It's getting more and more 'useful' to have something slightly better especially in the laptop division. There is such a huge power draw (~100W/processor) on desktop systems under full load that laptops can't afford anymore to have similar processors anymore. "3D cards" as we used to call them are also no longer an option.
However newer applications like HD movies and effects on the desktop have become standard and what can be done on a desktop is also expected of a laptop. Even presentations (Keynote, PowerPoint) have gotten nice accelerated effects, I can enable OpenGL acceleration in NeoOffice and then there is the 'cross-browser' *ahum*Flash or Java-based*ahum* communication platforms that everybody is implementing for better or worse and everybody wants to do video conferencing and the bigger the picture, the better. Even a simple browser can peg at least 1 core on a CPU if you're going to a site that uses Flash or JavaScript effects.
There is enough software for anyone to go around. For any closed source package, there is at least 1 open source alternative. Anything from Office utilities to realistic Flight and Space sims, it's there.
Except that with most current patents, the inventor just patents "making an edible substance based on derivatives of farming" and not only gets away protecting their 'invention' but can also sue (and will do if necessary) anybody making a sandwich, hot dog, hamburger and anything else that involves bread in any form, way or method.
You can set Jabber up so it doesn't federate with other servers and you can also set it up to not allow non-SSL connections. I have Apple's iChat Server solution which is basically a Jabber server with a nice management interface (although for your specifics you might have to delve a bit deeper), it integrates in my directory and if you want also Active Directory. There are clients for all platforms and as I said, you can set it up entirely how you want it.
If you're looking for something else, look for HL7-enabled clients/servers which is a standard that can communicate with modalities even though some of those platforms don't have any interface for any type of chat client. It also integrates in workflow software etc. Apache's Camel and Mina projects are something to look for if you want to implement that, if you want to combine it with your DICOM-compatible PACS and/or RIS see DCM4CHEE
They did it in a time that there was a difference between server-grade, enterprise-grade and desktop-grade software. Their desktop software was DOS and Windows NT wasn't really usable for any type of desktop use. The code base was very small, 1 or 2 API's to speak off, the video and some other subsystems were in userland (not integrated in the kernel) and only a few simple apps. They were also helped by IBM and had developers that were used to programming for multiple architectures.
Now things have become a mess. Over time, those architectures have died off in the mainstream in favor of x86. You can use Windows Server on a desktop, Windows XP as a server, they're all the same really. A whole lot of stuff that's now ultimately complex sits in the kernel and would need re-developed and rebuilt from the ground up to be usable on other architectures (DirectX,.NET, Internet Explorer, a whole lot of device drivers...). Just look at the problem it is to get an x86 extension (64-bit) supported decently.
On the other hand Linux over time has always been modular and over time has been kept running (willingly or not) on hardware that's classically Big Iron (Unix) domain and lately handheld and embedded devices even though some of it (PPC Linux) might be slightly outdated it still works. That's because the main developers (Linus and friends) don't necessarily need to be involved in the development for such hardware whereas Microsoft does need to be involved for such changes (and if it's not profitable, it doesn't get done). A single company or even a single developer can keep track of it in his spare time as long as it's profitable for them, they don't need to wait on their vendor.
That's true for all industries. Some will charge you a lot because they only got a few customers and want to get their return on investment by the time the next quarter turns around. They usually grow very quickly, gain investment capital, get some customers and then disappear. Why: because there are few customers that can afford their services and they can't afford to lose a customer. If they do (either because they make a mistake and the customers leave or other alternatives are cheaper), it's usually the beginning of a death sentence.
Then there are the small companies that charge pennies for the same service (or even free). They gain money using alternative income (support contracts, ads, enterprise versions or 'featured' items) and use that to support their free services. They have bunches of (loyal) customers and can afford to lose a few.
