If the problem is with silver spoon children, then why don't you start preaching for a HUGE transfer tax? It would include inheritance and any transfer of money more than $5k-$10k a year. I think inheritance tax (death tax) is the most moral of taxes. You can tax someone who isn't alive, or tax someone's labor (income), or tax someone for using something (use/sales tax), or tax someone's assets (property), or tax someone's gains on assets (capital gains), or tax someone's profit (dividend). Put 95% on dead people.
Enough with the income tax complications.
Wouldn't quite work since it would severely hurt the estates of elderly that are dispersing inheritance to the decease's families. You would be surprised at how many non-wealthy people are still able to leave tens of thousands to their children.
How is Hawaii expensive? It IS a US state after all. And Obama used to live there. So it's not a terrible destination.
Compared to the continental US, Hawaii is quite expensive.
But you also have to consider how much it costs to run Air Force One there versus nearly anywhere else in the Continental U.S, which makes it more expensive yet.
And any trip outside the US and its territories requires a lot of investigative work by the Secret Service to clear the personnel at hotels, etc. in order to ensure a safe trip - more so than trips within the US and its territories (which still requires checks, but more information is already available).
Deflation has tangible negative effects on folks that are not rich -- when you borrow some money, the deflationary effect essentially means that you might never be able to pay back the loan, because the value of the gold in real terms that you have to pay back is increasing, on top of the actual interest charges; you can't know the economic growth in advance....
Deflation also keeps inflation and economies in check. Like Inflation there are both good and bad aspects to Deflation. Trying to avoid deflation is just arrogant. It is part of the natural cycle of economies and one that needs to happen from time to time - if that cycle is not allowed to happen then when it does it'll be that much greater.
Also, unless we actually move to a fixed currency, in 30 years a candy bar will cost around $35 due do inflation, but maybe a bit less as technology might find better ways of making candy bars, or maybe a bit more if regulations make it more burdensome to make them.
Not likely. Since the 1950's we've gone from a Candy Bar costing 5-10 cents to now at least $1, usually for something slightly smaller in size at that.
So, in another 50-60 years time frame, going from $1 to $10 is very likely and even expected under current policies.
The question is - is that wise? I'd say no. I think a candy bar should still be around 5-10 cents.
Yes, I'd like to see a deflation of the dollar back to 1950 levels; it would actually strengthen the economy significantly. But that won't happen as long as we have the Federal Reserve and it remains tasked to keep inflation positive and under control. There are good reasons to have the Federal Reserve around, but we need to stop being so arrogant as to try to keep deflation from ever happening - eventually it'll catch up to us.
Despite what Keysian economists tell you, Deflation can be and is a good thing.
Trying to avoid it at all costs, one of the purposes of the Federal Reserve, is, however, a bad thing that will eventually come around to bit in a very very big way.
Microsoft threatened vendors when they wanted to put other browsers on their OEM builds and that's what made it illegal.
Do you have a citation for this? I've never heard this particular statement before. Furthermore, if the problem was that they threatened vendors, shouldn't that have been what the lawsuit was about, and not about bundling the browser?
It seems silly to me that the argument went like: "You are threatening vendors and forcing them to not put other browsers on OEM builds. Therefore, we require that you remove your own browser, even though that's not the problem, that's not what was illegal, and there's nothing wrong with you having it there."
It wasn't simply IE. It was repeated things about many MS products and MS forcing OEM vendors to do things that would promote MS at the expense of competitors. IE is just one example - threatening vendors if they included Netscape on the install, for example. They did similar things with Office and other products (MSN).
And if you're really interested (and have the time), take a look at Groklaw's Comes Exhibits. There's lots of juicy things in there about what Microsoft did and why, and how much they knew it would hurt competitors (like Netscape, Novell, WordPerfect, etc.) in numerous areas (OS, Web Browsers, Office Productivity).
As a software engineer you're likely much more frequently found at your desk than the average sales rep.
So for you, a land line is just the best tool for the job. For an always-on-the-move sales rep, a mobile phone is.
Most people I have worked with - both in software and out - are typically found at their desk. Sales people are the biggest exception to that.
However, unless the company is paying for the mobile they need to provide a landline.
Where I work now, we have a landlines to every desk from our PBX. Anyone can be gotten to easily, and everyone has their own extension and voicemail.
In contrast, the head office in Italy - you only get a desk phone if you are so far up the chain - typically management; and it is hard to get ahold of anyone there as a result since you basically have to call the building secretary, ask for them, then hope that someone can find them and give them a wireless desk phone - in a company of (at one point) over 200 people.
So if the company wants to give me a permenant cell phone and pay for it themselves, then find - I'll take that over the desk phone; but it better have an easy way to communicate with everyone else in the company too so I don't have to go around collecting everyone's full phone numbers.
