Via the Internet it is also possible to do much more damage in the short timeframe it takes to disable the card than with any of the examples above. Another problem would be your identification for the process of disabling the card/account. If everyone uses this cards to identify you online how would MS identify the authorized person for this failsafe?
You could also just use PAM (which is already a few years old) and basically allows you to use any authentication with any PAM-capable software without any changes to the software at all.
You might have a point in systems needing a grade of security that they don't use regular (read long-term) passwords anymore today like Nuclear Weapons Storage or things like that. Nobody would tear out an eyeball to break into your home and steal your stereo or to get onto your work-pc.
That's brilliant. Authentication and the death of one of the most "popular" types of spam all at the same time. You just have to tell them they can't enlarge their penis for security reasons and thus can't answer to this type of spam.
If and when it is possible to copy a biometric feature of your body the whole biometric system is compromised not only your account. The strong point for biometrics is the difference with copying them.
For example, if banks would stop constantly requiring me to remember seventeen different ID numbers,...
That is one of the worst examples concerning RL-Usability I know. Why can't they keep their databases primary keys to themselves and just identify me by my name, adress and birthdate? This goes not only for banks but also for the government and most companies which instantly assign you a customer ID.
Unfortunately, many systems are not designed from the viewpoint of a new user, but rather the professional user who created the system.
You could say the same thing the other way round. Most systems these days are designed for the new user without giving much thought to people using the system while knowing what they do. One extreme example is the whole windows configuration infrastructure with the options dialogs and the registry. It is a relatively easy way to change settings the first time but after you changed it one time too often you wish for a simple config file as a backend for these easy-to-use dialogs so you could just copy the config file instead of changing it manually over and over again.
Most users see this, compare it to the statistics of other OS/Linux Distributions and think these times are long. What most of the statistics fail to mention is the actual percentage of this time you have to spend in front of your pc and the time it works unattended. Most people's computers have enough idle time that it is worth a lot less than the time of the user. Gentoo saves my time (e.g. not having to reinstall Windows or not having to search Yast or some other stupid distribution-specific tool for a setting for which I know the matching config-file parameter) at the cost of my computer's idle time. I think this is a good deal.
It does this only when there is a problem with one of the filesystem checks (like errors that can only be fixed by unmounting and checking the partition manually) in which case continuing might damage the filesystem further. Errors in the other boot scripts are shown but the boot continues.
I use a router/server/... at home where I do everything via ssh including the Gentoo Installation (except putting the Boot-CD in the drive and removing it a little later) and I can not really share your view concerning Gentoo as I use it because it lets me configure the config files my way (compared to other distros)
Yast is one of the major SuSE short comings in my opinion. Because of Yast you can not configure anything manually via config files which means if you have a problem you have to search for other SuSE users with the same problem instead of being able to use any infos from users of any distro with similar problems.
What's the problem with Star/OpenOffice taking so long to load, anyhow? Is it Java, or is it just badly written software?
It's a good (as in "few differences") copy of a badly designed program with a bloated feature list badly written in a badly designed, memory-hog of a language.
An interesting question would be how many of these exploits are remote exploits and how many are "just" local user. With most Windows machines running as Admin per default local exploits seem to be ignored there most of the time.
It is not about doing it but about being able to make small fixes to the numerous relatively old (read: unsupported by vendor) programs in use in big companies. The main tools like Office and Windows are not the real problem but in every transition to a new OS (-Version) all the small tools used by a small percentage of people in the company with lots of data in unreadable propietary formats are the real difficult thing to transfer.
When you use Open Source Tools for this you are able to adjust them to the new OS yourself which is far cheaper than finding a new tool and converting all your data.
In future it would be nice if Rockstar games would include a switch to change the traffic handedness...
Or maybe it would be nice for these few countries that drive left, use inch, feet,... to turn around and use the standard ways of doing things in the rest of the world?
If you've seen a Trekkie convention you know that too much TV can alter a person's view of reality.
Disclaimer: I am no Trekkie or LARP-Player or something like that but I know some LARP-Players in RL.
