I find it very hard to believe that anything like this coming from Microsoft is not entirely intentional.
Microsoft is nothing more than a gargantuan marketing machine. This action is no exception.
Perhaps more importantly, better software solutions can make large hardware systems unnecessary. Instead of running and cooling 10 servers for a certain purpose, write better software to allow you to do the same thing on just one or two servers. If you cut down the amount of servers in the room by enough, you don't even need dedicated cooling.
The problem is, the whole point of a rootkit is kernel-mode code that subverts OS API calls and lies about the results.
Actually, most rootkits only hijack the OS API calls that deal with reading files and folders, they don't stop you from reading the raw data on the actual filesystem itself. So if you are reading the data directly from the hard drive, and there is something there that the Windows API isn't reporting, it's a possible rootkit.
Blizzard just have to write their own code for reading the filesytem/registry and to notice the differences between the raw data and the results from the windows API calls, and Warden can start to check for rootkits.
Unfortunately Sony may be able to claim that they offer an uninstaller.
From TFA: Hypponen said the only way to uninstall the program in the conventional sense (without running the risk of hosing your system or CD-ROM drive) is to contact Sony BMG directly via a Web form and request removal.
At that point, a real, live person will call you back and ask for all kinds of information about your system, and your reason for wanting to remove the software. You're then directed to a Web page that downloads an ActiveX program (yes, you must be using Microsoft's Internet Explorer to do this), which determines what version is installed and reports that back to First4Internet. Then you get an e-mail containing a link to another site that downloads something that finally uninstalls the Sony program.
So, although they make you sell your firstborn to get it, they apparently do offer an uninstaller. IANAL, but maybe someone can still argue that the uninstaller needs to be bundled with the CD. Sony might also be liable if the installation damages your computer.
Any decent OS will detect an attempt to infinitely traverse a symlink, but what's it supposed to do?
It can:
Close the program (= Possible data loss)
Slow the speed at which the program is allowed to access certain files (= Increase the chance of race conditions, sometimes by a lot. It doesn't really solve anything either)
Make the symlinks "disappear" after a certain level of recursion (= Inconsistent data)
Do nothing (= Solves nothing)
None of these options are as good as the software actually detecting the symlinks itself. When I say "most" UNIX software checks for symlinks, I am only referring to software which would otherwise be at risk of infinite recursion.
Since Windows programs have not ever needed to check for the existence of symlinks, a lot of software will be a serious DoS waiting to happen. Recursive symlink traversal is one of the most devastating things a computer can do to itself. It can damage hard drives, crash software, take down servers and generally make the computer unusable. On UNIX, almost all software is aware of this pitfall and won't go crashing the computer.
Digital cinema will cut down on piracy and help the industry to increase its profits.
Last time I checked it was 100x easier to pirate a digital format by simply copying it as oppose to the usual digital-camera-at-screen method or even more difficult and costly telecine process.
TFA says the timezone is Eastern Daylight Time (UTC - 0400).
So it is at 3:25 am UTC. I don't know where in the world Mars will be visible from at that time though.
Where I live it will be daylight, so I won't be able to see anything but the Sun as it burns into my retinas.
According to Specs, this device records to 704x240 asf. If this is as powerful as they claim it is, why not use XviD or another open source codec?
The 40GB HDD, USB2.0 and other features all look nice, but I still think it's supported formats aren't fantastic. It has no mention of supporting things like ogg or ac3.
Despite their claims of being open source, this device is still being marketed to Windows' users, and designed for them.
Certainly if it's unavoidable that two quanta cross, then either one of them must stop, or there needs to be a bridge. However in most cases it should be avoidable, as the gaps between quanta on one road should be made to coincide with times that quanta will pass from an intersecting road. For best efficiency one of the roads may need to have it's average speed reduced (a small percentage of cars stopped) to allow maximum efficiency of the system of a whole. The system has other benefits as well, like being able to rapidly adapt to changing road conditions (emergency evacuations, car accidents blocking the road, roadworks, emergency vehicles and large public events.) It also discourages speeding, since if you speed you end up moving out of your quantum so you're far more likely to get red lights. I imagine that fuel efficiency would also be greatly improved, with the majority of people not having to stop and start all the time.
