Jobs is funny. His silly doublespeak about DRM is just a riot. Anti-DRM messages coming from the head of THE largest single shareholder of Disney stock (voting stock at that) is just...well, I think you get the picture. If he was speaking more than hot air, he'd be the first one to strip everything on iTunes of DRM, including every single Disney and Pixar title, all of the tv shows from ABC, and would make Sony release their Disney Blu-Ray titles without BD+ DRM. I don't see that happening. Ever.
I think it's more along the lines of, "Everyone else should remove their DRM so we can sell their products on iTunes for a higher profit margin."
Mod me whatever, but Jobs is no knight in shining armor folks. If he was, Disney wouldn't be pulling the crap that they pull with public domain material and copyright extensions, and iTunes products would never have had DRM in the first place.
1) I fully admit it will be the first version of MS-Office I haven't "liberated" or "borrowed".
2) My wife uses Office daily. I rarely use it, as I am usually just viewing docs she creates or others create and not creating them myself, so having the official viewers from MS work just fine for me.
3) Open Office doesn't cut it. Neither do Star Office or any of the others for the purposes for which my wife uses Office for (certain functions, forumulas, etc in Excel and whatnot that the others don't have or that don't migrate over to other Office packages).
4) As long as I can read the docs I need to read, I could give a rat's ass which program they were created in or what format the end file uses.
5) I don't have to pay for it, as I am getting it free via the "Power Together" campaign. So, I will have a full, legal, licensed version of the latest Office version I can use and not worry about OGA, etc? And better yet, I didn't have to pay for it? Sweet.
6) It made the wife very happy. And for those of you with wives, you know very well of what it means to have a happy wife.:)
GUI: Vista loses hands down. A GUI shouldn't take 250+ MB of RAM while just sitting there doing nothing. Not to mention that it is a poor imitation of Gnome/Aqua/KDE. XP's GUI can be customized. Patched Uxtheme.dll, WindowBlinds, etc. using alot less resources.
Network: XP can use IPv6 as well. Vista just comes with it enabled by default. Not that anyone actually uses IPv6 yet anyhow. Improved network stack? Only if you like being crippled to 10 half-open TCP connections without a way to change it. Good luck with your torrents.
Gaming/Entertainment: Gotta love that DRM thing. No Hi-Def movies unless you have a compatible DRM compliant monitor. Yee-haw. DX10? If it's that great of a dev package, why did MS drop sound support? Not to mention forcing DX9 apps to run in emulation mode after DX10 is installed. WTF. That's going to go over great with gamers...upgrade to DX10 to play a few of the latest games now and toss all of your old DX9 or earlier games. Wonderful. Not to mention that MS has already stated that gaming is slower by 15%-25% in Vista compared to XP SP2, and that is before you take into account that fugly transparent Fisher-Price GUI.
Frankly, you'd have better results gaming in Linux Distro Dujour.
INFORMATION AND CYBER SECURITY OPTION. This option includes a set of courses that provides an understanding of the theories, skills, and technologies associated with network security, cyber threat defense, information warfare, and critical infrastructure protection across multiple venues.
Is this more what you were looking for than sitting there learning how to program a computer to say "Hello World"?
You obviously forget that the vast majority of business entities in China are direct subsidiaries of the government of that nation. There are some exceptions of course for certain international corporations in places like Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but even then, those corporations abide by alot of what the government orders them to do. The penalties in China for not obeying governmental directives is rather severe, and go far beyond the economic penalties the US SEC/Fed could ever impose. Also, they have mobile lethal injection chambers and they are not afraid to pass summary death sentences there, even with the recent 'smoke and mirrors' about their high court making the final decision on death penalty cases. Yet another incentive for their corporate citizens to keep in line with the party directive.
I've been to China, and my sister-in-law is Chinese. A word of advice if you visit there: Do NOT attempt to take pictures of any uniformed police or military members you see patrolling the streets. You won't like the reaction you get.
Who knows how many vulnerabilities are actually present in IE or Opera. They are both closed source, proprietary apps. There could be thousands and we would never know it, unless some enterprising young soul decides to reverse engineer them both, and publicize the results (and risk getting sued into oblivion doing so).
