From my experiments with the Windows encryption, it's not too difficult to break by moving the file to another directory.
A better protection for sensitive data on a laptop is offered by IBM. In addition to needing to replace a chip to change the BIOS password, as is common on most laptops, IBM encrypts the harddrive so without the BIOS password which sends a bigger password to the HD, the data cannot be accessed -- even if you change the BIOS password with a soldering iron.
Keep that in mind next time you are carrying around a laptop full of other people's personal data.
If you have seen the Manchurian Candidate IMDB, you know why Solitaire is standard install, don't you Raymond...
I don't get out of my cell much, did they use the Win version in the Remake of the movie?
yeah, the broadband is there, and I stated that in my post if you had read it, my point is that it's just that it seems people don't seem to feel the need for it.
It doesn't matter that *you* can get 3mb in town if no one else is taking advantage of that great of service. The fact that my kid is seen as some alien because she's the only one of her peers to have broadband access is cause for alarm.
And I don't need your condescension regarding the db2... it's cool, especially when hooked up with the db2e and J2ME. I will however accept the condescension regarding the Linux. For now we only have one Linux box, for the DB2E sync server... but slowly we will get out of the quagmire of Windows... this however seems to be the norm in the states where most people can get a Masters in CS without even touching Linux or UNIX.
Anyways, glad to here your out there somewhere in Marathon County, look forward to running into you some time.
Maybe down in Dane County folks are into the internet... but I just moved to Marathon County in the center of the state from Northern Ontario and it's like going back in time ten years... Everyone has dial up as opposed to NWO where every little backwater seems to have had broadband for at least 5 years if not 8.
Here in Marathon County, we're the only family in my kid's highscool to have broadband.
I am the only person in the IT department (where we work with the IBM AS/400 db2, yadda yadda) who has broadband.
My home connection is faster than my work connection because I share DSL with NO ONE.
A tax on the internet is only going to keep people from adopting technology they should have adopted nearly a decade ago. Even intelligent people who pay 5 cents a minute to talk to their neighbors on the phone hesitate at the cost of broadband even when I explain to them the savings of VoIP.
As far as taxes go, Wisconsin is cheap compared to Ontario -- there it's 15% sales tax. It's also cheaper than Minnesota and Chicago if you were to look across the borders.
Well, they can always do what they did with Abu Ghirab: send in Janet Jackson's nipple before the story breaks and scare the networks with "decency standards" scandals to get them to not broadcast the images at all.
...Although, compared to Janet Jackson's right nipple, I'd prefer the broadcast flags.
I am not completely familiar with broadcast flags, but wouldn't it be similar to DeCSS? Most big US studio movies have the DeCSS, but foreign and smaller films don't use it.
I am guessing foreign distros of US work would have the flags embedded
perhaps someone else knows if this would be the case due to the limits of the technology....
I tried to do a bit more scientific survey than yours when MSN search came out and I was stuck on a VBA/Access project. I used Google, MSN search and Yahoo to find answers to my frustrations with the gui wonder.
I figured, at least in this narrow field MS would trounce the competition. It didn't.
More suprisingly, Google's results weren't much better. Of the three, I found the best information through Yahoo by roughly 75%! Trailing far behind was Google (it referenced to many expertsexchange crud)...
suprisingly MS was a poor reference for it's own products. Which I am guessing shows that it is trying to be a real search engine and not just a marketing machine.
Could you expand on this, please. It sounds interesting but with a bit of Googling I am unable to track down any reference to what you speak. Tradeskill is used a lot in Warcraft and other games. I found a few pieces by an economist Paul Hawkens about green economics and there are many Michael Phillips out there.
I am raising a 16 year old geek who really lacks these "Tradeskills" you speak of and would really appreciate a link to an essay, article or book that lays out these concepts. An essay would be the most receptive since she is not much of a reader but will put up with an essay and discussion after dinner.
If these skills must be attained by 18 the clock is ticking.
Steve Jobs, while a brilliant manager is really not that much of a techie. He just happens to have a knack for driving techies.
There seems to be an optimal relationship between the autistic nature of geeks and the OC/ADD nature of salesmen that seems to bring about good work. Look at the symbiotic relationship of Jobs/Woz or Gates/Allen.
