According to google define hezbollah is hez-boh-LAH Militant Islamic resistance movement; it does not recognize Israel's right to exist.
Bury me if you want, but that seems to fit some of the younguns I meet nowadays. They see the MPAA/RIAA has gone so far overboard in enforcement they no longer think that ANY content industry should be albe to make money. The Hezbollah claim that Israel does not have ANY right to stay where they are. Both are radical, extremist and IMHO wrong.
Israel should stay where it is, content industries should be albe to make money off their work. I think the claim is that nNeither should go to the lengths they have in enforcing their rights.
It is supposed to run Linux. Assuming it is a full distro that you have real access to (which may be assuming too much from proprietary Sony) - they can't stop you from ripping DVDs, adding linux supported capture cards, and becoming a real multimedia center.
If it could do all this easily enough - they might have convinced me to get one.
No seriously - they are. Acording to Sony, the PS3 is not a gaming console. Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison is "We believe that the PS3 will be the place where our users play games, watch films, browse the Web, and use other [home] computer functions. The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC." It is supposed to replace desktop computers, be a total media center and play some games on the side.
Oh yeah, it'll cure cancer too.
Re:Why not lock, instead of unlock?
on
Just Let Me Play!
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Ever played Resident Evil? Ammo starvation sucks, I don't want to have to knife 40 zombies in the head just so I might have enough bullets to kill the incredibly jumpy boss.
Some movies are like that, some are the other way around. In any event, ammo starvation sucks. This is a hilarious read on games see number 13.
Better yet, backup the data, reformat, install, update, and then make a darn image! You can do it with a knoppix liveCD - using the DD (disk duplicate) command. Just back it up to an external drive or dvd or something. Then if the computer gets hosed, no problems, boot back to knoppix, reformat the drive fat32 and dd the image back to the drive. Works like a charm.
Of course a little prevention goes a long way - don't use IE, keep everything up to date, keep an AV product in case you miss something. But I keep a disk image of three computers, my laptop, my fathers desktop and my grandmothers desktop. I've tried to educate them, but it just didn't take hold in their minds; this way they can be reckless and it doesn't take but an hour to replace their hosed system.
Just so long as they don't use Outlook Express - that is a pain in the neck to back up.
Good plan, but sometimes malware modifies autoexec.bat to repopulate msconfig. Or they make sure your system won't boot properly if you remove the startup file, or they embed themselves in something that should run, or do any of a number of other things that make removal impossible from within the infected system.
If you can't do a reformat, the best thing to do is pull out the drive, hook it up to a computer (externally or internally) that isn't infected and run anti-malware tools from there.
If that isn't an option get something like Winternals ERD Commander and add some modules to it, like adaware, spybot and spysweeper. Plus some little things like stinger, hijackthis & rootkit revealer. Then an antivirus scanner - clamwin and AVG both run fine off of a live CD. All of these should be up to date. Windows defender won't run in ERD commander or off any live cd - it needs a full Windows environment. Then boot to live CD and run the tools. It works wonderfully. If you don't want to shell out for ERD commander, roll your own live windows based cd with BartsPE builder. I've heard of people doing it with Windows CE too, I just don't know how.
If the MiniPE liveCD wasn't infringing dozens of copyrights and wasn't a highly illegal set of warez - it would be the champ IMHO. It is a highly effective and well done set of tools.
Safe mode is good too, but a lot of scanners won't run in safe mode (like windows defender) and more imporantly, some malware embeds itself in system files. As such they often get locked (you can't delete them) even if safe mode.
Linux live CDs can handle viruses pretty well with clamAV, but they really can't find other sorts of malware very well. Plus they can't touch the system (if it is NTFS), so they aren't terribly useful for anything other than backing up data before a clean sweep (which is the best option after all anyway).
Malware is tricky, but you can get it if you try hard enough. Come on Ballmer you can do better, I'm not even an MCSE!
users mess stuff up. And they can't get excel formulas right all the time.
