I have an Asus G1S. It has a C: drive with Vista on it and D:. I have a copy of XP Pro retail I want to install to dual boot with Vista.
But D: is a logical drive, and XP won't work on it.
People have reported that if you repartition into two drives install XP first on C: and the Vista on D: it will work but to do that I need a retail Vista. The restore CD would just go back to the original config of the machine, groundhog day style.
Yeah, it's painful some clueless court forced Acer who sell decent entry level laptops to refund more money for the software than they paid and thus make a loss.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/20/microsoft_gets_green_light/
The compliance committee doesn't seem to think so. "These MDP funds are reduced by $1 per unit if any desktop computer is sold by the OEM without a license to an operating system (Windows or otherwise)," the latest report notes. So there's a penalty for selling boxes with no OS at all on the grounds that people would most likely install pirated Windows on them. But selling them with FreeDos or for that matter Linux preinstalled is ok. I think that's why Dell preinstalls FreeDos, so people that want something other than Windows can nuke it and install whatever they want and Dell doesn't break the agreement not to sell bare systems.
All this only applies to big companies and preassembled systems. You can buy a case+hard drive+RAM+CPU+graphics card as parts and put them together and install whatever you want on it.
There won't BE any real competition until the bundling is broken and consumers can make an ACTIVE choice without being penalized or relegated to a few specific models. I don't think it will happen. People want to use Windows software and OEMs want to sell computers that can do that out of the box. People don't want to pay the retail price for Windows or install it. And OEMs want to get the cheap ($50 to Dell) OEM version subsidized by the trialware companies (who knows but they could afford to pay $50 per seat), because it's easier to support if they control the installation. Bundling accomplishes all this, and it's not just in Microsoft's interest, it works for the OEMs and the 99% of end users who just want the latest version of Windows.
Politicians aren't going to do force that means average people need to spend an extra hundred bucks on the retail version of Windows and install it themselves. Especially just to placate a hyper technical minority who want to run FOSS software and can get an unbundled machine now (even a latop with FreeDos) and know how to install what they want to use.
BeOS had database filesystems Microsost STILL hasn't managed to ship with Vista!! they were ready to ship in 6 weeks until the OEM lawyers pulled the plug. It was blatantly illegal, monopoly tactics but never got much press outside slashdot and OSnews... very sad
Do you have a link for that?
It looks to me as if NTFS is already a database. You attach name attributes to files, there's no reason you couldn't attach other things to them too. You'd need to expose a few more APIs to user mode to open by other attributes but it could be done.
Mind you, to me there's an argument for doing database queries in user mode where everything is easier.
So if the OEM version is $100, but there is $89 of bundledware (that is only available on Windows), who is going to give up forking out $11 to buy an OS that they "know" and instead try that thing they've been all FUD'ed about...And trust me, if unbundling becomes forced, there will be a FUDfest like no other in history...remember the "not compatible with DOS" astroturfing wars in the 80's? But this time it will be about piracy, patent-violating, known-provider...hey haven't we heard some of this before?
I got a laptop recently and it had Vista, Norton Internet Security (which made a fast machine run like molasses) and a bunch of other stuff. Norton was a trial copy for 3 months. I've seen other machines loaded down with much more trialware including MS Office. And non technical users do actually buy this stuff. So it's quite possible that a big OEM gets a hefty discount on Vista OEM down to $50 bucks and since an aveage user will spend >$50 bucks on buying the trialware, the trialware companies can basically pay for the OEM Windows license.
Actually the really clever thing is that any other platform wouldn't need antivirus software until it got decent market share, maybe not even then. And Linux users are very unlikely to pay for commercial trialware. So Norton et al that make Windows free to OEMs wouldn't be interested in porting. Microsoft, who can use MS Office or Works trialware to subsidize their own OS in the same way won't port either. So Windows ends up being free to both OEMs and end users in strange sort of way.
Why do all files need to be scanned for viruses? I am not an expert on the innards of OS, including Macs. If I remember correctly, Macs have a process launcher I believe is called launchd.
In Windows a kext would be a driver and you get a confirmation box if the driver is not signed, assuming you're an admin. If not, it will just fail to install.
