In the US, they don't sue you for downloading, but for distribution. I can download anything I want to off of, say, rapidshare - all day long, right in front of the entire RIAA and MPAA's combined legal squad, and they legally can't do a damned thing about it.
Now if I used a torrent or otherwise provably uploaded copyrighted material that I had no rights to, then they'd be able to sue.
Or, maybe the summary and TFA goofed their terminology.
Actually, this is no longer the case. Back in the 90's, this was the case, but there are a number of laws and court cases on the books in the US that have analyzed "downloading" and found it to be a part of distribution... and therefore copyright infringement for the recipient as well as the distributor. I believe "receiving illegally obtained goods across state lines" has even been used on occasion.
In Canada, it's a mixed bag... in some cases, it's infringement, in other cases it's not. Due to the fact that the music cartels lobbied for a tariff on recordable media and got it back in the 80's/90's, it is completely legal to download music owned by them. Other copyrighted works vary in their legality.
I'm sorry you feel that way. To many of us around the world, the US War on Public Healthcare looks an awful lot like the US War on Drugs. The information is only valuable because of how it can be (mis)used. Give everyone equal access to what the private information grants a select few, and the problem goes away. Of course, there *are* other problems created, but not of the "chop off your nose" variety.
Let me translate that: Locks on homes prevent people you don't want from coming in DRM prevents people from accessing the content
Only problem is... the content providers WANT people accessing the content. Locks on homes are like having a firewall, patched software and some sort of AV software on your computer... the house would work just well without the security add-ons, and so would your computer. The add-ons make it more secure.
With DRM, the entire idea is to prevent access.
Now, a real counter argument is that if people are grabbing pirated copies of the content, there is nothing to prove that the content is still secure and hasn't been monkeyed with by the pirates, to, say, add botnet software, a keylogger, or something else nefarious. Then again, some of the DRM software includes keylogger and/or botnet-like hooks that the Bad Guys can leverage, so it's probably a wash.
If your home security system only worked when you didn't have a cold, and only worked for some members of your household, or otherwise prevented people with the right to access the home from doing so in an accustomed manner, you'd find that security feature hobbled in some manner pretty quickly. Then you get the appearance of security without the benefit... just like with DRM.
If you want entry level with no upgrade path and a relatively short lifespan (2-4 years), Samsung's probably a good choice. Decent interface, compact, and half decent CCDs and lenses.
If you want to go to the next step up, the Canon superzooms are probably the best choice.
After you hit SLR, I'd personally recommend skipping the entry level, and going with the next level up Nikon -- you'll get superb interfaces, a nicely weighted body, a SOLID body that can take a beating and exposure to the weather, and an excellent upgrade path.
If you go the SLR route, make sure you get a few prime lenses (no zoom) -- I find that for quick shots on a decent DSLR, not having to fiddle with zoom until you hit photoshop is actually an advantage. You'll also want a decent zoom lens or two so you can get just the right boka in those artsy shots;)
In this case, it looks like someone in the company pressed the "release the lawyers" button, and when the feedback came back to the company from the EFF, other people of the "Ack! What did you do?!?!?" camp got involved, instructed the lawyers to kill the injunction, and crafted an apology.
Guys; the above, although funny, is exactly the business and marketing explanation for Apple products. Another example of this marketing a "lifestyle" is Harley Davidson Motorcycles. I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.
Saint Steven Jobs was the greatest salesmen and marketer that has ever existed. And I'd dare say, St. Jobs will be the best that will ever be.
Apple doesn't need logo'd apparrel. They'd prefer you to just buy one of their products and wear it as a talisman:) That way they don't have to make as many sizes and styles.
There are things in our society that it is fine to reference in text, which we oppose to referencing visually. For example, I'm sure a graphic representation of my family tree and how it formed would be considered mature viewing by most -- a lot of the details we find uncomfortable tend to be left out in the text.