Now, to get to the meat of why IE vulnerabilities will always be more dangerous than Firefox, Safari, etc combined:
Those idiots in Redmond integrated it into the OS with Ring0 access. IE7, same problem. They obviously have learned very little. IE is a straight vector into hosing/controlling the entire OS.
So, I take these advisory report scores with a grain of salt. There is simply no way to confirm that a proprietary app will ever be free of vulnerabilites, especially if it is tied directly into the OS.
I have a friend who works in the Patent Office. Here is what he had to say to me about this exact thing:
"I am stuck working with a bunch of anal-retentive, vicious, back-stabbing Republican assholes. Most of them get appointed to work here by some friend who got elected to office, and they are biased towards corporate interests, especially the corporate interests who their 'friends' work with. I hate my job. We are overworked, short-staffed, and we have to try and review every poorly-written, legalese-filled, doublespeak piece of crap submitted to us. And that all happens on a GOOD day."
Re:Honestly, this was a long time coming
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The venom apparatus or "sting" of a stingray is a spine or modified dermal denticle (the scales covering sharks and stingrays) with two ventral grooves filled with venom-producing tissue. The venom apparatus is surrounded by a cell-rich covering or sheath that also may produce lesser amounts of venom. The venom itself is a largely protein-based toxin that causes great pain in mammals and may also alter heart rate and respiration. However, since it is proteinaceous, it can be inactivated by exposure to high temperatures. Because of this, immersion of the wound in hot water or application of a heat compress are recommended as an immediate treatment for unfortunate victims of a stingray injury or "envenomation." Although this may reduce the initial pain of a stingray injury, victims should still obtain medical assistance so that the wound can be properly examined and cleaned to avoid secondary infections or other complications.
As mentioned above, the sting on most pelagic stingrays is situated near the base of the tail. This may discourage predators from biting the animal near its vital organs. In contrast, the sting of most bottom-dwelling stingrays is located further away from the body, making it a more effective and dangerous "striking" weapon. However, it should be pointed out that the sting is purely a defensive weapon only and that the "striking" action is an involuntary response rather than a conscious "attack."
Stingers usually range from 4cm to 6 inches. And they are barbed and venemous. So, if this was a large stingray with a large stinger, it is easy to understand how he could have perished from receiving a direct blow to the chest from one of these.
But, what IT department manager in their right mind, when having the option NOT to install any Flash plugins for Linux, is going to do so willingly, knowing what everyone knows about Flash?
If you ask me, it is a perfect way to say, "Sorry, no Flash for you." No more annoying Flash adverts, or other exploits.
Also, this is a perfect time for them to prevent alot of things - remove the CD/DVD-ROM drives from the cases (or alternatively, setup the optical drive access to be ROOT-only), disable installation of P2P apps, etc. This will prevent students from wasting alot of educational resources playing around with crap like Limewire or Diablo II, and frankly, it's been needed for a long time now.
I admin on a few online games, and let me tell you, the amount of students that are on there during school hours never ceases to amaze me and piss me off at the same time, as I know they are wasting valuable school resources and educational opportunities to play games, instead of doing something useful like learning how to administer a web server, etc. There is a time and place for games, and during class is not one of them IMHO. We have, in fact, as administrators, turned in students to their school principals for precisely this reason. As a staff, we believe in education first, socializing and leisure time second when it comes to our games.
Install MS Office, Windows Defender or any other MS app on a clean OS install and you will see exactly what I mean about useless entries/garbage being left over. It isn't just 3rd party vendors who have issue with the Registry, even MS software Devs/Programmers can't seem to get it right.
Very excellent point. If Microsoft was serious about this, they wouldn't care if they broke backwards compatibility, they would just do it. Now mind you, this bit they are doing here with Patchguard is like a "damned if we do" "damned if we don't" kind of thing. On the one hand, if they do it, they can potentially close some loopholes, but still take alot of guff from 3rd party vendors, etc. On the other hand, if they don't, then everyone jumps on them about not being serious about security. So really, due to their own malfeasance, they are stuck between the figurative "rock and a hard place".
They should have listened to everyone back when they released 98SE when they were told to break backwards compatibility for the sake of security if for no other reason...and what did we end up with...WinME...and then Win2k, XP and 2k3...and they still haven't learned apparently if alot of the swiss cheese holes in XP are still found in Vista.