It's just too expensive to do work for the company on my own personal phones - cell or otherwise.
His point isn't actually invalid, as it applies to Cable TV as well. If you want all of the new movies you have to pick up HBO, Stars, and what ever else there is, each at an additional charge per month. $271 a year (your math for netflix+hulu+amazon) is kind of expensive, and really a joke to do something like that because you would be buying the extras just for the sake of the couple exclusives they have.
How is that expensive compared to a Cable TV bill - which could be as much as $200/month without getting all HBO and Stars.
Seriously, if you dropped your Cable TV subscription and just went with Netflix+Hulu+Amazon, then you would have it paid off inside of 3 months. Even if you only got basic cable - which can run anywhere from $20/month to $60/month, you'd still save money or at worse break even over the course of a year.
Or you do like me and only have Netflix and no Cable TV - $64/year. Well...we've got Amazon too (technically)...and we're evaluating that on whether we save shipping over the holidays/birthdays/etc, not against TV usage.
....what would happen if the magnetic direction never changed like they are expecting? Say they go another 1million AUs and it's still reading the same...
Not saying that will happen. Just saying we really don't know what to expect or when to expect it.
Honestly, any programmer worth $120k could make something more efficient just using threads, if they thought about it. This will get you 20% of the efficiency gains without thinking of it.
THIS IS WHAT WINDOWS PROGRAMMERS ACTUALLY BELIEVE.
Unfortunately for them Windows eats that 20%, thus negating any gains they may make in their actual program.
The double counting is fine as long as they're double counting consistently. What's important is that the metric by which Microsoft is counting licenses is increasing exponentially from version to version. This did not happen with Vista. But it did happen with Windows 7, and by my estimation it's happening with Windows 8 as well.
Only if you like misleading data. It could be a SEC violation for misleading investors, etc. Only fortunate part for MS is that their biggest investors - Gates, Ballmer, Elop, etc - are all MS employees who know about it and thus won't sue over it.
Licenses Sold is the same statistic that Microsoft reported during the lifetime of Windows 7, thus it's directly comparable. There were people in 2009 saying the same thing as you, but it turns out that Licenses sold is highly correlated with devices sold by OEMs. Seems like there are some smart people working at Dell, HP, etc. who figure out how much demand there is and buy the appropriate number of components (including OS licenses) so they're not left over with useless inventory (basic supply and demand economics).
Not necessarily. That may have been true through WinXP, but starting with Vista there was a lot of double-counting (or triple-counting) of licenses going on.
For instance, many low-end laptops are sold with the "Starter Edition", which is cheap for OEMs but almost useless for customers. So customers have to go buy at least another license to upgrade to another version of Windows - e.g. Home Premium; a process which may repeat itself for the same computer. While MS may have sold 2 or more licenses, they have not received 2 or more customers or devices - only one.
Oh, and they don't break down the numbers between licenses sold and how many were upgrades to an existing license (e.g. Win7 Starter->Win 7 Home Premium).
Win8 has the same issues, though more limited than Win7 or Vista since there are not so many editions.
SELinux isnt something that was built in "from the ground up"; it was tacked on by the NSA after the fact, and is absent from most consumer Linux distros. I will grant both that I dont know a whole lot about it (other than the high level "heres what it does") and also that its probably more granular than stock Windows, but thats not terribly relevant-- the topic was "ways stock Linux is more secure than stock Windows", and SELinux is very much NOT "stock".
True, SELinux wasn't in at the start, but users, groups, and permissions were in every Unix from the start.
But it also probably came from the fact that in Windows - even the Windows NT line - security was an after thought,
Lets be real here: Security was an afterthought everywhere. Windows' history may be particularly bad here, but noone (other than some of those crazier BSD guys) can really claim to have security "from the ground up". Im not clear why you think security was an afterthought in the NT line, either-- XP had everyone admin by default, but this was mostly because 90% of software vendors are incompetent at running without admin privileges, something that continues to persist even into Win7 days. You certainly could run as a standard user in XP and get a great deal of protection, however.
For Windows, look at the Win16 and Win32 APIs - supported by even the earliest versions of the WinNT lines. These APIs are by design insecure, do not utilize ACLs or permissions, etc. Yet they are the foundation of the Windows API until Win8 with the WinRT API - the first major rewrite of the official Windows API as it bypasses even Win32 (AFAIK).
Comparatively, Unix/Linux while they dealt with more generic APIs, many were subject to the permissions system from the get go. Look at X Windows and you'll see the same thing - unlike in Windows where any application can subvert or access another application's User interface elements by design.
That said, Linux/Unix also have the ability to use ACLs. But most don't as they are inferior to other technogies that are available. So they only get used when integrating with Windows sytems.
I understand that you can get a bit more granular with extended ACLs, but that theyre not always supported and still not quite as granular as NTFS ACLs. I wasnt aware that there were other technologies available for that sort of thing, what were you referring to (sincerely curious)?