Most Roleplayers I know are above average in their skill to distinguish reality and fiction. They might wear strange costumes but they are aware they are costumes and would laugh at the thought of doing any of the things they do to other characters to a real person (like steal, murder,...)
The Media is not the only thing that shapes our behaviour but you can not deny that the media gives you most of your information about the society and what is socially acceptable.
The only problem I see here is that some people can not differentiate between fiction and non-fiction media.
The OP did not say that. He said the have violent tendencies so they like violent games. He did not say there are no other reasons to like these games.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you ignore MS for a moment it is never a good idea to trust all your security to a single vendor/system.
Via the Internet it is also possible to do much more damage in the short timeframe it takes to disable the card than with any of the examples above. Another problem would be your identification for the process of disabling the card/account. If everyone uses this cards to identify you online how would MS identify the authorized person for this failsafe?
Ever heard of PAM? http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/whatispam .html/
You could also just use PAM (which is already a few years old) and basically allows you to use any authentication with any PAM-capable software without any changes to the software at all.
You might have a point in systems needing a grade of security that they don't use regular (read long-term) passwords anymore today like Nuclear Weapons Storage or things like that. Nobody would tear out an eyeball to break into your home and steal your stereo or to get onto your work-pc.
That's brilliant. Authentication and the death of one of the most "popular" types of spam all at the same time. You just have to tell them they can't enlarge their penis for security reasons and thus can't answer to this type of spam.
If and when it is possible to copy a biometric feature of your body the whole biometric system is compromised not only your account. The strong point for biometrics is the difference with copying them.
Active content (as in "scripts") in all types of documents are one of the worst and most useless features MS ever introduced.
Most users see this, compare it to the statistics of other OS/Linux Distributions and think these times are long. What most of the statistics fail to mention is the actual percentage of this time you have to spend in front of your pc and the time it works unattended. Most people's computers have enough idle time that it is worth a lot less than the time of the user. Gentoo saves my time (e.g. not having to reinstall Windows or not having to search Yast or some other stupid distribution-specific tool for a setting for which I know the matching config-file parameter) at the cost of my computer's idle time. I think this is a good deal.
It does this only when there is a problem with one of the filesystem checks (like errors that can only be fixed by unmounting and checking the partition manually) in which case continuing might damage the filesystem further. Errors in the other boot scripts are shown but the boot continues.
You know there is a file where you can put the USE-Flags for each package so you don't have to enter them on the commandline every time?
I use a router/server/... at home where I do everything via ssh including the Gentoo Installation (except putting the Boot-CD in the drive and removing it a little later) and I can not really share your view concerning Gentoo as I use it because it lets me configure the config files my way (compared to other distros)
Yast is one of the major SuSE short comings in my opinion. Because of Yast you can not configure anything manually via config files which means if you have a problem you have to search for other SuSE users with the same problem instead of being able to use any infos from users of any distro with similar problems.
Even more reason not to let them download whole CDs but only the packages they need.
An interesting question would be how many of these exploits are remote exploits and how many are "just" local user. With most Windows machines running as Admin per default local exploits seem to be ignored there most of the time.
It is not about doing it but about being able to make small fixes to the numerous relatively old (read: unsupported by vendor) programs in use in big companies. The main tools like Office and Windows are not the real problem but in every transition to a new OS (-Version) all the small tools used by a small percentage of people in the company with lots of data in unreadable propietary formats are the real difficult thing to transfer. When you use Open Source Tools for this you are able to adjust them to the new OS yourself which is far cheaper than finding a new tool and converting all your data.
The Simon the Sorcerer Series and Floyd (the game the same people made after Simon the Sorcerer) were fun to play as well.
Do you read anywhere that they want to sell only one copy?
Most Roleplayers I know are above average in their skill to distinguish reality and fiction. They might wear strange costumes but they are aware they are costumes and would laugh at the thought of doing any of the things they do to other characters to a real person (like steal, murder,...)
The Media is not the only thing that shapes our behaviour but you can not deny that the media gives you most of your information about the society and what is socially acceptable. The only problem I see here is that some people can not differentiate between fiction and non-fiction media.
The OP did not say that. He said the have violent tendencies so they like violent games. He did not say there are no other reasons to like these games.