Seriously, I bet you would find word processor kludges far more common (like carriage returns rather than a page break, spaces rather than tabs, and periods rather than leaders). AND word processors are used for important stuff, like spreadsheets.
And again, why are "slashdotters" responsible for what the finance guys are doing with spreadsheets? Of course they could use a versioning system, a real database, or a pen and paper, but I wouldn't take IT advice from them, I see no reason they should take auditing advide from me.
As a note, the relevant quote from Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison is "We believe that the PS3 will be the place where our users play games, watch films, browse the Web, and use other [home] computer functions. The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC."
Well according to Sony, the PS3 is not a gaming console. No seriously, it will replace desktop computers, be a total media center and play some games on the side. Hence the overkill on capabilities.
Just like Cmd-S on a Mac or recovery mode on Ubuntu - on Windows press F8 on Windows and boot into "Safe Mode". Instant "Administrator" access - no password needed. Not to mention you are getting a gui which makes it a whole heck of a lot easier to hose a system or swipe stuff if you want.
Even better boot into "Safe Mode with Networking". Networking gives you access to the internet and any trojans you can find, or storage space you can access. Nice eh?
"But it is harder to find!" you cry. Of course it is - IF YOU'VE NEVER USED WINDOWS XP! If anyone has local access to a machine and wants to get in, they know this trick And I dare say editing grub.conf is a lot easier than editing the registry or running a vbs file.
I signed up for the patch when it first hit the fan. I hadn't been infected, but I thought my wife's computer might have been so I wanted the instructions on how to remove it. As such I gave them my email address.
The same type of argument (if it is easy to bypass "agreeing" without actually agreeing) is applied elsewhere, EULAs are null & void. Because the software writers didn't inconvenience us more, they forfeit any rights or waiver of responsiblity in the EULA.
Lets all call Microsoft for compensation the next time our friend's computer breaks because of Microsoft software and see if we can use this judge's decision.
IANAL but this isn't exclusively lawywer territory - I'm an economist and this is bogus.
First - what they are claiming isn't price fixing, it is predatory pricing. And this isn't what Standard Oil did. Standard oil bought out competitors, their lower prices were the effect of huge economies of scale - NOT predatory pricing. There are dozens of books on this.
Second - predatory pricing is a myth. The conditions requisite for predatory pricing to work are so stringent it is silly to beleive it exists in any but the most extreme circumstances. First you must be able to lower prices long enough to bankrupt your competitors while not going bankrupt yourself. Then you need to be able to raise the price high enough to cover - your losses and opportunity costs - all while keeping new competitors out and old competitors from re-entering. There are other conditions too, but these two alone are enough to disqualify 99% of the cases.
Third - if they did predatorily price to get rid of rambus - where are the super high prices that these evil price cutting companies would have to charge to recoup losses? Ram is cheaper than ever. Besides, why couldn't the 4 or 5 other ram producers undercut these two conspiring firms?
Fourth - when a business is stupid enough to try predatory pricing we shouldn't care. What we should care about is the barriers to entry that inhibit competition to such a degree that these businesses can charge artificially high costs in the future.
Predatory pricing is laughed out of court nowadays - it is almost ALWAYS an issue of lower costs not predatory pricing - which is why Rambus is calling this "price fixing."
Thank goodness MP3 format doesn't support DRM. Seriously, if I see an mp3, I know I can trust it, it is just bits. If I see an AAC, I don't know if it has DRM or not. I remember a story about a year ago in which someone made a proof of concept wma file that owned your computer. Microsoft said that it was necessary to allow that kind of control from wma files to support DRM.
So again, I'm so glad that no one has figured out how to DRM an MP3 (without making it incompatible with current players). That's the holy grail for audio sellers.
I bought one of the copy protection discs; if hadn't been running Debian I'd have been hit by it too. In February I just got a notice in the mail informing me that I can claim damages from this lawsuit. I wasn't infected but as long as I return the disk I can get awarded damages. Lets make this as expensive for Sony as we can (to deter behavior like this in the future). If you purchased either of these two copy protection schemes, the details below tell what you need to do to recieve compensation. Please get compensated. It isn't much, but if enough people get compensated it may just stop/slow this from happening again!