I wish more Christians/Jews/Muslims understood this. Even after the conceptual hurdle that is belief in a higher authority, their God is a colossal dick. Who the fuck wants to hop on that bandwagon?
Well, look at it this way: if that God exists exactly as you perceive him to be portrayed, what happens to you if you're one of the people who down-plays his might/existence?
The fact that humans tend to be colossal dicks throughout history points to the fact that it can at least happen in realms of lower authority....
If you're wanting to believe in a higher authority because it means you don't have to accept personal responsibility for things -- as a crutch or escape from reality -- that kind of god makes no sense. It makes a LOT of sense if you're looking for something/one who could have created the world we live in.
Look at the Greek pantheon; ALL of those gods were portrayed as colossal dicks at some point, and some of them were almost completely defined by that phrase.
Could you give a definition of fiction that does not include the Bible?
No; but I also could not give a definition of fiction that does not include most history books.
Considering the Bible is an anthology containing personal letters, poetry, songs, moral stories, census data and theological treatises, among other things, referring to it as "a work of fiction" makes as much sense as referring to Wikipedia as "a work of fiction".
It could have had 2 of every animal, accounting for evolution since then. However, it didn't have 2 of every known plant, and from the account taken at face value, the "world" was able to re-grow all fauna within a year after the deluge.
Key point here: look up the word translated as "world" in most English translations of the Bible. It had vastly different meaning and connotations in Aramaic 4,000 years ago than it does in English today. Very few people had even thought as far as entertaining the thought of the atmosphere being a permeable barrier between us an the heavens. "World" would likely have referred to places and peoples known by the local inhabitants.
That said, it is definitely possible that all current "humans" can trace themselves back to the sole surviving group of some flood. It is also possible that such a flood wiped out all flora/fauna in the previous cradle of humanity. "Major flood" is right up there with "dragon" in the list of things that appear to be a global part of our history, even though nobody can point to scientific evidence for the existence of the subjects of the tales. There are lots of excellent academic papers taking about every stance you can think of on these subjects, so I'm not going to attempt to claim to be the slashdot expert.
Is there proof? No... just scattered accounts, one of which happens to have ended up in the Bible, retold through Jewish eyes.
I wouldn't consider that to be the lego diorama that got the book censored though... more likely it's the animal sacrifices, death-by-cross, slave caravans, the chopped up raped woman, golden tumors, genocidal battle scenes or something similar that would do that trick.
I have plenty of evidence on which to believe Christianity to be true
I don't think "evidence" means what you think it means.
Well, that's obvious:) And I probably don't think "evidence" means what either of you think it means. For that matter, I probably don't even think "scientific evidence" (something shown as evident based on provable knowledge) means exactly what you think it means.
Back to the original topic, the Bible is almost all content that, in either a historical work or a work of fiction would get the book an "adult content" sticker these days. I'd say the only reason it doesn't have one is due to freedom of religion laws.
Maybe it should have one... or maybe it's time our society realized that our social morality needs a re-set (it's OK to talk about things that are Bad Things To Do, even in the context in which the people doing them think they're good)
Hey... we could do a "kevin bacon" on Facebook, and see if everyone on earth is within six degrees of separation from Facebook. Personally, I know people who have facebook accounts, and I know people who don't have facebook accounts. I don't have one because I was out of.edu when it launched, and read the "privacy" agreement when it was first opened to the public. That agreement almost got to an acceptable place for me a few times... but those times happened to coincide with data leaks where data was available in opposition to the policy.
Nowadays, if you can agree to their terms, I think your data is likely to be handled exactly as they say it will be, apart from data requested by some government entity about you. I'm happy with limiting profiling to what I say on slashdot though:)
Do they honor Google's _nomap suffix for smartphones?
As an aside, I remember an article on here around a decade ago where the big thing was RFID tags, and how a mall could track shoppers by the unique combination of RFID tags passing by the scanner at any given time.
I guess cellphones make that other technology old hat these days. Haven't heard much about RFID on here lately.
Slashdot doesn't allow you to delete anything you post.