A good tech manager gives an interface to the deep geeks. Sure they have to have some idea of what tech does, but that doesn't mean they have any idea of how it works.
In many ways it's good they don't understand... it allows them to push geeks who know it can't be done. Really it's because Jobs didn't know the Mac couldn't be done that he was able to push his geeks to do it.
Management has nothing to do with Tech. A tech manager has to be able to pass himself off as a geek when necessary to provide a seamless user interface to their minion, but in reality they are basically coaches. Coaches may wear track suits and sneakers, but generally they'd be out of breathe if you had them do a few situps. Coaches don't have to be able to do... coaches need to know how to do, they need to know how to motivate and coordinate to get things done.
The brutal treatment of women in the Middle East speaks volumes about Middle Eastern culture.
And the brutal treatment of Iraqi children by americans speaks volumes about the west. Not to mention the lovely photos of Abu Ghirab.
If the US weren't such a sadistic nation they'd have won by now. I am sure for far less then the $300Billion spent so far. They could have sent in a platoon of realtors into Iraq, bought everything, set everyone up with a low priced GMAC home mortgage and had a Mc Donalds on every corner and a WalMart in every town by now. $300Billion could have bought Iraq up for less than 2k an acre on average for the 170 million acres that constitute Iraq. That's a pretty high price for a desert view and no mod cons. On top of that, at 6% interest the money could be doubled in six years.
Instead, they're just setting up for more trouble. That $300 Billion is just a down payment on a money pit in a bad neighborhood made worse by their presence rather than better.
people learn at different speeds and it has little to do with psychiatry. At 12 I could build fairly advanced electronic projects, but I didn't learn to read until I was about 20.
And there are countless examples of people with much later adoption of literacy.
Since I grew up before personal computers were commonly available, there was no software for me to work with. What I had to do was copy books by hand until somehow the magic happened and I could read and write. That took time.
Much of what is difficult in becoming literate is getting your brain to convert meaningless symbols (letters) into ideas. For very visual people bridging this gap can be tremendously difficult. I mean we look at the word "Table" and we see a flat plane supported by four legs, not five scribbles or letters or even a word. That is a huge gap for brains to make.
That Zombie typing looks like it would have been perfect for me at age 12. Copying books by hand was hard work, typing games look like a lot more fun. If it was more visually oriented to what you are typing I bet it might be a bit more dull, but also more effective.
One computer game that really helped me, was a DOS game I was exposed to in Latin class. It was really simple, but you got instant feedback and scored points to rule the world by declining nouns and conjugating verbs. It was awesome.
As we go further and further into the digital world literacy will become less and less relevant. Look at how it is now, most adults can't read in our society by very basic metrics such as bus schedules let alone comprehending the simplistic grammatical constructions used in today's newspapers and magazines.
At the same time, literacy will remain as important as ever in deciphering the world and interacting in society. In many ways it appears as if we are regressing to a dark ages and society will be ruled by a power elite of literate priests -- these priests / scribes wo will be writing code and running computers.
A world like this would be aweful since without literacy, the common man would become much more violent and hostile unable to connect to others in any manner other than brutal.
--
To communicate is the beginning of understanding. -- AT&T
So I had to search for Louis and there are no ads. Then I did a knee jerk search for "Louis Vuitton Nazi" and hey, they really are Nazi's... they collaborated back in the 40's with Hitler!
Guess the more things change... the more they stay the same!
I recently completed a VBA/MS Access project. Now Access is a cool program for people who can't code... but as a programmer more comfortable with C, perl and java it was like trying to practice olympic diving in a kiddie pool.
I was frustrated fumbling in gui land and decided to use the frustration as a test of the search engines since I wasn't find answers easily thru the Google .
I did my searches in the new MS search, Google and Yahoo and found that Yahoo's results were most relevant, followed by Google and then MS. Now if their search motor doesn't work for their own products, how do you think it's going to work for finding tidbits on more important things?
Well, maybe not as effectively as blurring only one face, but it does mess up the whitebalance until the camera is reset... and it works on all digital cameras that aren't shielded by mirrors and most film cameras with automatic light meters.
your fingers may get cold, not mine. I have what you call a circulatory system. I avoid gloves until at all necessary. Additionally, I am more acclimated to the cooler weather. Although, once I did get frostburn at thirty-five below. I was writing code, sitting in my sleeping bag and I didn't notice the zipper was sitting on my skin conducting extra cooling.
