I remember in Giants: Citizen Kabuto, the game could be hacked to make one of the characters, Delphi, topless. She was apparently topless in the original release but they put a bikini top on her for the North American version. Quaintly, the file you deleted to make the change was named 'arpfix' (American Rating Panel?).
You Americans really need to loosen up. Even just up here in Canada I can remember seeing brief but uncensored images of topless women on the CBC News! And your nation goes into uproar when one tiny little tit gets displayed on CBS.
I'm talking about taking responsibility for writing an OS that lasts 12 minutes when plugged into the public internet before being owned.
Plug anything old enough into the internet and it will be owned. If you were running Linux 2.0.29 or earlier you would be vulnerable to syn floods (just as a quick and well-known example).
The key to not having this happen is to do clean installs with only versions of Windows that have service pack 2 slipstreamed in. In fact if you buy a new copy of windows at a store, that is all you can get is ones with service pack 2 preinstalled.
The fact that a virgin install of Windows XP is borked in 12 minutes owes more to the fact that legions of virus writers and hackers have been working for three years to find ways to do it, and machines scanning for other exploitable machines are everpresent on the internet.
Frankly, I don't know. The Blizzard Downloader for getting updates to World of Warcraft works just fine, it simply needs a couple of extra ports forwarded, 3724 and 6112 if I remember right, as well as one of 6881-6999 for bittorrent. People just bitched because they don't know how to forward a frickin port on a frickin router.
That's true, and in fact there are a number of up and coming wirelessservice providers setting up radio internet for outlying areas. It's a little more expensive for transmission equipment, but provides broadband for areas up to about a half-hour drive out of the city.
Obviously you've never heard of the Canadian loonie tossing game.
Apparently if you get it on a certain part of her you get a reward, or so I hear... *cough*
I agree with much of what you say. There's just a couple of things I want to comment on.
The trick we need to find is how to tap bigger forces. Tidal forces with tethered floating generators which rise and fall with the tides and capture that motion as energy would be good.
This suggestion isn't really viable. The problem is that electric power needs to be continuous, and electric energy can't really be stored in the quantities needed for widespread use. Because of this, the large surges of power and subsequent falloffs that we would get with tidal generation make it kind of undesirable as a power source. A much more promising idea that's been talked about for some time is to put turbines in the path of a major ocean current such as the Gulf Stream. After all, the oceans are the world's biggest solar collector, and a significant portion of that energy goes into generating these currents. It's a huge untapped source of energy.
More near term, we need to find or engineer a crop which is ideally suited to concentrating sunlight into a hydrocarbon or sugar that can be stored, transported without sigificant loss, then burned.
Ultimately, we just need to get off burning fossil fuels. After all, when you consider that energy on earth comes from two places, the planet's core, and, moreso, the sun, fossil fuels are solar energy stored by plants and animals millions of years ago. It's a finite supply, and frankly, we shouldn't be nearly as reliant on it as we are.
Heh, here in Saskatchewan I get 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up, and all for CA$38. I guess that's what you get when all the bandwith for the entire province (bigger in land area than Britain) is divided between a population of >1 million. I guess there was no way around running big fibre backbones through here, and we just get to suck away at them. =)
Um, yeah, I guess it's clearer. The thing is, though, that the licence agreement is a contract and if you click the accept button you're bound by its terms.
Actually any installer program that has a licence agreement step in it will generally cancel installation if you don't accept the agreement. So, you have to accept the agreement to go through with installation of the software, or the installer stops you from installing it.;)
What I was getting at originally was that if you never even run the installer but rather just skip ahead to decompiling the software, you've never agreed to the licence terms, including the part about not decompiling it.
You know, when I bought a boxed copy of Windows XP Professional, I don't remember signing anything. In fact, it wasn't until I was installing it on my computer in order to use it that I was presented with a legal contract to which I was asked to affix my 'digital signature' to agree to certain conditions for its use.
Now what if I bought the CD, took it home, and set about decompiling or reverse engineering this copy of Windows I just bought. Well, there's this clause in that EULA that says I can't do that, but wait, I haven't signed that agreement yet , and heck, since I bought this copy of Windows only so I could reverse engineer it and not to use it I may just not agree to its terms at all.