That's true. Perhaps in future it will have to add that capability for European users.
It's not thinking before you post, either, if by the age of 30 you aren't embarassed of at least one thing you did a decade earlier then you haven't had any sort of life.
...or you don't embarrass easily.
There's stuff on here I've written that I don't agree with, and stuff I've written that's no longer relevant, but I was taught young that you should expect no privacy over things you say in public. This means both thinking before you speak, and accepting that part of who you are in the world is the person you were yesterday.
Wishing you had done things differently is not the same thing as suppressing knowledge of what you did so that others will get a beneficially false impression of who you are. If that thing you did is the only data point to go on, then you aren't CURRENTLY living any sort of life.
Most people that I've talked to in Canada have absolutely no issues with Quebec (which is beside the point... the article and OP were talking about the French, not the Quebecois... and I can guarantee that Quebec is mostly not self-loathing).
Let's see... Albertans pay $4,000/yr into the equalization fund, and Quebec sucks out $1,200/capita. Sounds like a good deal; a lot of the fund gets to go to other parts of Canada like the east coast, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Isn't it great living in a Socialist country, where we help each other out?
Debt/Tax Rates: Quebec: Income over But not over Rate 0 $39,060 16% $39,060 $78,120 20%
Ontario: 5.05% on the first $37,774 of taxable income, + 9.15% on the next $37,776, + 11.16% on the amount over $75,550 $78,120 - 24%
British Columbia: 5.06% on the first $36,146 of taxable income, + 7.7% on the next $36,147, + 10.5% on the next $10,708, + 12.29% on the next $17,786, + 14.7% on the amount over $100,787
Quebec seems slightly more expensive, but not by much. Alberta is the exception to the tax rules in Canada, as most of the taxes are generated via the Oil industry. Alberta has decided to destroy a portion of the province for profit instead of extracting the money from working citizens. Note also the lax of provincial tax that all other provinces endure.
Alberta is an anomaly, as it has a flat-rate 10% income tax... this means that someone earning minimum wage in Alberta is paying 2x that of anyone else in the country except Quebec. However, further up the tax chain, Albertans are paying significantly less than anyone else.
Personally, I'd prefer to preserve bits of our country for our children than to wring all the profit we can out of the land and the people.
Anyway, what about the French? I feel like they've lost relevance in North America -- even Quebec isn't trying to emulate France anymore. People don't tend to hate those they consider irrelevant. They just dismiss them as not worth thinking about.
However, you do have a point... while computer theoretical models do exactly what they're told to do, as soon as you introduce a physical implementation, the computer will do whatever its environment tells it to do -- this is not always the same thing as what the computer operator tells it to do.
Similarly, the ocean does exactly as it is told to do... of course, this interaction is so complex, that a mere human being would be unable to untangle all of the instructions given to the ocean by various external influences.
Also, I'd argue that it is highly possible for a multiorganism as large as an ocean to have sentience... maybe it's just hiding this fact from us mere humans because it's smart enough to know that's a good move... maybe it's even smarter than that, and doesn't think us lower lifeforms have anything more to contribute than we would consider carrying on a conversation or discussing ethics with a top quark.
There is also the theory that 7" is a better size than 9.5" for this market. Beyond a certain size bigger is certainly better, but I dont think this market is in that zone. People want something that they can hold comfortably in one hand for a long period of time.
Interesting theory, but the market has shown that people want iPads. Would even more people want them with a 7" screen? Who knows?
I presume you're talking about the commenters in this thread, not the guy who generated the music... the 20th century brought us randomness, mathematical music, intentionally bad sounding music (I'm sure this is as old as homo sapiens), but not, AFAIK, pattern-free music. As presented in the talk (and this thread), they are NOT the same thing.
I was looking at the wikipedia page for web search engine and looking at the timeline along the right; i didnt recognize a single one on there after 1999.
We can start measuring internet time in Before Google and After Google i think.
