I spent two months investigating the wireless industry for its potential, and came up with a report denoting, in it's conclusion, the explosive potential yet to be had in the wireless (and by this, wireless telecommunications) industry.
I would guess some percentage would be the unauthorized use of leaked or stolen non-volume license keys. The rest of that 20% could be anything or nothing.
I have no idea what conclusion you were trying to draw from that statement, but you made quite a jump in logic there. That figure gives us no indication as to what total percentage of users have problems with WGA.
I don't think it's a jump in logic; my point was that of the 20% which could be anything or nothing, I am assuming thus that those are failures not resulting from "unauthorized use of leaked or stolen volume license keys". Thus, if WGA fails to rectify you as a geniune Windows XP owner, and you're one of those in the 20% that will be inconvenienced.
Through its spokeswoman, Microsoft said that "80% of all WGA validation failures are due to unauthorized use of leaked or stolen volume license keys."
That can partially explain why WGA will not cause the "killing" of computers with XP. That said, it's a 20% of their no-corporate users (large-volume purchasers of XP are exempt from installing WGA from TFA) that will be having problems trying to get things to update and work.
An essay regarding the mentioned topic, and I thought it might be interesting to a few people. The are many non-technical paragraphs that draw to the author's conclusions, and those should be readable by all.
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field.
In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
Thought it was pretty neat; the ant begins to look like a spider with the longer legs. The video didn't seem to have any additional bearing to the study, though. You'd need to read TFA for how the stilts helped in their conclusion.
What if the copy *was* legitimate? link
on
Microsoft Sued Over WGA
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Asked questions about what he would have done about Doom differently (he would've hired a great level designer), what was wrong with Doom (nothing, talked about how the game was designed), how he would do if he would make another Doom (pitch black, something new like stuff from HL 2), when he knew he hit it big (after seeing the numbers), what he thought of sequels (would only do one), what other projects he did and what he learned (he likes creation, and not so much cleanup), what he is doing (his new company, that he's working on something new that so far hasn't been done).
Strange thing to me was that I saw mostly DOOM III video gameplay (no DOOM I or II gameplay video - difficult to find?), and there was HL 2 showed for a quick bit.
With quite a number of dissentors here about the validity of the article, I thought to mention that Canada has a similar levee applied to blank media, and that from what I've heard it's one of the biggest reasons as to why it's difficult to make illegal copying in Canada.
That said, introducing a tax to cover possibly illegal acts and then making the action criminal altogether doesn't make much sense. Basically another good point to disprove the article's claims.
I've been lucky to head to a couple of optics conferences, and with the keynote presentations that has been the one surprising thing (to me as a layman) that comes up time after time.
10Gbps throughput via optics is great; in fact, with the use of optics, the amount of data that can be collected for, say, scanning living tissue, is enormous. Finding a storage mechanism large enough and fast enough to store seemingly infinite amount of information, though, have been the researchers' concern.
What did they think was a solution for this? You guessed it, optical storage.
So in summary; no, you do not need high bandwidth to do nasty things. It doesn't even really help. You need low profile to do nasty things, and cybercafes are not, despite common misconceptions, really all that low profile. Most of the VXers that have tried releasing from cybercafes got arrested. Enough said.
What you're saying about CCTVs might be true in the UK, but I know for a fact that isn't the case in many of the internet cafe's I've seen in Asia. There are many low profile ones around, and I don't think it's a common misconception to note that security in some of these are less than perfect
Could you also happen to quote VXers who have been arrested from cybercafes? I'm certainly not saying that you're wrong, but it would be interesting to read something like that, on how they nab the person.
Finally, as intimated in my parent post, I don't believe that internet cafes are the platforms for abuse. I'm just saying that the opportunity is there, noting that internet cafes are public areas that generally require only payment and not identification.
It's not purely a 100 mbit thing. But in terms of unaccountable internet usage, internet cafes generally do not record their user's information, and the opportunity for abuse or misuse is certainly there.
Let's say that someone who's created a devastating virus decides to release in the wild. When it gets down to it, when the authorities *really* want to find out the responsible person(s), it's still possible to track the virus back to it's originating source.
What if the person decided to release his virus through an internet cafe? There are no personally identifiable information, especially if the person waltzs into a cafe he/she has never been into, puts down money, and puts up the virus. What happens then? I realise this could happen with unrestricted free wifi, but an internet cafe is a public area that's open for business - with wireless routers strongly recommending passwords before allowing wireless use, the platform for this sort of abuse is lessening (unless of course it gets hijacked, but that's of a different concern then).
What sort of larger abuse could present itself from larger bandwidth? Especially when your infrastructural guru consists of young, unexperienced techs?
