Owww.. I had a really nice troll comment someone posted on slashdot a while ago describing an example of how the "user support" of a game company would sound like after releasing a game "fully supported" on Linux... (i.e. a user calling the support hotline after his brand-new game did not have sound)
It included the specification of distro (ubuntu vs redhat, vs mint, vs fedora, vs more than 100 more) desktop environment (KDE vs XFCE vs Gnome vs ???), sound system (ALSA, PulseAudio, OSS, ALSA over Pulseaudio, OSS over Alsa...) etc.
Really, I use Linux everyday for my Work (R-project+ awk + Netbeans + gcc + Gnumeric are Teh L33t) but I won't suggest "mainstream" linux gaming is a reality...
There are Linux games, but all of them require a lot of effort to make them run compared to Console, Mac or Windows games (double click installer and TADA!)
Where's the trade happening ? the business is between Facebook and the data consumers, not the hapless dupes who post all the personal information up there.
Trade is happening in the same way as the PirateBay and other pirate sites provide illegal media "for profit". That is, Facebook is providing a service to North Korea and they are in return making profit from the advertisements.
Your literal intepretation is unreasonable and silly.
Hey, don't forget it is Germany we are talking about here... where people take everything very literal (e.g., never say a German friend "we should come fishing to this lake" after walking past a lake because next week you may get them knocking at your door asking you to go fishing)
Yah, but for the 1 guy whose performance increases 10x after using Facebook, 100 other employees performance will decrease 2x.
I am all for personal privacy, but I also agree with the idea that, for those 8 hours that you are being paid, you are expected to *spend* that time doing whatever you are paid for and not wasting your time.
Moreover, I understand why companies would want to closely monitor the email of their workers. Ultimately, while you are on your work hours you *represent* the company, and anything you communicate can be used against them.
Me? I do not take it personally. Although in my case rules are very very relaxed as I am in a German research institute (Max Planck, Leibniz, Fraunhofer, etc), but I do understand the background of such "draconian" requirements
Yes, the main problem of Wave was this stupid policy of imposing an artificial barrier for people who wanted to use the collaborative service.
Being "invite only" for some time and after that having to *open* an account made it completely worthless for me.
In contrast (as an example) I started using DimDim with some colleagues because using it was as easy as i)opening a conference room and ii) giving a simple link in which my colleagues could get instant access to the meeting.
It is like if Facebook wanted to be a success by *only* allowing students to sign in (at that time I had no idea of Facebook)
the one that designed the system so that he could be infected by a virus
Well... then blame Microsoft and Bill gates. Because the problem in the computer with the virus was in a NORMAL PC running Windows and with a standard Trojan.
the it staff not noticing the virus their supervisors
Completely agree.
the pilots (were they alive)
I don't agree. The pilot even returned to check something that was wrong in the airplane, which was fixed by the mechanics. They did everything they thought to make the flight safe (shit, considering THEY where going in that flight).
the engineer replacing the faulty breaker
Maybe...maybe not... the guy looked at the problem and replaced the problematic part. However it seems there was another problem which should have been REPORTED IN THE MONITOR COMPUTER but as it was not, he could not have guessed.
The article does mention that IF the computer had been in good state (without trojans) then it would have informed that the plane had THREE failures of the same kind, preventing it from taking off.
Of course it all comes up to complete airline negligence and control. As the article said, each failure took 24 hours in being registered.
After reading this article I am convinced I will never fly with this Airline.
One thing that is important to note is that the trojans were NOT in the plane itself, but in a standard PC somewhere in Palma de Mallorca.
The central processor of the Spanair company in which airplane failures were logged was contaminated with malicious computer programs when the accident of flight JK 5022 was produced, two years ago.
The computer, situated in the airline headquarters in Palma de Mallorca emits an alarm signal in the monitor when it registers three similar technical problems in the same devcie. The plane that crashed in Barajas two years ago - 154 of their 172 occupants died - accumulated three incidents, which where not timely registered in the computer.
An internal memo of the company, dated the same day as the accident, indicates that the monitor [computer] was contaminated with "trojans". These malicious programs can provoke damage and facilitate attacks from computer hackers. Precisely, the association of the accident victims, has asked the judge, Juan David Pérez, to ask Spanair all the annotations registered in that computer in the dates before and after the accident. The magistrate has just ordered the airline to provide such data.
