I know it has been a LONG TIME since high school algebra, but the imaginary number, i, equals the square root of -1. Where did you get 2 / 0 = i from that page? Everything I ever learned in math (I went through diff. eq. in college.), always defined a real number divided by 0 as the limit x->0 for R / x. Of course depending on which way you approach this is either infinity or negative infinity. So maybe you are thinking inf and not i.
In regards to proprietary graphics drivers. They are proprietary because we tolerate them. If the day NVIDIA had released those drivers the kernel developers had asked the FSF to send a cease and desist to NVIDIA, we probably would have full open source 3d accelerated drivers the very next day.
Actually, I have to agree with the other child post, they would say F-CK YOU, and drop Linux support. Your response is to claim they want in on the embedded Linux devices market, which is a market that does not rely heavily on 3D graphics. Even those embedded systems that use 3D acceleration are typically lower power systems. More then likely, if pressed nVidia would simply release to us a very limited open source driver with many customizations and optimizations removed. These drivers would effectively be useless. You can argue that we could then improve upon them and make them better; however, many people are trying to help expand the reach and acceptance of Linux. If we wind up with 90 different versions of video card drivers or poor performing drivers (the current ones aren't necessarily great), many people are going to be turned off and do as you said before: if I want proprietary drivers, I guess I will have to use Windows or Mac.
As for patents. There is no question. No-one even looks at Microsoft's patents before they make these wild claims that GNU/Linux doesn't infringe on any of them. Write more than a couple of thousand lines of code and you're almost certainly violating someone's patent, why not Microsoft's?
There is almost an implied no-sue agreement with large corporations holding patents. HP and IBM are two huge open source supporters with many Unix and Linux based systems available in the server market, not to mention tons of contributions to Open Source projects. These two companies also have huge patent portfolios, I think I saw a stat that IBM has something like 10% of the software patents. The reason I think Microsoft will only sue Linux as a last result (By which I mean, Linux is victorious and Microsoft is a floundering company.), they fear that IBM will let loose on them. I think them and others are surprised/afraid at how IBM did not rollover to SCO and are literally sucking the company dry. Granted, doing this to Microsoft would be a lot harder, but I suspect that it would be highly frowned upon by most everyone else in the computer industry if Microsoft went after Linux.
As for this: you have to accept we do not all agree with you all the time. No I don't. I can try to convince you. Or you can try to convince me. And in agreement we might find something even better: truth.
We can argue all day. I am a pretty stubborn person, but you are welcome to try to convince me. Honestly, I tend to stick to an open-source ideology and support OSI more then I do FSF, mostly because RMS just rubs me the wrong way. Remember my comment about zealots. People really do not want emotional over-the-top demonstrations and speeches to attempt to show them what is wrong with software and companies like Microsoft. It actually turns a lot of people off, especially those who do not fully understand the information trying to be presented. In the end, a lot of people are more logical then we give them credit for, even if their logic is sometimes quite flawed.
since we're all pretty sure that there isn't any infringement there it is again. Bruce! we need you again.
Actually, his statement is not entirely wrong here. In the legal since, they may not be violating a copyright because they can be invalidated in court. It is not like copyright where it is relatively cut and dry, until fair-use comes into play. Patents are currently an icky mess, and I think a big reason you do not see these lawsuits against Linux with all these patents is because they know their house of cards will come tumbling down. OH, and because IBM could put Microsoft into patent litigation until we are all dead with their patent portfolio. They received an estimated 5,000 patents in two years alone. Note who isn't on this list.
Now, why shouldn't we want to run proprietary drivers? The grandparent's point is valid: if you want to use proprietary software in a "free" environment, then why can't you? He is arguing that he doesn't care about proprietary or free; he like many people truly believe that Unix-based and Unix-like systems are superior to Windows. One of the system's he uses is proprietary to some level, Mac, the other is free. If the X group can make drives that actually run 3D well, particularly OpenGL apps, then let me know. I have never been able to get games working in Linux without those drivers. I do not mind spending a bit of time to get them working in Linux, and I do not want to waste the time on rebooting for a dual boot. Also, there are plenty of native games that need that extra support: UT2004 and NWN being the big two I own.
Like the other child post stated, you have to accept we do not all agree with you all the time. There are plenty of problems with both proprietary software and open-source or free software, whichever phrase you tend to lean towards. Your "friend", Bruce, and the OSI tend to prefer open-source to the RMS/FSF definition of free software. Anyone who claims there is nothing wrong with their method is trying to sell something. I have seen this from both sides, and it is truly pathetic to watch some zealots push Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, or some other free alternative...if Microsoft made a truly superior product, which I would love to see them try, with no bugs and excellent performance, while using perfectly open document standards...people would still complain because it is proprietary and they cannot see the code...we will use our buggy, broke system instead. Zealotry is not very becoming.
