Most of us were raised on cop shows where the good guys are always driving around calling around on their radio system. Now we have our own radio system we naturally want to use it. Police no doubt have policies about these things so perhaps they should publicise them: we don't use the radio/phone while driving and you shouldn't either. Or something like that.
Here in Australia it is customary for people who have serious accidents in their cars to get breath tested to see if alcohol was a contributing factor. Perhaps the police should pull the phone records of the driver (happens all the time on law and order, shouldn't be that hard to do) and charge them appropriately if they were shown to be on the phone at the time of the crash.
This really comes down to distractions in cars. Whether it be the kids screaming to be taken to macdonalds or the mother in law going off about something in the back seat or that idiot guy who is always on the fucking radio. There is a lot of distraction out there. Perhaps this needs to be looked into, otherwise the narrower issue of people talking on cellphones without using an earpiece will look pretty silly.
Because of insurance you can go out and do a lot of damage with a car and pretty much get away with it. You can kill someone with a car and get less time in jail than if you did it with a gun. I think that needs to change. If it did people might start taking responsibility for their actions and they might start looking where they are going when they drive their car. That would make life a lot safer for bike riders like me.
If you want to take the liability of distributing patent-encumbered software and just cross your fingers you don't get sued, be my guest.
I can do that at home, but what about the internet cafe project I am working on? If I load it up with software for viewing media am I creating a legal liability for myself?
Next time my Mum needs her WinXP box "fixed" again, I'll be using Ubuntu to fix it. And yet I'll still be using it myself - two unix users from about as far apart on the spectrum as you can get, with their needs both met by the same distro. I like that.
My sister lives in a share house. Her PC is used by everybody and is on a DSL line 24*7. After a year or so of that Windows98 was rooted to the point of total unusability. Both from stuff which came off the internet and from various goes at fixing it.
Now she runs ubuntu. The machine quietly runs away. Exactly the same from one day to the next. Its only used for running Firefox and OO, as far as I can see. This is the kind of environment which needs something a little bit more robust than usual.
As long as your mothers requirements are modest: email, web browsing, some office apps, it will go well. If she is like my sister in law who wants an iPod, and the ability to run games she gets from the library, then you will have some trouble.
I gather the primary way to make money off them, in IE's case for instance, is to set millions of peoples home pages to the page of Microsofts choice and make money off the advertising
Mozilla makes a lot of money by setting the default search engine to google in firefox.
So? Yes, it was a huge challenge. But it was also a fairly simple concept.
Bulk storage of data is so pervasive these days. Perhaps none of us really appreciate what a challenge this was.
I remember when I was 13 or so. My computer had a 300 baud modem to store data on casette. My uncle had a reel to reel audio recorder and I used to fantasize about getting 9600 baud out of it. That would have been some incredible storage system.
They just do it because theu have to to play in the pointy-haired Western markets
Meaning that Asian markets are different? You may be right about that.
A workmate bought a bunch of DVD's back from china recently. He gave two of them to me because the dialog and subtitles turned out to be both in Mandarin, which my wife speaks.
One of the movies is a really cheap action movie with lots of planes being blown up and nukes being defused. At one point the protagonist confronts a stream of "encrypted data", we know this because it is labelled as such with a superimposed message. The encrypted data scrolling up the screen on the movie is the 3d matrix screensaver, as available on ms windows, not the 2d one you get on linux.
This update scared the hell out of me. I couldn't tell if a 3rd party app had mysteriously been installed or if it was a trusted update from Mozilla
Yes, me to. I would like to see firefox notify the user with an update button, or similar tool, so that they can choose when to take the update. The fact that it is in the browser toolbar should make it less likely to be an exploit.
I installed the firefox binary from mozilla.org in/usr/local/firefox and I am going to go back now and change the ownership to root. I can always download the binary again to get updates.
Now, is there any chance I can legally buy a used driver's license?
I am pretty sure you can do that where I live (Victoria, Australia) but if a cop asks to see your license and you show them something other than the license the state Government issued to you then you would be in trouble.
The best part so far has been seeing how they've dealt with the challenge of materialising something as abstract as software licences into a picture for a lgo. What the hell is that thing?
The favicon looks a bit like Netscape.
Strange that despite their business name they only claim to resell Microsoft software licenses. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on a copy of VMS.