This was true in the beginning of Microsoft where they sold DOS for $2-5 compared to IBM's solutions which were over $50 for their PC-DOS if I remember correctly. Over time Microsoft started increasing their prices and now they are ~$600 retail for their full OS while their competitors (Linux, Apple) come between free-$150. All Apple and the Linux vendors have to do (although it's more difficult for Linux vendors to increase prices because of the competition) is maintain their prices and don't make the same mistakes.
Well, at some point it's cheaper to do it in-house anyway. Maybe not for online interconnected services like Twitter, but especially for primary enterprise data (what they're targeting) you need fast, available access to data locally, the web only makes it more difficult to get it fast and available.
I don't even know if Twitter has the advantage of scale anymore. The advantage of scale only comes in where you xx% of a given capacity over 3-5 years but need 100% of the infrastructure to provide that xx%. At a certain point, the markup of the vendor and the disadvantages of the centralization (especially with storage, larger amounts of data increase the price of the storage infrastructure instead of decreasing it) and delays associated with that vendor exceeds that price.
Storage is cheap and even in the semi-enterprise field (100TB over FibreChannel) it's cheaper to invest in it locally and have a decent admin to handle your needs. Over 100TB it's probably going to be cheaper to use that service (if they themselves already have the PB infrastructure) but at that time it's not feasible anymore to move that amount of data into the 'cloud'. You'll also have issues with liability if the data ever gets lost. I would only use these services if you can't afford your own 'live' offsite backups.
Well, in my rant to the TWC marketing execs (https://rcbi.rochester.edu/weblog/vanooste/)I already explained that's what I pay on a yearly basis for them to give me a crappy 3Mbps copper-based service that's been there for the last 20 years. If that's all it costs for them to give us FiOS, I don't understand why it takes so long.
Most all OSes? It depends on what you tried. OS/2 could duplicate floppy's without even blinking (you literally wouldn't even notice), Unix and Amiga were multitasking, NeXT was as well and some of those had really well-written SCSI subsystems that would initiate certain commands and let the controller figure the rest out (like block copies) so you didn't tie up the CPU (damn you ATA/USB).
The only ones that weren't were DOS and it's derivatives Windows 95-ME was as much a shell over DOS as Windows 3 (since you can a) replace the kernel and basic io-system with other DOSes like Novell and DR-DOS and b) exit out of the graphic shells and you'll fall back into DOS) so it couldn't 'really' do multitasking although giving the impression.
For some or another reason DOS found it important enough to let the floppy tie up the whole system whenever it needed access
We all drive cars, but using scratch one's itch it implies that we are all mechanics as well. The first drivers of a car where also mechanics though. They had an itch to scratch: how can I drive around town without looking at a horses butt and keeping up the stables etc.
Even up until this day, mechanics and engineers think about what should go in a car. They drive around in a car and say: hey, you know what, it would be really cool if the lights went on automatically after dark because I always forget to turn mine on. Sure many customers might have taught about that but the implementation would most likely be very bad. Why, because they don't think about the way the car works or what can be done with it. They would put it connected to a clock or if they were really smart, put a sensor somewhere on the outside of the car because that's "where it belongs" and putting it inside would be "plain ugly". However they forget that sensors outside a car might get dirty, broken or weatherized really bad. Most consumers however don't see that because they buy a new car every 3 years or whenever something goes wrong with it. Mechanics and engineers however get to deal with 'dumb implementations' or 'customer error' everyday and they see how a car looks on the outside after 12 years, they also know where the least weatherizing goes on and the least stuff gets broken (the dashboard).
Leave the customer to the end-goal. They get to say what they need out of it. The engineers and mechanics get to put it together and though maybe somewhat inconvenient to a customer or end-user, the job gets done well and usually cheap or reusable. I've seen stuff being done top-down and as you pass several layers of bureaucracy and more non-engineers and non-mechanics get to mess with an idea, the worse it gets.
I used to have one of those cards as well. My battery was connected with velcro to the power supply and it basically sat in between the power supply and the rest of the computer. Nothing new.
