Apple should have divorced itself from hardware years ago. For example, just ordered a new Apple 12" G4 PowerBook for the boss. Total cost $2,199. I can get a nice Dell Latitude for $1,200.
And there really isn't anything particularly special about Apple hardware these days. Hasn't been for at least the past 6 or so years. PC's have indeed caught up.
So the only difference between that $2,199 laptop and the $1,200 laptop is the operating system and the universe of available software.
Hell, for $300 more I could buy two of those Dell Latitudes and run XP Pro on one, and FreeBSD 5.4 on the other and have the best of both worlds.
Put it this way - law enforcement can twist law any way they want. The very act of encrypting makes them suspicious and when they get suspicious they'll find a way to dig into your data.
I know this from having worked for the state AG's office. You'd be very surprised.
In the twisted logic of the law enforcement game, pretty much anything can be used as PC.
Put it this way, when I worked for the state AG's office all we'd need is the slightest whif and the next thing you know we would be hauling out paper records and computers, servers, etc.
And in the U.S. we have secret courts that will issue warrants with virtually no burden of proof. How do you like those apples?
It only scares me because we're moving our data center and 30 users. Of course we've taken the time to plan and map contingency but I've still got this creepy feeling.
I think they really screwed the pooch on the grid concept.
Because all the folks I know who need the capacity need it for more than a few cycles. For example, friend of mine kicked Sun to the curb and built a 125+ cluster of Dell 2850's running Linux. This cluster does oceanographic simulation btw. So it wouldn't have been a candidate for Grid because it would have been hideously expensive, more so than the 125 computer and the necessary electrical and cooling improvements.
Ah, the TRS-80. I had literally hacked the hell out of mine. It getting lowercase involved the flipping of a toggle switch. That plus tapping off the expansion port for various experiments was fun.
Knew the damned machine so well that one day the characters looked a little funny on the screen. I noticed one of the elements/pixels of the character had dropped out and from that could identify the RAM chip that went south and replaced it.
And my bad programming habits come from BASIC. Not VB though I've had to deal with too much of that in my career.
When you consider that VoIP to PSTN connections are nothing but last mile technologies it then becomes a piece of cake to tap a line. Vonage comes to mind on this one.
In essence the Vonage's out there said that they didn't need UNE's - all they needed was a partnering agreement with some CLEC's and a reasonably fat pipe to said CLEC. Digital switches have long been capable of using IP to route calls so this was a no brainer.
That being said it's VERY easy to tap a line from a digital central office. So I don't see the need to modify the current law until they first define VoIP. It comes in many flavors as has been pointed out here.
There is such a glut of MBA's right now that it's a wonder they don't already clog the gutters.
I had toyed with the idea of going back to school for a masters degree and was leaning toward an MBA. But I was struck by the realization that I'd be very much opposed to many of the ideas they'd put across in an MBA program.
So instead I'll probably just get a Masters in Library Science. Oh well.
I'd think we'd want to suck out as much energy as we could. Either that or just chill the storm somehow but the energy required would be huge and the net effect would probably bring on a quick ice age.
Maybe swarms of flying nano-bots are the solution. A large enough mass of them would disrupt the flow of warm water vapor. Therefore it would deny the storm the energy needed. Of course we're still a ways off from effective use of nano-bots but I can dream.
I guarantee they're using a MASER. You can thank RADAR pioneers from M.I.T. and Bell Labs for that.
That being said it is easily defeated. For example - short wavelengths below 1cm start resonating with water vapor. That's why doppler radar has been such a boon to meteorology.
But there are ways to stop it. Metal impregnated and grounded cement walls that are, oh, 6 to 8 feet below grade level would be reasonably safe. Of course don't put any windows, just ventilation.
And if you're really that much of a target they'd bug the place before they resorted to using microwave to listen in. BTW, for a good fantasy view of using microwave to peek in I highly recommend watching "The Siege" with Denzel Washinton and Tony Shaloub.
Watching this administration try to cover all bases in order to protect itself is the Greatest Show on Earth (tm). Oops, that's Barnum & Bailey's trademark but it applies here.
This administration is a circus. No getting around it. I think the main reason they object to the seal is because the radio addresses that the Onion produces are dead on. They gave myself and my co-workers a good laugh.
Pebble bed designs are relatively safe. The only issue I see with nuclear is the waste.
Until the physicists figure out how to neutralize gamma radiation disposing of said waste is going to be an issue. I'm not all that concerned with alpha and beta because they aren't nearly as harmful.
ITER is a good first step to sustainable nuclear fussion. Right now we use fission and that leaves lots of nasty byproducts. Maybe we can re-fuse that crap in a type of fussion reactor so it neutralizes. But I don't think physics is quite up to that yet.
If we in the United States didn't have such a twisted, puritanical mindset your plan would work.
But this runs completely counter to Christian Fundamentalism at play in the U.S. now. Swapping sexual partners is the ultimate of baddies.
