I wasn't aware that the vacuum of space had anything to do with drag. Drag being an issue usually associated with aero and fluid dynamics. Magnetic fields maybe?
You forgot something else: Damage from space debris (micro-meteors, etc) to the solar paneling, and damage from solar flares.
Interesting. I wonder if they are working on ways to negate the effects of Earth's gravity well. I'd imagine that once they figure out ways to safely use nuclear-powered orbital adjusters and power generators, we just might see the ISS or a similar project expand and remain in orbit for centuries, sans the fragile solar paneling.
Mr. Bruce Sewell (Intel general counsel) was shown on The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, denying that Intel is guilty of anything at all. That it NEVER asks retail or OEM partners to exclude competitors.
From the segment:
Officials said their case is largely based on e-mails and statements from businesses, some seized during surprise raids, according to the AP.
Intel general counsel Bruce Sewell told news agencies the case is built on "weak evidence" and regulators were drawing unfair inferences from a small number of documents.
That being said, instead of fining Intel, what they should do, is remove the Eurozone-wide VAT and import tariffs for AMD and VIA CPUs, while Intel CPUs still have VAT and import tariffs applied.
Leave it this way for the same amount of time that Intel was investigated for, and has been found guilty of anti-trust violations (Formal complaint filed by AMD in 2001).
Also, according to The News Hour segment mentioned above, Intel has 60 days to formally file an appeal, and according to Mr. Sewell, they will be filing an appeal by the end of May. Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said the company would appeal at the Court of First Instance, the EU's second-highest court.
From the segment:
By EU law, the fine for Intel could have been much higher -- 10% of the company's annual income times the number of years the company had been abusing the policy. Intel posted first-quarter sales of $7.1 billion.
Hypothetically, if Intel posted that $7.1 billion as the final tally of income for the year, they could have been fined $5.68 billion.
Current pure EV standards are 250 miles per recharge. The trailer idea is excellent, and you could even tie in solar energy to this, by covering the top of the trailer with small solar paneling. Since the average commute is 33 miles, the average user would drive for 5 days or so before having to recharge their system.
Even on longer trips, 250 miles is well within what most people travel for a single trip. As you mentioned, there is nothing preventing these trailers from being rental items for those who live in metro areas or whatnot.
The only real downside of EV systems right now, are the batteries themselves. LiON and NiMH are very environmentally unfriendly. The processed nickel for NiMH batteries could be partially solved by the US Treasury Dept. Recycling old currency (nickels, dimes, quarters) for use in NiMH batteries would make sense.
As it stands now, processed nickel can be found in most non-24-karat-gold jewelry (rings, etc). I know the recycling is already done on a small scale. It would take much greater investment and incentives from the government to really get this going.
Fun - fun - fun with disabling access time stamps (and other filesystem "time" settings) in Windows XP.
That's what always gets me about these forensic folks. What do they do if the individual they are investigating is technically literate, instead of Joe Job Number 10?
I know on my system at least, I have access timestamps disabled, and I have all file creation/modification times set to the original contained within the installers or.rar files.
Outside of.txt log files, Guildwars files, Firefox stuff, and MUSHClient configuration files, essentially everything on this system will probably look awfully strange to a forensics expert. Even the Microsoft patches after installation, only show the original timestamps from Microsoft.
Torrent clients? If it isn't a "portable" version, I don't use it. All data files, etc, kept on external and NAS drives. All OS system and installer log files are deleted once a week. Registry is cleaned out once a week. "Most Recently Used", etc is permanently disabled via the registry. System is defragged once per week as well. All deleted material is cleaned using DoD standards, and freespace is scrubbed and overwritten.
Take note: I do not sync my system clock with any outside server either.
How does a forensic expert deal with a system like mine?
When you change the policy from "Optimize for quick removal" to "optimize for performance", you see the registry value is created, and then "UserRemovalPolicy" is modified from 3 to 2.
Didn't take long for me to find this and other similar info in Google...did you try putting quotes around the terms Optimize for Performance and registry key?