I have a theory which states that traffic, when essentially quantized (grouped into bunches of vehicles moving between traffic lights), exhibits several quantum mechanisms. For example, whether or not a quantum of traffic (bunch of cars) reaches their intended destinations, the affects on the traffic of that area are the same as if they really did reach their intended destinations. This is essentially because people generally choose routes which they think will be the fastest or easiset, and people think "Oh it's Friday afternoon on the start of a long weekend, lots of people will be going out of the city for holidays down highway X, I'll go a different way." Hence whether or not a quantum of traffic is going somewhere, people avoid them just the same. This can be simulated by a computer in a combination with this kind of system, to very accurately time traffic light sequences so as to reduce the average waiting time per vehicle across a large area. In theory it is possible to quantize traffic (eg, stop/allow single cars until they end up in a bigger group) and time traffic lights so that almost no waiting at traffic lights is needed. As long as you travel within one of the quanta you would have green lights all the way.
The one feature I miss the most in The GIMP is better text handling, like being able to have more than one font/bold/italic/sized text in each text area. It should also have text boundaries which can be properly enforced to do word-wrapping and stuff. It's also nice to be able to have text follow a path, or be stretched into certain shapes. I also really like Photoshop's 'Save for Web' dialogue, and would like to see something like that in The GIMP. These are the only things I use photoshop for, everything else is really nice. One of the things I prefer about The GIMP is being able to have layer sizes different to the image size.
A feature I have yet to see in either Photoshop or The GIMP is being able to use the stamp tool to rotate the source image based on a path before applying it, this would allow you for example to correct problems around the edge of a circle without a whole lot of mess.
There are viruses that have strange effects on our own psychology, such as Rabies.
Rabies can cause hydrophobia, which means people or animals infected with it develop a fear of water and an inability to swallow liquids without great difficulty (hence lots of drooling). In animals this often causes death by dehydration.
I sent in a complaint to the senate inquiry about the US-AU-FTA, and they did nothing (except send me some nice looking books on their brainless decision). Why should I think they will change anything if I say something now?
This thing has saved me 6.8 seconds since I installed it when it came out. It's probably used 6.8 minutes of CPU time since then. If this thing doesn't start actually improving performance I am going to uninstall it.
As long as your internet connection is secure, ie, you have a good firewall or router (as you would have in a large corporate environment), then the negative effects of SP2 outweigh the positive ones.
SP2 breaks network connectivity by limiting the number of connections you can make in a given amount of time.
SP2 creates a bunch of annoying and useless popups and warning messages, with no real extra security (compare vulnerabilities found before and after SP2 on sites like Secunia).
The only thing SP2 does that's any good is fix up a bit of XP's so-called "firewall".
I don't blame these admins and I wouldn't be installing SP2 either.
If someone posted anything like this as a reply, they'd get modded down. Why should we care what this guy thinks?
In 5 years time Linux will be so different that making statements like this now is completely stupid.
I was reading an article a few years ago about how they are going to try reducing the surface area with nerves with syringes by putting tiny hair-like fibres along it, similar to a mosquito's proboscis (which can't be felt by most people).
I have yet to see them use that idea, and if you ask me that sounded a lot more cost effective then this does.
Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the latest releases to a computer server via satellite at a lower cost.
Will this mean that we will start to see screeners with higher quality than DvD's? I'm sure it won't take much money to convince a middle-manager to release some of that sweet sweet digital content.
And best of all, the movie would have to be downloaded possibly days before it's actually played.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it very hard to believe that anything like this coming from Microsoft is not entirely intentional.
Microsoft is nothing more than a gargantuan marketing machine. This action is no exception.
Wait until it's at least 30% off.
It already is 36% off! The original price was $3908.99.