BTW, that 1990s quake, was 1989. And damage was severe upwards of 50 miles away, if you check here. BTW, its epicenter was closer to Santa Cruz, so it did a lot of damage considering it travelled nearly 50+ miles to reach the bay.
This is no joke. I can tell you a story from the inside. Once I tried to interest my faculty colleagues at a Large University That Will Not Be Named Here in setting up an exit exam for our degree program. A big comprehensive bugger that would "certify" our graduates in a measureable way and in particular specific skills. (This is in a scientific/technical field, by the way, so such skills are easy to define.)
Let me tell you a story of a truly large university, Ohio State. There are not many in the US with a higher undergraduate enrollment. There are a few reasons why "certifying" your graduates is unnecessary and hard. First, let's discuss unnecessary. We have ABET. Not the greatest system in the world, but graduating from an ABET accredited institute is about all you need for most employers. It should be noted, a lot of these employers do not care. An "exit exam" would also prove very little, since it is merely a test, and there are plenty of people who can test much better than they study. For engineers, we have the PE exams. This is not taken by all and is practically worthless to some people. I honestly do not know many EE students who took the exam unless they were very heavy into the power-end of EE.
Now to hard. There becomes the undying question of what to ask. For example, at Ohio State, an EE student can easily take courses in a wide variety of fields. You can do digital design, microprocessor based systems, VLSI circuits, digital signals and systems, signal processing, power, RF, and the list continues. How do you test these students? They actually have very little course work in common. Most of the course work they share is low-level circuits classes. Does it really matter to an employer that I can interpret a simple circuit design, or even a really complex one? My field is computer networking, digital design and VLSI circuits. I honestly do not think I have had to handle a simple circuit design since I graduated, and if I did, it was so simple, you probably learned to solve it in a high school physics class when learning about electricity.
Since every graduate has passed the exam, a firm or graduate school knows for sure and in detail what graduates of this particular program know. That's the kind of gold-plated guarantee of competence that makes employers feel all warm and fuzzy about you when you turn up for your job interview looking appallingly young, like you started shaving yesterday.
The unreliability of testing methods makes this no better than using your GPA and transcript. Coming out of college you have very little work experience. If you are in a technical field, perhaps you will be luck enough to have a co-op or internship to rely on as experience, or the company you worked for will give you a full-time job. This notion that a test is somehow better than using grades is really bad. Look at all the complaints about using the SAT or ACT for a major acceptance requirement to college.
About the guarantee comment, have you ever worked in the private sector? I really doubt most places are going to care if you had an exit exam. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get away with lying that you did have one. This is really a crock. I believe my piece of paper is a tad bit overrated, but trust me, employers are not going to use an exit exam as some shining badge over other candidates.
I couldn't even find out what happened to our graduates -- who had hired them, what fields and types of positions they'd gone into. The data had never been collected, and no one was interested in doing so. Amazing. Blew my mind, I tell you. Any other business that spent so little effort finding out whether its "product" was meeting the needs of the market would tank. But luckily in modern America "education" is the new "good breeding" -- it can mean nothing at all in a practical, tangible sense, so long as it sets you apart in s
Linux is harder to set up, thus it will be more expensive for governments to switch over to linux because it takes more time to set it up.
There is common misconception #1. There are plenty of easy to install, easy to setup, and easy to maintain distributions. Almost all of these have free flavors without having to pay a ton of money. I believe Mandriva can be installed and setup without too much external help, and it is hardly a beast to figure out. It is also ahead of Windows because you do not have to waste time setting up the other software, like Office, since it is installed at the beginning for you.
Whereas with Windows, after being in the market for so long and having a lot of people at least be exposed to it once or twice in their lifetime, will not require as much time compared to linux.
I challenge you to get most average users through a Windows install. Guiding my brother through a re-install on his laptop was one of the most painful experiences I have ever been through. Once again, a proper distro of Linux is no harder to setup and install then Windows. It also works out of the box, unlike Windows which requires Office, your IE plugins, security patches galore, etc.
Once linux has the same support, features, ease-of-use as Windows has then it has a chance of succeeding and taking a good chunk of market share.
You do not need to start with market share to be successful. If this were the case, nothing would ever catch up to Windows. Also, Linux quite possibly has superior support to Windows. Have you tried to deal with a technical rep at Windows about any problem? If they do not try to hand you off to your PC vendor, they will talk in circles until your head spins. Trust me, Microsoft did not get big by offering great support.
But as linux continues to be protrayed as the geekdom of software, it will not be a cheaper solution to Windows.
Cost of Linux distro, $0. (Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, you get the idea)
Cost of Windows XP Pro, $299 at retail, $150 typically for OEM.