Three good suggestions for MS:
1) Rewrite your kernel structure - nothing but absolutely necessary modules and drivers get access, everything else should run separately. No unecessary hooks, APIs and other nonsense. If this breaks the way certain applications function, too bad. Programmers and devs can learn to deal just like they deal with other crap, and maybe this will encourage them to stop being so damned lazy when it comes to their code.
2) Get rid of that stupid Registry, which is nothing but a tangled mess of exploits, vulnerabilities, insecurity and the cause of numerous BSODs. Not to mention confusion, because you need a freaking college degree to even understand what it does. Hell, even seasoned programmers seem to have trouble dealing with that thing! Even by your OWN programmers, MS; witness the unecessary garbage left behind by your own application installers!
3) Rewrite your file system, and the way your file/folder structure is laid out. Programs should not have writable access to the Program Files, Windows, etc folders outside of installation and patching. Operating System files should be checked during boot, during access, and during shutdown to determine if they were modified. Compare them to a valid (encrypted) checksum of what they should be compared to what they actually are. Refuse to let them run if invalid. All other data, etc should be contained within some sort of userland directory structure, that is walled off from the core OS structure. Programs should not require Administrator level access to install or run. The OS should be a platform to make a computer and its hardware function, not serve as an easy way for lazy or malicious programmers to make 3rd-Party Program X do whatever it feels like doing (3rd-party programs installed to userland should not be able to install any modified OS files whatsoever). Programs that are not drivers, should not be allowed to install at the driver level. If BSD, Unix, Linux, etc can do it, why can't you?
Not only that, but with that much RAM in his system, it is highly doubtful he even needs a page file. More than likely, he is running the OS out of RAM (you can do that you know).
Number 1 is already coming into effect. Witness all new LCD monitors and video cards, new video iPod-like devices, tv-tuners, TiVo-like devices, etc are all coming pre-manufactured with this stuff enabled now. Blame it on Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Toshiba and Phillips (especially on Phillips, who own the patents on almost all hardware-based DRM devices for digital hardware). And as far as computers go, even though most of us hate Microsoft software, check out the Vista hardware compatibility lists for all of their recent builds. No computer tv tuner that goes without built-in DRM has been made compatible (The entire Hauppage line for instance). This is not an accident.
Number 4 is already taking place. PVRs (outside of Myth boxes), your computer (if you run MS or Apple OS software for instance, this obviously does not apply to 'Nix/BSD boxen), iPods, etc already DO call the mothership so to speak. They check for blacklists, etc, and update themselves with the latest iteration of 'Security Patches' to shore up the software end of their DRM. New network connected HD tvs, etc are not far behind, especially with this big push towards everything becoming a part of a LAN/WAN'd 'home media center'. Witness the Xbox 360, PS3, etc. They basically require a net connection. I wonder why so, if all they are supposed to do is play games or an occassional movie dvd or music cd...
I think you forgot to add the keyword yet. There aren't any phantom "untouchable" DRM drivers YET. That doesn't mean there won't be any, especially with the potentially updated DMCA trying to make it legal for companies to do what Sony did with their "rootkit".
You can remove IE7 Beta 2 from Windows XP via Add/Remove programs with no ill affects. The IE7 installer caches the installation files automatically so that this is possible. Kind of like being able to remove SP1 (no way to remove SP2 without a format or reinstall of WinXP, no matter what Microsoft claims, try it and watch Windows get hosed). I installed and uninstalled it last night, before installing it again, just to try this theory out.
My first computer was a MITS Altair 8800, followed by a TRS-80 Model II, an Atari 800 and then an early Apple, IIe I think it was. I played around with a C64, but found the Amigas to be a better choice as far as gaming went. I also remember playing with light pens and color ribbon printers around this time...
Then I got a Tandy 1000SL (with its clown-red power button and TGA 640x220x16 graphics...), and from there straight to a 350 MHz Pentium-based mashup box, after that a Compaq P3 800 MHz, and then several Heinz-57 boxes with various processors from Intel and AMD, and now a few Dells (Optiplex and Dimension series) and now I am putting together a new system (AMD-based, as it will be mainly used for gaming).