If you aren't sure if you've got a CD that qualifies, here is a list of the infected cds: with XCP and Mediamax.
Great job to the EFF, one of the few organizations looking out for Joe Sixpack (and everyone else). The email is as follows
***IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE/SOFTWARE UPDATE NOTICE***PLEASE READ*** (Please do not respond to this email. Responses will not be read.)
If You Bought, Received or Used a SONY BMG Music Entertainment CD Containing Either XCP or Media Max Content Protection Software, Your Rights May Be Affected By a Class Action Settlement, And You Should Download Updates For That Software.
What is this about?
A settlement has been proposed in a lawsuit brought against SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Inc., SunnComm International Inc., and First 4 Internet, Ltd. ("Defendants"). The lawsuit, In re SONY BMG CD Technologies Litigation, Case No. 1:05-cv-09575-NRB, is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and relates to XCP and MediaMax content protection software installed on certain SONY BMG music CDs.
The Settlement resolves claims that the Defendants manufactured and sold CDs containing XCP and MediaMax software without adequately disclosing the limitations the software imposes on the use of the CDs and the security vulnerabilities it creates. The Defendants have denied that they did anything wrong.
Who Is Included, And What Does The Settlement Provide?
The settlement provides relief for persons who bought, received or used SONY BMG CDs with either XCP or MediaMax software. Under the settlement, any person in possession of an XCP CD can exchange it for a replacement CD, an MP3 download of the same album, and either (a) cash payment of $7.50 and one (1) free album download from a list of 200 albums, or (b) three (3) free album downloads from that list.
Purchasers of CDs containing MediaMax 5.0 software will receive a free
MP3 download of the same album and one (1) additional free album download. Purchasers of CDs containing MediaMax 3.0 software will receive a free MP3 download of the same album.
The settlement also requires the Defendants to stop manufacturing SONY BMG CDs with XCP or MediaMax 3.0 and 5.0 software and, until 2008: (1) make available updates to fix all known security vulnerabilities caused by XCP and MediaMax software; (2) provide software programs to uninstall XCP and MediaMax software safely; (3) fix any future security vulnerabilities discovered in MediaMax and any other content protection software placed on SONY BMG CDs; (4) provide independent verification that personal information about users of SONY BMG CDs has not and will not be collected through XCP or MediaMax; (5) waive certain provisions of the end user license agreements for XCP and MediaMax software; and
(6) ensure that any other content protection software will be clearly disclosed, independently tested and readily uninstalled.
At 9:15a.m. on May 22, 2006, the Court will hold a hearing at the United States District Court, Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street, Courtroom 21A, New York, New York 10007-1312, to decide whether to approve the settlement and the class attorneys' fees and costs.
I have really had good luck with Clamwin. It doesn't do realtime scanning - so you actually have to scan stuff manually, or setup some auto scans. On the other hand, it won't bog down your system scanning every bloody little thing you download. Plus it is open scource - that is a bonus.
If you couple clamwin with winpooch (open source anti-spyware) it gives you incredible control over your system. With winpooch, clamwin can do real-time scanning.
No way the libertarians got this blocked - there are what, 5 of us? Seriously though, there were bigger problems than Christian moralists. For example:
The domain name allocation problem was a big part of the reason this got killed. Obviously the names would be auctioned but no one was sure if all the names should be auctioned at all. Who gets "baptists.xxx" or "mormon.xxx" or even "usgov.xxx"? Should anyone? The Baptists, Mormons & US Government probably don't think anyone should get these domain names.
The very existence of a porn site with the same name as a non (or anti) porn product is problematic - Coke can buy Coke.xxx but for those businesses that can't afford to buy out the domain - the very existence of a site could be slanderous. And if firms/churches/organizations all buy thier corresponding.xxx domain, critics could easily say - "look! Disney owns porn sites - they're hippocrites, poisoning young children's minds!"