But that's not what antivirus software looks for. Some user who doesn't know what they're gets an email saying "See Britney Naked, click the attachment" with BritneySpearsNaked.jpg.scr attached. This is actually a screensaver disguised as a jpg. But a screensaver is just a executable file and if you're running as an Admin as inexperienced users used to do before Vista, you just got owned. BritneySpearsNaked.jpg.scr will scan your address book and email itself to everyone you know. And copy itself somewhere it can start on bootup. Actually I happen to know it could kill the system in few milliseconds if it wanted to, though either virus writers aren't evil enough to do this or they haven't figured it out. I think highly virulent computer viruses might burn themselves out too, like biological ones like ebola do, so there's probably a evolutionary limit on virulence.
Antivirus software intercepts the CreateFile opening the attachment and causes it to fail. Actually it will probably stop the file being written to disk in the first place. In a bizarre piece of software symbiosis, the antivirus knows enough about the email programs file formats to replace it with a text file telling the user that the attachment was a virus that got removed.
These days much of this is fixed - Vista users don't run as admin all the time so processes they start can't damage things or infect the system. Since XP there's a prompt if processes start to use the mail APIs so the user has to confirm. And most modern (as in made in the last seven years) Windows email clients make it very hard to execute an executable attachment or send one. The BritneyNaked.jpg.scr scenario only really worked ten years ago. And intercepting file access was an ugly hack to stop it then.
On Macs or other *NIX based systems any process running as root can scan files.
That's true on Windows too.
A kext is not needed.
What if you want to scan things before they are opened? All Windows antivirus software works like this
1) OS does an open 2) Antivirus intercepts the open, opens the file and scans it for viruses 3) if it's clean then allow it to be opened, if not block it
Now I'm not saying this is a good feature - I always turn it off and do manual scans overnight, but it seems like if you need to intercept open(), close(), read() and write() - and actually in Windows the file APIS are much more extensive than this, you need to hook dozens of API functions, probably hundreds - it seems like you need a kext.
Incidentally, Windows antivirus software works by installing a filter driver over the filesystem. And if you're hooking you need an uninstall to undo the hooking when the software is removed.
Actually, maybe you don't. If you've ever used FileMon it's just one exe file. I think that file contains a filter driver which it writes out to disk and installs. Mind you, the people that wrote FileMon are a lot better programmers than the sort of people who write antivirus software, and FileMon can only track file accesses after it starts. A real antivirus should be able to run from very early in the boot cycle, which requires all sorts of voodoo to get a the driver and userspace parts working before the Win32 subsystem is up.
The registry in Windows is a serious design flaw that causes a large amount of the grief that Windows users experience.
Actually Windows supports.ini files too. In fact back in the Win 3.1 days that was all it supported. The registry was supposed to be some centralized place for config info that could be backed up all at once. It's faster than ini files too since it's binary.
But these days the fashion has changed and most apps use a text file in the user's directory for config. The speed advantage of a binary config database is largely irrelevant since machines are fast and it only needs to be accessed on app startup and shutdown, and it means you can uninstall the app by deleting it, Mac style. Also, you can run it from a USB key.
In fact I read some interview with Microsoft people where they said that the registry was originally only supposed to be for COM components, using it for app config data was basically a mistake.
What about kexts? It seems like an antivirus that can scan files on the fly needs to hook into the OS to do this. So just deleting the application executables won't remove this stuff.
I've tried Windows with and without anti virus software, and with and without spam blocking. With no antivirus and no spam block it's pretty obvious that clicking on BritneySpears.jpg.scr is a bad idea. With antivirus, BritneySpears.jpg.scr is deleted from the spam. With spamblocking the spam ends up hidden.
I think if you use email program with decent Bayesian filtering (or gmail) and you don't download pirated software you can live without antivirus, since the main attack vector is over email now that most Windows machines run with a firewall by default.
On Vista clicking on malware pops up a warning box making it clear it's a bad idea to install it. Even if you install it, Windows Defender will get rid of sooner or later. And even processes with Admin rights can't infect the system - all the Windows system directories are protected from everything but the TrustedInstaller process that runs.msi files.
I remember seeing this article a week ago. So yeah, how IS this new? That was the trial version of the article. Now we need to pay or stop talking about it.