It's also SBC/AT&T pressing this issue. You don't hear the cable companies pressing this issue, because in most places (in the USA), they already provide the best internet connections available to the end consumer. They already have bandwidth, etc provisioned for VoIP, movies, games and the rest.
It was interesting to note, that it was mentioned during the Senate committee meeting that Verizon has spent exactly $250,000,000 since the 1996 Telecom Act to upgrade its infrastructure (it was also noted, that Verizon and the other Bells promised at that time to have us all 45 mbit MINIMUM symetrical DSL lines into the home by 2005, and were given tax-free government-funded taxpayer dollars to do it with).
Assuming Verizon has 1 million paying customers for DSL at an average price of $45 per month:
$450,000,000
Multiply that by 12 months (this is not taking into account any paychecks, taxes, fees, etc Verizon has to pay).
Now, tell me again how they aren't making hand-over-foot profits while still not keeping their promises NOR paying back the tax-free loans the government gave them (using OUR taxpayer money)?
Maybe they should try improving their infrastructure even more before they go traipsing about trying to provide VoIP and video on demand.
As it was said during the hearing, "There is plenty of bandwidth out there, if you turn on your dark fiber instead of letting it gather dust." - a reference to the telcos laying alot of fiber line willy-nilly about the countryside, but only lighting up a small fraction of it.
Senator Stevens wasn't very pleased to learn that we are 16th in the world for broadband. He was also not happy about the fact that other nations have 100 mbit access and in some cases gigabit symetrical access to the home, while we are piddling around with 45-100 mbit asymertrical tops for home users and small businesses (fiber lines, and 100 mbit is exorbitantly expensive, unless you are a small business who can pass the buck onto your paying customers). He made note of how a certain telco ISP had blocked their customers from signing up with 3rd party VoIP, by not allowing traffic to go to that company's site from their network. He was proud of the fact that under certain laws passed within the last few years, it is ILLEGAL for telcos to do that. He also implied that for telcos to drop competing VoIP services into a low QOS queue would also be to their detriment if Congress catches wind of it, due to 911 emergency issues, etc.
I will reserve judgement until I see what kind of law Congress passes in this situation, but from what I witnessed today, the telcos are not making a very strong argument in their favor, and Google and the rest of the bunch are.
My grandmother on my mother's side has never used one. In fact, she didn't even own a color television until the mid nineties, nor have an indoor toilet, bathtub or washer and dryer until then either. Her house dates back to before the US Civil War. She's lived there basically ever since she got married to my grandfather back in the 1930's. So yeah, some people DON'T use computers, never have, and never will.
Don't laugh, it was actually considered at one point. That is, in light of Australia's history as an English penal colony... You guessed it, they were considering paying Australia to build prisons and house US prisoners there (US taxpayers would foot the bill of course, while you guys got the jobs created at the prisons, it was supposed to be a whole economy booster type thing).
I get just as much spam in my inbox as I did before this useless law. It does absolutely nothing to punish or restrict anyone outside of the United States (or who uses botnets and the like). That coupled with the fact that many commercial retailers bury their stupid opt-out in the bottom of several pages of spamvertisements in their emails (hey, they are technically complying after all) pretty much make this a useless law. Google's filters don't work for shite in this matter either, and they don't seem to care when you complain about it. C'est la vie.
When oh when are we ever going to get some techinically savvy politicians elected...
They do it by protocol and port. Some companies actually offer services and devices that supposedly scan packet contents as well (Giving ISPs a legal loophole in the Common Carrier argument, because it is actually a contracted 3rd party doing said filtering, not them. This way an ISP just has to claim that they passed the request traffic through as that is all they are required to do under the Common Carrier argument.) and drop them, assign them a lower priority, etc. Trust me, those high download speeds you get from Microsoft (updates etc), the various Linux distro sites, etc aren't just because they have "fat pipes". It's because that kind of traffic is given priority over general p2p, etc. Alot of ISPs view p2p traffic like they do worm or virus traffic. They want to kill it. They want people to pay to get content only from them or their paid partners. They don't want people trading files and information directly to one another on THEIR precious golden egg, er, networks.