I concur...when I worked for IBM, our contract with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania allowed me to work in one of the main datacenters. If Virginia's was anything even remotely similar, these yahoos did not delete all of the backups. Not even close. The data is kept on redundant tape cartridges (and reel to reel tapes). There is no single server to break into. The operations systems are not linked to the public internet. At best, they could have broken into the "card catalog" of the tape library.
Typically these were IBM machines running Windows 2000 and NT4 w/Samba. THOSE had a public-facing connection to the internet (mainly to access the IBM website). All those machines really did, was post to overhead displays which batch jobs were running and what tapes should be fetched and loaded into which machines. They had no direct server access, and could not manipulate any data contained on those tapes.
The big iron in that datacenter was a bunch of IBM and Sun machines (AS/400, Sparc, etc).
Lockheed Martin even had their own room in the same datacenter.
So I guess what I am saying is, I think at best, these jokers defaced the web portal (example: irs.gov), and not the actual data.
They don't generate squat. The parent company of ESPN for instance, requires that the cable/satellite/Verizon people advertise, sell, and bundle ESPN channels in order to get any of their other channels for use on their systems.
It's almost as if they are afraid that ESPN would fall flat otherwise....
Just a quick comment: Fox has been known for, and caught remarking Republicans as Democrats when they get into trouble. They actually will switch the party affiliation lettering right in their news ticker, or in the story sub-titling.
Microsoft does have versions of Windows XP for embedded systems that run on the ARM processors. Windows CE and Windows Mobile also run on ARM processors. I have heard through our corporate vendor that Microsoft is more than willing to port "normal" Windows XP to ARM as well, but only if you are willing to shell out about $400,000 per machine type + licensing fees.
Somehow I don't think they'll have any issues getting Windows 7 ported, especially since the ARM CEO is asking for it. Microsoft wants to totally own the netbook market, for them to NOT port Win7 (or maybe even WinXP SP3) over would be illogical. Intel might not like it though.
Or....perhaps it is evidence of Microsoft actually getting rid of legacy crap. Gotta start somewhere, and if they can't do it in their OS easily, then praise be to heavens they are at least doing it full tilt in their Office suite.
Everyone always pisses and moans about legacy stuff from Microsoft, and when they finally do something about it, we get people pissing and moaning that they got rid of the legacy stuff. It is not hugely presumptuous of them to have people use a new interface that replaces an old and busted UI that was based on the look and feel of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.
I am actually quite happy with the new interface. I no longer have to scroll through 30 different sub-menus to find something. It's right there on the bar, I just click the appropriate tab, click the appropriate option and voila!
It was no more difficult to understand or learn than when I used a tabbed browser for the first time. I am actually going to give MS credit on this one, for actually bringing office suite UI out of the freaking dinosaur era.
Too bad that in the US, people are required to pay fees and royalties on your works anyhow, even if you release them under CC. They gotcha on that little loophole. CC doesn't circumvent anything other than paying for your stuff in the check-out line. If anyone actually wants to put your/their stuff on the radio, they can't without paying. I am just waiting for the RIAA to notice sites like Magnatune and Jamendo, and start demanding their royalty collections. I think the only music/movies they can't collect royalties and fees on, are works that are within the Public Domain.
I don't buy movies unless they are in the used/$5 bin or at flea markets. I don't buy music period (everything I consider good, I bought years ago). I buy used books from library sales and flea markets.
I pay for live concerts, musicals and plays.
I won't pay the RIAA/MPAA full retail for a god-damned thing for the rest of my existence. They don't deserve my money.
The fact remains that.torrent files are not illegal in Sweden, and neither are trackers.
Doesn't excuse the fact that the judge in question legislated from the bench, which -IS- against the law in Sweden. Should the judge now turn himself in as a criminal?
What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.
Ahh, you are from my old neck of the woods then eh? I bounced around for years from York -> Harrisburg -> Lancaster -> Manheim -> Hershey -> Camp Hill -> Elizabethtown -> Lebanon. Never cared to set foot into Reading, Lititz, Annville, or Ephrata though.