"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime"
That is why the laptops are not a horrible idea. If they learn to perform the tasks to provide for themselves and better techniques of farming through education, then this will be anything but a failure.
yet I though that CSS was not broken because they cracked the weak cipher, but rather because whoever made the XING software DVD Player forgot to encrypt the decryption key or something like that.
I am not sure what initial method was used to break CSS; however, CSS was found to be somewhat receptable to brute force attacks, which is a good sign of crypto weakness. The reason for its weakness is due in some part (or completely) to the US export restrictions on strong cryptography.
Encryption is usually about everybody not having the password
Gah! Passwords are the evil anti-cryptography. The problem with a password is they are usually poorly designed and typically susceptible to the dumbest of attacks - the dictionary attack.
so if every agent in an airport has it, or if every DVD player has it inside, there's no way it can be really secure. You basically want "everybody" to decrypt the data... not a surprise if they're able to.
My understanding from the article was that the key is unique to each passport. Each passport's key is then either directly provided to the reader or established using the three values in question. This could be fixed using several different methods designed for establishing key values. They could have used Diffie-Hellman key agreement to establish the secret symmetric key. This key value would then be used for encryption. I suppose the only flaw here would be the RFID passport would need a space to store the established key.
You could also generate and store a key value that was generated using an RNG. Each station could then generate RSA key pairs and transmit a public key to the RFID, which would encrypt its symmetric key and transmit it back to the reader. The reader would then use its private key to decrypt the symmetric key. You could then generate different key pairs for each time a card is read. Again, I suppose a problem develops with where to store the public key.
There are plenty of ways to keep the secret key from being known. In this case, a bad choice was made in choosing how the key value is derived.
What fundamental principle of encryption are they breaking? If anything, a fundamental principle of encryption is that there can't be such a thing as a "secret key" if you're either putting it in the passport or if you're deploying it to everybody that needs to scan passports (remember DVD encryption?).
Okay, that you for showing you have no understanding of cryptography. The problem with DVD encryption is that is what a weak cipher. It is built on a 40-bit key (mistake one) and a stream cipher (potential mistake two). This weak encryption method was the real problem with CSS, not some fundamental flaw of cryptography. There are plenty of ways to have a true secret key. A secret key in cryptography is any symmetric key that is meant to be kept, well secret. These keys can be established using DH or by using an RSA keypair. Neither of these have been broken, and would be very secure for establishing keys for the RFID system.
What's important is to have the data in the passport (along with the picture) digitally signed, in order to avoid tampering. The article claims that these passports are indeed signed and they didn't break the signature. Big surprise, since all they did was get a RFID reader and decrypt 3DES with the key right in front of them.
Exactly! The 3DES key, well the two or three DES keys, was right in front of them because it was created from non-secret information stored in the passport. This means the data is publicly available and required no key information to read.
I do not get your claim that this is total FUD. Your "secure" passport can be broken. I believe a good dose of Fear that is doesn't work, Uncertainty that it does work (cause it obviously doesn't), and overall doubt of the system is in order here. There are plenty of ways they could have successfully secured this system. It is a design flaw brought about by the failing to follow the "rules of cryptography" and that is something to be worried about.
As of August 9, 2005, Cuban had begun spearheading ventures in both the social software and distributed networking industries. Cuban is an owner of IceRocket, a search engine which scours the blogosphere for content.[34] Cuban is also a partner in RedSwoosh[35] -- a company which uses peer-to-peer technology to deliver rich media, including video and software to a user's PC.
That is taken right from the wikipedia article, here. Seriously, this would just a movie to further his own ventures. I still think this is odd since he did back Grokster during their failed legal attempts. I guess since there is no way for him to get in on the Google/YouTube money (and he feels cheated there were wrongdoings in the deal) that he will help beat them the "old fashioned" way by financing someone who is suing them. Where have I heard of this little scheme before....
Depending on the drop, yes it is. The physical parts of a hard drive do not like being banged around and with all the parts of the laptop being so tightly packed, it doesn't take a lot to give a drive a lot of shock, especially if it is spinning. It was because of this that companies (I think IBM, now Lenovo, Thinkpads were among the first) to provide systems to protect drives by attempting to detect the impending fall and stopping the drive the drive from spinning.
I doubt anyone here is actually surprised by this. Since when has Microsoft ever done anything truly for the good of OSS?
They created ME and Vista. I would consider the users that left Windows because of ME or the ones who might leave because of Vista, something truly good for OSS.
1) The only mention of the DMCA is in the return address. They're not claiming any DMCA violation
Actually, it mentions 17 USC 512, which is part of the copyright law, which was amended in part from the DMCA. So, yes, this does involve the DMCA.