You don't need expensive dental materials. I fooled one just by using elementary school Elmer's Glue. Just swab a thick layer onto your finger, let it completely dry, peel it off carefully so it reverses the print to the outside, and voila. My friends and I all had a good laugh when we used it to fool the IBM Thinkpads that came with the scanners.
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Jobs is funny. His silly doublespeak about DRM is just a riot. Anti-DRM messages coming from the head of THE largest single shareholder of Disney stock (voting stock at that) is just...well, I think you get the picture. If he was speaking more than hot air, he'd be the first one to strip everything on iTunes of DRM, including every single Disney and Pixar title, all of the tv shows from ABC, and would make Sony release their Disney Blu-Ray titles without BD+ DRM. I don't see that happening. Ever.
I think it's more along the lines of, "Everyone else should remove their DRM so we can sell their products on iTunes for a higher profit margin."
Mod me whatever, but Jobs is no knight in shining armor folks. If he was, Disney wouldn't be pulling the crap that they pull with public domain material and copyright extensions, and iTunes products would never have had DRM in the first place.
Who pays $400 for it? You can get Vista Ultimate 32-Bit OEM from Newegg for $199 + $4.99 3-day shipping.
2 E16832116213
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Here are my reasons:
:)
1) I fully admit it will be the first version of MS-Office I haven't "liberated" or "borrowed".
2) My wife uses Office daily. I rarely use it, as I am usually just viewing docs she creates or others create and not creating them myself, so having the official viewers from MS work just fine for me.
3) Open Office doesn't cut it. Neither do Star Office or any of the others for the purposes for which my wife uses Office for (certain functions, forumulas, etc in Excel and whatnot that the others don't have or that don't migrate over to other Office packages).
4) As long as I can read the docs I need to read, I could give a rat's ass which program they were created in or what format the end file uses.
5) I don't have to pay for it, as I am getting it free via the "Power Together" campaign. So, I will have a full, legal, licensed version of the latest Office version I can use and not worry about OGA, etc? And better yet, I didn't have to pay for it? Sweet.
6) It made the wife very happy. And for those of you with wives, you know very well of what it means to have a happy wife.
GUI: Vista loses hands down. A GUI shouldn't take 250+ MB of RAM while just sitting there doing nothing. Not to mention that it is a poor imitation of Gnome/Aqua/KDE. XP's GUI can be customized. Patched Uxtheme.dll, WindowBlinds, etc. using alot less resources.
Network: XP can use IPv6 as well. Vista just comes with it enabled by default. Not that anyone actually uses IPv6 yet anyhow. Improved network stack? Only if you like being crippled to 10 half-open TCP connections without a way to change it. Good luck with your torrents.
Gaming/Entertainment: Gotta love that DRM thing. No Hi-Def movies unless you have a compatible DRM compliant monitor. Yee-haw. DX10? If it's that great of a dev package, why did MS drop sound support? Not to mention forcing DX9 apps to run in emulation mode after DX10 is installed. WTF. That's going to go over great with gamers...upgrade to DX10 to play a few of the latest games now and toss all of your old DX9 or earlier games. Wonderful. Not to mention that MS has already stated that gaming is slower by 15%-25% in Vista compared to XP SP2, and that is before you take into account that fugly transparent Fisher-Price GUI.
Frankly, you'd have better results gaming in Linux Distro Dujour.
You might want to check out Penn State's CS/IS program. They allow you to specialize.
t m/
For one example, as a CompSci/Information Sciences Major you can specialize in Security and Risk Analysis:
http://www.psu.edu/bulletins/bluebook/major/sra.h
It includes the following focus option:
INFORMATION AND CYBER SECURITY OPTION. This option includes a set of courses that provides an understanding of the theories, skills, and technologies associated with network security, cyber threat defense, information warfare, and critical infrastructure protection across multiple venues.
Is this more what you were looking for than sitting there learning how to program a computer to say "Hello World"?
You obviously forget that the vast majority of business entities in China are direct subsidiaries of the government of that nation. There are some exceptions of course for certain international corporations in places like Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but even then, those corporations abide by alot of what the government orders them to do. The penalties in China for not obeying governmental directives is rather severe, and go far beyond the economic penalties the US SEC/Fed could ever impose. Also, they have mobile lethal injection chambers and they are not afraid to pass summary death sentences there, even with the recent 'smoke and mirrors' about their high court making the final decision on death penalty cases. Yet another incentive for their corporate citizens to keep in line with the party directive.