Indeed, there ARE more libraries in that area than there are McDonald's. And that is saying something, considering the ungodly amount of strip malls in that entire area.
I think it is funny when people somehow think that everyone everywhere should have unlimited, cheap, fast internet. (Not saying you think this, just in general.) It's a great theory on paper, but who pays for the infrastructure? If we were to run fiber optic cable to all the rural areas in the USA it would cost way more money than any company could ever hope to recoup. So do we provide internet to everyone and have everyone absorb the costs? Would people be willing to pay triple what they pay now so farmers that are 100 miles from the city can surf the internet?
In the USA at least, the Telcos were heavily subsidized originally with hundreds of millions (now 4 billion and counting atm) of taxpayer dollars to do just that. What do we have to show for it? Nothing but the slowest average speeds and lowest average access coverage in the entire industrialized (First) world, while having among the highest costs to the consumer. It appears those Telcos, instead of using the money for what they were supposed to use it for, instead used it for advertising, executive bonuses, shareholder dividends and other things that had nothing to do with why they were given that capital investiture.
Other companies in various industries get their expensive projects done, so why can't the Telcos ever seem to accomplish this? Honestly, if they can get brand new interstate highways and railways built (through mountains and under water at that!), in less than a decade, then the Telcos have no excuse whatsoever for their almost total lack of action in this regard.
I would also suggest Better Privacy to get rid of those worthless LSO "cookies" that websites using Flash add, and Flash pretending to delete them via the Flash control panel, but really doesn't. Flashblock does not prevent these "cookies" from being put on your computer either, and neither does NoScript. Just having the Flash plugin installed/enabled for your browser allows a site to set one.
I have storage set to 0kb, etc in the Flash control panel, but these things still get set. Quite often the query contained (other than the current Flash meta-data) is "What has this browser last shown via Flash?" IMHO, nunya f'ing beeswax.
At least your fans only kick on under load. On my system, the fans run all of the time, and there is no way to control that behavior. I can can tell them to go faster or slower, but not on and off. Of course, this is on an old Abit VT7 based on VIA chips and running an Intel 2.80Ghz/512/1MB Prescott. Under load, my system reads 29-31 degrees C tops. I even unplugged the side fan and removed the case door....
I think the point I was trying to make is this: It is ridiculous to equate the monetary value of software (or other intangibles like 'intellectual property') on the same level as a physical item. It boggles my mind when companies try to equate the value of say Photoshop or Mickey Mouse with a Faberge Egg.
You have companies like EA releasing Roster Change 2009 and charging more than what they charged the previous year for no added 'value' whatsoever. I can still use Photoshop 6 just fine, why do I need to pay like triple the cost for CS3 or whatever the current version is? I could go buy something useful (and tangible) like a car, tv, etc for that amount of money.
Maybe I'm just not a sucker or something to want to pay silly amounts of money for a bunch of numbers and bits. I've seen 'enterprise' class software packages, and they are horrible beyond words, yet people pay out the nose for them. Why? Half the time I think they'd be better off just paying their own IT departments to create their own. We won't go into software patents, and how they are 'patently' ridiculous as well.
Feel free to take it all with a grain of salt. I have ADHD and Adult Bi-Polar 2 Disorder. Maybe my wiring just doesn't make the connection.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't aware that the vacuum of space had anything to do with drag. Drag being an issue usually associated with aero and fluid dynamics. Magnetic fields maybe?
You forgot something else: Damage from space debris (micro-meteors, etc) to the solar paneling, and damage from solar flares.
Interesting. I wonder if they are working on ways to negate the effects of Earth's gravity well. I'd imagine that once they figure out ways to safely use nuclear-powered orbital adjusters and power generators, we just might see the ISS or a similar project expand and remain in orbit for centuries, sans the fragile solar paneling.
You can get the 9600 GT for $65 right now if you look around.
The BFG 9800 GT is available for $124.99 @ Newegg. It currently also has a $20 MIR, so the total price would end up being $104.99 + shipping.
You can get a HIS ATI 4670 for $74.99 @ Newegg. There is currently a $10 MIR.