Don't get me wrong, the right wing Christian contingency was against this, but they weren't the only ones.
Of course there are market failures - whenever there are huge fixed costs (they lead to natural monopolies) - whenever there are externalities (positive or negative) - and a variety of other situations.
Market failures notwithstanding a state enforced monopoly (like power companies basically are) is certainly not the free market. Think of pollution for a case where the market fails, not telecoms or power companies - with the massive market power firms in these industries have - they are NOT free markets.
Absolutely. I don't know how joining the military & waving the flag became the only ways to be patriotic, but it has been so for some time. Think of Vietnam - most of the opposition came from people who were pro-american. And how were they percieved? Anti-American drug addicts.
Good comment, I think skimping on RAM is THE biggest chokepoint on most people's systems. My Uncle (non-techie) recently bought a computer - which he thought was nice. It had a nice video card, a 3ghz p4, dvd+-rw, 160gb HD, and... 256mb ram. Whoever sold him that computer ought to get a mandatory sentance of 5 years doing phone tech support. For AOL.
Trusted computing isn't without benefits. For my grandmother (who wants her computer to work like an appliance) trusted computing is probably the way to go. For me, it isn't. From my blog
Computers are all about the users. They were invented to help users simplify tasks (whether it is a scientist on a cray or your grandmother on her eMachine). That said, users have always been the problem with computers. We say we want stability, well why don't we run Solaris or FreeBSD? These are among the most stable complex systems out there; they'll do most everything we want and never crash (as opposed to DOS which won't crash but it won't do what we want). The answer is users, we are the weak link, not Solaris, us.
If you need to get something done, tools help. But the best tools won't get anything done if you don't know how to use them. I have a friend who uses a pen and pad of paper to do his budgeting. He has excel, he just doesn't know how to use it.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could just cut the user out of the equation? This is the whole idea behind mechanization, users make mistakes, we'll get a machine to do it. This has provided spectacular leaps in production. This mentality has long been in the computing world. Windows and OSX do this very well and it is a great boon to usability.
Computer security is starting to improve significantly by cutting the user out. All these computer security measures do this:
automatic updates
firewalls without user interaction
anti-virus programs automatically cleaning/deleting files
This makes user security better, it saves time, & does a better job than many users could do on their own.
But cutting the user out (like anything else) when taken too far has scary results. What if someone decided you couldn't be trusted to decide what to put on your computer, and that someone else should decide? This is essentially what "trusted computing" is all about.
There have been great discussions on Slashdot about trusted/treacherous computing. In one, a particularly insightful poster wrote "Trust the computer but don't trust me? That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen." That is the issue at heart here. Firms will decide what you can and can't do on your computer, because you cannot be trusted. One wonders, if they won't trust us, why should we trust them?
Trusted computing has lots of benefits. By only allowing tested code to run there are a lot of potential benefits:
stability could increase
viruses could be prevented from running
malware could be stomped out
piracy on trusted platforms would end
users would know when their system changed
phishing could be stomped out - no more passwords
These benefits are nothing to snub your nose at. A version of this model is what we have for online security. You can get a "trusted" SSL certificate for your business, signaling that it is OK to put in your SSN or credit card number. This has been a boon to online retailers, it provides a fast way to gain trust with a user. No more lock-ins to companies you have experience with.
There are potentially harmful effects to 'trusted computing' too. What if you were a virus writer and found out how to get your code to be 'trusted.' I don't pretend to understand how this could be done, but if it was it would be far more devastating than current viruses (and the incentive seems high enough for someone to figure this out). By cutting the user out of the equation, you may actually make systems LESS secure. Other potentially harmful effects:
vendor lock-in. Perpetually enforced monopoly power. Do you trust Microsoft to decide for you what applications you can use? Will Firefox be trusted? FF extensions? What about programs that cut into their revenue - OpenOffice? Not to pick on Microsoft, there are hundreds of tech/content firms that would love to eliminate competitors.