The previous defect adds to the fact that Spanair took 24 hours to annotate plane failures in the computer, according to the airline mechanical servicemen.
This is not a trivial issue, because presumably, the flight JK 5022 would have not taken off had its logs in the computer being up to date. The alarm should had been set off, given that the plane registered two failures before the accident in August 19th and one in the same day in August 20th. It was this last incident the one that motivated the flight commander to return from the head of the runway, after detecting that a probe had overheated and without justification. It is the mechanics who have the obligation to communicate to Spanair in Palma each failure just at the time when it is detected. In this case, when the employees tried to open the computer to log these three incidents, they realized that the monitor was unusable due to the trojans invasion. At that time, the airplane had crashed.
The main performance issue with antivirus is not in general within the amount of "CPU code" that is executed but with the amount of file read/write (mainly read) that is performed while deciding if each file you open (and nowadays, each document or file you get or the AV *thinks* you may get) is indeed infected.
Thus in this same reasoning line it would make more sense if someone like Seagate or WD bought McAfee (yeah... that really makes no sense).
Just try comparing Antivirus benchmarks between a Spinning HDD vs a Solid state disk (flash SSD); I am sure you will see a very different performance.
Just one thing... it has been mentioned that after Mexican army killed the drug kingpin Nacho Coronel they got his laptop. It seems that said laptop contains a lot of information on the government officials and other corrupt motherfuckers who were being paid by this scumbag.
How I wish with all my heart that there was some Mexican Army national hero, similar to Bradley Manning, who published all that info in Wikileaks. Because otherwise all that information will be washed away and exchanged as "political coins" between all the people in the corrupt Mexican government.
I am a Mexican living outside Mexico for now. My wife is actually from Gomez Palacio and all his family lives there.
In fact, two known persons were in the Italia Inn party the night of the attack, fortunately nothing really bad happened to them except a bullet in the leg to the girl. (the details of the story they have told... to friends, not to the police of course... the version you give to the police is that you could not see clearly anyone, otherwise you could be "levantado" next).
From everything we have heard from my wife's parents, it seems the situation is terrible. And I mean *really* fucking terrible. For example, policemen morale is so low than they need to make new recruiting quite often, and usually only 2 or 3 people arrive for the recruiting day (and usually 2 of the 3 are paid by the narcs).
Cars are stolen very very often in front of your home doors. With gun in hand they ask you
what do you think carnal I need your car for a "jale"
And that is just the situation in the "La Laguna" region (composed of 3 main cities of 2 states, Gomez Palacio, Torreón, Lerdo and other minor cities). Things are worse in places like Tijuana, CD. Juarez and other norther/frontier cities.
I was really happy to see this blog del narco rise. I applaud the guy who is making it. It is really sad to see the mainstream news in Mexico (Telerisa y Tv Apezta), when they comment on some narcotrafic event (IF they dare to comment) they make it seems as if it is a normal thing, and the news anchors just limit to say "ni hablar..." all the media is scared to silence.
Some time ago I read about some request to get the U.N. to Cd. Juarez. I *really* believe that is something which should happen *now* and not only in CD juarez but in the majority of Mexico (at least these cities where violence is known to be worst).
It is sad to say but what is needed in Mexico is some power from outside stepping to eliminate corruption in the country. All the system is corrupt, from top to bottom. If you read some old (2 to 4 years) articles of Semanario Zeta you will see how the Tijuana government is helping narcs (to the level of the Presidente Municipal/city major [for sure] and maybe even the governor [not sure]).
The same is known for example in Torreon, where eeeeverybody knows "Carlitos Herrera" owner of the Chilchota Cheese brand and previous Presidente Municipal is linked with drug gangs... but nobody says nor makes something.
Whatever, I got bored of writing this... it is a sad state in which our country is right now. It is so dangerous that I really am afraid of returning. Of course the fact that I have a well paid job in Europe is another factor as the only place were jobs are in Mexico is Mexico City in which I would never return to work...