Same here. Over 50 computers in an educational research environment. Retail prices for Office Academic are outrageous ($250 to $600).
Select licensing (where a single license could be purchased for $35) has been discontinued and replaced with a 'package deal' where you pay ~$120 for Windows + Office + whatever crap they want to share but you can't just get 5 license, you need a license for every single machine in your department no matter whether they're even capable of running Windows (eg. PowerPC Mac) just because they would be covered for Office.
And then there is of course the nice Enterprise licensing. They give you a Windows and Office package for ~$100 or $60 for individual licenses per year with automatic upgrades but you have to cover every single person that might work in the offices and might use Office at some point. So we're stuck here again because we can't afford to pay for our 5 staff and the roughly 50 researchers that have a part-time appointment and only come in once in a while.
All of the above is affordable for large departments that have bunches of students and the budget to go along with it and they get a better deal out of the 'packages' but if you're running a non-Windows environment you're pretty much screwed
In the US there are no such things as "Democrats" or "Republicans". You have the right (calling themselves Democrats) and the far right (calling themselves Republicans).
Right is the side that strives towards monarchies or keeping an elite group in power, usually trying to keep the state and church together for more influence to rule the populace. They also use nationalism as a state religion to feed their military.
Both parties are equally not interested in a democracy nor a republic.
Depending on who you're catering to, this might be a good issue. If you (ever) go to buy a Dell and you have to select through pages of stuff you don't understand (as a non-geek), the Apple Store is quite enlightening. Once you're done setting any decent system up in the Dell Store (as in, any recent CPU and a bit of RAM and hard drive), you might as well buy an Apple because it's cheaper
Except that that worker is a line worker doing very 'boring' jobs similar to a helpdesk line in the IT world which makes $12/hour tops. The actual wage of a GM line worker is around $25-30/hour but because you need so many of them that is very unsustainable in an economy where 'the other ones' do it at less than half the price. In what sane IT company does a first line helpdesk jockey earn $30/hour when you can hire 2 or 3 for that price?
I believe that security through obscurity doesn't work. The fact that there are only a handful of hackers for a platform also means that the platform is not scrutinized enough. Whatever entity wants to crack into those systems only need one of them on the 'dark side' to be successful. In those small niche groups (I belong to one of them), certain issues are very well known to exist and shared. Either there is a workaround or it's not important enough to fix right away but some of them have existed for years.
Every piece of software has issues whether it be open source or closed. I believe that open source because of it's nature has less bugs in it while closed source software is more rushed in the development phase as long as a new product is sold every few months/years.
I would like this thing to actually shut down all those computers that are infected. It would save quite a bit on energy and actually be quite useful. If there would be a way to permanently disable a computer (flash it's BIOS with a bad image) then maybe it could stimulate the economy. Another thing would be to simulate a 56k connection on all those machines. Finally the intertubes would be cleared of a lot of clutter by people trying to get to awful flash 'movies' of random people on Facebook or MySpace. Another thing would be to register every IP that the computers are connected to as potential spam hosts to well-known spam registries.
Of course if some host is infected and some life or death situation is dependent on it, the blame should be placed on the IT administrator or the vendor, not the creator.
That's why you let the computer generate it. If you manually generate a captcha then your input is very finite only to the extent you have patience/money. The crackers most likely have more patience than you and it's quicker to solve than generate. They only have to have their machines memorize a few to be successful.
If you let a machine generate it, it's theoretically infinite so they can't let a machine memorize, now they have to let the machine recognize it. Not impossible but more difficult and harder to fix within the alloted time. However what one programmer giveth, another one taketh and sourcing this to a GPU might give some interesting results in the fields of image processing and AI/computational recognition.
Wrong (as all the other ones here). It's not illegal to do certain drugs in certain countries (Netherlands, Venezuela). It's the same as providing a party house in those countries and then people proceed to do drugs there, then you get sued in the US as a non-US-citizen for having a business on non-US soil where people do things that are illegal according to US law.