2) DMCA or not, there's no fair-use right to be able to put content on YouTube. The guy isn't being sued.
You are missing the point. He is being asked to take it down by CNN (through YouTube). They are claiming copyright violation. He is claiming his clip falls under fair use, a concept only really defined in courts, not in the law, and not very well at that. He might not have a right to post it to YouTube, but if he doesn't have a place to host from himself and his post doesn't violate Copyright Law, then he can argue Fair Use. Fair use is at the heart of the matter here since the request for removal came from the copyright holder.
Harkening back to the days of the Virtual Boy, Nintendo will release a truly immersive gaming experience. Having learned from past failure, there will be no more crazy red characters and major headaches, instead there will be full body-suits, making us all look like we are in Tron.
It might not be as crazy as it sounds. Especially in five years. Our next console, Virtual Wii. (Which almost sounds worse then Wii.)
I call BS. I do not have the article in front of me, but there was a cabin/cottage or some such thing on a mountain. The site is physically inaccessible to the handicapped due to nature putting rocks and ledges and trees and things in the way. So the owners never added ramps and such. Well, a group sued under the ADA and they were forced to add these things. Why? Because a judge said so, eventhough the people in wheelchairs couldn't get there without gross assistance.
The group then dragged (and this is more literal then you might think) the people to this place so they could make use of the ramp. Trust me, this law is abused and misrepresented more than you would think. I honestly believe we will begin to see people attempting to receive accomodations under the ADA soon for obesity (if they haven't already).
1. You do not know that. It could be perfectly legit under the guidelines. The article's offer makes some guesses at what this means, but he really does not know.
2. Okay, so we agree...
3. I still think for true quality control VM is not the best idea.
4. Why not? Doesn't VMWare have a free VMS now? If so, you can just use it. Honestly, I love virtualization for some things, but overall, I would rather...a) dual boot or b) have the crappy 2nd machine.
Actually, no. A lot of manufacturers of hardware and software makes are probably not using virtualization with XP Home. They would probably use a real computer running the module, because while the point of VM is to emulate hardware, it is not perfect by any means. Also, I would not be surprised if some of them just test on XP Pro and be done with it.
Actually, I think the serial port is a wonderful thing. I am an electrical engineer, so there is lots of fun to be had with that little port if you actually know what to do with it. But hey, you must know me better than I do...
Where to start...
1. The benchmark testing and posting applies to.NET Framework components. I do not see this being some great ending of benchmarking the Windows OS. Also, the link for further information does not (currently?) work. So, this could just be an issue that isn't an issue at all.
2. This version argument is really tiring. In some ways I see their logic, in other ways I think the six version idea is stupid. Actually, there are more versions of XP then two. Technically, there are four. Windows Media Center Edition and Starter Edition. I imagine Starter Vista will be virtually unseen like XP SE. As for Win MCE, I suppose that would be Home Premium. XP Home = Vista Home, XP Pro = Vista Business. Guess this only leaves two extraneous versions...
3. The Virtualization argument is pointless. How many home users do virtualization? How many business (which do the most virtualization) actually use XP Home licenses? I really think this is a non-issue like #1.
4. The license transfer is more stringent version of the current license transfer. The example they give is a bit weak. At work, if you get a new workstation? I seriously think that corporate licensing will have provisions for this sort of thing. How many people buy their own work computer licenses? Unless you own your own business, not many. Most home users keep a machine for several years. If you assume a home user is on a 3-year replacement cycle (the most common business practice I have found), they will probably only need a single transfer before the new OS is out (though after this, you never know.) Also, how many new PC purchases do not come with a new license?
I by no means am a Microsoft supporter. I have said on multiple occassions that Windows XP would be the last Windows OS I would ever use. I intend on changing my mom to Linux when XP support disappears. I do think that some of these arguments are very bogus though. There are plenty of other reasons to hate Vista, including the evil DRM, more Microsoft monopoly violations, and stupid, half-assed "security" tools.
Because, the "unless prohibited by law or landlord situations" applies to the Wii launch. Please note that the Wii launch is on a Sunday. In many states, particularly the south, there are laws in place that only apply to the Sunday opening of stores. Actually, it is very rare, if not unheard of, for such laws during the rest of the week; however, it is actually somewhat common in some parts of the country to have laws prohibiting stores from opening before a certain time on Sunday.
Also, this notion of contractions being unprofessional is somewhat laughable. It should be noted, there are a great many people in the current generation who do not learn about this. It is a given for technical writing but an engineers writing isn't exactly the best anyway.