You have a number of options - from ACLs (which can be embedded into ext2/3/4) to SELinux to AppArmor to a number of other things if you want to get the more advanced permission functionality.
MS only focuses on user-experience in so much as it drives a business purchase decision; not because it makes a better user-experience.
I mean, they kind of ARE in the software biz to make money, so yes their focus is on generating sales most efficiently. But I worded it as I did because I cant for the life of me figure out how Windows8 drives business purchasing decisions-- Microsoft does seem to care about home user experience to try to chase down this tablet market.
MS is trying to drive businesses to buy their tablets and phones. It hasn't been working very well, so they are pushing Win8 to achieve that; but it's not likely going to work very well either since most businesses (especially the large businesses that are the core of MS's market) that care about tablets and phones have already integrated iOS support for iPad/iPhone.
If you're too stupid to get that there can still be SIGNAL of anthropegenic global warming in the NOISE of random CLIMATE VARIATION, you don't belong on slashdot. Go argue on a reality TV show fan site or something. J@sus!
Yes, there could be a signal in all that noise. The question is, is there one?
The GW folks adamently claim every little thing is.
The anti-GW folks range from those who adamently claim there isn't, to those that merely point out the issues in what the GW folks are claiming to start with.
Me? I'm more of a real skeptic on the issue. While I don't think there is, I'd be happy to be proven wrong - I just don't see any real evidence of it in all the noise, and find much of the claimed data to be insufficient (e.g. not enough), inadequate (e.g. not relevent enough), or improperly interpreted (e.g. extrapolating in appropriately). In the mean time, I'll be happy to reduce, re-use, and recycle - thereby mitigating the issue any way; not because I believe the GW folks, but because I think it is better stewardship of the resources we have.
Windows however does not have privileged separation from the ground up
What do you suppose UAC is? And what do you mean "from the ground up"-- NT "from the ground up" has notions of users and different privilege levels that possibly eclipses the Unix world in scope and granularity.
You obviously do not understand the differences between Windows+ACLs and Linux+SELinux. SELinux is far more granular than anything available in the Windows world.
Why do you think Chrome has robust sandboxing on Windows, but not on other platforms? As I recall, the reason the Chrome team gave was that, quite simply, Windows had better supported mechanisms for stripping privileges from processes (I believe they mentioned there was a way to do the sandboxing, but it used a little-used method that was not recommended on Linux).
Haven't read up on Chrome in that respect. Windows does have abilities for programs to restrict or enhance their priviledges at run-time; not something common in the Unix world to do. But it also probably came from the fact that in Windows - even the Windows NT line - security was an after thought, so it had to be added to keep compatibilty in place and allow developers to more easily transition to new security models within Windows.
Im not a Linux guru; Ill admit that. But Im not aware of a bog-standard Linux or Mac install having the ability to set permissions and privileges on specific processes completely aside from the context that launched them; or being able to set permissions on specific entries in a particular plist file (the equivalent of per-key permissions in the windows registry). As I recall, Windows also has more robust ASLR-- or at least did for many years-- than Linux or Mac, earlier support for DEP, and more granular ACLs on its default filesystem.
ACLs enable Windows to do what in Linux is Groups. They are more robust in that they don't have to necessarily mean a group and can be applied a little differently.
That said, Linux/Unix also have the ability to use ACLs. But most don't as they are inferior to other technogies that are available. So they only get used when integrating with Windows sytems.
I really dont want to get into a "this OS is better than that" argument, because different philosophies went into each, and each has its strength. OSX focuses heavily on user experience. Linux focuses heavily on modularity, flexibility, and extreme hackability. Windows tends to focus on business and end-user experience,
More like:
Apple/Mac focuses on user-experience
Linux focuses on freedom, modularity, developer capability
Microsoft/Windows focuses on business needs
MS only focuses on user-experience in so much as it drives a business purchase decision; not because it makes a better user-experience.
And the FOSS world is coming around on the user-experience area - especially KDE; but it takes time and resources, which are typically lacking.
Seriously, what is so difficult about having a multi-user phone OS when Linux or Darwin is running the underpinnings?
It's a matter of how Android uses Linux.
Android makes very extensive use of Users and Groups for the normal permissions protection. However, instead of using a user/group like you do on your Linux server or desktop, they give one to each individual application (user) or set of applications (group). So only applications by the same developer that the developer has marked as being able to be part of the same group can access the stuff by a given group; and only applications running as the same user - typically the various components of the Android app (e.g. Activity, Content Provider, etc.) - can see each other/talk to each other.
So unless you create some kind of super-group/super-user and the existing users+groups are subsets of that, it would be hard to do permissions how Android does them and have multiple people with different user identities on the same device without using a hypervisor to switch between users.
