You know what. IT support are janitors. Much in the same way that the janitors can't tell Doctors/executives "you can't do that for the good of the hospital/company", IT support can't do that either.
So the chances of locking down a network that people work on is essentially zero. And much like janitors, when users make a mess of things is IT support's job to clean it up.
> At the very least, you never allow mail with executable attachments through your defences (nor mails with archives containing executables, etc.)
People will get around this easily - just zip the executable in a passworded zip file, put that passworded zip file into another passworded zip. Or rename the passworded zip file as.bin or something. Contrary to popular belief, there are legitimate reasons for emailing executables in zip files - e.g. an updated version of a driver to someone who can't access FTP because their firewall blocks it.
Why not give a talk on Scientology or some other virulent meme of your choice to demonstrate the dangers of letting non trusted employees give attendance mandatory talks to all employees?
If you want more battery life, why not just buy yourself a couple of 9 cell batteries? It'll be cheaper than replacing all you applications, most likely with "work alike" ones since the originals never get ported to ARM.
I have an ARM in my Windows Mobile phone. There are a lot of applications and some of them are very useful on a phone. I can't imagine using any of them on a laptop.
...Look how eagerly Mac developers transitioned to x86....
Could that be because 90% of the world's computers were using x86? For a profit-making corporation like Microsoft, what advantage would there be in putting out a version of Windows that nobody would buy, because there is no application software.
Not having any stupid user mode codes means the CPU can switch down to a low power state more often. Turn off the LCD and put the DRAM into self refresh and you should get an awesome battery life.
Actually this points to another problem with ARM competing with Intel. Intel have their own, very good fabs. For desktop and server CPUs this is absolutely critical - you need a very high end process to compete. Most ARMs are built on a much less hi tech process, e.g. TSMC's. That means that even if ARM had a desktop class CPU, the OEMs don't have a desktop class chip process to make it on.
Fabless CPU companies can compete only if they have some sort of architectural advantage, e.g. MIPS 4000 vs the 486. If they don't they will end up shipping at too low a clock rate to be competitive. In the long run MIPS gave up trying to take over the desktop and concentrated on embedded stuff. ARM has always been about embedded. I think the chances of the architecture taking over the desktop is minimal.
It's a shame VESA didn't invent some way to handle accelerated graphics really. I remember reading that adding acceleration to line drawing and BitBlts gave you most of the speed up for graphics. Now admittedly this was back in the Windows 2000 days, and modern GUIs probably need much more hadrware support.
Still you could imagine a scheme where the graphics card had could say "I have line drawing, write the start and end position here and write a command to this register" and "I have BitBlt, write the parameters here and write a command here". That way non Windows OSs could at least have used these operations. Now the problem is that you really don't want to make a Bios call. Still you could imagine an ACPI like mixture of tables that describe the hardware and byte code which controls it. You'd need to interpret the byte code in a native driver of course, so it would have a heavy speed penalty. If you used tables, I think that would work fine. Of course that means that all cards would need to do things in a very similar way.
Now unfortunately VESA didn't do this. So the now all graphics cards support the Windows kernel API and that is the extent of the standardization for accelerated graphics.
My family rent houses out to students. We fitted CFL lights in all the places where you need a ladder to change them for obvious reasons. It seems like some CFL bulbs fail really quickly - much sooner than you'd expect based on the rated life. Still you can RMA them and get a new bulb for free. Sooner or later it seems like you get good ones, and they do have the expected life.
Still, my guess is that LED bulbs should in the long run be more efficient and have longer lifespans.
Bah, your duty as an overpaid tech geek is to be an early adopter for overpriced ultra high end stuff based on new technologies. That way the volumes go up and everyone else can afford it. By which point you've moved on. It's the circle of life.
China's industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said manufacturers, internet users and organisations opposed to the plans had received the wrong message from his department and that installation was never planned to be compulsory.