There are tons and tons of 9500GT and 4650 models for under $70 also.
Tell that to CSPAN.
Who is dumb enough to use their real world details when signing up for sites on the internet? Oh wait...Stephan...
Mr. Bruce Sewell (Intel general counsel) was shown on The News Hour With Jim Lehrer, denying that Intel is guilty of anything at all. That it NEVER asks retail or OEM partners to exclude competitors.
From the segment:
Officials said their case is largely based on e-mails and statements from businesses, some seized during surprise raids, according to the AP.
Intel general counsel Bruce Sewell told news agencies the case is built on "weak evidence" and regulators were drawing unfair inferences from a small number of documents.
That being said, instead of fining Intel, what they should do, is remove the Eurozone-wide VAT and import tariffs for AMD and VIA CPUs, while Intel CPUs still have VAT and import tariffs applied.
Leave it this way for the same amount of time that Intel was investigated for, and has been found guilty of anti-trust violations (Formal complaint filed by AMD in 2001).
Also, according to The News Hour segment mentioned above, Intel has 60 days to formally file an appeal, and according to Mr. Sewell, they will be filing an appeal by the end of May. Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said the company would appeal at the Court of First Instance, the EU's second-highest court.
From the segment:
By EU law, the fine for Intel could have been much higher -- 10% of the company's annual income times the number of years the company had been abusing the policy. Intel posted first-quarter sales of $7.1 billion.
Hypothetically, if Intel posted that $7.1 billion as the final tally of income for the year, they could have been fined $5.68 billion.
Current pure EV standards are 250 miles per recharge. The trailer idea is excellent, and you could even tie in solar energy to this, by covering the top of the trailer with small solar paneling. Since the average commute is 33 miles, the average user would drive for 5 days or so before having to recharge their system.
Even on longer trips, 250 miles is well within what most people travel for a single trip. As you mentioned, there is nothing preventing these trailers from being rental items for those who live in metro areas or whatnot.
The only real downside of EV systems right now, are the batteries themselves. LiON and NiMH are very environmentally unfriendly. The processed nickel for NiMH batteries could be partially solved by the US Treasury Dept. Recycling old currency (nickels, dimes, quarters) for use in NiMH batteries would make sense.
As it stands now, processed nickel can be found in most non-24-karat-gold jewelry (rings, etc). I know the recycling is already done on a small scale. It would take much greater investment and incentives from the government to really get this going.
Fun - fun - fun with disabling access time stamps (and other filesystem "time" settings) in Windows XP.
That's what always gets me about these forensic folks. What do they do if the individual they are investigating is technically literate, instead of Joe Job Number 10?
I know on my system at least, I have access timestamps disabled, and I have all file creation/modification times set to the original contained within the installers or .rar files.
Outside of .txt log files, Guildwars files, Firefox stuff, and MUSHClient configuration files, essentially everything on this system will probably look awfully strange to a forensics expert. Even the Microsoft patches after installation, only show the original timestamps from Microsoft.
Torrent clients? If it isn't a "portable" version, I don't use it. All data files, etc, kept on external and NAS drives. All OS system and installer log files are deleted once a week. Registry is cleaned out once a week. "Most Recently Used", etc is permanently disabled via the registry. System is defragged once per week as well. All deleted material is cleaned using DoD standards, and freespace is scrubbed and overwritten.
Take note: I do not sync my system clock with any outside server either.
How does a forensic expert deal with a system like mine?
Bah, leave it up to Slashcode to mangle the key, it should read:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR\(your_usb_device_description\instance_id_number)\Device Parameters\Classpnp\UserRemovalPolicy REG_DWORD 0x00000002
Sorry for the double post.
It depends...is this a USB, IDE or SATA drive you are talking about here?
By default, if it is a USB drive, the key is not even created in the Registry until after you manually change the option in the GUI.
For instance:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR\\Device Parameters\Classpnp\UserRemovalPolicy REG_DWORD 0x00000002
When you change the policy from "Optimize for quick removal" to "optimize for performance", you see the registry value is created, and then "UserRemovalPolicy" is modified from 3 to 2.