My only hope is that they pull their shit together in the next 2 years because after my contract ends I would need to return to Mexico... fortunately the place where my family lives (more to the south) is still not so violent (yet... touches wood,crosses fingers).
Well, I am deffinitely late at this but would like to make an analogy which I think is adequate for the subject.
Trying to record digitally these "last days" of your wife is similar to going to a concert and spending all the night with your video/photo camera recording the video... you won't be enjoying the concert AND you will end with a not-so-good video.
Better enjoy the moment 100% instead of putting 50% attention on cameras/electronic gizmos and only dedicating 50% on sharing the time with your loved ones.
Wikileaks is the shit. I have followed them since the day I learnt from them on the New Scientist Magazine.
Day and Night I am wishing people in my country (Mexico) would be brave enough to leak the documents showing all the corrupt people that are paid by the drug-traffic cartels (e.g. the laptop of the drug-lord recently confiscated ).
This kind of public full disclosure is the only way to attack the full corruption circle in the government.
Mhmm, lets see: 1. Users do not really care... and if someone care they use either PGP or https: in an email
2. Kind of like when someone wants to link one forum conversation (or any other media from the web) into another, they use this magical "a href" thing.
3. Oooor you can use a standard forum and give the linky (see point 2) of the thread to your pal. (from your linked post) 4. "extend with poll widgets": Current forum software can do it. 5. "letter by letter real time communication", can you tell me 1 (ONE) scenario where this is not only a gimmic... anyway, webchat (ala facebook chat), irc and any other instant messenger protocol can do it. 6. "Retract comments": I can do it on email, it is called "apologizing" for sending the wrong email (or an email without attachement)... also in forums, it is called "edit post" or just reply to your own post. 7. "waves can be global an public", guess what! Forums can be made global and public! 8. "Waves can be moderated;" this is getting boring...
In reality it is true that nothing of value was lost.
Look, I use a lot of google services (e.g. gmail, docs, calendar) on a daily basis, including the "failed" google Notebook which is quite good.
But when I tried to use wave I just could not see any feature that would make me want to change from Skype+Forum+DimDim+Doodle+Docs to do what I want.
The *only* thing that Wave *could* have done is concentrate all those services in one place, the problem is that the interface then became very complex.
A hardware hack could be an annoyance, by stopping a mobile phone from functioning. Or it could be more dangerous, if it damages the way a critical system operates.
BTW, I remember an urban legend circulating that there was a virus that changed some low-level instructions in 3.5 floppy drives making them keep reading discs... which made the drives get on fire. Anyone has got more info on that?
Back when I was a kid my father used to buy us some books which contained smaller "filtered" versions of the classical stories (of authors like Jules Verne). Although they were aimed to kids, they were good text books (with very few pictures here and there).
As we grew a bit more we read Reader's Digest Condensed Books (I was ~11) and some full books.
I would love to find similar books/ebooks written in a language for children or condensed books online.
Re:why can't MS have easy to get iso's for windows
on
The Recovery Disc Rip-Off
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So, which of those links takes me to download a copy of Windows 7 in which I can just put the legal key that came under my laptop?
I bought an HP Laptop in Mexico and took it to the UK for my studies. After about three years my disk went kaput and I had to get a new one.
Unfortunately I didn't have an XP install disk... although I did have my XP license (in a stick under my laptop).
I went into the UK HP client service and told them that I wanted to get their install disk; I think they were selling it for about 30 pounds, which I said I would pay. I was ready to give all my machine details but they said they could not send it because it was a machine bought in Mexico, and thus, I had to contact HP-Mexico
I did contact Hp-Mexico and they told me they could not send me a disk to the UK... At the end I finished torrenting a really good XP release (Windows UE in Spanish FWIW).
It really sucks how companies go to such efforts to prevent people to try to do things right and then whine when people take alternative routes.
Slashdot Mirror
Owww.. I had a really nice troll comment someone posted on slashdot a while ago describing an example of how the "user support" of a game company would sound like after releasing a game "fully supported" on Linux... (i.e. a user calling the support hotline after his brand-new game did not have sound)
It included the specification of distro (ubuntu vs redhat, vs mint, vs fedora, vs more than 100 more) desktop environment (KDE vs XFCE vs Gnome vs ???), sound system (ALSA, PulseAudio, OSS, ALSA over Pulseaudio, OSS over Alsa...) etc.