Perhaps more importantly, better software solutions can make large hardware systems unnecessary. Instead of running and cooling 10 servers for a certain purpose, write better software to allow you to do the same thing on just one or two servers. If you cut down the amount of servers in the room by enough, you don't even need dedicated cooling.
The problem is, the whole point of a rootkit is kernel-mode code that subverts OS API calls and lies about the results.
Actually, most rootkits only hijack the OS API calls that deal with reading files and folders, they don't stop you from reading the raw data on the actual filesystem itself. So if you are reading the data directly from the hard drive, and there is something there that the Windows API isn't reporting, it's a possible rootkit.
Blizzard just have to write their own code for reading the filesytem/registry and to notice the differences between the raw data and the results from the windows API calls, and Warden can start to check for rootkits.
Unfortunately Sony may be able to claim that they offer an uninstaller.
From TFA:
Hypponen said the only way to uninstall the program in the conventional sense (without running the risk of hosing your system or CD-ROM drive) is to contact Sony BMG directly via a Web form and request removal.
At that point, a real, live person will call you back and ask for all kinds of information about your system, and your reason for wanting to remove the software. You're then directed to a Web page that downloads an ActiveX program (yes, you must be using Microsoft's Internet Explorer to do this), which determines what version is installed and reports that back to First4Internet. Then you get an e-mail containing a link to another site that downloads something that finally uninstalls the Sony program.
So, although they make you sell your firstborn to get it, they apparently do offer an uninstaller. IANAL, but maybe someone can still argue that the uninstaller needs to be bundled with the CD. Sony might also be liable if the installation damages your computer.
It can:
- Close the program (= Possible data loss)
- Slow the speed at which the program is allowed to access certain files (= Increase the chance of race conditions, sometimes by a lot. It doesn't really solve anything either)
- Make the symlinks "disappear" after a certain level of recursion (= Inconsistent data)
- Do nothing (= Solves nothing)
None of these options are as good as the software actually detecting the symlinks itself. When I say "most" UNIX software checks for symlinks, I am only referring to software which would otherwise be at risk of infinite recursion.Since Windows programs have not ever needed to check for the existence of symlinks, a lot of software will be a serious DoS waiting to happen. Recursive symlink traversal is one of the most devastating things a computer can do to itself. It can damage hard drives, crash software, take down servers and generally make the computer unusable. On UNIX, almost all software is aware of this pitfall and won't go crashing the computer.
You wouldn't do it right? Because you know you'd be out $1000.
No, I wouldn't do it because I'd have a bunch of pseudo-scientists clambering over me for my delicious bounty.
Digital cinema will cut down on piracy and help the industry to increase its profits.
Last time I checked it was 100x easier to pirate a digital format by simply copying it as oppose to the usual digital-camera-at-screen method or even more difficult and costly telecine process.
TFA says the timezone is Eastern Daylight Time (UTC - 0400).
So it is at 3:25 am UTC. I don't know where in the world Mars will be visible from at that time though.
Where I live it will be daylight, so I won't be able to see anything but the Sun as it burns into my retinas.
According to Specs, this device records to 704x240 asf. If this is as powerful as they claim it is, why not use XviD or another open source codec?
The 40GB HDD, USB2.0 and other features all look nice, but I still think it's supported formats aren't fantastic. It has no mention of supporting things like ogg or ac3.
Despite their claims of being open source, this device is still being marketed to Windows' users, and designed for them.
Certainly if it's unavoidable that two quanta cross, then either one of them must stop, or there needs to be a bridge. However in most cases it should be avoidable, as the gaps between quanta on one road should be made to coincide with times that quanta will pass from an intersecting road. For best efficiency one of the roads may need to have it's average speed reduced (a small percentage of cars stopped) to allow maximum efficiency of the system of a whole.
The system has other benefits as well, like being able to rapidly adapt to changing road conditions (emergency evacuations, car accidents blocking the road, roadworks, emergency vehicles and large public events.) It also discourages speeding, since if you speed you end up moving out of your quantum so you're far more likely to get red lights. I imagine that fuel efficiency would also be greatly improved, with the majority of people not having to stop and start all the time.