I've been to China, and my sister-in-law is Chinese. A word of advice if you visit there: Do NOT attempt to take pictures of any uniformed police or military members you see patrolling the streets. You won't like the reaction you get.
For more information on this topic, straight from Microsoft:
5 f83-1a10-4e4a-a137-c1db829637f5/10-03-06SoftwarePr otectionWP.doc
http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/2/9/c293
Like a poster before me mentioned:
Who knows how many vulnerabilities are actually present in IE or Opera. They are both closed source, proprietary apps. There could be thousands and we would never know it, unless some enterprising young soul decides to reverse engineer them both, and publicize the results (and risk getting sued into oblivion doing so).
Now, to get to the meat of why IE vulnerabilities will always be more dangerous than Firefox, Safari, etc combined:
Those idiots in Redmond integrated it into the OS with Ring0 access. IE7, same problem. They obviously have learned very little. IE is a straight vector into hosing/controlling the entire OS.
So, I take these advisory report scores with a grain of salt. There is simply no way to confirm that a proprietary app will ever be free of vulnerabilites, especially if it is tied directly into the OS.
I have a friend who works in the Patent Office. Here is what he had to say to me about this exact thing:
"I am stuck working with a bunch of anal-retentive, vicious, back-stabbing Republican assholes. Most of them get appointed to work here by some friend who got elected to office, and they are biased towards corporate interests, especially the corporate interests who their 'friends' work with. I hate my job. We are overworked, short-staffed, and we have to try and review every poorly-written, legalese-filled, doublespeak piece of crap submitted to us. And that all happens on a GOOD day."
Stingers usually range from 4cm to 6 inches. And they are barbed and venemous. So, if this was a large stingray with a large stinger, it is easy to understand how he could have perished from receiving a direct blow to the chest from one of these.
But, what IT department manager in their right mind, when having the option NOT to install any Flash plugins for Linux, is going to do so willingly, knowing what everyone knows about Flash?
If you ask me, it is a perfect way to say, "Sorry, no Flash for you." No more annoying Flash adverts, or other exploits.
Also, this is a perfect time for them to prevent alot of things - remove the CD/DVD-ROM drives from the cases (or alternatively, setup the optical drive access to be ROOT-only), disable installation of P2P apps, etc. This will prevent students from wasting alot of educational resources playing around with crap like Limewire or Diablo II, and frankly, it's been needed for a long time now.
I admin on a few online games, and let me tell you, the amount of students that are on there during school hours never ceases to amaze me and piss me off at the same time, as I know they are wasting valuable school resources and educational opportunities to play games, instead of doing something useful like learning how to administer a web server, etc. There is a time and place for games, and during class is not one of them IMHO. We have, in fact, as administrators, turned in students to their school principals for precisely this reason. As a staff, we believe in education first, socializing and leisure time second when it comes to our games.
Install MS Office, Windows Defender or any other MS app on a clean OS install and you will see exactly what I mean about useless entries/garbage being left over. It isn't just 3rd party vendors who have issue with the Registry, even MS software Devs/Programmers can't seem to get it right.
Very excellent point. If Microsoft was serious about this, they wouldn't care if they broke backwards compatibility, they would just do it. Now mind you, this bit they are doing here with Patchguard is like a "damned if we do" "damned if we don't" kind of thing. On the one hand, if they do it, they can potentially close some loopholes, but still take alot of guff from 3rd party vendors, etc. On the other hand, if they don't, then everyone jumps on them about not being serious about security. So really, due to their own malfeasance, they are stuck between the figurative "rock and a hard place".
They should have listened to everyone back when they released 98SE when they were told to break backwards compatibility for the sake of security if for no other reason...and what did we end up with...WinME...and then Win2k, XP and 2k3...and they still haven't learned apparently if alot of the swiss cheese holes in XP are still found in Vista.
Three good suggestions for MS:
1) Rewrite your kernel structure - nothing but absolutely necessary modules and drivers get access, everything else should run separately. No unecessary hooks, APIs and other nonsense. If this breaks the way certain applications function, too bad. Programmers and devs can learn to deal just like they deal with other crap, and maybe this will encourage them to stop being so damned lazy when it comes to their code.