Really, I use Linux everyday for my Work (R-project+ awk + Netbeans + gcc + Gnumeric are Teh L33t) but I won't suggest "mainstream" linux gaming is a reality...
There are Linux games, but all of them require a lot of effort to make them run compared to Console, Mac or Windows games (double click installer and TADA!)
Fun fun fun...
I am sure a couple of head honchos at Google are banging their heads for not having bought Sun Microsystems when they could.
Where's the trade happening ? the business is between Facebook and the data consumers, not the hapless dupes who post all the personal information up there.
Trade is happening in the same way as the PirateBay and other pirate sites provide illegal media "for profit". That is, Facebook is providing a service to North Korea and they are in return making profit from the advertisements.
Your literal intepretation is unreasonable and silly.
Hey, don't forget it is Germany we are talking about here... where people take everything very literal (e.g., never say a German friend "we should come fishing to this lake" after walking past a lake because next week you may get them knocking at your door asking you to go fishing)
Yah, but for the 1 guy whose performance increases 10x after using Facebook, 100 other employees performance will decrease 2x.
I am all for personal privacy, but I also agree with the idea that, for those 8 hours that you are being paid, you are expected to *spend* that time doing whatever you are paid for and not wasting your time.
Moreover, I understand why companies would want to closely monitor the email of their workers. Ultimately, while you are on your work hours you *represent* the company, and anything you communicate can be used against them.
Me? I do not take it personally. Although in my case rules are very very relaxed as I am in a German research institute (Max Planck, Leibniz, Fraunhofer, etc), but I do understand the background of such "draconian" requirements
Yes, the main problem of Wave was this stupid policy of imposing an artificial barrier for people who wanted to use the collaborative service.
Being "invite only" for some time and after that having to *open* an account made it completely worthless for me.
In contrast (as an example) I started using DimDim with some colleagues because using it was as easy as i)opening a conference room and ii) giving a simple link in which my colleagues could get instant access to the meeting.
It is like if Facebook wanted to be a success by *only* allowing students to sign in (at that time I had no idea of Facebook)
the one that designed the system so that he could be infected by a virus
Well... then blame Microsoft and Bill gates. Because the problem in the computer with the virus was in a NORMAL PC running Windows and with a standard Trojan.
the it staff not noticing the virus
their supervisors
Completely agree.
the pilots (were they alive)
I don't agree. The pilot even returned to check something that was wrong in the airplane, which was fixed by the mechanics. They did everything they thought to make the flight safe (shit, considering THEY where going in that flight).
the engineer replacing the faulty breaker
Maybe...maybe not... the guy looked at the problem and replaced the problematic part. However it seems there was another problem which should have been REPORTED IN THE MONITOR COMPUTER but as it was not, he could not have guessed.
The article does mention that IF the computer had been in good state (without trojans) then it would have informed that the plane had THREE failures of the same kind, preventing it from taking off.
Of course it all comes up to complete airline negligence and control. As the article said, each failure took 24 hours in being registered.
After reading this article I am convinced I will never fly with this Airline.
One thing that is important to note is that the trojans were NOT in the plane itself, but in a standard PC somewhere in Palma de Mallorca.
The central processor of the Spanair company in which airplane failures were logged was contaminated with malicious computer programs when the accident of flight JK 5022 was produced, two years ago.
The computer, situated in the airline headquarters in Palma de Mallorca emits an alarm signal in the monitor when it registers three similar technical problems in the same devcie. The plane that crashed in Barajas two years ago - 154 of their 172 occupants died - accumulated three incidents, which where not timely registered in the computer.
An internal memo of the company, dated the same day as the accident, indicates that the monitor [computer] was contaminated with "trojans". These malicious programs can provoke damage and facilitate attacks from computer hackers. Precisely, the association of the accident victims, has asked the judge, Juan David Pérez, to ask Spanair all the annotations registered in that computer in the dates before and after the accident. The magistrate has just ordered the airline to provide such data.