That must be down to MS's bad marketing, if you didn't recognize Bing....
Added to this, VMs on the same hardware are dependent on the security of the virtualization system -- you move from having multiple points of failure on separate hardware to a single point of failure. All it takes is one attack on the VM itself, and ALL your guests are compromised. Plus, if one guest is hit with denial of service, the entire host is likely to go down.
The benefit of VMs is that since the hardware is virtualized, you can move the actual images to wherever makes the most sense, whenever you want. This homogeneous virtual architecture means one set of architecture to defend, but also means only one set of architecture for attackers to target.
One company I interviewed with gave me the questions ahead of time and got me to submit my answers. They then grilled me on my answers when I came in, not the questions.
To me, this is a much better way of doing things, as you can use whatever means you want to answer the questions, but you should be able to understand your answers without reference material and communicate the ideas to others -- skills that make a great team player.
Tests can be a good measurement of quality when the test is material that can be studied for. In school you have a test at the end of a class. For certifications, tests are meant to measure knowledge gained during training. In graduate school, qualifying exams are done to second year students who have time to prepare and hone their skills.
Testing somebody from a cold start, on subjects they have no practical way to prepare for seems like a good way to hire a trivia expert, but the productivity of an employee should be evaluated by his resume and portfolio.
With your response, you assume the tests are of the memorization and regurgitation type. Most "cold start" tests (including the ones I did in school) are problem-solving tests, where you are generally provided with all the tools needed to solve the problem except for industry-standard knowledge and your own problem solving skills.
My favorite one was presented to me way back in highschool, where if you read through the exam before answering the questions, the material provided in the questions for the exam gave you everything you needed to answer the other questions. My second favorite was a timed test that, at the beginning said to read through the entire test before answering any questions, and at the end stated that any answer not left blank would be marked incorrect. The questions were too hard and too numerous for anyone to get to the end by working through from the beginning.
Slashdot Mirror
In the US, they don't sue you for downloading, but for distribution. I can download anything I want to off of, say, rapidshare - all day long, right in front of the entire RIAA and MPAA's combined legal squad, and they legally can't do a damned thing about it.
Now if I used a torrent or otherwise provably uploaded copyrighted material that I had no rights to, then they'd be able to sue.
Or, maybe the summary and TFA goofed their terminology.
Actually, this is no longer the case. Back in the 90's, this was the case, but there are a number of laws and court cases on the books in the US that have analyzed "downloading" and found it to be a part of distribution... and therefore copyright infringement for the recipient as well as the distributor. I believe "receiving illegally obtained goods across state lines" has even been used on occasion.
In Canada, it's a mixed bag... in some cases, it's infringement, in other cases it's not. Due to the fact that the music cartels lobbied for a tariff on recordable media and got it back in the 80's/90's, it is completely legal to download music owned by them. Other copyrighted works vary in their legality.
I'm sorry you feel that way. To many of us around the world, the US War on Public Healthcare looks an awful lot like the US War on Drugs. The information is only valuable because of how it can be (mis)used. Give everyone equal access to what the private information grants a select few, and the problem goes away. Of course, there *are* other problems created, but not of the "chop off your nose" variety.
Let me translate that:
Locks on homes prevent people you don't want from coming in
DRM prevents people from accessing the content
Only problem is... the content providers WANT people accessing the content. Locks on homes are like having a firewall, patched software and some sort of AV software on your computer... the house would work just well without the security add-ons, and so would your computer. The add-ons make it more secure.
With DRM, the entire idea is to prevent access.
Now, a real counter argument is that if people are grabbing pirated copies of the content, there is nothing to prove that the content is still secure and hasn't been monkeyed with by the pirates, to, say, add botnet software, a keylogger, or something else nefarious.
Then again, some of the DRM software includes keylogger and/or botnet-like hooks that the Bad Guys can leverage, so it's probably a wash.