If I got rich off the capitalist system, I would know darn well how much this mythical technology would be worth. Then I'd sell it, I could make a killing right now - even if I never made another dime in my life.
Look - if I am rich and I own oil - I don't want to prevent new technology, I want to own new technology. If some new technology would make everyone go out and get a new car, happy day! I want to be producing those cars, or own a patent on the super duper warp drive they use - not stopping their production.
To say the rich are trying tu surpress new tech is silly. It is true they're afraid of change - ownership changes not technology changes. They are simply trying to keep on top of new inventions.
Absolutely right, way too much thermal grease for efficient heat dispersion. But I don't think it was a mistake. As I've said before, Apple they knew exactly what they were doing.
Why all the grease? It is quieter. Seriously, Apple knows how hot those chips run and how loud computer fans can be when they run all the time. They could paste up the chips and let them get hot (so long as it isn't damaging) for a quieter laptop or - put the right amount of paste and get a cool laptop that runs its fan all the time.
This is just an engineering tradeoff, it wasn't an accident or a mistake.
It wasn't that Apple screwed up - they knew exactly what they were doing. Why so much thermal paste then? Why run the laptop so hot?
Because it is quieter. Seriously, Apple knows how hot those chips run, they had two options - paste them up, let them get hot (so long as it isn't damaging) and get a quieter laptop or - put the right amount of paste and get a cool laptop that runs its fan all the time.
This is just an engineering tradeoff quandry. It wasn't an accident or a mistake - it was a tradeoff.
Slashdot Mirror
According to google define hezbollah is hez-boh-LAH Militant Islamic resistance movement; it does not recognize Israel's right to exist.
Bury me if you want, but that seems to fit some of the younguns I meet nowadays. They see the MPAA/RIAA has gone so far overboard in enforcement they no longer think that ANY content industry should be albe to make money. The Hezbollah claim that Israel does not have ANY right to stay where they are. Both are radical, extremist and IMHO wrong.
Israel should stay where it is, content industries should be albe to make money off their work. I think the claim is that nNeither should go to the lengths they have in enforcing their rights.
It is supposed to run Linux. Assuming it is a full distro that you have real access to (which may be assuming too much from proprietary Sony) - they can't stop you from ripping DVDs, adding linux supported capture cards, and becoming a real multimedia center.
If it could do all this easily enough - they might have convinced me to get one.
No seriously - they are. Acording to Sony, the PS3 is not a gaming console. Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison is "We believe that the PS3 will be the place where our users play games, watch films, browse the Web, and use other [home] computer functions. The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC." It is supposed to replace desktop computers, be a total media center and play some games on the side.
Oh yeah, it'll cure cancer too.
Ever played Resident Evil? Ammo starvation sucks, I don't want to have to knife 40 zombies in the head just so I might have enough bullets to kill the incredibly jumpy boss.
Some movies are like that, some are the other way around. In any event, ammo starvation sucks. This is a hilarious read on games see number 13.
Better yet, backup the data, reformat, install, update, and then make a darn image! You can do it with a knoppix liveCD - using the DD (disk duplicate) command. Just back it up to an external drive or dvd or something. Then if the computer gets hosed, no problems, boot back to knoppix, reformat the drive fat32 and dd the image back to the drive. Works like a charm.
Of course a little prevention goes a long way - don't use IE, keep everything up to date, keep an AV product in case you miss something. But I keep a disk image of three computers, my laptop, my fathers desktop and my grandmothers desktop. I've tried to educate them, but it just didn't take hold in their minds; this way they can be reckless and it doesn't take but an hour to replace their hosed system.
Just so long as they don't use Outlook Express - that is a pain in the neck to back up.
Good plan, but sometimes malware modifies autoexec.bat to repopulate msconfig. Or they make sure your system won't boot properly if you remove the startup file, or they embed themselves in something that should run, or do any of a number of other things that make removal impossible from within the infected system.
If you can't do a reformat, the best thing to do is pull out the drive, hook it up to a computer (externally or internally) that isn't infected and run anti-malware tools from there.