The really odd thing about Philip K Dick in general and this book in particular is that this seemed to be the most implausible idea - a machine which creates religious experiences, and someone seems to have made one.
Correct, but unfortunately not connected with the point trying to be made (you missed it in your knee-jerk reaction against breaking copyright law), which is that the situation raised as an analogy in laughingcoyote's post would indicate that there is something wrong with the justice system (within his analogy). The justice system being analogous to "the content industry" in this case. No it doesn't - maybe the more serious criminal is just harder to catch than amateur ones. In fact that's common sense. Serial killers and big time commercial pirates would know to take counter measures against being caught that people that kill by mistake or download movies at the weekend wouldn't.
Just pointing to uncaught serious criminals doesn't affect whether less serious criminals are guilty or not.
In my eyes, the major problem with the argument in question is that the poster lumps a lot of relatively unrelated organizations (RIAA, MPAA, and all their respective "shadows" in non-US countries) into one cohesive "content industry", in order to criticize its behavior as being disjointed and arbitrary. I believe the term is "The Man", consisting of law enforcement and The Corporations. If The Man doesn't prosecute some obscure and no doubt untraceable company selling a few pirate DVDs, he shouldn't be allowed to prosecute people uploading millions of songs to the internet who make no attempt to remain anonymous.
The only reason an argument this weak is so popular with the mods is because it justifies them getting free stuff.
I got caught speeding 10 miles an hour over the limit once
I.e. you broke the law. Prepare to pay the price.
there's a guy who's running around hitting pedestrians all over the city. They know exactly who he is and where to find him, but they haven't even given him a ticket yet.
They fact that they haven't caught him doesn't give you a license to break the law. Neither does excessive penalties, the fact that enforcing the law is advocated by rich or nasty people, "information wants to be free", vague arguments that the people you're stealing from should change business models or any of the other pro piracy arguments that get moderated up here. Seriously, all this stuff is irrelevant.
If you break the law despite knowing the penalties for doing so are severe, you know what to expect.
"In our best interests" to "allow" them to do this? Who the hell do you think we are? A country that defeated Japan in WWII forced them to demilitarize afterwards and has had troops there ever since? For better or worse the US does have a say in this stuff.
And I agree with the GP BTW that the US should encourage Japan to normalize their constitution as an ally to the US and a counterweight to China.
I think it's both strange and a little sad to see Americans - and it's not just you - talking about Japan modifying their military as if it's both our decision to make, and a decision to be taken lightly. You don't understand Japan's domestic or international issues. You don't understand their constitution or their history. You've really got no place to be commenting on what they should or shouldn't do in our best interests. Japan will and should continue to act in its own best interests. Yes of course, but the US can support one side of the debate in Japan, the one that wants to take out the more pacifist bits of their constitution. The US admin could also support them by selling them F-22s, handing over responsibility for defending Japan to the Japanese and partnering with them on missile defense - i.e. essentially by making the relationship between the US and Japan more one between equals rather than occupier/occupied as it has been since then end of WWII.
In fact Japan is a natural US partner for that since they are in range of North Korean missiles and a plausible target for North Korea to strike in a war. They also have the technical and economic base to be useful and they are unlikely to gain any technology that they don't already have, or use it in a way that is counter to US interests.
The Japanese public has shown little interest in modifying their military. They just voted out en masse the party that was in favor of doing so, and forced their nationalistic prime minister to resign in part because he was more concerned with things like modifying the military's constitutional basis than he was in fixing things like pensions and wage disparities. Why would they want to go down the same road that led them into WWII, go down the same road that's led the US into Vietnam and Iraq, down the same road that's led to the division of Korea? Why would they want to do that given the economic prosperity and success that they've built with both all the money they've saved and all the goodwill they've built up over the past 60 years by not employing an offensive military?
And how is this not intuitive to people outside of Japan?
Japan has had thousands of years of history dominated by war; they're experts in it. They look at us and see us as absolute beginners. They've now had 60 years of history dominated by peace and they've become one of the richest, best-educated and most technologically advanced countries in the world, with among the longest lifespans. They see the correlation between the two, why don't you? All that seems like a good thing to me - the fact that a majority of Japanese public is pacifist makes if hard for a future Japanese government to try some sort of 1930's style adventurism and thus it makes them easier to trust as a long term ally. It seems unlikely that the Japanese democratic system will be unstable too - even in the 90's deflation it seemed to be remarkably stable.