40-45F may be more prevalent in some places, but that is irrelevant. Look at how those temperatures effect animals. The relative humidity wicks body heat away rapidly. Additionally the cooler wet temperatures are breeding ground for mange. Until it gets deep cold or extreme heat, 40F is the hardest on animals.
At extreme cold, it is nearly impossible to get a virus like the flu since it is too cold to survive.
My main point is that your psychology dictates how you experience the weather. I was a part of an arctic expedition once providing internet connectivity over satellite, and one of the main rules was no one was to say the word "cold". Call it cool, brisk, whatever... calling it cold was self defeating.
Once you learn how to dress properly, 20 below zero celsius is the most comfortable ambient temperature. Extreme cold doesn't really happen until well past that... 40 below celsius and farenheit meet and your spit freezes before it hits the ground. 60 below and tires freeze.. they are no longer round, but have a flat spot from where the rested overnight. Beyond that, tires can just shatter. I will admit, beyond 65 below I find uncomfortable, but even that for extended periods one can find acclimatable, and then you find yourself wearing a t-shirt at 40 below and getting giddy.
Humidity is related to temperature because when it is cool and humid, the moisture wicks the heat from your body more rapidly. Alternately, when it is hot and humid, the moisture insulates the heat to your body.
This is why 100F in the midwest is miserable whereas 100F in Las Vegas feels cool. Both Wind and Humidity effect the relative way a temperature feels. I find it insulting that the news agencies only consider the one that make you feel worse.
At 40 below, your spit freezes before it hits the ground. This is not true when the wind chill is -40.
Gates may want to get paid, but that doesn't necessarily mean he intends to pay for work others did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall
Anyways, it seems far too many musicians sell/lose the rights to their music long before they are dead. How many american musicians are there who are contractually unable to play their own music without paying a royalty to someone else, or are forced to see their recordings endorse products they have nothing to do with?
More than limiting copyrights by time, they should be limited to the creator. They shouldn't necessarily be as commoditized as they currently are.
yeah, I just want to be up there when the permafrost melts... I love mosquitoes! and the thought of all those northern swamps and bogs opening up. Yum.
yeah, if you count the windchill, it's -20, but that is only relevant if you are going outside in your bathing suit...
For a more realistic temperature, factor in the humidity like the meterologists do in the summer and if feels more like a dry 30F.
The news people look for the worst possible angle on the weather because it makes it more extreme and more interesting. They want you to stay inside and watch the news. Notice how they never factor in wind chill in the summer, just humidity?
I've spent about a decade living outdoors much further north than Wisconsin. And while I now live indoors and in Wisconsin, I can still tell the ambient temperature with out the aid of a thermometer within two degrees. No matter how you factor in the windchill, twenty below zero is much more comfortable than twenty above due to the humidity. (again, as long as you're wearing a coat and not expecting to go outside in shorts and a t-shirt) I just chuckle at how the cheeseheads complain about -20.
The most uncomfortable temperature is 40F-45F. In that range the humidity is unbearable which is why people are more likely to succumb to hypothermia in that range than at real -20.
Look on the brightside... this cool weather is going to keep the mosquitoes down, especially after all the rain that hit wisconsin earlier in the week!
The basic fact is that if the temperature raises 10 celsius it's gonna be miserable. Winter won't kill out disease, summers will regularly be in excess of 130F, crops will consistantly fail and plagues will rule. You think mosquitos are miserable now, just wait for malaria and other tropical diseases to hit Wisconsin.
Slashdot Mirror
I have posted here before a test I conducted when MSN rolled out their new search engine.
I was working on an MS Access project and had a lot of questions. I figured if any one would have the answers it would be MSN.
They didn't.
I went to Google, not much more help -- too much experts exchange links.
I also tried the same searches on Yahoo and they were head and shoulders above the other two.
From my experiments with the Windows encryption, it's not too difficult to break by moving the file to another directory.