2) Get rid of that stupid Registry, which is nothing but a tangled mess of exploits, vulnerabilities, insecurity and the cause of numerous BSODs. Not to mention confusion, because you need a freaking college degree to even understand what it does. Hell, even seasoned programmers seem to have trouble dealing with that thing! Even by your OWN programmers, MS; witness the unecessary garbage left behind by your own application installers!
3) Rewrite your file system, and the way your file/folder structure is laid out. Programs should not have writable access to the Program Files, Windows, etc folders outside of installation and patching. Operating System files should be checked during boot, during access, and during shutdown to determine if they were modified. Compare them to a valid (encrypted) checksum of what they should be compared to what they actually are. Refuse to let them run if invalid. All other data, etc should be contained within some sort of userland directory structure, that is walled off from the core OS structure. Programs should not require Administrator level access to install or run. The OS should be a platform to make a computer and its hardware function, not serve as an easy way for lazy or malicious programmers to make 3rd-Party Program X do whatever it feels like doing (3rd-party programs installed to userland should not be able to install any modified OS files whatsoever). Programs that are not drivers, should not be allowed to install at the driver level. If BSD, Unix, Linux, etc can do it, why can't you?
Not only that, but with that much RAM in his system, it is highly doubtful he even needs a page file. More than likely, he is running the OS out of RAM (you can do that you know).
Number 1 is already coming into effect. Witness all new LCD monitors and video cards, new video iPod-like devices, tv-tuners, TiVo-like devices, etc are all coming pre-manufactured with this stuff enabled now. Blame it on Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Toshiba and Phillips (especially on Phillips, who own the patents on almost all hardware-based DRM devices for digital hardware). And as far as computers go, even though most of us hate Microsoft software, check out the Vista hardware compatibility lists for all of their recent builds. No computer tv tuner that goes without built-in DRM has been made compatible (The entire Hauppage line for instance). This is not an accident.
Number 4 is already taking place. PVRs (outside of Myth boxes), your computer (if you run MS or Apple OS software for instance, this obviously does not apply to 'Nix/BSD boxen), iPods, etc already DO call the mothership so to speak. They check for blacklists, etc, and update themselves with the latest iteration of 'Security Patches' to shore up the software end of their DRM. New network connected HD tvs, etc are not far behind, especially with this big push towards everything becoming a part of a LAN/WAN'd 'home media center'. Witness the Xbox 360, PS3, etc. They basically require a net connection. I wonder why so, if all they are supposed to do is play games or an occassional movie dvd or music cd...
All I have to say is... "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny." -Master Yoda
I think you forgot to add the keyword yet. There aren't any phantom "untouchable" DRM drivers YET. That doesn't mean there won't be any, especially with the potentially updated DMCA trying to make it legal for companies to do what Sony did with their "rootkit".
You can remove IE7 Beta 2 from Windows XP via Add/Remove programs with no ill affects. The IE7 installer caches the installation files automatically so that this is possible. Kind of like being able to remove SP1 (no way to remove SP2 without a format or reinstall of WinXP, no matter what Microsoft claims, try it and watch Windows get hosed). I installed and uninstalled it last night, before installing it again, just to try this theory out.
My first computer was a MITS Altair 8800, followed by a TRS-80 Model II, an Atari 800 and then an early Apple, IIe I think it was. I played around with a C64, but found the Amigas to be a better choice as far as gaming went. I also remember playing with light pens and color ribbon printers around this time...
Then I got a Tandy 1000SL (with its clown-red power button and TGA 640x220x16 graphics...), and from there straight to a 350 MHz Pentium-based mashup box, after that a Compaq P3 800 MHz, and then several Heinz-57 boxes with various processors from Intel and AMD, and now a few Dells (Optiplex and Dimension series) and now I am putting together a new system (AMD-based, as it will be mainly used for gaming).
It's also SBC/AT&T pressing this issue. You don't hear the cable companies pressing this issue, because in most places (in the USA), they already provide the best internet connections available to the end consumer. They already have bandwidth, etc provisioned for VoIP, movies, games and the rest.