In fact Japan is almost a best case ally for the US.
Now what's in it for the content industry to beat up private citizens with $220,000 judgements or scrambling to get DeCSS sites shut down within hours, while corporate scammers openly sell pirate DVDs for months on end, unopposed?" I got arrested and sent to prison for vehicular manslaughter. I run over some kid but she was really young - it was more like a late term abortion really. And yet in Wisconsin there's a serial killer who has murdered ten adults and not been caught. By the principle of double standards raised in this article I should therefore be released.
Because the US is an aggressively militaristic and jingoistic culture that glamourizes and fetishizes the military and its weapons. You say that again and I'll put a cap in the your ass.
If W had spent the kind of energy, money and political capital on space that he did on Iraq, we would have a base on Mars by now, and fusion powered spaceships. I don't think you can blame W for a lack of fusion powered spaceships. As far as I know no designs have been tested, though twohave been proposed. The wiki page for Orion says
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
By using energetic nuclear power, Orion offered both high thrust and high specific impulse the holy grail of spacecraft propulsion. It offered performance greater than the most advanced conventional or nuclear rocket engines now under study. Cheap interplanetary travel was the goal of the Orion Project. Its supporters felt that it had great potential for space travel, but it lost political approval because of concerns with fallout from its propulsion. The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is generally acknowledged to have ended the project. The PTBT is a "Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water". So no possibility of a fusion powered spacecraft. Mind you W could have pulled the US out of the PTBT like he did with the ABM treaty.
Actually these laptops are being sold to the corrupt third world goverments who caused them to be malnourished in the first place. But I'm sure they'll do the honest thing and hand them out to the starving millions for free.
It's not exactly PC to point it out but the average person from South Eastern country like Vietnam is light years ahead intellectually compared to the average Pakistani. Or for that matter the average American or English person.
And it's not racial at all - I think Indians are quite similar ethnically to Pakistanis, it's just that they have a culture which is capable of teaching maths and the Pakistanis don't. Americans are somewhere in between Vietnam and Pakistan.
And before people start to get all nationalistic and defensive about it, I said average as in Johnny Sixpack jock types in America and Madrassah fodder in Pakistan, not the 0.5% of the population who likes math and posts on slashdot. The thing SE Asian countries do well is to get average people to learn maths, mostly by old fashioned blackboard lessons a punishing curriculum and exams you can actually fail. America and Britain have dumbed things down to increase the pass rate and because telling people they're failures is a bit fascist, and Pakistan education is patchy and dominated by a poisonous religion.
In fact if you were looking at things from a cynical point of view, the War on Terror is a handy way to keep the people too stupid to pass Calculus 101 busy from both Pakistan and America.
Now, Lyndon Johnson wasn't much of a popular guy like Jack. There wasn't an ounce of Camelot in him. But Lyndon had a few advantages, in that, he was a physically big guy, a real bear of a man, and, he was really a lot more connected in with the still important Roosevelt wing of the Democratic Party - much more so than Jack did. LBJ was a crack shot with a Carcano rifle too.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the same though.
I have an Asus G1S. It has a C: drive with Vista on it and D:. I have a copy of XP Pro retail I want to install to dual boot with Vista.
But D: is a logical drive, and XP won't work on it.
People have reported that if you repartition into two drives install XP first on C: and the Vista on D: it will work but to do that I need a retail Vista. The restore CD would just go back to the original config of the machine, groundhog day style.
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/post-737896.html&sid=d104cb5b451af71033375f4228c5a440
Yeah, it's painful some clueless court forced Acer who sell decent entry level laptops to refund more money for the software than they paid and thus make a loss.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/20/microsoft_gets_green_light/ The compliance committee doesn't seem to think so. "These MDP funds are reduced by $1 per unit if any desktop computer is sold by the OEM without a license to an operating system (Windows or otherwise)," the latest report notes. So there's a penalty for selling boxes with no OS at all on the grounds that people would most likely install pirated Windows on them. But selling them with FreeDos or for that matter Linux preinstalled is ok. I think that's why Dell preinstalls FreeDos, so people that want something other than Windows can nuke it and install whatever they want and Dell doesn't break the agreement not to sell bare systems.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/27/0135208
All this only applies to big companies and preassembled systems. You can buy a case+hard drive+RAM+CPU+graphics card as parts and put them together and install whatever you want on it.