If that isn't an option get something like Winternals ERD Commander and add some modules to it, like adaware, spybot and spysweeper. Plus some little things like stinger, hijackthis & rootkit revealer. Then an antivirus scanner - clamwin and AVG both run fine off of a live CD. All of these should be up to date. Windows defender won't run in ERD commander or off any live cd - it needs a full Windows environment. Then boot to live CD and run the tools. It works wonderfully. If you don't want to shell out for ERD commander, roll your own live windows based cd with BartsPE builder. I've heard of people doing it with Windows CE too, I just don't know how.
If the MiniPE liveCD wasn't infringing dozens of copyrights and wasn't a highly illegal set of warez - it would be the champ IMHO. It is a highly effective and well done set of tools.
Safe mode is good too, but a lot of scanners won't run in safe mode (like windows defender) and more imporantly, some malware embeds itself in system files. As such they often get locked (you can't delete them) even if safe mode.
Linux live CDs can handle viruses pretty well with clamAV, but they really can't find other sorts of malware very well. Plus they can't touch the system (if it is NTFS), so they aren't terribly useful for anything other than backing up data before a clean sweep (which is the best option after all anyway).
Malware is tricky, but you can get it if you try hard enough. Come on Ballmer you can do better, I'm not even an MCSE!
users mess stuff up. And they can't get excel formulas right all the time.
Seriously, I bet you would find word processor kludges far more common (like carriage returns rather than a page break, spaces rather than tabs, and periods rather than leaders). AND word processors are used for important stuff, like spreadsheets.
And again, why are "slashdotters" responsible for what the finance guys are doing with spreadsheets? Of course they could use a versioning system, a real database, or a pen and paper, but I wouldn't take IT advice from them, I see no reason they should take auditing advide from me.
As a note, the relevant quote from Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison is "We believe that the PS3 will be the place where our users play games, watch films, browse the Web, and use other [home] computer functions. The PlayStation 3 is a computer. We do not need the PC."
Well according to Sony, the PS3 is not a gaming console. No seriously, it will replace desktop computers, be a total media center and play some games on the side. Hence the overkill on capabilities.
Not to mention I heard it'll cure cancer too.
Just like Cmd-S on a Mac or recovery mode on Ubuntu - on Windows press F8 on Windows and boot into "Safe Mode". Instant "Administrator" access - no password needed. Not to mention you are getting a gui which makes it a whole heck of a lot easier to hose a system or swipe stuff if you want.
Even better boot into "Safe Mode with Networking". Networking gives you access to the internet and any trojans you can find, or storage space you can access. Nice eh?
"But it is harder to find!" you cry. Of course it is - IF YOU'VE NEVER USED WINDOWS XP! If anyone has local access to a machine and wants to get in, they know this trick And I dare say editing grub.conf is a lot easier than editing the registry or running a vbs file.
I signed up for the patch when it first hit the fan. I hadn't been infected, but I thought my wife's computer might have been so I wanted the instructions on how to remove it. As such I gave them my email address.
The same type of argument (if it is easy to bypass "agreeing" without actually agreeing) is applied elsewhere, EULAs are null & void. Because the software writers didn't inconvenience us more, they forfeit any rights or waiver of responsiblity in the EULA.
Lets all call Microsoft for compensation the next time our friend's computer breaks because of Microsoft software and see if we can use this judge's decision.
IANAL but this isn't exclusively lawywer territory - I'm an economist and this is bogus.
First - what they are claiming isn't price fixing, it is predatory pricing. And this isn't what Standard Oil did. Standard oil bought out competitors, their lower prices were the effect of huge economies of scale - NOT predatory pricing. There are dozens of books on this.
Second - predatory pricing is a myth. The conditions requisite for predatory pricing to work are so stringent it is silly to beleive it exists in any but the most extreme circumstances. First you must be able to lower prices long enough to bankrupt your competitors while not going bankrupt yourself. Then you need to be able to raise the price high enough to cover - your losses and opportunity costs - all while keeping new competitors out and old competitors from re-entering. There are other conditions too, but these two alone are enough to disqualify 99% of the cases.