It's the same as any dance club or bar anywhere in the world (whether it's in the US or not). Certain activities people do in those clubs are well known (whether it be doing drugs, drunkenness, fornication - which is still a criminal offence in the US and elsewhere). However you can't sue the owner of the establishment because people paid an entrance fee and then proceed to do stuff they shouldn't be doing according to the law. The owner may know about it, even the police and everybody in the neighborhood knows what goes on there. It's not forbidden to have a business that thrives on it.
Unless you use SuperMicro or low-end Dell 'servers'. I have seen slides in both brands that are little less than a handle with 2 metal prongs on. The data and power connector have to be directly plugged into the backplane. Lately more and more manufacturers seem to go that way though (since SATA and SAS connectors are so simple yet so fragile) which is a shame.
Of course if some dimwit replaces those hard drive and misaligns the drive only slightly and then proceeds to 'bang' it in you could end up very easily with a broken backplane.
First of all, the Tesla roadster didn't have gears, I suspect this one won't either. Electric cars can be done without a transmission (and thus without it's maintenance/power losses). However most of them do have a kill switch. I would suspect the kill switch to be either automatically activated when the car crashes (I mean, let it go off with the airbags or when it detects that the car is at more than a 70 degree angle (flipped over or on it's side) but there probably will also be a manual kill switch under the hood, where the charger is and/or under the dash.
It's very easy to do. Most if not all servers are currently IPv6 compatible and most of the software has this type of stuff abstracted away by the operating system.
Then all you need to do is ask your provider for an IPv6 range and put some records in your DNS, enable your clients for IPv6, tell your routers that they'll from now on see IPv6 addresses as well (usually already in the firmware or it's in an upgrade somewhere) let your DHCP server give out IPv6 addresses and then you're done. Add an IPv4 to IPv6 gateway if your provider doesn't support IPv6 yet.
This all can be done in several steps and IPv4 can keep chugging at the same time as well so there is practically no downtime to the systems. It's the same as adding an IPv4 range to your network (if you ever run out of space in your range) except that there are more digits and that some of your older hardware needs a small upgrade.
The problem is that it requires manpower to do so which isn't cheap. In an organization like Google it takes a group a while at 20% of their time. In many organizations, those groups are 1) not as competent, 2) don't have 10% of free time, let alone 20%, 3) this has to be justified as far as manpower costs go.
Oh, don't worry, the Netherlands' government is much like the UK/Canada: always trying to follow the US government especially when it comes to tahrarhism and privacy. As far as the RIAA goes, they have their hands over there as well under the name BREIN (from Wikipedia):
BREIN is perhaps best known for shutting down Dutch eDonkey 2000 link giant ShareConnector.com in December 2004. Due to controversy over the legality of links to illegal content, and a lack of quality in the evidence provided by BREIN, the case has not been put to trial yet. After being offline for two years, ShareConnector reopened in December 2006 but after barely one year; on November 12, 2007, Shareconnector went offline again.
On October 23, 2007 BREIN, together with IFPI, BPI, Dutch police, and other organizations shut down prominent Bittorrent tracker Oink's Pink Palace.
On November 19, 2007, TorrentFreak announced on its website that BREIN copy-and-pasted a sentence of text from TorrentFreak's website onto its own website without attributing TorrentFreak, as per TorrentFreak's copyright license. TorrentFreak stated that they intended to seek legal action and damages of almost $1,000,000 for the alleged intellectual property violation.
According to their own website (anti-piracy.nl) the organization has as members not only the local (legalized) copyright organization but also the MPAA to 'represent the American movie industry'. According to them 35% of new and 16% of ALL media in circulation in the Netherlands is 'illegal'.
Slashdot Mirror
It's getting more and more 'useful' to have something slightly better especially in the laptop division. There is such a huge power draw (~100W/processor) on desktop systems under full load that laptops can't afford anymore to have similar processors anymore. "3D cards" as we used to call them are also no longer an option.