Affirmative Action was valid at one point to level the playing field. It's not longer required. It also has nothing to do with "Paying back more than you owe", and those calling for its removal have no reason other than to truly level the playing field. Those calling for it to stay have more reason to keep it for failure from their own incompetence.
Christian universities can kick you out for spewing progressive nonsense.
However, those Christian universities typically don't - they usually make it a point of discussion instead bringing people in from both sides of the issue.
But why're you singling out porn? If you're talking about 'also malware', I'd put pirate sites above that - more dangerous, and actually illegal instead of just 'immoral'.
Probably a public relations issue.
I went to a private college that had a similar policy, but only for the PR with alumni to keep the funding coming in. They had a policy of "Responsible Freedom", only instead of enforcing their network access agreement, they put a K12 filter (N2H2's Bess Filter) on all computers when there were only a handful of students that had a problem, and those students actually used lab computers at times when no one else was there. The network access in ones own dorm room had an ISP-like agreement in place; so they could easily disconnect you from the network if you violated it.
The P2P traffic did eat their bandwidth enough to put a load balancer in to favor certain kinds of traffic - like outgoing video feeds during January for the presentations made during the month, again namely for alumni. But the network did have issues and their pipe was limited - they were in a ring network and eating more bandwidth than they were purchasing (a side-effect of the network design by the ISP allowed that - one reason I prefer Cable Internet instead of DSL).
The nVidia driver uses a special wrapper module around their binary blob to escape the GPL issue on their binary blob.
There's nothing special about the wrapper, besides it being GPL licensed.
The real reason why the nVidia binary blob isn't a derivative work of the Linux kernel is because it was originally developed for a different OS (Windows).
The wrapper is just an adapter to make the blob work with the Linux kernel.
Not quite. They do strip out the interface for the Windows NT Kernel; and add a new interface for the supported Linux Kernels. It's not GPL because nVidia wrote it and the wrapper and they can license the wrapper such that it allows the binary blob to work without violating the overall GPL license of the Linux Kernel. That and Linus has said he doesn't care - he's not going to force driver writers to make their drivers 100% GPL.
Then next time you buy something, make sure it's 5 GHz capable.:-D I don't know your local shopping situation, but all the "tech" stores around here (Staples, Best Buy, etc...) have at least a couple models of dual-band USB 2.0 adapters in the $40 range.
If you can find a USB 2.0 Dual-Band Wifi 802.11g/n device that uses a minimum amount of space sticking out, then I'd love to hear it. The one I got sticks out may be 10 mm from the computer - 90% of it is the USB connection; and it's the only one I could find that met my requirements. (I have a 2 year old at home, so I don't want a USB device sticking out that could be easily broken if the laptop were to be knocked over for some reason.)
Most of the Dual-band devices I found were large, had cables, etc - e.g. nothing small and easily portable, but easily attachable to a desktop.
My ideal situation would have been to find a dual-band mini-PCI card to replace the one I have; however, that was not possible - all the 802.11n internal cards are mini-PCIe as far as laptops go. Even a CardBus/PCMCIA card would have been a good option, but again they don't make them anymore, in favor of USB.
So I got what I got not for lack of trying to find a 5GHz dual-band device, but simply because what is out there doesn't meet my needs or work with my laptop (which is running Linux).
I'm not an expert on the nvidia case itself, but I do know a bit about some of the other "blob" drivers. In those cases, the real drivers (the smarts) are firmware that is uploaded onto a separate core (sometimes on the same die as the CPU(s), but sometimes off-die) that does not run linux. And therefore is not governed by the kernel's GPL, any more than a bitmap image pulled off the boot partition and flashed up on screen at boot time would be. That's payload, that's not control, it's input and output for the kernel, it's not part of the kernel. The actual linux kernel module is usually just a firmware uploading wrapper, some initial configuration of io parameters (dma areas, buses, clocks, etc.) and after that some simple shims.
nVidia doesn't do that. They may be including some firmware to upload the card, but it's not that simple. While I don't know everything they do, I do know they:
1. Have the same binary blob for all their supported platforms - x86/x86-64, though the 64-bit and 32-bit versions probably differ.
2. The driver enables the same functionality on all supported platforms.
3. It does more than a simple firmware upload.
If it was merely a firmward upload, then the open source guys would be extracting the firmware from the drivers (like they do for many others) to use themselves. But it's not. They're using functionality on the card that is driven by the driver, and just wrapping it sufficiently for each OS in the actual OS driver. It's neat that they were able to abstract their drivers like that - though it would be neater if they actually open sourced the drivers 100%.
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Hate to tell you this, but Obama isn't exactly a 99%er either.
His income as POTUS is chump change compared to the rest of his income (speaking, books, etc.), which he has not curtailed much since becoming POTUS.
Personally I think we need to ask for his POTUS income back due to his lack of performance on the job, not to mention the various other issues.