If your home security system only worked when you didn't have a cold, and only worked for some members of your household, or otherwise prevented people with the right to access the home from doing so in an accustomed manner, you'd find that security feature hobbled in some manner pretty quickly. Then you get the appearance of security without the benefit... just like with DRM.
But the whole idea here isn't to store on disk is it? I thought it was to stream to devices that weren't invited to the DRM party.
If you want entry level with no upgrade path and a relatively short lifespan (2-4 years), Samsung's probably a good choice. Decent interface, compact, and half decent CCDs and lenses.
If you want to go to the next step up, the Canon superzooms are probably the best choice.
After you hit SLR, I'd personally recommend skipping the entry level, and going with the next level up Nikon -- you'll get superb interfaces, a nicely weighted body, a SOLID body that can take a beating and exposure to the weather, and an excellent upgrade path.
If you go the SLR route, make sure you get a few prime lenses (no zoom) -- I find that for quick shots on a decent DSLR, not having to fiddle with zoom until you hit photoshop is actually an advantage. You'll also want a decent zoom lens or two so you can get just the right boka in those artsy shots ;)
In this case, it looks like someone in the company pressed the "release the lawyers" button, and when the feedback came back to the company from the EFF, other people of the "Ack! What did you do?!?!?" camp got involved, instructed the lawyers to kill the injunction, and crafted an apology.
Guys; the above, although funny, is exactly the business and marketing explanation for Apple products. Another example of this marketing a "lifestyle" is Harley Davidson Motorcycles. I'm just surprised Apple hasn't gotten into logo'd apparel yet.
Saint Steven Jobs was the greatest salesmen and marketer that has ever existed. And I'd dare say, St. Jobs will be the best that will ever be.
Apple doesn't need logo'd apparrel. They'd prefer you to just buy one of their products and wear it as a talisman :) That way they don't have to make as many sizes and styles.
There are things in our society that it is fine to reference in text, which we oppose to referencing visually. For example, I'm sure a graphic representation of my family tree and how it formed would be considered mature viewing by most -- a lot of the details we find uncomfortable tend to be left out in the text.
I wish more Christians/Jews/Muslims understood this. Even after the conceptual hurdle that is belief in a higher authority, their God is a colossal dick. Who the fuck wants to hop on that bandwagon?
Well, look at it this way: if that God exists exactly as you perceive him to be portrayed, what happens to you if you're one of the people who down-plays his might/existence?
The fact that humans tend to be colossal dicks throughout history points to the fact that it can at least happen in realms of lower authority....
If you're wanting to believe in a higher authority because it means you don't have to accept personal responsibility for things -- as a crutch or escape from reality -- that kind of god makes no sense. It makes a LOT of sense if you're looking for something/one who could have created the world we live in.
Look at the Greek pantheon; ALL of those gods were portrayed as colossal dicks at some point, and some of them were almost completely defined by that phrase.
Could you give a definition of fiction that does not include the Bible?
No; but I also could not give a definition of fiction that does not include most history books.
Considering the Bible is an anthology containing personal letters, poetry, songs, moral stories, census data and theological treatises, among other things, referring to it as "a work of fiction" makes as much sense as referring to Wikipedia as "a work of fiction".
It could have had 2 of every animal, accounting for evolution since then. However, it didn't have 2 of every known plant, and from the account taken at face value, the "world" was able to re-grow all fauna within a year after the deluge.
Key point here: look up the word translated as "world" in most English translations of the Bible. It had vastly different meaning and connotations in Aramaic 4,000 years ago than it does in English today. Very few people had even thought as far as entertaining the thought of the atmosphere being a permeable barrier between us an the heavens. "World" would likely have referred to places and peoples known by the local inhabitants.
That said, it is definitely possible that all current "humans" can trace themselves back to the sole surviving group of some flood. It is also possible that such a flood wiped out all flora/fauna in the previous cradle of humanity. "Major flood" is right up there with "dragon" in the list of things that appear to be a global part of our history, even though nobody can point to scientific evidence for the existence of the subjects of the tales. There are lots of excellent academic papers taking about every stance you can think of on these subjects, so I'm not going to attempt to claim to be the slashdot expert.