A better protection for sensitive data on a laptop is offered by IBM. In addition to needing to replace a chip to change the BIOS password, as is common on most laptops, IBM encrypts the harddrive so without the BIOS password which sends a bigger password to the HD, the data cannot be accessed -- even if you change the BIOS password with a soldering iron.
Keep that in mind next time you are carrying around a laptop full of other people's personal data.
If you have seen the Manchurian Candidate IMDB, you know why Solitaire is standard install, don't you Raymond... I don't get out of my cell much, did they use the Win version in the Remake of the movie?
yeah, the broadband is there, and I stated that in my post if you had read it, my point is that it's just that it seems people don't seem to feel the need for it.
It doesn't matter that *you* can get 3mb in town if no one else is taking advantage of that great of service. The fact that my kid is seen as some alien because she's the only one of her peers to have broadband access is cause for alarm.
And I don't need your condescension regarding the db2... it's cool, especially when hooked up with the db2e and J2ME. I will however accept the condescension regarding the Linux. For now we only have one Linux box, for the DB2E sync server... but slowly we will get out of the quagmire of Windows... this however seems to be the norm in the states where most people can get a Masters in CS without even touching Linux or UNIX.
Anyways, glad to here your out there somewhere in Marathon County, look forward to running into you some time.
Maybe down in Dane County folks are into the internet... but I just moved to Marathon County in the center of the state from Northern Ontario and it's like going back in time ten years... Everyone has dial up as opposed to NWO where every little backwater seems to have had broadband for at least 5 years if not 8.
Here in Marathon County, we're the only family in my kid's highscool to have broadband.
I am the only person in the IT department (where we work with the IBM AS/400 db2, yadda yadda) who has broadband.
My home connection is faster than my work connection because I share DSL with NO ONE.
A tax on the internet is only going to keep people from adopting technology they should have adopted nearly a decade ago. Even intelligent people who pay 5 cents a minute to talk to their neighbors on the phone hesitate at the cost of broadband even when I explain to them the savings of VoIP.
As far as taxes go, Wisconsin is cheap compared to Ontario -- there it's 15% sales tax. It's also cheaper than Minnesota and Chicago if you were to look across the borders.
Well, they can always do what they did with Abu Ghirab: send in Janet Jackson's nipple before the story breaks and scare the networks with "decency standards" scandals to get them to not broadcast the images at all.
...Although, compared to Janet Jackson's right nipple, I'd prefer the broadcast flags.
I am not completely familiar with broadcast flags, but wouldn't it be similar to DeCSS? Most big US studio movies have the DeCSS, but foreign and smaller films don't use it.
I am guessing foreign distros of US work would have the flags embedded
perhaps someone else knows if this would be the case due to the limits of the technology....
I tried to do a bit more scientific survey than yours when MSN search came out and I was stuck on a VBA/Access project. I used Google, MSN search and Yahoo to find answers to my frustrations with the gui wonder.
I figured, at least in this narrow field MS would trounce the competition. It didn't.
More suprisingly, Google's results weren't much better. Of the three, I found the best information through Yahoo by roughly 75%! Trailing far behind was Google (it referenced to many expertsexchange crud)...
suprisingly MS was a poor reference for it's own products. Which I am guessing shows that it is trying to be a real search engine and not just a marketing machine.
for those of us without fridges, winter is the only time we can have ice cream... plus, you need the extra calories this time of year!
Could you expand on this, please. It sounds interesting but with a bit of Googling I am unable to track down any reference to what you speak. Tradeskill is used a lot in Warcraft and other games. I found a few pieces by an economist Paul Hawkens about green economics and there are many Michael Phillips out there.
I am raising a 16 year old geek who really lacks these "Tradeskills" you speak of and would really appreciate a link to an essay, article or book that lays out these concepts. An essay would be the most receptive since she is not much of a reader but will put up with an essay and discussion after dinner.
If these skills must be attained by 18 the clock is ticking.
Steve Jobs, while a brilliant manager is really not that much of a techie. He just happens to have a knack for driving techies.
There seems to be an optimal relationship between the autistic nature of geeks and the OC/ADD nature of salesmen that seems to bring about good work. Look at the symbiotic relationship of Jobs/Woz or Gates/Allen.