Third - if they did predatorily price to get rid of rambus - where are the super high prices that these evil price cutting companies would have to charge to recoup losses? Ram is cheaper than ever. Besides, why couldn't the 4 or 5 other ram producers undercut these two conspiring firms?
Fourth - when a business is stupid enough to try predatory pricing we shouldn't care. What we should care about is the barriers to entry that inhibit competition to such a degree that these businesses can charge artificially high costs in the future.
Predatory pricing is laughed out of court nowadays - it is almost ALWAYS an issue of lower costs not predatory pricing - which is why Rambus is calling this "price fixing."
Thank goodness MP3 format doesn't support DRM. Seriously, if I see an mp3, I know I can trust it, it is just bits. If I see an AAC, I don't know if it has DRM or not. I remember a story about a year ago in which someone made a proof of concept wma file that owned your computer. Microsoft said that it was necessary to allow that kind of control from wma files to support DRM.
So again, I'm so glad that no one has figured out how to DRM an MP3 (without making it incompatible with current players). That's the holy grail for audio sellers.
If you aren't sure if you've got a CD that qualifies, here is a list of the infected cds: with XCP and Mediamax.
Great job to the EFF, one of the few organizations looking out for Joe Sixpack (and everyone else). The email is as follows
I have really had good luck with Clamwin. It doesn't do realtime scanning - so you actually have to scan stuff manually, or setup some auto scans. On the other hand, it won't bog down your system scanning every bloody little thing you download. Plus it is open scource - that is a bonus.
If you couple clamwin with winpooch (open source anti-spyware) it gives you incredible control over your system. With winpooch, clamwin can do real-time scanning.
No way the libertarians got this blocked - there are what, 5 of us? Seriously though, there were bigger problems than Christian moralists. For example:
.xxx domain, critics could easily say - "look! Disney owns porn sites - they're hippocrites, poisoning young children's minds!"
The domain name allocation problem was a big part of the reason this got killed. Obviously the names would be auctioned but no one was sure if all the names should be auctioned at all. Who gets "baptists.xxx" or "mormon.xxx" or even "usgov.xxx"? Should anyone? The Baptists, Mormons & US Government probably don't think anyone should get these domain names.
The very existence of a porn site with the same name as a non (or anti) porn product is problematic - Coke can buy Coke.xxx but for those businesses that can't afford to buy out the domain - the very existence of a site could be slanderous. And if firms/churches/organizations all buy thier corresponding
Don't get me wrong, the right wing Christian contingency was against this, but they weren't the only ones.
Of course there are market failures - whenever there are huge fixed costs (they lead to natural monopolies) - whenever there are externalities (positive or negative) - and a variety of other situations.
Market failures notwithstanding a state enforced monopoly (like power companies basically are) is certainly not the free market. Think of pollution for a case where the market fails, not telecoms or power companies - with the massive market power firms in these industries have - they are NOT free markets.
Absolutely. I don't know how joining the military & waving the flag became the only ways to be patriotic, but it has been so for some time. Think of Vietnam - most of the opposition came from people who were pro-american. And how were they percieved? Anti-American drug addicts.
Good comment, I think skimping on RAM is THE biggest chokepoint on most people's systems. My Uncle (non-techie) recently bought a computer - which he thought was nice. It had a nice video card, a 3ghz p4, dvd+-rw, 160gb HD, and... 256mb ram. Whoever sold him that computer ought to get a mandatory sentance of 5 years doing phone tech support. For AOL.
Trusted computing isn't without benefits. For my grandmother (who wants her computer to work like an appliance) trusted computing is probably the way to go. For me, it isn't. From my blog
Computers are all about the users. They were invented to help users simplify tasks (whether it is a scientist on a cray or your grandmother on her eMachine). That said, users have always been the problem with computers. We say we want stability, well why don't we run Solaris or FreeBSD? These are among the most stable complex systems out there; they'll do most everything we want and never crash (as opposed to DOS which won't crash but it won't do what we want). The answer is users, we are the weak link, not Solaris, us.