Politicians aren't going to do force that means average people need to spend an extra hundred bucks on the retail version of Windows and install it themselves. Especially just to placate a hyper technical minority who want to run FOSS software and can get an unbundled machine now (even a latop with FreeDos) and know how to install what they want to use.
BeOS had database filesystems Microsost STILL hasn't managed to ship with Vista!! they were ready to ship in 6 weeks until the OEM lawyers pulled the plug. It was blatantly illegal, monopoly tactics but never got much press outside slashdot and OSnews... very sad
Do you have a link for that?
It looks to me as if NTFS is already a database. You attach name attributes to files, there's no reason you couldn't attach other things to them too. You'd need to expose a few more APIs to user mode to open by other attributes but it could be done.
Mind you, to me there's an argument for doing database queries in user mode where everything is easier.
So if the OEM version is $100, but there is $89 of bundledware (that is only available on Windows), who is going to give up forking out $11 to buy an OS that they "know" and instead try that thing they've been all FUD'ed about...And trust me, if unbundling becomes forced, there will be a FUDfest like no other in history...remember the "not compatible with DOS" astroturfing wars in the 80's? But this time it will be about piracy, patent-violating, known-provider...hey haven't we heard some of this before?
I got a laptop recently and it had Vista, Norton Internet Security (which made a fast machine run like molasses) and a bunch of other stuff. Norton was a trial copy for 3 months. I've seen other machines loaded down with much more trialware including MS Office. And non technical users do actually buy this stuff. So it's quite possible that a big OEM gets a hefty discount on Vista OEM down to $50 bucks and since an aveage user will spend >$50 bucks on buying the trialware, the trialware companies can basically pay for the OEM Windows license.Actually the really clever thing is that any other platform wouldn't need antivirus software until it got decent market share, maybe not even then. And Linux users are very unlikely to pay for commercial trialware. So Norton et al that make Windows free to OEMs wouldn't be interested in porting. Microsoft, who can use MS Office or Works trialware to subsidize their own OS in the same way won't port either. So Windows ends up being free to both OEMs and end users in strange sort of way.
Why do all files need to be scanned for viruses? I am not an expert on the innards of OS, including Macs. If I remember correctly, Macs have a process launcher I believe is called launchd.
launchd is just for kexts, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launchd
In Windows a kext would be a driver and you get a confirmation box if the driver is not signed, assuming you're an admin. If not, it will just fail to install.
But that's not what antivirus software looks for. Some user who doesn't know what they're gets an email saying "See Britney Naked, click the attachment" with BritneySpearsNaked.jpg.scr attached. This is actually a screensaver disguised as a jpg. But a screensaver is just a executable file and if you're running as an Admin as inexperienced users used to do before Vista, you just got owned. BritneySpearsNaked.jpg.scr will scan your address book and email itself to everyone you know. And copy itself somewhere it can start on bootup. Actually I happen to know it could kill the system in few milliseconds if it wanted to, though either virus writers aren't evil enough to do this or they haven't figured it out. I think highly virulent computer viruses might burn themselves out too, like biological ones like ebola do, so there's probably a evolutionary limit on virulence.
Antivirus software intercepts the CreateFile opening the attachment and causes it to fail. Actually it will probably stop the file being written to disk in the first place. In a bizarre piece of software symbiosis, the antivirus knows enough about the email programs file formats to replace it with a text file telling the user that the attachment was a virus that got removed.
These days much of this is fixed - Vista users don't run as admin all the time so processes they start can't damage things or infect the system. Since XP there's a prompt if processes start to use the mail APIs so the user has to confirm. And most modern (as in made in the last seven years) Windows email clients make it very hard to execute an executable attachment or send one. The BritneyNaked.jpg.scr scenario only really worked ten years ago. And intercepting file access was an ugly hack to stop it then.
On Macs or other *NIX based systems any process running as root can scan files.