The point I'm trying to make is that while the EULA may be a contract, it's only required that I agree to its terms before installing and using it, not at the point of sale before purchasing it. Now naturally, IANAL, but tell me, am I wrong?
Folks generally always hate the brand of hard drive that's died on them. Ultimately, I've seen hard drives from most every major brand go bad. The worst by far though is Fujitsu. I've seen about three times as many dead Fujitsu drives as other brands.
Present and potential world leaders routinely display their stupidity to the world. Everybody calls them names for it, not just the/. readership.
All this guy did was run a technologically interesting piece of software on a computer he shouldn't have. To me, that hardly even warrants termination, let alone public humiliation.
The point of that article, and expecially the excellent graph in it, is that we've pushed atmospheric CO2 levels far above what they've ever gone to in recent geological history. That, and the mean global temperature is being pushed above even their highest estimates of its natural fluctuations. Worse yet, this is all happening in the equivalent of a geological microsecond.
I think if you look at the sizes of the different schools of thought on this, you'll find that the number of scientists who think we're screwing ourselves outnumbers those who think it's a natural phenomenon by about 10:1.
I remember that shortly after Windows XP was released, one of the early critical updates they put out fixed compatibility issues with a whole whack of software and drivers. IMO they should do the same thing now after Service Pack 2. I mean, some of this stuff is their own damn software!
I wouldn't say it's a waste. I've heard tell that once the microdrive is removed, it can be replaced with a simple 512MB CF card and the player can still be used, albeit with lower storage capacity.
I dunno, I think this might be at least kind of reliable.
Admittedly, this is the zeitgeist for google.ca. The google.com one doesn't show the OS statistics for some reason. Anyway, if you look it over, you find that Linux is about on par with Windows 95, with 1% of the share. Windows NT 4.0 still has twice Linux's share at 2%, and Windows ME and Mac OS are tied at 3% each. Windows 98, 2000, and XP take a whopping 85%, with 51% going to XP alone. All the Windowses combined make up 91% of the share. There's also that 5% other, and who knows what that is (UNIXes and unidentifiable Linuxes, perhaps? Maybe some of the older Mac OSes, too). Either way, while Linux is getting more and more ready for widespread, desktop use, it's clear it's not getting a lot of that currently.
I know, I read them too. Those are mostly technical folks who know what they're talking about. I also read the ones on Microsoft Blog, though. Here's a good example:
Have been running sp2 (beta( for 2 months no problems, thought it was a dream come true. Alas, Microsoft downloaded final sp2 to me today, thank heaven I have GoBack installed. My msn messenger wouldn't work, Norton messenger protect wouldn't work, not that it made much difference. No matter how many times i clicked my desktop icons nothing would start., although in all fairness some programs did initialize after about 3 minutes, good grief.. and restart the computer, a lost cause without a complete power down. Restored system back to before sp2 installed and everything working beautifully with sp2 (beta), as usual Microsoft is going to use the public as a test bed, for their failure to sufficiently test their products.
I think this just proves that idiots and beta software don't mix. =)
This seems to me like "automate it because lusers don't know better" dogma. While that does apply in situations such as applying periodical security patches or updating anti-virus software, which should be automated, it can't be applied in this case.
Find me 3rd party firewall or anti-virus software that can be turned off by an installer program, and I'll bet you it could be turned off just as easily by a virus. It would defeat the purpose of having such software. Many applications will bring up a "do you want to save changes" when there's a modified document open. Would it be better for the installer to force the app to close and lose unsaved changes? I think not.
I would agree that the installer should include an on-screen warning to close all programs, turn of AV and firewalls, and not to install over a beta version. Such a warning would probably get a lot more people to do it right, and if they didn't know how to do some of those things, to hold off installing until they figure out how. Doing it for them, however, wouldn't work, and if attempted, would probably create many more problems than it would prevent.
I bet most of that can be chalked up to simple carelessness in installation. Simple things that people should do, but may often not, is closing all applications, temporarily disabling the on-access scanning of their anti-virus software, and also temporarily turning off a 3rd-party software firewall if possible. Worst of all is the crazy people who try to install it over an SP2 beta. They should have the good sense to uninstall the beta service pack first and go back to the SP1 they had before, then install SP2.