Didn't take long for me to find this and other similar info in Google...did you try putting quotes around the terms Optimize for Performance and registry key?
I concur...when I worked for IBM, our contract with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania allowed me to work in one of the main datacenters. If Virginia's was anything even remotely similar, these yahoos did not delete all of the backups. Not even close. The data is kept on redundant tape cartridges (and reel to reel tapes). There is no single server to break into. The operations systems are not linked to the public internet. At best, they could have broken into the "card catalog" of the tape library.
Typically these were IBM machines running Windows 2000 and NT4 w/Samba. THOSE had a public-facing connection to the internet (mainly to access the IBM website). All those machines really did, was post to overhead displays which batch jobs were running and what tapes should be fetched and loaded into which machines. They had no direct server access, and could not manipulate any data contained on those tapes.
The big iron in that datacenter was a bunch of IBM and Sun machines (AS/400, Sparc, etc).
Lockheed Martin even had their own room in the same datacenter.
So I guess what I am saying is, I think at best, these jokers defaced the web portal (example: irs.gov), and not the actual data.
They don't generate squat. The parent company of ESPN for instance, requires that the cable/satellite/Verizon people advertise, sell, and bundle ESPN channels in order to get any of their other channels for use on their systems.
It's almost as if they are afraid that ESPN would fall flat otherwise....
Just a quick comment: Fox has been known for, and caught remarking Republicans as Democrats when they get into trouble. They actually will switch the party affiliation lettering right in their news ticker, or in the story sub-titling.
Happened fairly recently too as I recall.
Microsoft does have versions of Windows XP for embedded systems that run on the ARM processors. Windows CE and Windows Mobile also run on ARM processors. I have heard through our corporate vendor that Microsoft is more than willing to port "normal" Windows XP to ARM as well, but only if you are willing to shell out about $400,000 per machine type + licensing fees.
Somehow I don't think they'll have any issues getting Windows 7 ported, especially since the ARM CEO is asking for it. Microsoft wants to totally own the netbook market, for them to NOT port Win7 (or maybe even WinXP SP3) over would be illogical. Intel might not like it though.
Or....perhaps it is evidence of Microsoft actually getting rid of legacy crap. Gotta start somewhere, and if they can't do it in their OS easily, then praise be to heavens they are at least doing it full tilt in their Office suite.
Everyone always pisses and moans about legacy stuff from Microsoft, and when they finally do something about it, we get people pissing and moaning that they got rid of the legacy stuff. It is not hugely presumptuous of them to have people use a new interface that replaces an old and busted UI that was based on the look and feel of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.
I am actually quite happy with the new interface. I no longer have to scroll through 30 different sub-menus to find something. It's right there on the bar, I just click the appropriate tab, click the appropriate option and voila!
It was no more difficult to understand or learn than when I used a tabbed browser for the first time. I am actually going to give MS credit on this one, for actually bringing office suite UI out of the freaking dinosaur era.
RAWR!
Too bad that in the US, people are required to pay fees and royalties on your works anyhow, even if you release them under CC. They gotcha on that little loophole. CC doesn't circumvent anything other than paying for your stuff in the check-out line. If anyone actually wants to put your/their stuff on the radio, they can't without paying. I am just waiting for the RIAA to notice sites like Magnatune and Jamendo, and start demanding their royalty collections. I think the only music/movies they can't collect royalties and fees on, are works that are within the Public Domain.
I don't buy movies unless they are in the used/$5 bin or at flea markets. I don't buy music period (everything I consider good, I bought years ago). I buy used books from library sales and flea markets.
I pay for live concerts, musicals and plays.
I won't pay the RIAA/MPAA full retail for a god-damned thing for the rest of my existence. They don't deserve my money.
The fact remains that .torrent files are not illegal in Sweden, and neither are trackers.
Doesn't excuse the fact that the judge in question legislated from the bench, which -IS- against the law in Sweden. Should the judge now turn himself in as a criminal?
What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.