If the problem is with silver spoon children, then why don't you start preaching for a HUGE transfer tax? It would include inheritance and any transfer of money more than $5k-$10k a year. I think inheritance tax (death tax) is the most moral of taxes. You can tax someone who isn't alive, or tax someone's labor (income), or tax someone for using something (use/sales tax), or tax someone's assets (property), or tax someone's gains on assets (capital gains), or tax someone's profit (dividend). Put 95% on dead people.
Enough with the income tax complications.
Wouldn't quite work since it would severely hurt the estates of elderly that are dispersing inheritance to the decease's families. You would be surprised at how many non-wealthy people are still able to leave tens of thousands to their children.
How is Hawaii expensive? It IS a US state after all. And Obama used to live there. So it's not a terrible destination.
Compared to the continental US, Hawaii is quite expensive.
But you also have to consider how much it costs to run Air Force One there versus nearly anywhere else in the Continental U.S, which makes it more expensive yet.
And any trip outside the US and its territories requires a lot of investigative work by the Secret Service to clear the personnel at hotels, etc. in order to ensure a safe trip - more so than trips within the US and its territories (which still requires checks, but more information is already available).
Deflation has tangible negative effects on folks that are not rich -- when you borrow some money, the deflationary effect essentially means that you might never be able to pay back the loan, because the value of the gold in real terms that you have to pay back is increasing, on top of the actual interest charges; you can't know the economic growth in advance....
Deflation also keeps inflation and economies in check. Like Inflation there are both good and bad aspects to Deflation. Trying to avoid deflation is just arrogant. It is part of the natural cycle of economies and one that needs to happen from time to time - if that cycle is not allowed to happen then when it does it'll be that much greater.
You can not increase the wealth and quality of life by inducing inflation.
Correct. Nor do you need inflation for population growth, as many Fiat Currenty defendents will tell you.
Also, unless we actually move to a fixed currency, in 30 years a candy bar will cost around $35 due do inflation, but maybe a bit less as technology might find better ways of making candy bars, or maybe a bit more if regulations make it more burdensome to make them.
Not likely. Since the 1950's we've gone from a Candy Bar costing 5-10 cents to now at least $1, usually for something slightly smaller in size at that. So, in another 50-60 years time frame, going from $1 to $10 is very likely and even expected under current policies.
The question is - is that wise? I'd say no. I think a candy bar should still be around 5-10 cents.
Yes, I'd like to see a deflation of the dollar back to 1950 levels; it would actually strengthen the economy significantly. But that won't happen as long as we have the Federal Reserve and it remains tasked to keep inflation positive and under control. There are good reasons to have the Federal Reserve around, but we need to stop being so arrogant as to try to keep deflation from ever happening - eventually it'll catch up to us.
Despite what Keysian economists tell you, Deflation can be and is a good thing.
Trying to avoid it at all costs, one of the purposes of the Federal Reserve, is, however, a bad thing that will eventually come around to bit in a very very big way.
Microsoft threatened vendors when they wanted to put other browsers on their OEM builds and that's what made it illegal.
Do you have a citation for this? I've never heard this particular statement before. Furthermore, if the problem was that they threatened vendors, shouldn't that have been what the lawsuit was about, and not about bundling the browser?
It seems silly to me that the argument went like: "You are threatening vendors and forcing them to not put other browsers on OEM builds. Therefore, we require that you remove your own browser, even though that's not the problem, that's not what was illegal, and there's nothing wrong with you having it there."
It wasn't simply IE. It was repeated things about many MS products and MS forcing OEM vendors to do things that would promote MS at the expense of competitors. IE is just one example - threatening vendors if they included Netscape on the install, for example. They did similar things with Office and other products (MSN).
And if you're really interested (and have the time), take a look at Groklaw's Comes Exhibits. There's lots of juicy things in there about what Microsoft did and why, and how much they knew it would hurt competitors (like Netscape, Novell, WordPerfect, etc.) in numerous areas (OS, Web Browsers, Office Productivity).
As a software engineer you're likely much more frequently found at your desk than the average sales rep.
So for you, a land line is just the best tool for the job. For an always-on-the-move sales rep, a mobile phone is.
Most people I have worked with - both in software and out - are typically found at their desk. Sales people are the biggest exception to that.
However, unless the company is paying for the mobile they need to provide a landline.
Where I work now, we have a landlines to every desk from our PBX. Anyone can be gotten to easily, and everyone has their own extension and voicemail.
In contrast, the head office in Italy - you only get a desk phone if you are so far up the chain - typically management; and it is hard to get ahold of anyone there as a result since you basically have to call the building secretary, ask for them, then hope that someone can find them and give them a wireless desk phone - in a company of (at one point) over 200 people.