Of course the only reason sexual fidelity is pushed so much is because of property inheritance issues. I mean, who'd want to find out that the son they thought they had was a little bastard and let that little bastard inheret what you'd work for?
So there are root problems that have to be addressed. As initial reading I'd suggest Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". Granted, the book is a little on the fantasy side but the problems presented aren't.
When I first started this job we used a 1337 spelling of common words for initial passwords.
So I started using the Secure Password generation extension in Firefox, emailed the password to supervisor and set it so the user had to change it on first log in.
Only problem was that after 10 or so minutes of conversatin with said new user you could guess their password.
Look at the IRS debacle, or that of the FBI. Improved I.T. systems are a panacea. Unless you address the inherent policy and operating issues you CANNOT design a system that meets requirements set forth under the old paradigm.
What happens here is that some higher level wag gets a call from MS, or Oracle, etc. They come in, do the song and dance, and next thing you know they're rushing through the project. Not once did the high level wags do any due diligence. Had they done so they might have realized that first they should look at the mechanics of what they do on a day to day basis.
But this is a typical tactic used by the big I.T. vendors.
And people wonder why OSS is coming up.
The issue is that if you really want to kill something, you put it into committee.
Passing control to the U.N. would do that. And please keep mind, it would be relatively simple to just cut the rest of the world off the net. But then it's no longer an internet.
Who says you even have to use their printer to do it? I would bet that the serial number is embedded in a ROM chip somewhere. Be a fairly simple exercise to reverse engineer the ROM and change the serial number at random, or to a chosen number.
I block ads because I'm paying for the net connection. I see pushing ads in the same way I see telemarketing calls I'd receive over the phone. I don't want them.
I use Firefox and the AdBlock extension. In addition, I target most of the ad sites to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts file.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple should have divorced itself from hardware years ago. For example, just ordered a new Apple 12" G4 PowerBook for the boss. Total cost $2,199. I can get a nice Dell Latitude for $1,200.
And there really isn't anything particularly special about Apple hardware these days. Hasn't been for at least the past 6 or so years. PC's have indeed caught up.
So the only difference between that $2,199 laptop and the $1,200 laptop is the operating system and the universe of available software.
Hell, for $300 more I could buy two of those Dell Latitudes and run XP Pro on one, and FreeBSD 5.4 on the other and have the best of both worlds.
PC == Probable Cause
Sorry, I picked up lots of the lingo and acronyms in the two years I worked with prosecutors and cops.
Put it this way - law enforcement can twist law any way they want. The very act of encrypting makes them suspicious and when they get suspicious they'll find a way to dig into your data.
I know this from having worked for the state AG's office. You'd be very surprised.
Encrypting a drive is enough for probable cause.
In the twisted logic of the law enforcement game, pretty much anything can be used as PC.
Put it this way, when I worked for the state AG's office all we'd need is the slightest whif and the next thing you know we would be hauling out paper records and computers, servers, etc.
And in the U.S. we have secret courts that will issue warrants with virtually no burden of proof. How do you like those apples?
It only scares me because we're moving our data center and 30 users. Of course we've taken the time to plan and map contingency but I've still got this creepy feeling.
I think they really screwed the pooch on the grid concept.
Because all the folks I know who need the capacity need it for more than a few cycles. For example, friend of mine kicked Sun to the curb and built a 125+ cluster of Dell 2850's running Linux. This cluster does oceanographic simulation btw. So it wouldn't have been a candidate for Grid because it would have been hideously expensive, more so than the 125 computer and the necessary electrical and cooling improvements.
Ah, the TRS-80. I had literally hacked the hell out of mine. It getting lowercase involved the flipping of a toggle switch. That plus tapping off the expansion port for various experiments was fun.
Knew the damned machine so well that one day the characters looked a little funny on the screen. I noticed one of the elements/pixels of the character had dropped out and from that could identify the RAM chip that went south and replaced it.
And my bad programming habits come from BASIC. Not VB though I've had to deal with too much of that in my career.
When you consider that VoIP to PSTN connections are nothing but last mile technologies it then becomes a piece of cake to tap a line. Vonage comes to mind on this one.
In essence the Vonage's out there said that they didn't need UNE's - all they needed was a partnering agreement with some CLEC's and a reasonably fat pipe to said CLEC. Digital switches have long been capable of using IP to route calls so this was a no brainer.
That being said it's VERY easy to tap a line from a digital central office. So I don't see the need to modify the current law until they first define VoIP. It comes in many flavors as has been pointed out here.
There is such a glut of MBA's right now that it's a wonder they don't already clog the gutters.
I had toyed with the idea of going back to school for a masters degree and was leaning toward an MBA. But I was struck by the realization that I'd be very much opposed to many of the ideas they'd put across in an MBA program.
So instead I'll probably just get a Masters in Library Science. Oh well.
I'm just in the process of reading it (About 300 pages in) and it's amazing. Despite all the fretting the rovers have performed flawlessly.