However newer applications like HD movies and effects on the desktop have become standard and what can be done on a desktop is also expected of a laptop. Even presentations (Keynote, PowerPoint) have gotten nice accelerated effects, I can enable OpenGL acceleration in NeoOffice and then there is the 'cross-browser' *ahum*Flash or Java-based*ahum* communication platforms that everybody is implementing for better or worse and everybody wants to do video conferencing and the bigger the picture, the better. Even a simple browser can peg at least 1 core on a CPU if you're going to a site that uses Flash or JavaScript effects.
Eclipse, XCode, GCC, GDB, SVN, ...
There is enough software for anyone to go around. For any closed source package, there is at least 1 open source alternative. Anything from Office utilities to realistic Flight and Space sims, it's there.
Except that with most current patents, the inventor just patents "making an edible substance based on derivatives of farming" and not only gets away protecting their 'invention' but can also sue (and will do if necessary) anybody making a sandwich, hot dog, hamburger and anything else that involves bread in any form, way or method.
You can set Jabber up so it doesn't federate with other servers and you can also set it up to not allow non-SSL connections. I have Apple's iChat Server solution which is basically a Jabber server with a nice management interface (although for your specifics you might have to delve a bit deeper), it integrates in my directory and if you want also Active Directory. There are clients for all platforms and as I said, you can set it up entirely how you want it.
If you're looking for something else, look for HL7-enabled clients/servers which is a standard that can communicate with modalities even though some of those platforms don't have any interface for any type of chat client. It also integrates in workflow software etc. Apache's Camel and Mina projects are something to look for if you want to implement that, if you want to combine it with your DICOM-compatible PACS and/or RIS see DCM4CHEE
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/04/06/italy.quake/index.html
Well, you should believe the scientists when they say something based on facts
They did it in a time that there was a difference between server-grade, enterprise-grade and desktop-grade software. Their desktop software was DOS and Windows NT wasn't really usable for any type of desktop use. The code base was very small, 1 or 2 API's to speak off, the video and some other subsystems were in userland (not integrated in the kernel) and only a few simple apps. They were also helped by IBM and had developers that were used to programming for multiple architectures.
Now things have become a mess. Over time, those architectures have died off in the mainstream in favor of x86. You can use Windows Server on a desktop, Windows XP as a server, they're all the same really. A whole lot of stuff that's now ultimately complex sits in the kernel and would need re-developed and rebuilt from the ground up to be usable on other architectures (DirectX, .NET, Internet Explorer, a whole lot of device drivers...). Just look at the problem it is to get an x86 extension (64-bit) supported decently.
On the other hand Linux over time has always been modular and over time has been kept running (willingly or not) on hardware that's classically Big Iron (Unix) domain and lately handheld and embedded devices even though some of it (PPC Linux) might be slightly outdated it still works. That's because the main developers (Linus and friends) don't necessarily need to be involved in the development for such hardware whereas Microsoft does need to be involved for such changes (and if it's not profitable, it doesn't get done). A single company or even a single developer can keep track of it in his spare time as long as it's profitable for them, they don't need to wait on their vendor.
That's true for all industries. Some will charge you a lot because they only got a few customers and want to get their return on investment by the time the next quarter turns around. They usually grow very quickly, gain investment capital, get some customers and then disappear. Why: because there are few customers that can afford their services and they can't afford to lose a customer. If they do (either because they make a mistake and the customers leave or other alternatives are cheaper), it's usually the beginning of a death sentence.
Then there are the small companies that charge pennies for the same service (or even free). They gain money using alternative income (support contracts, ads, enterprise versions or 'featured' items) and use that to support their free services. They have bunches of (loyal) customers and can afford to lose a few.