Is there proof? No... just scattered accounts, one of which happens to have ended up in the Bible, retold through Jewish eyes.
I wouldn't consider that to be the lego diorama that got the book censored though... more likely it's the animal sacrifices, death-by-cross, slave caravans, the chopped up raped woman, golden tumors, genocidal battle scenes or something similar that would do that trick.
I don't think "evidence" means what you think it means.
Well, that's obvious :) And I probably don't think "evidence" means what either of you think it means. For that matter, I probably don't even think "scientific evidence" (something shown as evident based on provable knowledge) means exactly what you think it means.
Back to the original topic, the Bible is almost all content that, in either a historical work or a work of fiction would get the book an "adult content" sticker these days. I'd say the only reason it doesn't have one is due to freedom of religion laws.
Maybe it should have one... or maybe it's time our society realized that our social morality needs a re-set (it's OK to talk about things that are Bad Things To Do, even in the context in which the people doing them think they're good)
Hey... we could do a "kevin bacon" on Facebook, and see if everyone on earth is within six degrees of separation from Facebook. Personally, I know people who have facebook accounts, and I know people who don't have facebook accounts. I don't have one because I was out of .edu when it launched, and read the "privacy" agreement when it was first opened to the public. That agreement almost got to an acceptable place for me a few times... but those times happened to coincide with data leaks where data was available in opposition to the policy.
Nowadays, if you can agree to their terms, I think your data is likely to be handled exactly as they say it will be, apart from data requested by some government entity about you. I'm happy with limiting profiling to what I say on slashdot though :)
Do they honor Google's _nomap suffix for smartphones?
As an aside, I remember an article on here around a decade ago where the big thing was RFID tags, and how a mall could track shoppers by the unique combination of RFID tags passing by the scanner at any given time.
I guess cellphones make that other technology old hat these days. Haven't heard much about RFID on here lately.
That's true. Perhaps in future it will have to add that capability for European users.
It's not thinking before you post, either, if by the age of 30 you aren't embarassed of at least one thing you did a decade earlier then you haven't had any sort of life.
...or you don't embarrass easily.
There's stuff on here I've written that I don't agree with, and stuff I've written that's no longer relevant, but I was taught young that you should expect no privacy over things you say in public. This means both thinking before you speak, and accepting that part of who you are in the world is the person you were yesterday.
Wishing you had done things differently is not the same thing as suppressing knowledge of what you did so that others will get a beneficially false impression of who you are. If that thing you did is the only data point to go on, then you aren't CURRENTLY living any sort of life.
"deleting" also doesn't tend to refer to the backups... only the on-line copy.
???
Most people that I've talked to in Canada have absolutely no issues with Quebec (which is beside the point... the article and OP were talking about the French, not the Quebecois... and I can guarantee that Quebec is mostly not self-loathing).
Let's see... Albertans pay $4,000/yr into the equalization fund, and Quebec sucks out $1,200/capita. Sounds like a good deal; a lot of the fund gets to go to other parts of Canada like the east coast, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Isn't it great living in a Socialist country, where we help each other out?
Debt/Tax Rates:
Quebec:
Income over But not over Rate
0 $39,060 16%
$39,060 $78,120 20%
Ontario:
5.05% on the first $37,774 of taxable income, +
9.15% on the next $37,776, +
11.16% on the amount over $75,550
$78,120 - 24%
British Columbia:
5.06% on the first $36,146 of taxable income, +
7.7% on the next $36,147, +
10.5% on the next $10,708, +
12.29% on the next $17,786, +
14.7% on the amount over $100,787
Quebec seems slightly more expensive, but not by much. Alberta is the exception to the tax rules in Canada, as most of the taxes are generated via the Oil industry. Alberta has decided to destroy a portion of the province for profit instead of extracting the money from working citizens. Note also the lax of provincial tax that all other provinces endure.