I can think of a few conflicts on Cuban's part. 1) He has interest in media companies, namely HDnet. 2) He helped bankroll Grokster in their failed legal attempts. 3) His interest in IceRocket, a search engine for blogs. Since attacking YouTube is basically attacking Google, this is a conflict too. 4) He is a partner in Red Swoosh, which apparently is using peer-to-peer tech to deliver media to PCs.
So, to say he has a conflict here might be an understatement. Also, Mark Cuban has a tendancy to open his mouth without thinking. Unless he or his "source" has evidence, I really won't read much into this until I see it.
Tell me you are not seriously having this problem. DO NOT cd/cdrom. run cedega/cdrom/setup.exe. Going into/cdrom is what makes the drive busy. This is a very common mistake and one I see more corrections about in forums then anything else. It is actually a fairly simple notion too. So, if you really did have that problem...I hope I helped...
Every Tony Hawk video game made to date has had a soundtrack, and some very good ones in my opinion. Also, Crazy Taxi had a very cool soundtrack. While both are primarily noted for their gameplay, I would imagine a few people were probably exposed to music in those games they otherwise hadn't or wouldn't have heard. Music is becoming much more prevalent. EA has added tracks to all their sports titles. Guitar Hero, which basically relies on music comes to mind as well.
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I know it has been a LONG TIME since high school algebra, but the imaginary number, i, equals the square root of -1. Where did you get 2 / 0 = i from that page? Everything I ever learned in math (I went through diff. eq. in college.), always defined a real number divided by 0 as the limit x->0 for R / x. Of course depending on which way you approach this is either infinity or negative infinity. So maybe you are thinking inf and not i.
In regards to proprietary graphics drivers. They are proprietary because we tolerate them. If the day NVIDIA had released those drivers the kernel developers had asked the FSF to send a cease and desist to NVIDIA, we probably would have full open source 3d accelerated drivers the very next day.
Actually, I have to agree with the other child post, they would say F-CK YOU, and drop Linux support. Your response is to claim they want in on the embedded Linux devices market, which is a market that does not rely heavily on 3D graphics. Even those embedded systems that use 3D acceleration are typically lower power systems. More then likely, if pressed nVidia would simply release to us a very limited open source driver with many customizations and optimizations removed. These drivers would effectively be useless. You can argue that we could then improve upon them and make them better; however, many people are trying to help expand the reach and acceptance of Linux. If we wind up with 90 different versions of video card drivers or poor performing drivers (the current ones aren't necessarily great), many people are going to be turned off and do as you said before: if I want proprietary drivers, I guess I will have to use Windows or Mac.
As for patents. There is no question. No-one even looks at Microsoft's patents before they make these wild claims that GNU/Linux doesn't infringe on any of them. Write more than a couple of thousand lines of code and you're almost certainly violating someone's patent, why not Microsoft's?
There is almost an implied no-sue agreement with large corporations holding patents. HP and IBM are two huge open source supporters with many Unix and Linux based systems available in the server market, not to mention tons of contributions to Open Source projects. These two companies also have huge patent portfolios, I think I saw a stat that IBM has something like 10% of the software patents. The reason I think Microsoft will only sue Linux as a last result (By which I mean, Linux is victorious and Microsoft is a floundering company.), they fear that IBM will let loose on them. I think them and others are surprised/afraid at how IBM did not rollover to SCO and are literally sucking the company dry. Granted, doing this to Microsoft would be a lot harder, but I suspect that it would be highly frowned upon by most everyone else in the computer industry if Microsoft went after Linux.
As for this: you have to accept we do not all agree with you all the time. No I don't. I can try to convince you. Or you can try to convince me. And in agreement we might find something even better: truth.
We can argue all day. I am a pretty stubborn person, but you are welcome to try to convince me. Honestly, I tend to stick to an open-source ideology and support OSI more then I do FSF, mostly because RMS just rubs me the wrong way. Remember my comment about zealots. People really do not want emotional over-the-top demonstrations and speeches to attempt to show them what is wrong with software and companies like Microsoft. It actually turns a lot of people off, especially those who do not fully understand the information trying to be presented. In the end, a lot of people are more logical then we give them credit for, even if their logic is sometimes quite flawed.
since we're all pretty sure that there isn't any infringement there it is again. Bruce! we need you again.
Actually, his statement is not entirely wrong here. In the legal since, they may not be violating a copyright because they can be invalidated in court. It is not like copyright where it is relatively cut and dry, until fair-use comes into play. Patents are currently an icky mess, and I think a big reason you do not see these lawsuits against Linux with all these patents is because they know their house of cards will come tumbling down. OH, and because IBM could put Microsoft into patent litigation until we are all dead with their patent portfolio. They received an estimated 5,000 patents in two years alone. Note who isn't on this list.