So if the company wants to give me a permenant cell phone and pay for it themselves, then find - I'll take that over the desk phone; but it better have an easy way to communicate with everyone else in the company too so I don't have to go around collecting everyone's full phone numbers.
It's just too expensive to do work for the company on my own personal phones - cell or otherwise.
His point isn't actually invalid, as it applies to Cable TV as well. If you want all of the new movies you have to pick up HBO, Stars, and what ever else there is, each at an additional charge per month. $271 a year (your math for netflix+hulu+amazon) is kind of expensive, and really a joke to do something like that because you would be buying the extras just for the sake of the couple exclusives they have.
How is that expensive compared to a Cable TV bill - which could be as much as $200/month without getting all HBO and Stars.
Seriously, if you dropped your Cable TV subscription and just went with Netflix+Hulu+Amazon, then you would have it paid off inside of 3 months. Even if you only got basic cable - which can run anywhere from $20/month to $60/month, you'd still save money or at worse break even over the course of a year.
Or you do like me and only have Netflix and no Cable TV - $64/year. Well...we've got Amazon too (technically)...and we're evaluating that on whether we save shipping over the holidays/birthdays/etc, not against TV usage.
....what would happen if the magnetic direction never changed like they are expecting? Say they go another 1million AUs and it's still reading the same...
Not saying that will happen. Just saying we really don't know what to expect or when to expect it.
What does interstellar space taste like?
Isn't it obvious? Chicken!
Exactly! Everything tastes like Chicken
Honestly, any programmer worth $120k could make something more efficient just using threads, if they thought about it. This will get you 20% of the efficiency gains without thinking of it.
THIS IS WHAT WINDOWS PROGRAMMERS ACTUALLY BELIEVE.
Unfortunately for them Windows eats that 20%, thus negating any gains they may make in their actual program.
The double counting is fine as long as they're double counting consistently. What's important is that the metric by which Microsoft is counting licenses is increasing exponentially from version to version. This did not happen with Vista. But it did happen with Windows 7, and by my estimation it's happening with Windows 8 as well.
Only if you like misleading data. It could be a SEC violation for misleading investors, etc. Only fortunate part for MS is that their biggest investors - Gates, Ballmer, Elop, etc - are all MS employees who know about it and thus won't sue over it.
Licenses Sold is the same statistic that Microsoft reported during the lifetime of Windows 7, thus it's directly comparable. There were people in 2009 saying the same thing as you, but it turns out that Licenses sold is highly correlated with devices sold by OEMs. Seems like there are some smart people working at Dell, HP, etc. who figure out how much demand there is and buy the appropriate number of components (including OS licenses) so they're not left over with useless inventory (basic supply and demand economics).
Not necessarily. That may have been true through WinXP, but starting with Vista there was a lot of double-counting (or triple-counting) of licenses going on.
For instance, many low-end laptops are sold with the "Starter Edition", which is cheap for OEMs but almost useless for customers. So customers have to go buy at least another license to upgrade to another version of Windows - e.g. Home Premium; a process which may repeat itself for the same computer. While MS may have sold 2 or more licenses, they have not received 2 or more customers or devices - only one.
Oh, and they don't break down the numbers between licenses sold and how many were upgrades to an existing license (e.g. Win7 Starter->Win 7 Home Premium).
Win8 has the same issues, though more limited than Win7 or Vista since there are not so many editions.
SELinux isnt something that was built in "from the ground up"; it was tacked on by the NSA after the fact, and is absent from most consumer Linux distros. I will grant both that I dont know a whole lot about it (other than the high level "heres what it does") and also that its probably more granular than stock Windows, but thats not terribly relevant-- the topic was "ways stock Linux is more secure than stock Windows", and SELinux is very much NOT "stock".
True, SELinux wasn't in at the start, but users, groups, and permissions were in every Unix from the start.
But it also probably came from the fact that in Windows - even the Windows NT line - security was an after thought,
Lets be real here: Security was an afterthought everywhere. Windows' history may be particularly bad here, but noone (other than some of those crazier BSD guys) can really claim to have security "from the ground up". Im not clear why you think security was an afterthought in the NT line, either-- XP had everyone admin by default, but this was mostly because 90% of software vendors are incompetent at running without admin privileges, something that continues to persist even into Win7 days. You certainly could run as a standard user in XP and get a great deal of protection, however.
For Windows, look at the Win16 and Win32 APIs - supported by even the earliest versions of the WinNT lines. These APIs are by design insecure, do not utilize ACLs or permissions, etc. Yet they are the foundation of the Windows API until Win8 with the WinRT API - the first major rewrite of the official Windows API as it bypasses even Win32 (AFAIK).
Comparatively, Unix/Linux while they dealt with more generic APIs, many were subject to the permissions system from the get go. Look at X Windows and you'll see the same thing - unlike in Windows where any application can subvert or access another application's User interface elements by design.