A good tech manager gives an interface to the deep geeks. Sure they have to have some idea of what tech does, but that doesn't mean they have any idea of how it works.
In many ways it's good they don't understand... it allows them to push geeks who know it can't be done. Really it's because Jobs didn't know the Mac couldn't be done that he was able to push his geeks to do it.
Management has nothing to do with Tech. A tech manager has to be able to pass himself off as a geek when necessary to provide a seamless user interface to their minion, but in reality they are basically coaches. Coaches may wear track suits and sneakers, but generally they'd be out of breathe if you had them do a few situps. Coaches don't have to be able to do... coaches need to know how to do, they need to know how to motivate and coordinate to get things done.
The brutal treatment of women in the Middle East speaks volumes about Middle Eastern culture.
And the brutal treatment of Iraqi children by americans speaks volumes about the west. Not to mention the lovely photos of Abu Ghirab.
If the US weren't such a sadistic nation they'd have won by now. I am sure for far less then the $300Billion spent so far. They could have sent in a platoon of realtors into Iraq, bought everything, set everyone up with a low priced GMAC home mortgage and had a Mc Donalds on every corner and a WalMart in every town by now. $300Billion could have bought Iraq up for less than 2k an acre on average for the 170 million acres that constitute Iraq. That's a pretty high price for a desert view and no mod cons. On top of that, at 6% interest the money could be doubled in six years.
Instead, they're just setting up for more trouble. That $300 Billion is just a down payment on a money pit in a bad neighborhood made worse by their presence rather than better.
people learn at different speeds and it has little to do with psychiatry. At 12 I could build fairly advanced electronic projects, but I didn't learn to read until I was about 20.
And there are countless examples of people with much later adoption of literacy.
Since I grew up before personal computers were commonly available, there was no software for me to work with. What I had to do was copy books by hand until somehow the magic happened and I could read and write. That took time.
Much of what is difficult in becoming literate is getting your brain to convert meaningless symbols (letters) into ideas. For very visual people bridging this gap can be tremendously difficult. I mean we look at the word "Table" and we see a flat plane supported by four legs, not five scribbles or letters or even a word. That is a huge gap for brains to make.
That Zombie typing looks like it would have been perfect for me at age 12. Copying books by hand was hard work, typing games look like a lot more fun. If it was more visually oriented to what you are typing I bet it might be a bit more dull, but also more effective.
One computer game that really helped me, was a DOS game I was exposed to in Latin class. It was really simple, but you got instant feedback and scored points to rule the world by declining nouns and conjugating verbs. It was awesome.
As we go further and further into the digital world literacy will become less and less relevant. Look at how it is now, most adults can't read in our society by very basic metrics such as bus schedules let alone comprehending the simplistic grammatical constructions used in today's newspapers and magazines.
At the same time, literacy will remain as important as ever in deciphering the world and interacting in society. In many ways it appears as if we are regressing to a dark ages and society will be ruled by a power elite of literate priests -- these priests / scribes wo will be writing code and running computers.
A world like this would be aweful since without literacy, the common man would become much more violent and hostile unable to connect to others in any manner other than brutal.
-- To communicate is the beginning of understanding. -- AT&T
yeah, but Moby Dick doesn't throw out tons of plastic, chemicals and other consumer waste per day.... or did I miss that chapter of Melville's?
So I had to search for Louis and there are no ads. Then I did a knee jerk search for "Louis Vuitton Nazi" and hey, they really are Nazi's... they collaborated back in the 40's with Hitler!
Guess the more things change... the more they stay the same!
Pete and Repeat were sitting on a fence. Pete fell off. Who was left? Repeat! [slashdot.org] -- Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself
Lucent, HP and Compaq... very few people can claim stake to gutting three tech titans!
with her midieval degree she must have really studied the Machiavelli.
Lets hope Steve Ballmer has the foresight to pick her up, Microsoft could really use her magic... well, it would be fun to watch.
I recently completed a VBA/MS Access project. Now Access is a cool program for people who can't code... but as a programmer more comfortable with C, perl and java it was like trying to practice olympic diving in a kiddie pool.
I was frustrated fumbling in gui land and decided to use the frustration as a test of the search engines since I wasn't find answers easily thru the Google .