The ignorance... it's too much! You must realize that the 3000+ and 3200+ numbers are just AMD's performance numbers. Both processors actually have the same clock speed of 2GHz. The only difference is that the 3200+ has twice the L2 cache - 1MB of it, and therefore has a higher performance number. Get it right, eh?
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I remember in Giants: Citizen Kabuto, the game could be hacked to make one of the characters, Delphi, topless. She was apparently topless in the original release but they put a bikini top on her for the North American version. Quaintly, the file you deleted to make the change was named 'arpfix' (American Rating Panel?).
You Americans really need to loosen up. Even just up here in Canada I can remember seeing brief but uncensored images of topless women on the CBC News! And your nation goes into uproar when one tiny little tit gets displayed on CBS.
I'm talking about taking responsibility for writing an OS that lasts 12 minutes when plugged into the public internet before being owned.
Plug anything old enough into the internet and it will be owned. If you were running Linux 2.0.29 or earlier you would be vulnerable to syn floods (just as a quick and well-known example).
The key to not having this happen is to do clean installs with only versions of Windows that have service pack 2 slipstreamed in. In fact if you buy a new copy of windows at a store, that is all you can get is ones with service pack 2 preinstalled.
The fact that a virgin install of Windows XP is borked in 12 minutes owes more to the fact that legions of virus writers and hackers have been working for three years to find ways to do it, and machines scanning for other exploitable machines are everpresent on the internet.
Frankly, I don't know. The Blizzard Downloader for getting updates to World of Warcraft works just fine, it simply needs a couple of extra ports forwarded, 3724 and 6112 if I remember right, as well as one of 6881-6999 for bittorrent. People just bitched because they don't know how to forward a frickin port on a frickin router.
That's true, and in fact there are a number of up and coming wireless service providers setting up radio internet for outlying areas. It's a little more expensive for transmission equipment, but provides broadband for areas up to about a half-hour drive out of the city.
Obviously you've never heard of the Canadian loonie tossing game. Apparently if you get it on a certain part of her you get a reward, or so I hear... *cough*
I think you forgot the processor, although really then a composting toilet would certainly fit the bill.
I agree with much of what you say. There's just a couple of things I want to comment on.
This suggestion isn't really viable. The problem is that electric power needs to be continuous, and electric energy can't really be stored in the quantities needed for widespread use. Because of this, the large surges of power and subsequent falloffs that we would get with tidal generation make it kind of undesirable as a power source. A much more promising idea that's been talked about for some time is to put turbines in the path of a major ocean current such as the Gulf Stream. After all, the oceans are the world's biggest solar collector, and a significant portion of that energy goes into generating these currents. It's a huge untapped source of energy.
They have this. It's biodiesel made with canola. read about it here.
Ultimately, we just need to get off burning fossil fuels. After all, when you consider that energy on earth comes from two places, the planet's core, and, moreso, the sun, fossil fuels are solar energy stored by plants and animals millions of years ago. It's a finite supply, and frankly, we shouldn't be nearly as reliant on it as we are.
Heh, here in Saskatchewan I get 5Mbps down, 1Mbps up, and all for CA$38. I guess that's what you get when all the bandwith for the entire province (bigger in land area than Britain) is divided between a population of >1 million. I guess there was no way around running big fibre backbones through here, and we just get to suck away at them. =)
My guess is that you're behind a NAT or some other firewall, and that's the only thing keeping your machine from being eaten alive.
Um, yeah, I guess it's clearer. The thing is, though, that the licence agreement is a contract and if you click the accept button you're bound by its terms.
Actually any installer program that has a licence agreement step in it will generally cancel installation if you don't accept the agreement. So, you have to accept the agreement to go through with installation of the software, or the installer stops you from installing it. ;)
What I was getting at originally was that if you never even run the installer but rather just skip ahead to decompiling the software, you've never agreed to the licence terms, including the part about not decompiling it.
You know, when I bought a boxed copy of Windows XP Professional, I don't remember signing anything. In fact, it wasn't until I was installing it on my computer in order to use it that I was presented with a legal contract to which I was asked to affix my 'digital signature' to agree to certain conditions for its use.
Now what if I bought the CD, took it home, and set about decompiling or reverse engineering this copy of Windows I just bought. Well, there's this clause in that EULA that says I can't do that, but wait, I haven't signed that agreement yet , and heck, since I bought this copy of Windows only so I could reverse engineer it and not to use it I may just not agree to its terms at all.