That said, Linux/Unix also have the ability to use ACLs. But most don't as they are inferior to other technogies that are available. So they only get used when integrating with Windows sytems.
I understand that you can get a bit more granular with extended ACLs, but that theyre not always supported and still not quite as granular as NTFS ACLs. I wasnt aware that there were other technologies available for that sort of thing, what were you referring to (sincerely curious)?
You have a number of options - from ACLs (which can be embedded into ext2/3/4) to SELinux to AppArmor to a number of other things if you want to get the more advanced permission functionality.
MS only focuses on user-experience in so much as it drives a business purchase decision; not because it makes a better user-experience.
I mean, they kind of ARE in the software biz to make money, so yes their focus is on generating sales most efficiently. But I worded it as I did because I cant for the life of me figure out how Windows8 drives business purchasing decisions-- Microsoft does seem to care about home user experience to try to chase down this tablet market.
MS is trying to drive businesses to buy their tablets and phones. It hasn't been working very well, so they are pushing Win8 to achieve that; but it's not likely going to work very well either since most businesses (especially the large businesses that are the core of MS's market) that care about tablets and phones have already integrated iOS support for iPad/iPhone.
If you're too stupid to get that there can still be SIGNAL of anthropegenic global warming in the NOISE of random CLIMATE VARIATION, you don't belong on slashdot. Go argue on a reality TV show fan site or something. J@sus!
Yes, there could be a signal in all that noise. The question is, is there one?
The GW folks adamently claim every little thing is.
The anti-GW folks range from those who adamently claim there isn't, to those that merely point out the issues in what the GW folks are claiming to start with.
Me? I'm more of a real skeptic on the issue. While I don't think there is, I'd be happy to be proven wrong - I just don't see any real evidence of it in all the noise, and find much of the claimed data to be insufficient (e.g. not enough), inadequate (e.g. not relevent enough), or improperly interpreted (e.g. extrapolating in appropriately). In the mean time, I'll be happy to reduce, re-use, and recycle - thereby mitigating the issue any way; not because I believe the GW folks, but because I think it is better stewardship of the resources we have.
Windows however does not have privileged separation from the ground up
What do you suppose UAC is? And what do you mean "from the ground up"-- NT "from the ground up" has notions of users and different privilege levels that possibly eclipses the Unix world in scope and granularity.
You obviously do not understand the differences between Windows+ACLs and Linux+SELinux. SELinux is far more granular than anything available in the Windows world.
Why do you think Chrome has robust sandboxing on Windows, but not on other platforms? As I recall, the reason the Chrome team gave was that, quite simply, Windows had better supported mechanisms for stripping privileges from processes (I believe they mentioned there was a way to do the sandboxing, but it used a little-used method that was not recommended on Linux).
Haven't read up on Chrome in that respect. Windows does have abilities for programs to restrict or enhance their priviledges at run-time; not something common in the Unix world to do. But it also probably came from the fact that in Windows - even the Windows NT line - security was an after thought, so it had to be added to keep compatibilty in place and allow developers to more easily transition to new security models within Windows.
Im not a Linux guru; Ill admit that. But Im not aware of a bog-standard Linux or Mac install having the ability to set permissions and privileges on specific processes completely aside from the context that launched them; or being able to set permissions on specific entries in a particular plist file (the equivalent of per-key permissions in the windows registry). As I recall, Windows also has more robust ASLR-- or at least did for many years-- than Linux or Mac, earlier support for DEP, and more granular ACLs on its default filesystem.
ACLs enable Windows to do what in Linux is Groups. They are more robust in that they don't have to necessarily mean a group and can be applied a little differently.
That said, Linux/Unix also have the ability to use ACLs. But most don't as they are inferior to other technogies that are available. So they only get used when integrating with Windows sytems.
I really dont want to get into a "this OS is better than that" argument, because different philosophies went into each, and each has its strength. OSX focuses heavily on user experience. Linux focuses heavily on modularity, flexibility, and extreme hackability. Windows tends to focus on business and end-user experience,
More like:
MS only focuses on user-experience in so much as it drives a business purchase decision; not because it makes a better user-experience.
And the FOSS world is coming around on the user-experience area - especially KDE; but it takes time and resources, which are typically lacking.
Seriously, what is so difficult about having a multi-user phone OS when Linux or Darwin is running the underpinnings?
It's a matter of how Android uses Linux.
Android makes very extensive use of Users and Groups for the normal permissions protection. However, instead of using a user/group like you do on your Linux server or desktop, they give one to each individual application (user) or set of applications (group). So only applications by the same developer that the developer has marked as being able to be part of the same group can access the stuff by a given group; and only applications running as the same user - typically the various components of the Android app (e.g. Activity, Content Provider, etc.) - can see each other/talk to each other.