This was true in the beginning of Microsoft where they sold DOS for $2-5 compared to IBM's solutions which were over $50 for their PC-DOS if I remember correctly. Over time Microsoft started increasing their prices and now they are ~$600 retail for their full OS while their competitors (Linux, Apple) come between free-$150. All Apple and the Linux vendors have to do (although it's more difficult for Linux vendors to increase prices because of the competition) is maintain their prices and don't make the same mistakes.
Well, at some point it's cheaper to do it in-house anyway. Maybe not for online interconnected services like Twitter, but especially for primary enterprise data (what they're targeting) you need fast, available access to data locally, the web only makes it more difficult to get it fast and available.
I don't even know if Twitter has the advantage of scale anymore. The advantage of scale only comes in where you xx% of a given capacity over 3-5 years but need 100% of the infrastructure to provide that xx%. At a certain point, the markup of the vendor and the disadvantages of the centralization (especially with storage, larger amounts of data increase the price of the storage infrastructure instead of decreasing it) and delays associated with that vendor exceeds that price.
Storage is cheap and even in the semi-enterprise field (100TB over FibreChannel) it's cheaper to invest in it locally and have a decent admin to handle your needs. Over 100TB it's probably going to be cheaper to use that service (if they themselves already have the PB infrastructure) but at that time it's not feasible anymore to move that amount of data into the 'cloud'. You'll also have issues with liability if the data ever gets lost. I would only use these services if you can't afford your own 'live' offsite backups.
Well, in my rant to the TWC marketing execs (https://rcbi.rochester.edu/weblog/vanooste/)I already explained that's what I pay on a yearly basis for them to give me a crappy 3Mbps copper-based service that's been there for the last 20 years. If that's all it costs for them to give us FiOS, I don't understand why it takes so long.
Most all OSes? It depends on what you tried. OS/2 could duplicate floppy's without even blinking (you literally wouldn't even notice), Unix and Amiga were multitasking, NeXT was as well and some of those had really well-written SCSI subsystems that would initiate certain commands and let the controller figure the rest out (like block copies) so you didn't tie up the CPU (damn you ATA/USB).
The only ones that weren't were DOS and it's derivatives Windows 95-ME was as much a shell over DOS as Windows 3 (since you can a) replace the kernel and basic io-system with other DOSes like Novell and DR-DOS and b) exit out of the graphic shells and you'll fall back into DOS) so it couldn't 'really' do multitasking although giving the impression.
For some or another reason DOS found it important enough to let the floppy tie up the whole system whenever it needed access
We all drive cars, but using scratch one's itch it implies that we are all mechanics as well. The first drivers of a car where also mechanics though. They had an itch to scratch: how can I drive around town without looking at a horses butt and keeping up the stables etc.
Even up until this day, mechanics and engineers think about what should go in a car. They drive around in a car and say: hey, you know what, it would be really cool if the lights went on automatically after dark because I always forget to turn mine on. Sure many customers might have taught about that but the implementation would most likely be very bad. Why, because they don't think about the way the car works or what can be done with it. They would put it connected to a clock or if they were really smart, put a sensor somewhere on the outside of the car because that's "where it belongs" and putting it inside would be "plain ugly". However they forget that sensors outside a car might get dirty, broken or weatherized really bad. Most consumers however don't see that because they buy a new car every 3 years or whenever something goes wrong with it. Mechanics and engineers however get to deal with 'dumb implementations' or 'customer error' everyday and they see how a car looks on the outside after 12 years, they also know where the least weatherizing goes on and the least stuff gets broken (the dashboard).
Leave the customer to the end-goal. They get to say what they need out of it. The engineers and mechanics get to put it together and though maybe somewhat inconvenient to a customer or end-user, the job gets done well and usually cheap or reusable. I've seen stuff being done top-down and as you pass several layers of bureaucracy and more non-engineers and non-mechanics get to mess with an idea, the worse it gets.
I used to have one of those cards as well. My battery was connected with velcro to the power supply and it basically sat in between the power supply and the rest of the computer. Nothing new.