Now, why shouldn't we want to run proprietary drivers? The grandparent's point is valid: if you want to use proprietary software in a "free" environment, then why can't you? He is arguing that he doesn't care about proprietary or free; he like many people truly believe that Unix-based and Unix-like systems are superior to Windows. One of the system's he uses is proprietary to some level, Mac, the other is free. If the X group can make drives that actually run 3D well, particularly OpenGL apps, then let me know. I have never been able to get games working in Linux without those drivers. I do not mind spending a bit of time to get them working in Linux, and I do not want to waste the time on rebooting for a dual boot. Also, there are plenty of native games that need that extra support: UT2004 and NWN being the big two I own.
Like the other child post stated, you have to accept we do not all agree with you all the time. There are plenty of problems with both proprietary software and open-source or free software, whichever phrase you tend to lean towards. Your "friend", Bruce, and the OSI tend to prefer open-source to the RMS/FSF definition of free software. Anyone who claims there is nothing wrong with their method is trying to sell something. I have seen this from both sides, and it is truly pathetic to watch some zealots push Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, or some other free alternative...if Microsoft made a truly superior product, which I would love to see them try, with no bugs and excellent performance, while using perfectly open document standards...people would still complain because it is proprietary and they cannot see the code...we will use our buggy, broke system instead. Zealotry is not very becoming.
Our house is about 20 miles from epicenter of the 1994 Northridge quake
Then apparently you were lucky.
BTW, that 1990s quake, was 1989. And damage was severe upwards of 50 miles away, if you check here.
BTW, its epicenter was closer to Santa Cruz, so it did a lot of damage considering it travelled nearly 50+ miles to reach the bay.
Let me tell you a story of a truly large university, Ohio State. There are not many in the US with a higher undergraduate enrollment. There are a few reasons why "certifying" your graduates is unnecessary and hard. First, let's discuss unnecessary. We have ABET. Not the greatest system in the world, but graduating from an ABET accredited institute is about all you need for most employers. It should be noted, a lot of these employers do not care. An "exit exam" would also prove very little, since it is merely a test, and there are plenty of people who can test much better than they study. For engineers, we have the PE exams. This is not taken by all and is practically worthless to some people. I honestly do not know many EE students who took the exam unless they were very heavy into the power-end of EE.
Now to hard. There becomes the undying question of what to ask. For example, at Ohio State, an EE student can easily take courses in a wide variety of fields. You can do digital design, microprocessor based systems, VLSI circuits, digital signals and systems, signal processing, power, RF, and the list continues. How do you test these students? They actually have very little course work in common. Most of the course work they share is low-level circuits classes. Does it really matter to an employer that I can interpret a simple circuit design, or even a really complex one? My field is computer networking, digital design and VLSI circuits. I honestly do not think I have had to handle a simple circuit design since I graduated, and if I did, it was so simple, you probably learned to solve it in a high school physics class when learning about electricity.
The unreliability of testing methods makes this no better than using your GPA and transcript. Coming out of college you have very little work experience. If you are in a technical field, perhaps you will be luck enough to have a co-op or internship to rely on as experience, or the company you worked for will give you a full-time job. This notion that a test is somehow better than using grades is really bad. Look at all the complaints about using the SAT or ACT for a major acceptance requirement to college.
About the guarantee comment, have you ever worked in the private sector? I really doubt most places are going to care if you had an exit exam. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get away with lying that you did have one. This is really a crock. I believe my piece of paper is a tad bit overrated, but trust me, employers are not going to use an exit exam as some shining badge over other candidates.
How is that punishment? Chilling with the Warner Brothers and their sister Dot would ROCK!
Linux is harder to set up, thus it will be more expensive for governments to switch over to linux because it takes more time to set it up.
There is common misconception #1. There are plenty of easy to install, easy to setup, and easy to maintain distributions. Almost all of these have free flavors without having to pay a ton of money. I believe Mandriva can be installed and setup without too much external help, and it is hardly a beast to figure out. It is also ahead of Windows because you do not have to waste time setting up the other software, like Office, since it is installed at the beginning for you.
Whereas with Windows, after being in the market for so long and having a lot of people at least be exposed to it once or twice in their lifetime, will not require as much time compared to linux.
I challenge you to get most average users through a Windows install. Guiding my brother through a re-install on his laptop was one of the most painful experiences I have ever been through. Once again, a proper distro of Linux is no harder to setup and install then Windows. It also works out of the box, unlike Windows which requires Office, your IE plugins, security patches galore, etc.
Once linux has the same support, features, ease-of-use as Windows has then it has a chance of succeeding and taking a good chunk of market share.
You do not need to start with market share to be successful. If this were the case, nothing would ever catch up to Windows. Also, Linux quite possibly has superior support to Windows. Have you tried to deal with a technical rep at Windows about any problem? If they do not try to hand you off to your PC vendor, they will talk in circles until your head spins. Trust me, Microsoft did not get big by offering great support.