Actually if you read www.danwei.org, www.chinasmack.com for example, there are lots of examples of people using irony, sarcasm, ambiguity, puns and homonyms to evade censorship and make political points that would be unsafe to make if they stated things outright. However I don't believe this is one of those cases - it's more like there's a mass uprising against Green Dam and the Chinese government is slowly backing down.
> Yay slashdot for not understanding UTF8. It's supposed to be ying xiang.
Yeah, that is irritating. Basically people used things like Unicode's Left to Right Override character to mess up the layout so someone who's language can be represented in 7 bit ASCII decided to clobber Unicode completely.
My Hanyu Pinyin dictionary says ying3xiang3 means influence and it gives one of the examples as "The crops have been influenced by the weather", so the connotation is clearly negative.
I heard an odd story about a friend driving around the middle of nowhere in Australia. He stopped for some reason and he started to hear things. He listened more carefully and looked out the window. It was dusk and he saw a big crowd of people running towards his car, whooping to each other and sounding extremely drunk/hostile. He started the engine, floored the accelerator and kept it floored until he found a town, many miles later.
My grandfather fought in 5 WW2 campaigns. Whilst lined up waiting to be evacuated (australians, scots, canadians, I think greek) from *somewhere* via a beach, British redcap's on horseback arrived and announced that all the colonial troops would have to stand aside while the British troops were evacuated first.
The battle hardened Australian troops responded by killing all 12 MP's, queue jumping is disliked to this day in Australia.
Nothing is worse than when reality resembles a scene from a Mel Gibson film.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the left has global warming and economic depression to use as an excuse for bigger and worse government, it's only fair the right has terrorism.
The price of freedom will be mainly paid by people who make snarky and unpatriotic comments about vigilance.
Mac fans show their people skills once again.
You know what. IT support are janitors. Much in the same way that the janitors can't tell Doctors/executives "you can't do that for the good of the hospital/company", IT support can't do that either.
So the chances of locking down a network that people work on is essentially zero. And much like janitors, when users make a mess of things is IT support's job to clean it up.
> At the very least, you never allow mail with executable attachments through your defences (nor mails with archives containing executables, etc.)
People will get around this easily - just zip the executable in a passworded zip file, put that passworded zip file into another passworded zip. Or rename the passworded zip file as .bin or something. Contrary to popular belief, there are legitimate reasons for emailing executables in zip files - e.g. an updated version of a driver to someone who can't access FTP because their firewall blocks it.
Handing out dope laced brownies would teach people not to eat untrusted food.
Why not give a talk on Scientology or some other virulent meme of your choice to demonstrate the dangers of letting non trusted employees give attendance mandatory talks to all employees?
I bet they won't ask you to give another one.
If you want more battery life, why not just buy yourself a couple of 9 cell batteries? It'll be cheaper than replacing all you applications, most likely with "work alike" ones since the originals never get ported to ARM.
I have an ARM in my Windows Mobile phone. There are a lot of applications and some of them are very useful on a phone. I can't imagine using any of them on a laptop.
...Look how eagerly Mac developers transitioned to x86....
Could that be because 90% of the world's computers were using x86? For a profit-making corporation like Microsoft, what advantage would there be in putting out a version of Windows that nobody would buy, because there is no application software.
Not having any stupid user mode codes means the CPU can switch down to a low power state more often. Turn off the LCD and put the DRAM into self refresh and you should get an awesome battery life.
Actually this points to another problem with ARM competing with Intel. Intel have their own, very good fabs. For desktop and server CPUs this is absolutely critical - you need a very high end process to compete. Most ARMs are built on a much less hi tech process, e.g. TSMC's. That means that even if ARM had a desktop class CPU, the OEMs don't have a desktop class chip process to make it on.
Fabless CPU companies can compete only if they have some sort of architectural advantage, e.g. MIPS 4000 vs the 486. If they don't they will end up shipping at too low a clock rate to be competitive. In the long run MIPS gave up trying to take over the desktop and concentrated on embedded stuff. ARM has always been about embedded. I think the chances of the architecture taking over the desktop is minimal.