Alberta is an anomaly, as it has a flat-rate 10% income tax... this means that someone earning minimum wage in Alberta is paying 2x that of anyone else in the country except Quebec. However, further up the tax chain, Albertans are paying significantly less than anyone else.
Personally, I'd prefer to preserve bits of our country for our children than to wring all the profit we can out of the land and the people.
Anyway, what about the French? I feel like they've lost relevance in North America -- even Quebec isn't trying to emulate France anymore. People don't tend to hate those they consider irrelevant. They just dismiss them as not worth thinking about.
This method has a few added security benefits too :)
Are you sure about those two statements?
However, you do have a point... while computer theoretical models do exactly what they're told to do, as soon as you introduce a physical implementation, the computer will do whatever its environment tells it to do -- this is not always the same thing as what the computer operator tells it to do.
Similarly, the ocean does exactly as it is told to do... of course, this interaction is so complex, that a mere human being would be unable to untangle all of the instructions given to the ocean by various external influences.
Also, I'd argue that it is highly possible for a multiorganism as large as an ocean to have sentience... maybe it's just hiding this fact from us mere humans because it's smart enough to know that's a good move... maybe it's even smarter than that, and doesn't think us lower lifeforms have anything more to contribute than we would consider carrying on a conversation or discussing ethics with a top quark.
There is also the theory that 7" is a better size than 9.5" for this market. Beyond a certain size bigger is certainly better, but I dont think this market is in that zone. People want something that they can hold comfortably in one hand for a long period of time.
Interesting theory, but the market has shown that people want iPads. Would even more people want them with a 7" screen? Who knows?
I presume you're talking about the commenters in this thread, not the guy who generated the music... the 20th century brought us randomness, mathematical music, intentionally bad sounding music (I'm sure this is as old as homo sapiens), but not, AFAIK, pattern-free music. As presented in the talk (and this thread), they are NOT the same thing.
I was looking at the wikipedia page for web search engine and looking at the timeline along the right; i didnt recognize a single one on there after 1999.
We can start measuring internet time in Before Google and After Google i think.
That must be down to MS's bad marketing, if you didn't recognize Bing....
Added to this, VMs on the same hardware are dependent on the security of the virtualization system -- you move from having multiple points of failure on separate hardware to a single point of failure. All it takes is one attack on the VM itself, and ALL your guests are compromised. Plus, if one guest is hit with denial of service, the entire host is likely to go down.
The benefit of VMs is that since the hardware is virtualized, you can move the actual images to wherever makes the most sense, whenever you want. This homogeneous virtual architecture means one set of architecture to defend, but also means only one set of architecture for attackers to target.
One company I interviewed with gave me the questions ahead of time and got me to submit my answers. They then grilled me on my answers when I came in, not the questions.
To me, this is a much better way of doing things, as you can use whatever means you want to answer the questions, but you should be able to understand your answers without reference material and communicate the ideas to others -- skills that make a great team player.
Tests can be a good measurement of quality when the test is material that can be studied for. In school you have a test at the end of a class. For certifications, tests are meant to measure knowledge gained during training. In graduate school, qualifying exams are done to second year students who have time to prepare and hone their skills.
Testing somebody from a cold start, on subjects they have no practical way to prepare for seems like a good way to hire a trivia expert, but the productivity of an employee should be evaluated by his resume and portfolio.
With your response, you assume the tests are of the memorization and regurgitation type. Most "cold start" tests (including the ones I did in school) are problem-solving tests, where you are generally provided with all the tools needed to solve the problem except for industry-standard knowledge and your own problem solving skills.
My favorite one was presented to me way back in highschool, where if you read through the exam before answering the questions, the material provided in the questions for the exam gave you everything you needed to answer the other questions. My second favorite was a timed test that, at the beginning said to read through the entire test before answering any questions, and at the end stated that any answer not left blank would be marked incorrect. The questions were too hard and too numerous for anyone to get to the end by working through from the beginning.