Same here. Over 50 computers in an educational research environment. Retail prices for Office Academic are outrageous ($250 to $600).
Select licensing (where a single license could be purchased for $35) has been discontinued and replaced with a 'package deal' where you pay ~$120 for Windows + Office + whatever crap they want to share but you can't just get 5 license, you need a license for every single machine in your department no matter whether they're even capable of running Windows (eg. PowerPC Mac) just because they would be covered for Office.
And then there is of course the nice Enterprise licensing. They give you a Windows and Office package for ~$100 or $60 for individual licenses per year with automatic upgrades but you have to cover every single person that might work in the offices and might use Office at some point. So we're stuck here again because we can't afford to pay for our 5 staff and the roughly 50 researchers that have a part-time appointment and only come in once in a while.
All of the above is affordable for large departments that have bunches of students and the budget to go along with it and they get a better deal out of the 'packages' but if you're running a non-Windows environment you're pretty much screwed
In the US there are no such things as "Democrats" or "Republicans". You have the right (calling themselves Democrats) and the far right (calling themselves Republicans).
Right is the side that strives towards monarchies or keeping an elite group in power, usually trying to keep the state and church together for more influence to rule the populace. They also use nationalism as a state religion to feed their military.
Both parties are equally not interested in a democracy nor a republic.
Depending on who you're catering to, this might be a good issue. If you (ever) go to buy a Dell and you have to select through pages of stuff you don't understand (as a non-geek), the Apple Store is quite enlightening. Once you're done setting any decent system up in the Dell Store (as in, any recent CPU and a bit of RAM and hard drive), you might as well buy an Apple because it's cheaper
Except that that worker is a line worker doing very 'boring' jobs similar to a helpdesk line in the IT world which makes $12/hour tops. The actual wage of a GM line worker is around $25-30/hour but because you need so many of them that is very unsustainable in an economy where 'the other ones' do it at less than half the price. In what sane IT company does a first line helpdesk jockey earn $30/hour when you can hire 2 or 3 for that price?
I believe that security through obscurity doesn't work. The fact that there are only a handful of hackers for a platform also means that the platform is not scrutinized enough. Whatever entity wants to crack into those systems only need one of them on the 'dark side' to be successful. In those small niche groups (I belong to one of them), certain issues are very well known to exist and shared. Either there is a workaround or it's not important enough to fix right away but some of them have existed for years.
Every piece of software has issues whether it be open source or closed. I believe that open source because of it's nature has less bugs in it while closed source software is more rushed in the development phase as long as a new product is sold every few months/years.
I would like this thing to actually shut down all those computers that are infected. It would save quite a bit on energy and actually be quite useful. If there would be a way to permanently disable a computer (flash it's BIOS with a bad image) then maybe it could stimulate the economy. Another thing would be to simulate a 56k connection on all those machines. Finally the intertubes would be cleared of a lot of clutter by people trying to get to awful flash 'movies' of random people on Facebook or MySpace. Another thing would be to register every IP that the computers are connected to as potential spam hosts to well-known spam registries.
Of course if some host is infected and some life or death situation is dependent on it, the blame should be placed on the IT administrator or the vendor, not the creator.
It will be interesting to see what will happen.
That's why you let the computer generate it. If you manually generate a captcha then your input is very finite only to the extent you have patience/money. The crackers most likely have more patience than you and it's quicker to solve than generate. They only have to have their machines memorize a few to be successful.
If you let a machine generate it, it's theoretically infinite so they can't let a machine memorize, now they have to let the machine recognize it. Not impossible but more difficult and harder to fix within the alloted time. However what one programmer giveth, another one taketh and sourcing this to a GPU might give some interesting results in the fields of image processing and AI/computational recognition.
Wrong (as all the other ones here). It's not illegal to do certain drugs in certain countries (Netherlands, Venezuela). It's the same as providing a party house in those countries and then people proceed to do drugs there, then you get sued in the US as a non-US-citizen for having a business on non-US soil where people do things that are illegal according to US law.