It was interesting to note, that it was mentioned during the Senate committee meeting that Verizon has spent exactly $250,000,000 since the 1996 Telecom Act to upgrade its infrastructure (it was also noted, that Verizon and the other Bells promised at that time to have us all 45 mbit MINIMUM symetrical DSL lines into the home by 2005, and were given tax-free government-funded taxpayer dollars to do it with).
Assuming Verizon has 1 million paying customers for DSL at an average price of $45 per month:
$450,000,000
Multiply that by 12 months (this is not taking into account any paychecks, taxes, fees, etc Verizon has to pay).
Now, tell me again how they aren't making hand-over-foot profits while still not keeping their promises NOR paying back the tax-free loans the government gave them (using OUR taxpayer money)?
Maybe they should try improving their infrastructure even more before they go traipsing about trying to provide VoIP and video on demand.
As it was said during the hearing, "There is plenty of bandwidth out there, if you turn on your dark fiber instead of letting it gather dust." - a reference to the telcos laying alot of fiber line willy-nilly about the countryside, but only lighting up a small fraction of it.
Senator Stevens wasn't very pleased to learn that we are 16th in the world for broadband. He was also not happy about the fact that other nations have 100 mbit access and in some cases gigabit symetrical access to the home, while we are piddling around with 45-100 mbit asymertrical tops for home users and small businesses (fiber lines, and 100 mbit is exorbitantly expensive, unless you are a small business who can pass the buck onto your paying customers). He made note of how a certain telco ISP had blocked their customers from signing up with 3rd party VoIP, by not allowing traffic to go to that company's site from their network. He was proud of the fact that under certain laws passed within the last few years, it is ILLEGAL for telcos to do that. He also implied that for telcos to drop competing VoIP services into a low QOS queue would also be to their detriment if Congress catches wind of it, due to 911 emergency issues, etc.
I will reserve judgement until I see what kind of law Congress passes in this situation, but from what I witnessed today, the telcos are not making a very strong argument in their favor, and Google and the rest of the bunch are.
My grandmother on my mother's side has never used one. In fact, she didn't even own a color television until the mid nineties, nor have an indoor toilet, bathtub or washer and dryer until then either. Her house dates back to before the US Civil War. She's lived there basically ever since she got married to my grandfather back in the 1930's. So yeah, some people DON'T use computers, never have, and never will.
Don't laugh, it was actually considered at one point. That is, in light of Australia's history as an English penal colony... You guessed it, they were considering paying Australia to build prisons and house US prisoners there (US taxpayers would foot the bill of course, while you guys got the jobs created at the prisons, it was supposed to be a whole economy booster type thing).
Man, talk about your misnomers...
I get just as much spam in my inbox as I did before this useless law. It does absolutely nothing to punish or restrict anyone outside of the United States (or who uses botnets and the like). That coupled with the fact that many commercial retailers bury their stupid opt-out in the bottom of several pages of spamvertisements in their emails (hey, they are technically complying after all) pretty much make this a useless law. Google's filters don't work for shite in this matter either, and they don't seem to care when you complain about it. C'est la vie.
When oh when are we ever going to get some techinically savvy politicians elected...
They do it by protocol and port. Some companies actually offer services and devices that supposedly scan packet contents as well (Giving ISPs a legal loophole in the Common Carrier argument, because it is actually a contracted 3rd party doing said filtering, not them. This way an ISP just has to claim that they passed the request traffic through as that is all they are required to do under the Common Carrier argument.) and drop them, assign them a lower priority, etc. Trust me, those high download speeds you get from Microsoft (updates etc), the various Linux distro sites, etc aren't just because they have "fat pipes". It's because that kind of traffic is given priority over general p2p, etc. Alot of ISPs view p2p traffic like they do worm or virus traffic. They want to kill it. They want people to pay to get content only from them or their paid partners. They don't want people trading files and information directly to one another on THEIR precious golden egg, er, networks.
You don't need expensive dental materials. I fooled one just by using elementary school Elmer's Glue. Just swab a thick layer onto your finger, let it completely dry, peel it off carefully so it reverses the print to the outside, and voila. My friends and I all had a good laugh when we used it to fool the IBM Thinkpads that came with the scanners.