much!
I thought the "UnWheel" mod, announced on the finalists list for the competition, was quite innovative, if very unpolished. It used the Unreal game physics to do a complete makeover with vehicles, which it did quite successfully (except the computer AI is non-existant at the moment.)
It reminded me of the joys of playing "Hard Drivin'" for the first time. Trying to drive the slow moving School Bus up the loop, only to get halfway and watch it fall back on itself from a 3rd person perspective was the best part.
I think what he was trying to say was that there's no point putting code to do threading into the OS when there is threading functionality built into the hardware (such as in Intel's hyperthreading CPUs).
But yeah, he really didn't re-edit his article to make that blindingly clear.
A command line is good enough for me, but I suppose that when you think about it, a 2 dimensional graphical user desktop display is not really the be all and end all interfacing with a computer. It was as good as it was going to get when hardware was more expensive and slower... but to think that the GUI desktop is the end of computer evolution is very premature IMHO. We have the technology....
There are so many ways that the technology can be pushed, that Microsoft actually *may* end up innovating something here. OK, they have a really poor track record at innovation so far, but MS has more money, expertise, and will than anyone else to throw around on evolving the GUI. Something interesting may come out of it. Whether ordinary PC users can benefit from it remains to be seen....
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my fully-featured DOOM UI so I can blow up old log files, and camp near the ethernet ports and cover my team engineer from while he switches the default gateway to the new firewall appliance.
Seriously, do they actually employ the sysadmin to go thorugh all your cookies to find out what you've been up to online?
Sheesh, I barely have enough time to go through the web proxy log at my place of work to find out where all the good pr0n sites are that everyone's found!
At work where I have to use Windows, I just stick to Firefox and Thunderbird.
When most of the beginner oriented Desktop Linux distros include both of these proggies in them by default... the Linux desktop will move further forward.
"Alcohol, by releasing at large primeval instincts and leveling ranking potentials, eases sexual intimacy, thus increasing the chance for low ranking people, however negative consequences of alcohol consumption are widely known.
Since instinctive sexual selection does not know anything about alcoholism, symptoms of alcohol abuse do not hamper subconscious preference of the potential partner. "
They've already developed a mind enhancing drug, and it's called beer. It helps me understand women with precise clarity, something that I can't do when I'm totally sober and supposedly "thinking straight".
Slashdot Mirror
I've toyed around with MS's "encryption" and all I can say is the following:-
1) That password you give your administrator account on your system can be hacked off in under 5 minutes with the Emergency Boot CD EBCD . So much for encryption.
2) Files encrypted in Windows 2000 (the OS I tested then on) were still visible in their directories, despite their contents being encrypted. To me, this wasn't good enough. I wanted the whole filesystem to be encrypted, with plausible deniability that the files that certain files (or even file systems) never even existed.
To add injury to insult, I could easily become administrator with the EBCD and get the encryption key easily to break the encryption anyway.
3) Built in Windows encryption isn't good enough, forcing you to get third party products to do the job right. This means that you pay through the nose if you haven't got the technical skill to set up a Linux or BSD box running free encryption modules and samba.
But come on. If MS made a perfect operating system, they wouldn't have a business model selling updates. Instead of dropping support for old products, I'm almost expecting their next OS to have a use-by date embedded in their EULA and OS to FORCE you off their old system after so many years.... or else!
Does it mean that we can not only create souls, but in fact design completely new kinds of souls, new races of people? This is both fascinating and frightening.
Well shucks. I wake up everyday, look in the mirror, and decide how I live every day of my life.
You make that sound like the hardest thing in the world.
Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter we are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself. Wise words? The human genetic code has evolved to this point after thousands of years of trial and error, pain, suffering, hard work, learning, love, and the will to live. A scientist is going to replace all that with, what,.. a chemical formula?
This is starting to sound like the plotline to FarCry....
Assuming that MS tinker with automatic Windows update so that it detects illegal installs when a user tries Widnows Update on a pirated copy, I can't see how this system is going to work.
At the moment, any user of Windows (legal or illegal) can MANUALLY find the system administrator patches easily on Microsoft's website.
Unless MS manage to work a pirate copy checking system into each and every one of their system patches, this system will be easily broken. (and even then pirates may distribute cracked patches)
My main beef with MS is that I paid for XP, but reinstalling the system just to fix it means that I have to play their stupid online registration game - which only gives me so many lives before "Game over"
Norton Firewall has had this capability already. Talk about prior art!