I wonder what their Licence Procurement Division does. It that like dumpster diving?
If anything, IT people spend too much time listening to security eggheads, and not enough to the social engineering specialists who know where true weaknesses lie.
Oh absolutely, I just wouldn't want to have Mitnick as a friend.
I see that you have a nice list of your friends web pages on your site which is great, including the link to Kevin Mitnick's site which is nice because he was in jail and everything but now it redirects to Kevin's new business which I don't have any problem with either, except that Mitnick has actualy spent time in jail for doing bad things to people and their systems and now seems to make money advising people how to steer clear of people like himself.
I'm not making any suggestions or anything, just pointing that out.
Slashdot Mirror
Or several, perhaps. The Europa reference would be Arthur Clarke. The Mars reference would be Kim Stanley Robinson.
Either way, neither of these things is science fact.
It means hundred of miles horizontally from pond to pond.
I can do that at home, but what about the internet cafe project I am working on? If I load it up with software for viewing media am I creating a legal liability for myself?
My sister lives in a share house. Her PC is used by everybody and is on a DSL line 24*7. After a year or so of that Windows98 was rooted to the point of total unusability. Both from stuff which came off the internet and from various goes at fixing it.
Now she runs ubuntu. The machine quietly runs away. Exactly the same from one day to the next. Its only used for running Firefox and OO, as far as I can see. This is the kind of environment which needs something a little bit more robust than usual.
As long as your mothers requirements are modest: email, web browsing, some office apps, it will go well. If she is like my sister in law who wants an iPod, and the ability to run games she gets from the library, then you will have some trouble.
I would love to see a robot which can detect both IUDs and mines. Truely versatile.
Mozilla makes a lot of money by setting the default search engine to google in firefox.
Which *nix partly removes by providing a competitor at the OS level.
IIRC it was up on /. a couple of months ago. Good on 'em.
The sysadmin at work did it for me on my workstation just by duplicating the first line of /etc/passwd and changing the username to my-root
I think CD was like that. Not so sure about DVD though.
I think you are off by an order of magnitude, but not two.
Bulk storage of data is so pervasive these days. Perhaps none of us really appreciate what a challenge this was.
I remember when I was 13 or so. My computer had a 300 baud modem to store data on casette. My uncle had a reel to reel audio recorder and I used to fantasize about getting 9600 baud out of it. That would have been some incredible storage system.
Yes but how did it get that way?
Meaning that Asian markets are different? You may be right about that.
A workmate bought a bunch of DVD's back from china recently. He gave two of them to me because the dialog and subtitles turned out to be both in Mandarin, which my wife speaks.
One of the movies is a really cheap action movie with lots of planes being blown up and nukes being defused. At one point the protagonist confronts a stream of "encrypted data", we know this because it is labelled as such with a superimposed message. The encrypted data scrolling up the screen on the movie is the 3d matrix screensaver, as available on ms windows, not the 2d one you get on linux.
Yes, me to. I would like to see firefox notify the user with an update button, or similar tool, so that they can choose when to take the update. The fact that it is in the browser toolbar should make it less likely to be an exploit.
I installed the firefox binary from mozilla.org in /usr/local/firefox and I am going to go back now and change the ownership to root. I can always download the binary again to get updates.
I am pretty sure you can do that where I live (Victoria, Australia) but if a cop asks to see your license and you show them something other than the license the state Government issued to you then you would be in trouble.
The favicon looks a bit like Netscape.
Strange that despite their business name they only claim to resell Microsoft software licenses. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on a copy of VMS.
I wonder what their Licence Procurement Division does. It that like dumpster diving?
But they do become obsolete faster than most other products. The Windows98 license I own is pretty worn out in one sense.
I wish we could fix "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Australia's equivelant of Guantanamo is Guantanamo
Social engineering is basically a con. You develop a relationship and proceed to exploit it.
Oh absolutely, I just wouldn't want to have Mitnick as a friend.
I see that you have a nice list of your friends web pages on your site which is great, including the link to Kevin Mitnick's site which is nice because he was in jail and everything but now it redirects to Kevin's new business which I don't have any problem with either, except that Mitnick has actualy spent time in jail for doing bad things to people and their systems and now seems to make money advising people how to steer clear of people like himself.
I'm not making any suggestions or anything, just pointing that out.