But as linux continues to be protrayed as the geekdom of software, it will not be a cheaper solution to Windows.
Cost of Linux distro, $0. (Fedora, OpenSuse, Ubuntu, you get the idea)
Cost of Windows XP Pro, $299 at retail, $150 typically for OEM.
You do the math.
"Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime"
That is why the laptops are not a horrible idea. If they learn to perform the tasks to provide for themselves and better techniques of farming through education, then this will be anything but a failure.
yet I though that CSS was not broken because they cracked the weak cipher, but rather because whoever made the XING software DVD Player forgot to encrypt the decryption key or something like that.
I am not sure what initial method was used to break CSS; however, CSS was found to be somewhat receptable to brute force attacks, which is a good sign of crypto weakness. The reason for its weakness is due in some part (or completely) to the US export restrictions on strong cryptography.
Encryption is usually about everybody not having the password
Gah! Passwords are the evil anti-cryptography. The problem with a password is they are usually poorly designed and typically susceptible to the dumbest of attacks - the dictionary attack.
so if every agent in an airport has it, or if every DVD player has it inside, there's no way it can be really secure. You basically want "everybody" to decrypt the data... not a surprise if they're able to.
My understanding from the article was that the key is unique to each passport. Each passport's key is then either directly provided to the reader or established using the three values in question. This could be fixed using several different methods designed for establishing key values. They could have used Diffie-Hellman key agreement to establish the secret symmetric key. This key value would then be used for encryption. I suppose the only flaw here would be the RFID passport would need a space to store the established key.
You could also generate and store a key value that was generated using an RNG. Each station could then generate RSA key pairs and transmit a public key to the RFID, which would encrypt its symmetric key and transmit it back to the reader. The reader would then use its private key to decrypt the symmetric key. You could then generate different key pairs for each time a card is read. Again, I suppose a problem develops with where to store the public key.
There are plenty of ways to keep the secret key from being known. In this case, a bad choice was made in choosing how the key value is derived.
Exactly! The 3DES key, well the two or three DES keys, was right in front of them because it was created from non-secret information stored in the passport. This means the data is publicly available and required no key information to read.
I do not get your claim that this is total FUD. Your "secure" passport can be broken. I believe a good dose of Fear that is doesn't work, Uncertainty that it does work (cause it obviously doesn't), and overall doubt of the system is in order here. There are plenty of ways they could have successfully secured this system. It is a design flaw brought about by the failing to follow the "rules of cryptography" and that is something to be worried about.
Depending on the drop, yes it is. The physical parts of a hard drive do not like being banged around and with all the parts of the laptop being so tightly packed, it doesn't take a lot to give a drive a lot of shock, especially if it is spinning. It was because of this that companies (I think IBM, now Lenovo, Thinkpads were among the first) to provide systems to protect drives by attempting to detect the impending fall and stopping the drive the drive from spinning.
I doubt anyone here is actually surprised by this. Since when has Microsoft ever done anything truly for the good of OSS?
They created ME and Vista. I would consider the users that left Windows because of ME or the ones who might leave because of Vista, something truly good for OSS.
1) The only mention of the DMCA is in the return address. They're not claiming any DMCA violation
Actually, it mentions 17 USC 512, which is part of the copyright law, which was amended in part from the DMCA. So, yes, this does involve the DMCA.
2) DMCA or not, there's no fair-use right to be able to put content on YouTube. The guy isn't being sued.
You are missing the point. He is being asked to take it down by CNN (through YouTube). They are claiming copyright violation. He is claiming his clip falls under fair use, a concept only really defined in courts, not in the law, and not very well at that. He might not have a right to post it to YouTube, but if he doesn't have a place to host from himself and his post doesn't violate Copyright Law, then he can argue Fair Use. Fair use is at the heart of the matter here since the request for removal came from the copyright holder.
Harkening back to the days of the Virtual Boy, Nintendo will release a truly immersive gaming experience. Having learned from past failure, there will be no more crazy red characters and major headaches, instead there will be full body-suits, making us all look like we are in Tron.
It might not be as crazy as it sounds. Especially in five years. Our next console, Virtual Wii. (Which almost sounds worse then Wii.)
This one might be a bit hot for an HTPC. Hope that at least helps.
I call BS. I do not have the article in front of me, but there was a cabin/cottage or some such thing on a mountain. The site is physically inaccessible to the handicapped due to nature putting rocks and ledges and trees and things in the way. So the owners never added ramps and such. Well, a group sued under the ADA and they were forced to add these things. Why? Because a judge said so, eventhough the people in wheelchairs couldn't get there without gross assistance.