.ini files too. In fact back in the Win 3.1 days that was all it supported. The registry was supposed to be some centralized place for config info that could be backed up all at once. It's faster than ini files too since it's binary.
That's true on Windows too.
A kext is not needed.
What if you want to scan things before they are opened? All Windows antivirus software works like this
1) OS does an open
2) Antivirus intercepts the open, opens the file and scans it for viruses
3) if it's clean then allow it to be opened, if not block it
Now I'm not saying this is a good feature - I always turn it off and do manual scans overnight, but it seems like if you need to intercept open(), close(), read() and write() - and actually in Windows the file APIS are much more extensive than this, you need to hook dozens of API functions, probably hundreds - it seems like you need a kext.
Incidentally, Windows antivirus software works by installing a filter driver over the filesystem. And if you're hooking you need an uninstall to undo the hooking when the software is removed.
Actually, maybe you don't. If you've ever used FileMon it's just one exe file. I think that file contains a filter driver which it writes out to disk and installs. Mind you, the people that wrote FileMon are a lot better programmers than the sort of people who write antivirus software, and FileMon can only track file accesses after it starts. A real antivirus should be able to run from very early in the boot cycle, which requires all sorts of voodoo to get a the driver and userspace parts working before the Win32 subsystem is up.
The registry in Windows is a serious design flaw that causes a large amount of the grief that Windows users experience.
Actually Windows supports
But these days the fashion has changed and most apps use a text file in the user's directory for config. The speed advantage of a binary config database is largely irrelevant since machines are fast and it only needs to be accessed on app startup and shutdown, and it means you can uninstall the app by deleting it, Mac style. Also, you can run it from a USB key.
In fact I read some interview with Microsoft people where they said that the registry was originally only supposed to be for COM components, using it for app config data was basically a mistake.
What about kexts? It seems like an antivirus that can scan files on the fly needs to hook into the OS to do this. So just deleting the application executables won't remove this stuff.
I've tried Windows with and without anti virus software, and with and without spam blocking. With no antivirus and no spam block it's pretty obvious that clicking on BritneySpears.jpg.scr is a bad idea. With antivirus, BritneySpears.jpg.scr is deleted from the spam. With spamblocking the spam ends up hidden.
.msi files.
I think if you use email program with decent Bayesian filtering (or gmail) and you don't download pirated software you can live without antivirus, since the main attack vector is over email now that most Windows machines run with a firewall by default.
On Vista clicking on malware pops up a warning box making it clear it's a bad idea to install it. Even if you install it, Windows Defender will get rid of sooner or later. And even processes with Admin rights can't infect the system - all the Windows system directories are protected from everything but the TrustedInstaller process that runs
Actually it reminds me of an empathy box -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%3F#Mercerism
The really odd thing about Philip K Dick in general and this book in particular is that this seemed to be the most implausible idea - a machine which creates religious experiences, and someone seems to have made one.
Just pointing to uncaught serious criminals doesn't affect whether less serious criminals are guilty or not. In my eyes, the major problem with the argument in question is that the poster lumps a lot of relatively unrelated organizations (RIAA, MPAA, and all their respective "shadows" in non-US countries) into one cohesive "content industry", in order to criticize its behavior as being disjointed and arbitrary. I believe the term is "The Man", consisting of law enforcement and The Corporations. If The Man doesn't prosecute some obscure and no doubt untraceable company selling a few pirate DVDs, he shouldn't be allowed to prosecute people uploading millions of songs to the internet who make no attempt to remain anonymous.
The only reason an argument this weak is so popular with the mods is because it justifies them getting free stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
I got caught speeding 10 miles an hour over the limit once
I.e. you broke the law. Prepare to pay the price.
there's a guy who's running around hitting pedestrians all over the city. They know exactly who he is and where to find him, but they haven't even given him a ticket yet.
They fact that they haven't caught him doesn't give you a license to break the law. Neither does excessive penalties, the fact that enforcing the law is advocated by rich or nasty people, "information wants to be free", vague arguments that the people you're stealing from should change business models or any of the other pro piracy arguments that get moderated up here. Seriously, all this stuff is irrelevant.
If you break the law despite knowing the penalties for doing so are severe, you know what to expect.
