In Soviet Russia they kept track of how many Jews people were hiring, just to make sure they stayed in line. Here they're trying to keep tabs on the Blacks. Good intentions be damned, this just doesn't smell good.
Source Insight lets you browse source code - very useful for largish codebases. It's much quicker than findstr or grep because it has an index rather than having to search the whole thing. It's not free of course but I'd never go back to findstr having used it.
The Windows Recovery Console is used to facilitate repairing an unbootable computer. It requires the Windows installation media (the four Setup disks or the CD-ROM). The Recovery Console can be pre-installed by running the winnt32/cmdcons command from the Windows installation CD-ROM to place the files on the local hard disk. This option requires approximately 7 megabytes (MB) of disk space on the system partition.
The Windows Recovery console uses the normal Windows NT kernel. So did text mode setup. Both of those are a only a few MB because they are just a kernel and a few drivers and a text mode UI.
'net stop wuauserv' from a command prompt stops the automatic update service if you really want to stop a machine rebooting because it's doing something. Then reboot manually to get back to normal.
After all that registration and setup work, turns out my wife likes Win7 but "hates" the new ribbon interface of Office2007 and wanted Office97 back. I can't find my Office97 CD, so I installed the latest Open Office hoping they didn't do the ribbon interface thing. OOO-Calc still offers a more familiar drop-down interface to my veteran Excel user than the new Excel. Hopefully OOO-Calc will leave the interface fairly stable as it moves forward.
Office 2007 is some kind of sick joke like Vista. Particularly as Open Office is free and seems to open Word documents just fine. Like you I used Office 97 for ages but I don't have the CD to hand anymore. The machine I'm typing this on has Office 2007 on it but it's so irritating I used OOO instead.
Hell if you could convince customers to this they could install your unsigned drivers on their machines too.
However for a sane user experience you should run the WHQL tests on your machine and have Microsoft WHQL sign the drivers. That needs a Verisign certificate which costs hundreds of dollars per year. Still consider - the hardware vendor writes the drivers. They spent a lot more than a hundred dollars doing that. The requirement that code be signed in kernel mode means that the company that wrote it is known and the certificate can be revoked if they write malware. And WHQL signing will at least catch many of the common bugs.
So as a user I'd definitely want to only use WHQL'd drivers on my machine. Still I could work around that if I wanted - the freedom that has been removed is the freedom for anonymous and unaccountable entities to install kernel mode code on other people's machines, not of users to write their own drivers and install them on their own ones.
This is not the case on most games consoles or mobile phones - there the hardware will refuse to load unsigned software. You'd need to buy a special development system to program them and the code you write will only run on that system until the vendor approves your code and release signs it. So there your freedom to tinker is really not present.
E.g. if aliens had technology comparable to ours today they'd be able to see that the Earth's atmosphere had lots of oxygen. Free oxygen in the atmosphere seems to me to be a good sign of life.
So they could scan all planets in range for non equilibrium atmosphere and then direct a high energy laser beam that would be bright but harmless from our point of view. They could use that to send a signal - it would start off pulsing out prime numbers (or something else obviously non natural) and gradually build up to maths and physics.
Now since we've only been able to do this recently it seems like another civilisation doing it would likely be more advanced than ours. So the physics would be interesting, to say the least.
We -might- find an oxygen atmosphere, heated water laden, near-1g planet "nearby" (100 ly) but it's unlikely. What's nearly impossible is finding one with a biosphere that we can survive in without basically obliterating it and dropping down earth biologicals. Most things on such a planet would poison us.
Unless such a magical planet is found, exploring outside our system before serious colonization (which -could- be economically valuable) of Mars, gas giant moons, etc is a waste. On all levels.
If such a planet was found, I'd consider it proof of god.
I dunno about that - since we've only got one example of a planet with life we don't know how variable life is. Maybe life based on DNA and proteins is really common.
Even if their equivalent of proteins is different but based on the same principles we could still harvest them and convert them into ours with a few well engineered enzymes. Compared to the problem of getting there, even disassembling their proteins into atoms and reassembling those atoms into our proteins is not very hard.
So consider - given a planet with oxygen and some plant and animal life but no intelligence humans would need to do some processing on the plant life but they could turn it into something they could consume.
Still it seems it would make more sense to go somewhere nearer and bring your biosphere with you I have to admit.
Most of the time it's not a problem of what governments allow, it's a problem of that sells papers. Gossip does, Watergate style involved reporting does not.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh crap, the upgrade makes the world roll on my fixed frequency NHS eyes.
FreeBSD supporters are dying - blows to their skulls confirm it.
Watch this documentary
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
No you fool! You need to remodulate the shield harmonics and reverse the polarity of the neutron flow! What are you trying to do, kill us all?
Not if you're a ROBOT.
In Soviet Russia they kept track of how many Jews people were hiring, just to make sure they stayed in line. Here they're trying to keep tabs on the Blacks. Good intentions be damned, this just doesn't smell good.
In Obama's America minorities keep track of YOU!
So long as he stays on his couch and doesn't seep over the armrest into my airline seat like something out of a 50's horror movie I'd say he was OK.
And some people have big, flabby asses.
Japan! Squid a la schoolgirl knickers!
Saying Java is better because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is better because it works on all genders.