The group then dragged (and this is more literal then you might think) the people to this place so they could make use of the ramp. Trust me, this law is abused and misrepresented more than you would think. I honestly believe we will begin to see people attempting to receive accomodations under the ADA soon for obesity (if they haven't already).
Aha! Found It!
I wonder if Porn sites could be held to that kind standard...
Am I the only one with a vision of Blinkin with Braille Playboy?
1. You do not know that. It could be perfectly legit under the guidelines. The article's offer makes some guesses at what this means, but he really does not know.
2. Okay, so we agree...
3. I still think for true quality control VM is not the best idea.
4. Why not? Doesn't VMWare have a free VMS now? If so, you can just use it. Honestly, I love virtualization for some things, but overall, I would rather...a) dual boot or b) have the crappy 2nd machine.
Actually, no. A lot of manufacturers of hardware and software makes are probably not using virtualization with XP Home. They would probably use a real computer running the module, because while the point of VM is to emulate hardware, it is not perfect by any means. Also, I would not be surprised if some of them just test on XP Pro and be done with it.
Actually, I think the serial port is a wonderful thing. I am an electrical engineer, so there is lots of fun to be had with that little port if you actually know what to do with it. But hey, you must know me better than I do...
Where to start... .NET Framework components. I do not see this being some great ending of benchmarking the Windows OS. Also, the link for further information does not (currently?) work. So, this could just be an issue that isn't an issue at all.
1. The benchmark testing and posting applies to
2. This version argument is really tiring. In some ways I see their logic, in other ways I think the six version idea is stupid. Actually, there are more versions of XP then two. Technically, there are four. Windows Media Center Edition and Starter Edition. I imagine Starter Vista will be virtually unseen like XP SE. As for Win MCE, I suppose that would be Home Premium. XP Home = Vista Home, XP Pro = Vista Business. Guess this only leaves two extraneous versions...
3. The Virtualization argument is pointless. How many home users do virtualization? How many business (which do the most virtualization) actually use XP Home licenses? I really think this is a non-issue like #1.
4. The license transfer is more stringent version of the current license transfer. The example they give is a bit weak. At work, if you get a new workstation? I seriously think that corporate licensing will have provisions for this sort of thing. How many people buy their own work computer licenses? Unless you own your own business, not many. Most home users keep a machine for several years. If you assume a home user is on a 3-year replacement cycle (the most common business practice I have found), they will probably only need a single transfer before the new OS is out (though after this, you never know.) Also, how many new PC purchases do not come with a new license?
I by no means am a Microsoft supporter. I have said on multiple occassions that Windows XP would be the last Windows OS I would ever use. I intend on changing my mom to Linux when XP support disappears. I do think that some of these arguments are very bogus though. There are plenty of other reasons to hate Vista, including the evil DRM, more Microsoft monopoly violations, and stupid, half-assed "security" tools.
Because, the "unless prohibited by law or landlord situations" applies to the Wii launch. Please note that the Wii launch is on a Sunday. In many states, particularly the south, there are laws in place that only apply to the Sunday opening of stores. Actually, it is very rare, if not unheard of, for such laws during the rest of the week; however, it is actually somewhat common in some parts of the country to have laws prohibiting stores from opening before a certain time on Sunday.
Also, this notion of contractions being unprofessional is somewhat laughable. It should be noted, there are a great many people in the current generation who do not learn about this. It is a given for technical writing but an engineers writing isn't exactly the best anyway.
I can think of a few conflicts on Cuban's part. 1) He has interest in media companies, namely HDnet. 2) He helped bankroll Grokster in their failed legal attempts. 3) His interest in IceRocket, a search engine for blogs. Since attacking YouTube is basically attacking Google, this is a conflict too. 4) He is a partner in Red Swoosh, which apparently is using peer-to-peer tech to deliver media to PCs.
So, to say he has a conflict here might be an understatement. Also, Mark Cuban has a tendancy to open his mouth without thinking. Unless he or his "source" has evidence, I really won't read much into this until I see it.
Tell me you are not seriously having this problem. DO NOT cd /cdrom. run cedega /cdrom/setup.exe. Going into /cdrom is what makes the drive busy. This is a very common mistake and one I see more corrections about in forums then anything else. It is actually a fairly simple notion too. So, if you really did have that problem...I hope I helped...
Every Tony Hawk video game made to date has had a soundtrack, and some very good ones in my opinion. Also, Crazy Taxi had a very cool soundtrack. While both are primarily noted for their gameplay, I would imagine a few people were probably exposed to music in those games they otherwise hadn't or wouldn't have heard. Music is becoming much more prevalent. EA has added tracks to all their sports titles. Guitar Hero, which basically relies on music comes to mind as well.