And I agree with the GP BTW that the US should encourage Japan to normalize their constitution as an ally to the US and a counterweight to China. I think it's both strange and a little sad to see Americans - and it's not just you - talking about Japan modifying their military as if it's both our decision to make, and a decision to be taken lightly. You don't understand Japan's domestic or international issues. You don't understand their constitution or their history. You've really got no place to be commenting on what they should or shouldn't do in our best interests. Japan will and should continue to act in its own best interests. Yes of course, but the US can support one side of the debate in Japan, the one that wants to take out the more pacifist bits of their constitution. The US admin could also support them by selling them F-22s, handing over responsibility for defending Japan to the Japanese and partnering with them on missile defense - i.e. essentially by making the relationship between the US and Japan more one between equals rather than occupier/occupied as it has been since then end of WWII.
In fact Japan is a natural US partner for that since they are in range of North Korean missiles and a plausible target for North Korea to strike in a war. They also have the technical and economic base to be useful and they are unlikely to gain any technology that they don't already have, or use it in a way that is counter to US interests. The Japanese public has shown little interest in modifying their military. They just voted out en masse the party that was in favor of doing so, and forced their nationalistic prime minister to resign in part because he was more concerned with things like modifying the military's constitutional basis than he was in fixing things like pensions and wage disparities. Why would they want to go down the same road that led them into WWII, go down the same road that's led the US into Vietnam and Iraq, down the same road that's led to the division of Korea? Why would they want to do that given the economic prosperity and success that they've built with both all the money they've saved and all the goodwill they've built up over the past 60 years by not employing an offensive military?
And how is this not intuitive to people outside of Japan?
Japan has had thousands of years of history dominated by war; they're experts in it. They look at us and see us as absolute beginners. They've now had 60 years of history dominated by peace and they've become one of the richest, best-educated and most technologically advanced countries in the world, with among the longest lifespans. They see the correlation between the two, why don't you? All that seems like a good thing to me - the fact that a majority of Japanese public is pacifist makes if hard for a future Japanese government to try some sort of 1930's style adventurism and thus it makes them easier to trust as a long term ally. It seems unlikely that the Japanese democratic system will be unstable too - even in the 90's deflation it seemed to be remarkably stable.
In fact Japan is almost a best case ally for the US.
I read on MSDN that Linux doesn't support the S character so Linux users have to use $ instead.
(Hunts around for his Windows "live CD"...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) By using energetic nuclear power, Orion offered both high thrust and high specific impulse the holy grail of spacecraft propulsion. It offered performance greater than the most advanced conventional or nuclear rocket engines now under study. Cheap interplanetary travel was the goal of the Orion Project. Its supporters felt that it had great potential for space travel, but it lost political approval because of concerns with fallout from its propulsion. The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is generally acknowledged to have ended the project. The PTBT is a "Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water". So no possibility of a fusion powered spacecraft. Mind you W could have pulled the US out of the PTBT like he did with the ABM treaty.
Actually these laptops are being sold to the corrupt third world goverments who caused them to be malnourished in the first place. But I'm sure they'll do the honest thing and hand them out to the starving millions for free.
I think worrying about proprietary, undocumented hardware and a knowledge of boobs are mutually exclusive.
It's not exactly PC to point it out but the average person from South Eastern country like Vietnam is light years ahead intellectually compared to the average Pakistani. Or for that matter the average American or English person.
And it's not racial at all - I think Indians are quite similar ethnically to Pakistanis, it's just that they have a culture which is capable of teaching maths and the Pakistanis don't. Americans are somewhere in between Vietnam and Pakistan.
And before people start to get all nationalistic and defensive about it, I said average as in Johnny Sixpack jock types in America and Madrassah fodder in Pakistan, not the 0.5% of the population who likes math and posts on slashdot. The thing SE Asian countries do well is to get average people to learn maths, mostly by old fashioned blackboard lessons a punishing curriculum and exams you can actually fail. America and Britain have dumbed things down to increase the pass rate and because telling people they're failures is a bit fascist, and Pakistan education is patchy and dominated by a poisonous religion.
In fact if you were looking at things from a cynical point of view, the War on Terror is a handy way to keep the people too stupid to pass Calculus 101 busy from both Pakistan and America.