If you need to get something done, tools help. But the best tools won't get anything done if you don't know how to use them. I have a friend who uses a pen and pad of paper to do his budgeting. He has excel, he just doesn't know how to use it.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could just cut the user out of the equation? This is the whole idea behind mechanization, users make mistakes, we'll get a machine to do it. This has provided spectacular leaps in production. This mentality has long been in the computing world. Windows and OSX do this very well and it is a great boon to usability.
Computer security is starting to improve significantly by cutting the user out. All these computer security measures do this:
automatic updates
firewalls without user interaction
anti-virus programs automatically cleaning/deleting files
This makes user security better, it saves time, & does a better job than many users could do on their own.
But cutting the user out (like anything else) when taken too far has scary results. What if someone decided you couldn't be trusted to decide what to put on your computer, and that someone else should decide? This is essentially what "trusted computing" is all about.
There have been great discussions on Slashdot about trusted/treacherous computing. In one, a particularly insightful poster wrote "Trust the computer but don't trust me? That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen." That is the issue at heart here. Firms will decide what you can and can't do on your computer, because you cannot be trusted. One wonders, if they won't trust us, why should we trust them?
Trusted computing has lots of benefits. By only allowing tested code to run there are a lot of potential benefits:
stability could increase
viruses could be prevented from running
malware could be stomped out
piracy on trusted platforms would end
users would know when their system changed
phishing could be stomped out - no more passwords
These benefits are nothing to snub your nose at. A version of this model is what we have for online security. You can get a "trusted" SSL certificate for your business, signaling that it is OK to put in your SSN or credit card number. This has been a boon to online retailers, it provides a fast way to gain trust with a user. No more lock-ins to companies you have experience with.
There are potentially harmful effects to 'trusted computing' too. What if you were a virus writer and found out how to get your code to be 'trusted.' I don't pretend to understand how this could be done, but if it was it would be far more devastating than current viruses (and the incentive seems high enough for someone to figure this out). By cutting the user out of the equation, you may actually make systems LESS secure. Other potentially harmful effects:
vendor lock-in. Perpetually enforced monopoly power. Do you trust Microsoft to decide for you what applications you can use? Will Firefox be trusted? FF extensions? What about programs that cut into their revenue - OpenOffice? Not to pick on Microsoft, there are hundreds of tech/content firms that would love to eliminate competitors.
You're spot on.
If I got rich off the capitalist system, I would know darn well how much this mythical technology would be worth. Then I'd sell it, I could make a killing right now - even if I never made another dime in my life.
Look - if I am rich and I own oil - I don't want to prevent new technology, I want to own new technology. If some new technology would make everyone go out and get a new car, happy day! I want to be producing those cars, or own a patent on the super duper warp drive they use - not stopping their production.
To say the rich are trying tu surpress new tech is silly. It is true they're afraid of change - ownership changes not technology changes. They are simply trying to keep on top of new inventions.
Absolutely right, way too much thermal grease for efficient heat dispersion. But I don't think it was a mistake. As I've said before, Apple they knew exactly what they were doing.
Why all the grease? It is quieter. Seriously, Apple knows how hot those chips run and how loud computer fans can be when they run all the time. They could paste up the chips and let them get hot (so long as it isn't damaging) for a quieter laptop or - put the right amount of paste and get a cool laptop that runs its fan all the time.
This is just an engineering tradeoff, it wasn't an accident or a mistake.
It wasn't that Apple screwed up - they knew exactly what they were doing. Why so much thermal paste then? Why run the laptop so hot?
Because it is quieter. Seriously, Apple knows how hot those chips run, they had two options - paste them up, let them get hot (so long as it isn't damaging) and get a quieter laptop or - put the right amount of paste and get a cool laptop that runs its fan all the time.
This is just an engineering tradeoff quandry. It wasn't an accident or a mistake - it was a tradeoff.