The point I'm trying to make is that while the EULA may be a contract, it's only required that I agree to its terms before installing and using it, not at the point of sale before purchasing it. Now naturally, IANAL, but tell me, am I wrong?
But shouldn't /etc/hosts only be editable as root or with a sudo?
Mac OS X has lots of nice security checks like that.
Folks generally always hate the brand of hard drive that's died on them. Ultimately, I've seen hard drives from most every major brand go bad. The worst by far though is Fujitsu. I've seen about three times as many dead Fujitsu drives as other brands.
Present and potential world leaders routinely display their stupidity to the world. Everybody calls them names for it, not just the /. readership.
All this guy did was run a technologically interesting piece of software on a computer he shouldn't have. To me, that hardly even warrants termination, let alone public humiliation.
Perhaps then this will convince you.
The point of that article, and expecially the excellent graph in it, is that we've pushed atmospheric CO2 levels far above what they've ever gone to in recent geological history. That, and the mean global temperature is being pushed above even their highest estimates of its natural fluctuations. Worse yet, this is all happening in the equivalent of a geological microsecond.
I think if you look at the sizes of the different schools of thought on this, you'll find that the number of scientists who think we're screwing ourselves outnumbers those who think it's a natural phenomenon by about 10:1.
Don't forget broken applications.
I remember that shortly after Windows XP was released, one of the early critical updates they put out fixed compatibility issues with a whole whack of software and drivers. IMO they should do the same thing now after Service Pack 2. I mean, some of this stuff is their own damn software!
I wouldn't say it's a waste. I've heard tell that once the microdrive is removed, it can be replaced with a simple 512MB CF card and the player can still be used, albeit with lower storage capacity.
I dunno, I think this might be at least kind of reliable.
Admittedly, this is the zeitgeist for google.ca. The google.com one doesn't show the OS statistics for some reason. Anyway, if you look it over, you find that Linux is about on par with Windows 95, with 1% of the share. Windows NT 4.0 still has twice Linux's share at 2%, and Windows ME and Mac OS are tied at 3% each. Windows 98, 2000, and XP take a whopping 85%, with 51% going to XP alone. All the Windowses combined make up 91% of the share. There's also that 5% other, and who knows what that is (UNIXes and unidentifiable Linuxes, perhaps? Maybe some of the older Mac OSes, too). Either way, while Linux is getting more and more ready for widespread, desktop use, it's clear it's not getting a lot of that currently.
I know, I read them too. Those are mostly technical folks who know what they're talking about. I also read the ones on Microsoft Blog, though. Here's a good example:
I think this just proves that idiots and beta software don't mix. =)
This seems to me like "automate it because lusers don't know better" dogma. While that does apply in situations such as applying periodical security patches or updating anti-virus software, which should be automated, it can't be applied in this case.
Find me 3rd party firewall or anti-virus software that can be turned off by an installer program, and I'll bet you it could be turned off just as easily by a virus. It would defeat the purpose of having such software. Many applications will bring up a "do you want to save changes" when there's a modified document open. Would it be better for the installer to force the app to close and lose unsaved changes? I think not.
I would agree that the installer should include an on-screen warning to close all programs, turn of AV and firewalls, and not to install over a beta version. Such a warning would probably get a lot more people to do it right, and if they didn't know how to do some of those things, to hold off installing until they figure out how. Doing it for them, however, wouldn't work, and if attempted, would probably create many more problems than it would prevent.
I bet most of that can be chalked up to simple carelessness in installation. Simple things that people should do, but may often not, is closing all applications, temporarily disabling the on-access scanning of their anti-virus software, and also temporarily turning off a 3rd-party software firewall if possible. Worst of all is the crazy people who try to install it over an SP2 beta. They should have the good sense to uninstall the beta service pack first and go back to the SP1 they had before, then install SP2.
And just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not all out to get you.
(200mhz more than the 3000+)
The ignorance... it's too much! You must realize that the 3000+ and 3200+ numbers are just AMD's performance numbers. Both processors actually have the same clock speed of 2GHz. The only difference is that the 3200+ has twice the L2 cache - 1MB of it, and therefore has a higher performance number. Get it right, eh?