I did my searches in the new MS search, Google and Yahoo and found that Yahoo's results were most relevant, followed by Google and then MS. Now if their search motor doesn't work for their own products, how do you think it's going to work for finding tidbits on more important things?
Well, maybe not as effectively as blurring only one face, but it does mess up the whitebalance until the camera is reset... and it works on all digital cameras that aren't shielded by mirrors and most film cameras with automatic light meters.
your fingers may get cold, not mine. I have what you call a circulatory system. I avoid gloves until at all necessary. Additionally, I am more acclimated to the cooler weather. Although, once I did get frostburn at thirty-five below. I was writing code, sitting in my sleeping bag and I didn't notice the zipper was sitting on my skin conducting extra cooling.
40-45F may be more prevalent in some places, but that is irrelevant. Look at how those temperatures effect animals. The relative humidity wicks body heat away rapidly. Additionally the cooler wet temperatures are breeding ground for mange. Until it gets deep cold or extreme heat, 40F is the hardest on animals.
At extreme cold, it is nearly impossible to get a virus like the flu since it is too cold to survive.
My main point is that your psychology dictates how you experience the weather. I was a part of an arctic expedition once providing internet connectivity over satellite, and one of the main rules was no one was to say the word "cold". Call it cool, brisk, whatever... calling it cold was self defeating.
Once you learn how to dress properly, 20 below zero celsius is the most comfortable ambient temperature. Extreme cold doesn't really happen until well past that... 40 below celsius and farenheit meet and your spit freezes before it hits the ground. 60 below and tires freeze.. they are no longer round, but have a flat spot from where the rested overnight. Beyond that, tires can just shatter. I will admit, beyond 65 below I find uncomfortable, but even that for extended periods one can find acclimatable, and then you find yourself wearing a t-shirt at 40 below and getting giddy.
Humidity is related to temperature because when it is cool and humid, the moisture wicks the heat from your body more rapidly. Alternately, when it is hot and humid, the moisture insulates the heat to your body.
This is why 100F in the midwest is miserable whereas 100F in Las Vegas feels cool. Both Wind and Humidity effect the relative way a temperature feels. I find it insulting that the news agencies only consider the one that make you feel worse.
At 40 below, your spit freezes before it hits the ground. This is not true when the wind chill is -40.
Gates may want to get paid, but that doesn't necessarily mean he intends to pay for work others did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall
Anyways, it seems far too many musicians sell/lose the rights to their music long before they are dead. How many american musicians are there who are contractually unable to play their own music without paying a royalty to someone else, or are forced to see their recordings endorse products they have nothing to do with?
More than limiting copyrights by time, they should be limited to the creator. They shouldn't necessarily be as commoditized as they currently are.
yeah, I just want to be up there when the permafrost melts... I love mosquitoes! and the thought of all those northern swamps and bogs opening up. Yum.
yeah, if you count the windchill, it's -20, but that is only relevant if you are going outside in your bathing suit...
For a more realistic temperature, factor in the humidity like the meterologists do in the summer and if feels more like a dry 30F.
The news people look for the worst possible angle on the weather because it makes it more extreme and more interesting. They want you to stay inside and watch the news. Notice how they never factor in wind chill in the summer, just humidity?
I've spent about a decade living outdoors much further north than Wisconsin. And while I now live indoors and in Wisconsin, I can still tell the ambient temperature with out the aid of a thermometer within two degrees. No matter how you factor in the windchill, twenty below zero is much more comfortable than twenty above due to the humidity. (again, as long as you're wearing a coat and not expecting to go outside in shorts and a t-shirt) I just chuckle at how the cheeseheads complain about -20.
The most uncomfortable temperature is 40F-45F. In that range the humidity is unbearable which is why people are more likely to succumb to hypothermia in that range than at real -20.
Look on the brightside... this cool weather is going to keep the mosquitoes down, especially after all the rain that hit wisconsin earlier in the week!
The basic fact is that if the temperature raises 10 celsius it's gonna be miserable. Winter won't kill out disease, summers will regularly be in excess of 130F, crops will consistantly fail and plagues will rule. You think mosquitos are miserable now, just wait for malaria and other tropical diseases to hit Wisconsin.
...it's already a mess!