Ahh, you are from my old neck of the woods then eh? I bounced around for years from York -> Harrisburg -> Lancaster -> Manheim -> Hershey -> Camp Hill -> Elizabethtown -> Lebanon. Never cared to set foot into Reading, Lititz, Annville, or Ephrata though.
Indeed, there ARE more libraries in that area than there are McDonald's. And that is saying something, considering the ungodly amount of strip malls in that entire area.
I think it is funny when people somehow think that everyone everywhere should have unlimited, cheap, fast internet. (Not saying you think this, just in general.) It's a great theory on paper, but who pays for the infrastructure? If we were to run fiber optic cable to all the rural areas in the USA it would cost way more money than any company could ever hope to recoup. So do we provide internet to everyone and have everyone absorb the costs? Would people be willing to pay triple what they pay now so farmers that are 100 miles from the city can surf the internet?
In the USA at least, the Telcos were heavily subsidized originally with hundreds of millions (now 4 billion and counting atm) of taxpayer dollars to do just that. What do we have to show for it? Nothing but the slowest average speeds and lowest average access coverage in the entire industrialized (First) world, while having among the highest costs to the consumer. It appears those Telcos, instead of using the money for what they were supposed to use it for, instead used it for advertising, executive bonuses, shareholder dividends and other things that had nothing to do with why they were given that capital investiture.
Other companies in various industries get their expensive projects done, so why can't the Telcos ever seem to accomplish this? Honestly, if they can get brand new interstate highways and railways built (through mountains and under water at that!), in less than a decade, then the Telcos have no excuse whatsoever for their almost total lack of action in this regard.
Yes...those free market evangelists get us Union Carbide, NAFTA, CAFTA, Housing/Credit Bubbles, Monsanto, et al. Listening to them is a fool's errand.
he could have nominated/appointed the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, or Darl McBride.
That being said, I'll hold a wait-and-see approach to this guy.
I dunno, but Linus Torvalds is pretty famous and he gives his work away for free....(Linux Kernel). Just sayin'.
I would also suggest Better Privacy to get rid of those worthless LSO "cookies" that websites using Flash add, and Flash pretending to delete them via the Flash control panel, but really doesn't. Flashblock does not prevent these "cookies" from being put on your computer either, and neither does NoScript. Just having the Flash plugin installed/enabled for your browser allows a site to set one.
I have storage set to 0kb, etc in the Flash control panel, but these things still get set. Quite often the query contained (other than the current Flash meta-data) is "What has this browser last shown via Flash?" IMHO, nunya f'ing beeswax.
At least your fans only kick on under load. On my system, the fans run all of the time, and there is no way to control that behavior. I can can tell them to go faster or slower, but not on and off. Of course, this is on an old Abit VT7 based on VIA chips and running an Intel 2.80Ghz/512/1MB Prescott. Under load, my system reads 29-31 degrees C tops. I even unplugged the side fan and removed the case door....
I think the point I was trying to make is this: It is ridiculous to equate the monetary value of software (or other intangibles like 'intellectual property') on the same level as a physical item. It boggles my mind when companies try to equate the value of say Photoshop or Mickey Mouse with a Faberge Egg.
You have companies like EA releasing Roster Change 2009 and charging more than what they charged the previous year for no added 'value' whatsoever. I can still use Photoshop 6 just fine, why do I need to pay like triple the cost for CS3 or whatever the current version is? I could go buy something useful (and tangible) like a car, tv, etc for that amount of money.
Maybe I'm just not a sucker or something to want to pay silly amounts of money for a bunch of numbers and bits. I've seen 'enterprise' class software packages, and they are horrible beyond words, yet people pay out the nose for them. Why? Half the time I think they'd be better off just paying their own IT departments to create their own. We won't go into software patents, and how they are 'patently' ridiculous as well.
Feel free to take it all with a grain of salt. I have ADHD and Adult Bi-Polar 2 Disorder. Maybe my wiring just doesn't make the connection.
They have to pay unionized labor costs and permit fees as well as the cost of materials like the cables and battery backups.