And Squyers was worried that he'd only get 90 Sols out of the things. But they keep going, and going, and going.
But its an excellent book. I'm very happy I bought it.
Wouldn't that just add energy to it?
I'd think we'd want to suck out as much energy as we could. Either that or just chill the storm somehow but the energy required would be huge and the net effect would probably bring on a quick ice age.
Maybe swarms of flying nano-bots are the solution. A large enough mass of them would disrupt the flow of warm water vapor. Therefore it would deny the storm the energy needed. Of course we're still a ways off from effective use of nano-bots but I can dream.
I guarantee they're using a MASER. You can thank RADAR pioneers from M.I.T. and Bell Labs for that.
That being said it is easily defeated. For example - short wavelengths below 1cm start resonating with water vapor. That's why doppler radar has been such a boon to meteorology.
But there are ways to stop it. Metal impregnated and grounded cement walls that are, oh, 6 to 8 feet below grade level would be reasonably safe. Of course don't put any windows, just ventilation.
And if you're really that much of a target they'd bug the place before they resorted to using microwave to listen in. BTW, for a good fantasy view of using microwave to peek in I highly recommend watching "The Siege" with Denzel Washinton and Tony Shaloub.
Watching this administration try to cover all bases in order to protect itself is the Greatest Show on Earth (tm). Oops, that's Barnum & Bailey's trademark but it applies here.
This administration is a circus. No getting around it. I think the main reason they object to the seal is because the radio addresses that the Onion produces are dead on. They gave myself and my co-workers a good laugh.
How do you heat the water in the first place?
Obtaining hydrogen from water is a very energy inefficient process. What they appear to be proposing here is just shy of a perpetual motion machine.
Pebble bed designs are relatively safe. The only issue I see with nuclear is the waste.
Until the physicists figure out how to neutralize gamma radiation disposing of said waste is going to be an issue. I'm not all that concerned with alpha and beta because they aren't nearly as harmful.
ITER is a good first step to sustainable nuclear fussion. Right now we use fission and that leaves lots of nasty byproducts. Maybe we can re-fuse that crap in a type of fussion reactor so it neutralizes. But I don't think physics is quite up to that yet.
These scientists and the person posting the article obviously never saw a cat do its thing on a mouse.
Sure, the front claws are for holding prey. But the back claws are for gutting/disemboweling prey.
That's what I love about felix domesticus. They're perfect little predators.
If we in the United States didn't have such a twisted, puritanical mindset your plan would work.
But this runs completely counter to Christian Fundamentalism at play in the U.S. now. Swapping sexual partners is the ultimate of baddies.
Of course the only reason sexual fidelity is pushed so much is because of property inheritance issues. I mean, who'd want to find out that the son they thought they had was a little bastard and let that little bastard inheret what you'd work for?
So there are root problems that have to be addressed. As initial reading I'd suggest Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". Granted, the book is a little on the fantasy side but the problems presented aren't.
There are several holes in the U.S. banking system, most notable of which is the demand draft.
But banks would prefer secrecy and bad legislation to contain their screw ups.
When I first started this job we used a 1337 spelling of common words for initial passwords.
So I started using the Secure Password generation extension in Firefox, emailed the password to supervisor and set it so the user had to change it on first log in.
Only problem was that after 10 or so minutes of conversatin with said new user you could guess their password.
Passwords simply aren't enough anymore.
Novell had a pretty good server level product from 3.12 on. But then they stagnated.
But there is hope. At least the world is starting to embrace open source.
Who wants to start the betting on how soon MS will have to wipe 30% of its workforce?
But then, it doesn't even have to be large scale.
Look at the IRS debacle, or that of the FBI. Improved I.T. systems are a panacea. Unless you address the inherent policy and operating issues you CANNOT design a system that meets requirements set forth under the old paradigm.
What happens here is that some higher level wag gets a call from MS, or Oracle, etc. They come in, do the song and dance, and next thing you know they're rushing through the project. Not once did the high level wags do any due diligence. Had they done so they might have realized that first they should look at the mechanics of what they do on a day to day basis.
But this is a typical tactic used by the big I.T. vendors. And people wonder why OSS is coming up.
The issue is that if you really want to kill something, you put it into committee. Passing control to the U.N. would do that. And please keep mind, it would be relatively simple to just cut the rest of the world off the net. But then it's no longer an internet.
Now we can build Wonder Woman's jet. Then we can clone Linda Carter and make her clone fly it in the nude. Imagine the possibilities.
Who says you even have to use their printer to do it? I would bet that the serial number is embedded in a ROM chip somewhere. Be a fairly simple exercise to reverse engineer the ROM and change the serial number at random, or to a chosen number.
Just imagine the fun you could have with that.
I block ads because I'm paying for the net connection. I see pushing ads in the same way I see telemarketing calls I'd receive over the phone. I don't want them.
I use Firefox and the AdBlock extension. In addition, I target most of the ad sites to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts file.