Seriously, hasn't the government got something else better to do with the patent office, other than legalize get-rich-quick schemes?
Well, they made a bold push to do this by the end of 2005... so they have 1 year left to beat their own goal.
I'd say the problems they are experiencing are due course when migrating to a different platform. Sure, IE wrecked browser standards and many people had to play fiddle to Microsoft and write IE compatible pages. That's going to take a while to fix and there will be problems.
Porting some of their other apps in going to be a long and painful process.
I can't see any transition to another operating system being a smooth transition. For sure there WILL be DIFFICULT problems for them.
This is just part and parcel of development, and not a reason to give up on Linux AT ALL.
Good news is that Linux will be a better platform once their present-day trials are over, and they complete what they set out to do.
This is nothing special. I remember my elementary school's Apple ][GS learning how to play 5-in-a-row or noughts and crosse
s from this program called "AI".
There IS a winning strategy to rock paper scissors, but it only works when you have a round of games (say best of 3, or best of 5)
Initially, the first game is completely random, but reserachers found that if you chose the play that your opponent chose in the round before, you stand a 70% chance of winning the next round.
It has something to do with how the human brain works.
It's also something the Japanese taught me cause they play this game so much!
Have you seen this thing? Since when did FisherPrice start making keyboards?
And where's the space bar?!
I thought the "UnWheel" mod, announced on the finalists list for the competition, was quite innovative, if very unpolished. It used the Unreal game physics to do a complete makeover with vehicles, which it did quite successfully (except the computer AI is non-existant at the moment.)
It reminded me of the joys of playing "Hard Drivin'" for the first time. Trying to drive the slow moving School Bus up the loop, only to get halfway and watch it fall back on itself from a 3rd person perspective was the best part.
Fujitsu has an office suite software package caled OASYS. It only sells in Japan as far as I know.
Sweet! It will now be able to legally store the complete collection of cracked Commodore 64 disk games!
I looked at the Japanese pages where they had pictures of the update program.
I couldn't believe that it asked you to agree with the licence before it did the update!
So there's a star map in Naples?
Now all I need to do is find all the other Star Maps to locate the Star Forge and defeat Darth Malak.....
May the force be with me....
L.I.N.U.X - Linux Is Not UniX
I think what he was trying to say was that there's no point putting code to do threading into the OS when there is threading functionality built into the hardware (such as in Intel's hyperthreading CPUs).
But yeah, he really didn't re-edit his article to make that blindingly clear.
A command line is good enough for me, but I suppose that when you think about it, a 2 dimensional graphical user desktop display is not really the be all and end all interfacing with a computer. It was as good as it was going to get when hardware was more expensive and slower... but to think that the GUI desktop is the end of computer evolution is very premature IMHO. We have the technology....
There are so many ways that the technology can be pushed, that Microsoft actually *may* end up innovating something here.
OK, they have a really poor track record at innovation so far, but MS has more money, expertise, and will than anyone else to throw around on evolving the GUI. Something interesting may come out of it.
Whether ordinary PC users can benefit from it remains to be seen....
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my fully-featured DOOM UI so I can blow up old log files, and camp near the ethernet ports and cover my team engineer from while he switches the default gateway to the new firewall appliance.
It runs on a proprietary OS; and to prevent problems, users won't be able to install software, download big files, burn CDs or DVDs or edit videos.
Heck, they may as well be selling Commodore 64s.
Seriously, do they actually employ the sysadmin to go thorugh all your cookies to find out what you've been up to online?
Sheesh, I barely have enough time to go through the web proxy log at my place of work to find out where all the good pr0n sites are that everyone's found!
Personally I don't use Mozilla anymore.
At work where I have to use Windows, I just stick to Firefox and Thunderbird.
When most of the beginner oriented Desktop Linux distros include both of these proggies in them by default... the Linux desktop will move further forward.
If anything it will make for some great video footage.... thousands of penguins swept away in a tsunami.
What are the chances that Sun is paying attention?
"Alcohol, by releasing at large primeval instincts and leveling ranking potentials, eases sexual intimacy, thus increasing the chance for low ranking people, however negative consequences of alcohol consumption are widely known. Since instinctive sexual selection does not know anything about alcoholism, symptoms of alcohol abuse do not hamper subconscious preference of the potential partner. "
The Treatise of Love
They've already developed a mind enhancing drug, and it's called beer. It helps me understand women with precise clarity, something that I can't do when I'm totally sober and supposedly "thinking straight".