Source Insight lets you browse source code - very useful for largish codebases. It's much quicker than findstr or grep because it has an index rather than having to search the whole thing. It's not free of course but I'd never go back to findstr having used it.
Tell that to Sergeant Killbot. His new 133.7 firmware includes a Modern Literature database and a hardware irony decoder.
Actually it's 7MB
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229077
The Windows Recovery Console is used to facilitate repairing an unbootable computer. It requires the Windows installation media (the four Setup disks or the CD-ROM). The Recovery Console can be pre-installed by running the winnt32 /cmdcons command from the Windows installation CD-ROM to place the files on the local hard disk. This option requires approximately 7 megabytes (MB) of disk space on the system partition.
The Windows Recovery console uses the normal Windows NT kernel. So did text mode setup. Both of those are a only a few MB because they are just a kernel and a few drivers and a text mode UI.
VC?! WHERE?!
Run upstairs boy and get the Claymores and my service revolver from on top of the desk in my study!
'net stop wuauserv' from a command prompt stops the automatic update service if you really want to stop a machine rebooting because it's doing something. Then reboot manually to get back to normal.
After all that registration and setup work, turns out my wife likes Win7 but "hates" the new ribbon interface of Office2007 and wanted Office97 back. I can't find my Office97 CD, so I installed the latest Open Office hoping they didn't do the ribbon interface thing. OOO-Calc still offers a more familiar drop-down interface to my veteran Excel user than the new Excel. Hopefully OOO-Calc will leave the interface fairly stable as it moves forward.
Office 2007 is some kind of sick joke like Vista. Particularly as Open Office is free and seems to open Word documents just fine. Like you I used Office 97 for ages but I don't have the CD to hand anymore. The machine I'm typing this on has Office 2007 on it but it's so irritating I used OOO instead.
Wouldn't it be better if they had patents to license and were thus not dependent on public funds?
The new versions of Windows restrict driver development to "approved corporations" only.
That's not true. You can always install test signed drivers on your machine if you install your test certificate.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa906344.aspx
Hell if you could convince customers to this they could install your unsigned drivers on their machines too.
However for a sane user experience you should run the WHQL tests on your machine and have Microsoft WHQL sign the drivers. That needs a Verisign certificate which costs hundreds of dollars per year. Still consider - the hardware vendor writes the drivers. They spent a lot more than a hundred dollars doing that. The requirement that code be signed in kernel mode means that the company that wrote it is known and the certificate can be revoked if they write malware. And WHQL signing will at least catch many of the common bugs.
So as a user I'd definitely want to only use WHQL'd drivers on my machine. Still I could work around that if I wanted - the freedom that has been removed is the freedom for anonymous and unaccountable entities to install kernel mode code on other people's machines, not of users to write their own drivers and install them on their own ones.
This is not the case on most games consoles or mobile phones - there the hardware will refuse to load unsigned software. You'd need to buy a special development system to program them and the code you write will only run on that system until the vendor approves your code and release signs it. So there your freedom to tinker is really not present.
That's not true. If you use the wrong OS you will burn in hell. That's the consensus amongst an overwhelming majority of theologians.
A few deniers disagree of course, but that's probably just because they are in league with Satan.
The best option to me seems to be to take a mass spectrograph of their atmosphere as the planet passed between their sun and us. We can do that now
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080319-extrasolar-methane.html
E.g. if aliens had technology comparable to ours today they'd be able to see that the Earth's atmosphere had lots of oxygen. Free oxygen in the atmosphere seems to me to be a good sign of life.
So they could scan all planets in range for non equilibrium atmosphere and then direct a high energy laser beam that would be bright but harmless from our point of view. They could use that to send a signal - it would start off pulsing out prime numbers (or something else obviously non natural) and gradually build up to maths and physics.
Now since we've only been able to do this recently it seems like another civilisation doing it would likely be more advanced than ours. So the physics would be interesting, to say the least.
We -might- find an oxygen atmosphere, heated water laden, near-1g planet "nearby" (100 ly) but it's unlikely. What's nearly impossible is finding one with a biosphere that we can survive in without basically obliterating it and dropping down earth biologicals. Most things on such a planet would poison us.
Unless such a magical planet is found, exploring outside our system before serious colonization (which -could- be economically valuable) of Mars, gas giant moons, etc is a waste. On all levels.
If such a planet was found, I'd consider it proof of god.
I dunno about that - since we've only got one example of a planet with life we don't know how variable life is. Maybe life based on DNA and proteins is really common.
Even if their equivalent of proteins is different but based on the same principles we could still harvest them and convert them into ours with a few well engineered enzymes. Compared to the problem of getting there, even disassembling their proteins into atoms and reassembling those atoms into our proteins is not very hard.
So consider - given a planet with oxygen and some plant and animal life but no intelligence humans would need to do some processing on the plant life but they could turn it into something they could consume.
Still it seems it would make more sense to go somewhere nearer and bring your biosphere with you I have to admit.
Humans like veal which has been prevented from exercising. Maybe they prefer the taste of brain matter which hasn't done much.
Wow, I never knew about Numbers Stations. That article was fascinating. It's amazing that people are still using such a low tech encryption method.
Most of the time it's not a problem of what governments allow, it's a problem of that sells papers. Gossip does, Watergate style involved reporting does not.