So unless you create some kind of super-group/super-user and the existing users+groups are subsets of that, it would be hard to do permissions how Android does them and have multiple people with different user identities on the same device without using a hypervisor to switch between users.
Affirmative Action was valid at one point to level the playing field. It's not longer required. It also has nothing to do with "Paying back more than you owe", and those calling for its removal have no reason other than to truly level the playing field. Those calling for it to stay have more reason to keep it for failure from their own incompetence.
Christian universities can kick you out for spewing progressive nonsense.
However, those Christian universities typically don't - they usually make it a point of discussion instead bringing people in from both sides of the issue.
So. P2P, understandable. Malware, too.
But why're you singling out porn? If you're talking about 'also malware', I'd put pirate sites above that - more dangerous, and actually illegal instead of just 'immoral'.
Probably a public relations issue.
I went to a private college that had a similar policy, but only for the PR with alumni to keep the funding coming in. They had a policy of "Responsible Freedom", only instead of enforcing their network access agreement, they put a K12 filter (N2H2's Bess Filter) on all computers when there were only a handful of students that had a problem, and those students actually used lab computers at times when no one else was there. The network access in ones own dorm room had an ISP-like agreement in place; so they could easily disconnect you from the network if you violated it.
The P2P traffic did eat their bandwidth enough to put a load balancer in to favor certain kinds of traffic - like outgoing video feeds during January for the presentations made during the month, again namely for alumni. But the network did have issues and their pipe was limited - they were in a ring network and eating more bandwidth than they were purchasing (a side-effect of the network design by the ISP allowed that - one reason I prefer Cable Internet instead of DSL).
So yeah, it's probably a PR thing.
The nVidia driver uses a special wrapper module around their binary blob to escape the GPL issue on their binary blob.
There's nothing special about the wrapper, besides it being GPL licensed. The real reason why the nVidia binary blob isn't a derivative work of the Linux kernel is because it was originally developed for a different OS (Windows). The wrapper is just an adapter to make the blob work with the Linux kernel.
Not quite. They do strip out the interface for the Windows NT Kernel; and add a new interface for the supported Linux Kernels. It's not GPL because nVidia wrote it and the wrapper and they can license the wrapper such that it allows the binary blob to work without violating the overall GPL license of the Linux Kernel. That and Linus has said he doesn't care - he's not going to force driver writers to make their drivers 100% GPL.
Then next time you buy something, make sure it's 5 GHz capable. :-D I don't know your local shopping situation, but all the "tech" stores around here (Staples, Best Buy, etc...) have at least a couple models of dual-band USB 2.0 adapters in the $40 range.
If you can find a USB 2.0 Dual-Band Wifi 802.11g/n device that uses a minimum amount of space sticking out, then I'd love to hear it. The one I got sticks out may be 10 mm from the computer - 90% of it is the USB connection; and it's the only one I could find that met my requirements. (I have a 2 year old at home, so I don't want a USB device sticking out that could be easily broken if the laptop were to be knocked over for some reason.)
Most of the Dual-band devices I found were large, had cables, etc - e.g. nothing small and easily portable, but easily attachable to a desktop.
My ideal situation would have been to find a dual-band mini-PCI card to replace the one I have; however, that was not possible - all the 802.11n internal cards are mini-PCIe as far as laptops go. Even a CardBus/PCMCIA card would have been a good option, but again they don't make them anymore, in favor of USB.
So I got what I got not for lack of trying to find a 5GHz dual-band device, but simply because what is out there doesn't meet my needs or work with my laptop (which is running Linux).
I'm not an expert on the nvidia case itself, but I do know a bit about some of the other "blob" drivers. In those cases, the real drivers (the smarts) are firmware that is uploaded onto a separate core (sometimes on the same die as the CPU(s), but sometimes off-die) that does not run linux. And therefore is not governed by the kernel's GPL, any more than a bitmap image pulled off the boot partition and flashed up on screen at boot time would be. That's payload, that's not control, it's input and output for the kernel, it's not part of the kernel. The actual linux kernel module is usually just a firmware uploading wrapper, some initial configuration of io parameters (dma areas, buses, clocks, etc.) and after that some simple shims.
nVidia doesn't do that. They may be including some firmware to upload the card, but it's not that simple. While I don't know everything they do, I do know they:
1. Have the same binary blob for all their supported platforms - x86/x86-64, though the 64-bit and 32-bit versions probably differ.
2. The driver enables the same functionality on all supported platforms.
3. It does more than a simple firmware upload.
If it was merely a firmward upload, then the open source guys would be extracting the firmware from the drivers (like they do for many others) to use themselves. But it's not. They're using functionality on the card that is driven by the driver, and just wrapping it sufficiently for each OS in the actual OS driver. It's neat that they were able to abstract their drivers like that - though it would be neater if they actually open sourced the drivers 100%.