The previous defect adds to the fact that Spanair took 24 hours to annotate plane failures in the computer, according to the airline mechanical servicemen.
This is not a trivial issue, because presumably, the flight JK 5022 would have not taken off had its logs in the computer being up to date. The alarm should had been set off, given that the plane registered two failures before the accident in August 19th and one in the same day in August 20th. It was this last incident the one that motivated the flight commander to return from the head of the runway, after detecting that a probe had overheated and without justification. It is the mechanics who have the obligation to communicate to Spanair in Palma each failure just at the time when it is detected. In this case, when the employees tried to open the computer to log these three incidents, they realized that the monitor was unusable due to the trojans invasion. At that time, the airplane had crashed.
What about a CardBus/ExpressCard (PCMCIA) SDD drive? using that you don't have to remove your CD/DVD
The main performance issue with antivirus is not in general within the amount of "CPU code" that is executed but with the amount of file read/write (mainly read) that is performed while deciding if each file you open (and nowadays, each document or file you get or the AV *thinks* you may get) is indeed infected.
Thus in this same reasoning line it would make more sense if someone like Seagate or WD bought McAfee (yeah... that really makes no sense).
Just try comparing Antivirus benchmarks between a Spinning HDD vs a Solid state disk (flash SSD); I am sure you will see a very different performance.
Un compatriota con una ID de 4 dígitos...
En la madre!
Just one thing... it has been mentioned that after Mexican army killed the drug kingpin Nacho Coronel they got his laptop. It seems that said laptop contains a lot of information on the government officials and other corrupt motherfuckers who were being paid by this scumbag.
How I wish with all my heart that there was some Mexican Army national hero, similar to Bradley Manning, who published all that info in Wikileaks. Because otherwise all that information will be washed away and exchanged as "political coins" between all the people in the corrupt Mexican government.
Disclaimer, IAAMexican
Hello,
I am a Mexican living outside Mexico for now. My wife is actually from Gomez Palacio and all his family lives there.
In fact, two known persons were in the Italia Inn party the night of the attack, fortunately nothing really bad happened to them except a bullet in the leg to the girl. (the details of the story they have told ... to friends, not to the police of course... the version you give to the police is that you could not see clearly anyone, otherwise you could be "levantado" next).
From everything we have heard from my wife's parents, it seems the situation is terrible. And I mean *really* fucking terrible. For example, policemen morale is so low than they need to make new recruiting quite often, and usually only 2 or 3 people arrive for the recruiting day (and usually 2 of the 3 are paid by the narcs).
Cars are stolen very very often in front of your home doors. With gun in hand they ask you
what do you think carnal I need your car for a "jale"
And that is just the situation in the "La Laguna" region (composed of 3 main cities of 2 states, Gomez Palacio, Torreón, Lerdo and other minor cities). Things are worse in places like Tijuana, CD. Juarez and other norther/frontier cities.
I was really happy to see this blog del narco rise. I applaud the guy who is making it. It is really sad to see the mainstream news in Mexico (Telerisa y Tv Apezta), when they comment on some narcotrafic event (IF they dare to comment) they make it seems as if it is a normal thing, and the news anchors just limit to say "ni hablar..." all the media is scared to silence.
Some time ago I read about some request to get the U.N. to Cd. Juarez. I *really* believe that is something which should happen *now* and not only in CD juarez but in the majority of Mexico (at least these cities where violence is known to be worst).
It is sad to say but what is needed in Mexico is some power from outside stepping to eliminate corruption in the country. All the system is corrupt, from top to bottom. If you read some old (2 to 4 years) articles of Semanario Zeta you will see how the Tijuana government is helping narcs (to the level of the Presidente Municipal/city major [for sure] and maybe even the governor [not sure]).
The same is known for example in Torreon, where eeeeverybody knows "Carlitos Herrera" owner of the Chilchota Cheese brand and previous Presidente Municipal is linked with drug gangs... but nobody says nor makes something.
Whatever, I got bored of writing this... it is a sad state in which our country is right now. It is so dangerous that I really am afraid of returning. Of course the fact that I have a well paid job in Europe is another factor as the only place were jobs are in Mexico is Mexico City in which I would never return to work...