I have a theory which states that traffic, when essentially quantized (grouped into bunches of vehicles moving between traffic lights), exhibits several quantum mechanisms.
For example, whether or not a quantum of traffic (bunch of cars) reaches their intended destinations, the affects on the traffic of that area are the same as if they really did reach their intended destinations. This is essentially because people generally choose routes which they think will be the fastest or easiset, and people think "Oh it's Friday afternoon on the start of a long weekend, lots of people will be going out of the city for holidays down highway X, I'll go a different way." Hence whether or not a quantum of traffic is going somewhere, people avoid them just the same.
This can be simulated by a computer in a combination with this kind of system, to very accurately time traffic light sequences so as to reduce the average waiting time per vehicle across a large area. In theory it is possible to quantize traffic (eg, stop/allow single cars until they end up in a bigger group) and time traffic lights so that almost no waiting at traffic lights is needed. As long as you travel within one of the quanta you would have green lights all the way.
The one feature I miss the most in The GIMP is better text handling, like being able to have more than one font/bold/italic/sized text in each text area. It should also have text boundaries which can be properly enforced to do word-wrapping and stuff. It's also nice to be able to have text follow a path, or be stretched into certain shapes.
I also really like Photoshop's 'Save for Web' dialogue, and would like to see something like that in The GIMP.
These are the only things I use photoshop for, everything else is really nice.
One of the things I prefer about The GIMP is being able to have layer sizes different to the image size.
A feature I have yet to see in either Photoshop or The GIMP is being able to use the stamp tool to rotate the source image based on a path before applying it, this would allow you for example to correct problems around the edge of a circle without a whole lot of mess.
There are viruses that have strange effects on our own psychology, such as Rabies.
Rabies can cause hydrophobia, which means people or animals infected with it develop a fear of water and an inability to swallow liquids without great difficulty (hence lots of drooling). In animals this often causes death by dehydration.
I sent in a complaint to the senate inquiry about the US-AU-FTA, and they did nothing (except send me some nice looking books on their brainless decision). Why should I think they will change anything if I say something now?
This thing has saved me 6.8 seconds since I installed it when it came out. It's probably used 6.8 minutes of CPU time since then. If this thing doesn't start actually improving performance I am going to uninstall it.
FTA: Two NYPD veterans are being investigated by Internal Affairs...
From title: MPAA Under Investigation for Illegal NYPD Payoffs
So, who's under investigation here?
As long as your internet connection is secure, ie, you have a good firewall or router (as you would have in a large corporate environment), then the negative effects of SP2 outweigh the positive ones.
SP2 breaks network connectivity by limiting the number of connections you can make in a given amount of time.
SP2 creates a bunch of annoying and useless popups and warning messages, with no real extra security (compare vulnerabilities found before and after SP2 on sites like Secunia).
The only thing SP2 does that's any good is fix up a bit of XP's so-called "firewall".
I don't blame these admins and I wouldn't be installing SP2 either.
If someone posted anything like this as a reply, they'd get modded down. Why should we care what this guy thinks?
In 5 years time Linux will be so different that making statements like this now is completely stupid.
9 Years!?
Just think how much more money he could have made through fraud or robbery to get a 9 year jail sentence. I bet he's kicking himself now.
I was reading an article a few years ago about how they are going to try reducing the surface area with nerves with syringes by putting tiny hair-like fibres along it, similar to a mosquito's proboscis (which can't be felt by most people).
I have yet to see them use that idea, and if you ask me that sounded a lot more cost effective then this does.
Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the latest releases to a computer server via satellite at a lower cost.
Will this mean that we will start to see screeners with higher quality than DvD's? I'm sure it won't take much money to convince a middle-manager to release some of that sweet sweet digital content.
And best of all, the movie would have to be downloaded possibly days before it's actually played.