It's the same as any dance club or bar anywhere in the world (whether it's in the US or not). Certain activities people do in those clubs are well known (whether it be doing drugs, drunkenness, fornication - which is still a criminal offence in the US and elsewhere). However you can't sue the owner of the establishment because people paid an entrance fee and then proceed to do stuff they shouldn't be doing according to the law. The owner may know about it, even the police and everybody in the neighborhood knows what goes on there. It's not forbidden to have a business that thrives on it.
Unless you use SuperMicro or low-end Dell 'servers'. I have seen slides in both brands that are little less than a handle with 2 metal prongs on. The data and power connector have to be directly plugged into the backplane. Lately more and more manufacturers seem to go that way though (since SATA and SAS connectors are so simple yet so fragile) which is a shame.
Of course if some dimwit replaces those hard drive and misaligns the drive only slightly and then proceeds to 'bang' it in you could end up very easily with a broken backplane.
First of all, the Tesla roadster didn't have gears, I suspect this one won't either. Electric cars can be done without a transmission (and thus without it's maintenance/power losses). However most of them do have a kill switch. I would suspect the kill switch to be either automatically activated when the car crashes (I mean, let it go off with the airbags or when it detects that the car is at more than a 70 degree angle (flipped over or on it's side) but there probably will also be a manual kill switch under the hood, where the charger is and/or under the dash.
It's very easy to do. Most if not all servers are currently IPv6 compatible and most of the software has this type of stuff abstracted away by the operating system.
Then all you need to do is ask your provider for an IPv6 range and put some records in your DNS, enable your clients for IPv6, tell your routers that they'll from now on see IPv6 addresses as well (usually already in the firmware or it's in an upgrade somewhere) let your DHCP server give out IPv6 addresses and then you're done. Add an IPv4 to IPv6 gateway if your provider doesn't support IPv6 yet.
This all can be done in several steps and IPv4 can keep chugging at the same time as well so there is practically no downtime to the systems. It's the same as adding an IPv4 range to your network (if you ever run out of space in your range) except that there are more digits and that some of your older hardware needs a small upgrade.
The problem is that it requires manpower to do so which isn't cheap. In an organization like Google it takes a group a while at 20% of their time. In many organizations, those groups are 1) not as competent, 2) don't have 10% of free time, let alone 20%, 3) this has to be justified as far as manpower costs go.
RTFA: They were trying to literally "knock the socks off" Buster by igniting 500 pounds of NH4NO3
Oh, don't worry, the Netherlands' government is much like the UK/Canada: always trying to follow the US government especially when it comes to tahrarhism and privacy. As far as the RIAA goes, they have their hands over there as well under the name BREIN (from Wikipedia):
BREIN is perhaps best known for shutting down Dutch eDonkey 2000 link giant ShareConnector.com in December 2004. Due to controversy over the legality of links to illegal content, and a lack of quality in the evidence provided by BREIN, the case has not been put to trial yet. After being offline for two years, ShareConnector reopened in December 2006 but after barely one year; on November 12, 2007, Shareconnector went offline again.
On October 23, 2007 BREIN, together with IFPI, BPI, Dutch police, and other organizations shut down prominent Bittorrent tracker Oink's Pink Palace.
On November 19, 2007, TorrentFreak announced on its website that BREIN copy-and-pasted a sentence of text from TorrentFreak's website onto its own website without attributing TorrentFreak, as per TorrentFreak's copyright license. TorrentFreak stated that they intended to seek legal action and damages of almost $1,000,000 for the alleged intellectual property violation.
According to their own website (anti-piracy.nl) the organization has as members not only the local (legalized) copyright organization but also the MPAA to 'represent the American movie industry'. According to them 35% of new and 16% of ALL media in circulation in the Netherlands is 'illegal'.