It's a shame VESA didn't invent some way to handle accelerated graphics really. I remember reading that adding acceleration to line drawing and BitBlts gave you most of the speed up for graphics. Now admittedly this was back in the Windows 2000 days, and modern GUIs probably need much more hadrware support.
Still you could imagine a scheme where the graphics card had could say "I have line drawing, write the start and end position here and write a command to this register" and "I have BitBlt, write the parameters here and write a command here". That way non Windows OSs could at least have used these operations. Now the problem is that you really don't want to make a Bios call. Still you could imagine an ACPI like mixture of tables that describe the hardware and byte code which controls it. You'd need to interpret the byte code in a native driver of course, so it would have a heavy speed penalty. If you used tables, I think that would work fine. Of course that means that all cards would need to do things in a very similar way.
Now unfortunately VESA didn't do this. So the now all graphics cards support the Windows kernel API and that is the extent of the standardization for accelerated graphics.
So...monkey see, monkey do?
Bloatware Inc, Virtual Monkey® see
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Bloatware Inc, Virtual Monkey® do
My family rent houses out to students. We fitted CFL lights in all the places where you need a ladder to change them for obvious reasons. It seems like some CFL bulbs fail really quickly - much sooner than you'd expect based on the rated life. Still you can RMA them and get a new bulb for free. Sooner or later it seems like you get good ones, and they do have the expected life.
Still, my guess is that LED bulbs should in the long run be more efficient and have longer lifespans.
Bah, your duty as an overpaid tech geek is to be an early adopter for overpriced ultra high end stuff based on new technologies. That way the volumes go up and everyone else can afford it. By which point you've moved on. It's the circle of life.
China's industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said manufacturers, internet users and organisations opposed to the plans had received the wrong message from his department and that installation was never planned to be compulsory.
I think they've backed down.
Actually if you read www.danwei.org, www.chinasmack.com for example, there are lots of examples of people using irony, sarcasm, ambiguity, puns and homonyms to evade censorship and make political points that would be unsafe to make if they stated things outright. However I don't believe this is one of those cases - it's more like there's a mass uprising against Green Dam and the Chinese government is slowly backing down.
> Yay slashdot for not understanding UTF8. It's supposed to be ying xiang.
Yeah, that is irritating. Basically people used things like Unicode's Left to Right Override character to mess up the layout so someone who's language can be represented in 7 bit ASCII decided to clobber Unicode completely.
My Hanyu Pinyin dictionary says ying3xiang3 means influence and it gives one of the examples as "The crops have been influenced by the weather", so the connotation is clearly negative.
More than one AID.
I read you can get AIDs from dirty toilet seats. More than one in fact.
I highly doubt that you use soap + hot water + friction inside your lungs (but if you do, you're more of a man than I).
Weed kills these bugs and prevents lung cancer. I read it on www.good-skunk-is-a-humanright.co.uk
I heard an odd story about a friend driving around the middle of nowhere in Australia. He stopped for some reason and he started to hear things. He listened more carefully and looked out the window. It was dusk and he saw a big crowd of people running towards his car, whooping to each other and sounding extremely drunk/hostile. He started the engine, floored the accelerator and kept it floored until he found a town, many miles later.
My grandfather fought in 5 WW2 campaigns. Whilst lined up waiting to be evacuated (australians, scots, canadians, I think greek) from *somewhere* via a beach, British redcap's on horseback arrived and announced that all the colonial troops would have to stand aside while the British troops were evacuated first.
The battle hardened Australian troops responded by killing all 12 MP's, queue jumping is disliked to this day in Australia.
Nothing is worse than when reality resembles a scene from a Mel Gibson film.
Whoosh.
X-Mod-Mindfuck: that's the sound of a swinging pendant, not a low flying joke