My only hope is that they pull their shit together in the next 2 years because after my contract ends I would need to return to Mexico... fortunately the place where my family lives (more to the south) is still not so violent (yet... touches wood ,crosses fingers).
No, Italian would sound more like
Clicki dil translati buttoni in the upper lefti corneri.
And yeah, I am also a Native Spanish speaker, actually from Mexico.
Well, I am deffinitely late at this but would like to make an analogy which I think is adequate for the subject.
Trying to record digitally these "last days" of your wife is similar to going to a concert and spending all the night with your video/photo camera recording the video... you won't be enjoying the concert AND you will end with a not-so-good video.
Better enjoy the moment 100% instead of putting 50% attention on cameras/electronic gizmos and only dedicating 50% on sharing the time with your loved ones.
This reflects the sad state of slashdot.
I propose everybody tags this and other similar articles as "misleading"
Wikileaks is the shit. I have followed them since the day I learnt from them on the New Scientist Magazine.
Day and Night I am wishing people in my country (Mexico) would be brave enough to leak the documents showing all the corrupt people that are paid by the drug-traffic cartels (e.g. the laptop of the drug-lord recently confiscated ).
This kind of public full disclosure is the only way to attack the full corruption circle in the government.
Toyota Wins...
FATALITY
That, and a better JDownloader ^_^
Mhmm, lets see:
1. Users do not really care... and if someone care they use either PGP or https: in an email
2. Kind of like when someone wants to link one forum conversation (or any other media from the web) into another, they use this magical "a href" thing.
3. Oooor you can use a standard forum and give the linky (see point 2) of the thread to your pal.
(from your linked post)
4. "extend with poll widgets": Current forum software can do it.
5. "letter by letter real time communication", can you tell me 1 (ONE) scenario where this is not only a gimmic... anyway, webchat (ala facebook chat), irc and any other instant messenger protocol can do it.
6. "Retract comments": I can do it on email, it is called "apologizing" for sending the wrong email (or an email without attachement)... also in forums, it is called "edit post" or just reply to your own post.
7. "waves can be global an public", guess what! Forums can be made global and public!
8. "Waves can be moderated;" this is getting boring...
In reality it is true that nothing of value was lost.
Look, I use a lot of google services (e.g. gmail, docs, calendar) on a daily basis, including the "failed" google Notebook which is quite good.
But when I tried to use wave I just could not see any feature that would make me want to change from Skype+Forum+DimDim+Doodle+Docs to do what I want.
The *only* thing that Wave *could* have done is concentrate all those services in one place, the problem is that the interface then became very complex.
A hardware hack could be an annoyance, by stopping a mobile phone from functioning. Or it could be more dangerous, if it damages the way a critical system operates.
They wanted their BIOS-corrupting viruses back
BTW, I remember an urban legend circulating that there was a virus that changed some low-level instructions in 3.5 floppy drives making them keep reading discs... which made the drives get on fire. Anyone has got more info on that?
Back when I was a kid my father used to buy us some books which contained smaller "filtered" versions of the classical stories (of authors like Jules Verne). Although they were aimed to kids, they were good text books (with very few pictures here and there).
As we grew a bit more we read Reader's Digest Condensed Books (I was ~11) and some full books.
I would love to find similar books/ebooks written in a language for children or condensed books online.
So, which of those links takes me to download a copy of Windows 7 in which I can just put the legal key that came under my laptop?
Count me as one of them.
I bought an HP Laptop in Mexico and took it to the UK for my studies. After about three years my disk went kaput and I had to get a new one.
Unfortunately I didn't have an XP install disk... although I did have my XP license (in a stick under my laptop).
I went into the UK HP client service and told them that I wanted to get their install disk; I think they were selling it for about 30 pounds, which I said I would pay. I was ready to give all my machine details but they said they could not send it because it was a machine bought in Mexico, and thus, I had to contact HP-Mexico
I did contact Hp-Mexico and they told me they could not send me a disk to the UK... At the end I finished torrenting a really good XP release (Windows UE in Spanish FWIW).
It really sucks how companies go to such efforts to prevent people to try to do things right and then whine when people take alternative routes.