I had a chance to tour the original NINT facility (not the new one), and I recall a few interesting facts from it. Perhaps most interesting is that the original facility resides at a higher level (read: not basement or 1st floor), and while that means little to most of us, apparently the vibration of a building at that height - in MICROmeters - does effect NANO-research. I suppose that when you do research that's so intensive, factors you've never considered become critical in design, and the essential need for shielding from vibration and electrical interference is partially the reason for the cost of the building.
For a patent application to go through, the application is subject to a panel of industry experts on a particular subject to see if, among other things, the patent being filed is a new, unique and unobvious development.
If, for example, a new light-weight, strong-as-steel metal were just recently introduced into the marketplace, someone else couldn't patent it for the application of using it as a replacement material for cars - and then hold the auto industry for ransom and demand licensing fees. A jury of experts (I'm not sure how they select this, but I know they must be in the field that the patent application is for) disallows this and do stop a number of patent applications with really broad claims.
With so many patents to look through and so many claims to try to analyse, I think it's very possible for a few claims to go through when they shouldn't (because another patent covers this or some form of prior art - like already-known public knowledge).
I realise they aren't the same - Powerpoint is for presentations, and therefore it makes sense for the videos to be put in there.
With Word, and I've done this before, you can send a full document with the embedded video *inside* the word document - not just a link. In that sense you can have a complete word document sent to someone - he/she would read it and then see that a video can be played - and then double click to play it.
The effect is pretty good, and assuming the document was done relatively well, the whole package - the word document and the video inside- makes it look pretty professional.
That said, I wonder if the videos in Powerpoint would work if the ones in Word won't - I suspect they use the same API/program calls.
As an engineering student, I understand that there are quite a number of theories that baffle science today - superconductors, as noted in the article, was not explainable until the advancement of scientific tools to measure them.
As a human being, however, I find that there are even more inexplicable things - things that make absolutely no sense in this world. I caution to note that I admit that I have little knowledge on the overall affairs and the advancements to correct these, but:
#14: In a world where millions die of diabetes per year, there is a comparable sum of people who die of starvation.
...#15...#16...... The list goes on and on. The AIDs epidemic in underdeveloped countries. The continual sale of slaves. The horrifying acceptance that my kid brother can watch local news cover a brutal homocide with scenes of blood and the coverage of shootings without twitching, completely disaffected by it.
Scientific questions have their place in this world (answering them is how we as a species have advanced technologically) - I just thought we might want to remind ourselves of the baffling questions that many of us don't wish to know or answer.
At the chance of being modded "flamebait", I'm wondering, after looking through the initial posts, if everyone is just pot-shotting Microsoft.
There's no question about XP's vulnerabilities - on a fresh install, connecting to the internet without a firewall means pc-suicide. On that note I make sure I install the service packs (through a CD or something) before I connect a new PC online.
In this case, however, I believe the target was at the server version(s) of Windows. Is it that hard to believe that their server, which happens to be their product they sell directly to companies on the basis of being secure with an arguably lower TCO, might be more secure?
Remember, it's not MS Office. It's not Windows XP (Pro or Home, so my "biz" argument on this front fails - but again, not the right topic). It's not programs most people run -
Does the failure of several of their services automatically means that everything they do is wrong, completely flawed, full of only FUD without any merits?
How many people here run Windows Server 2003? Especially those who have based Microsoft products to no end before?
I remember a time when Windows 95 was slammed for being kinda "flunky", but those who used NT 4 then would swear by it.
Slamming is fine, don't get me wrong - I think Office without security to prevent VBA from taking over your computer, the fact that XP 1 came without a server - are oversights of products that need to be talked about.
But if the rush to reply about news for a company revolves around bashing their words senselessly without being on target, that diminishes our legitimacy in pointing out on the problems they have.
To the rest of the world and the IT community, we'd just seem drones - and will be taken to be just so.
It's a pretty interesting application that I've installed and still kept. The idea is pretty decent - for someone who considers himself a power user of the computer, the allowance of a much larger (albeit virtual) desktop allows for the more efficient use of space and extends the ability to multitask visually (beyond XP's standard taskbar).
It's pretty cool to show it to the people you know as well... It's interesting to flip and twirl windows (which I believe are just snapshots of your windows) around in a 3D globe, and the background pictures (360 degrees) are a nice touch.
Slashdot Mirror
Warning: Shameless bump/plug ahead :P
I spent two months investigating the wireless industry for its potential, and came up with a report denoting, in it's conclusion, the explosive potential yet to be had in the wireless (and by this, wireless telecommunications) industry.
The VERY READABLE (complete with many pictures!) report can be found here:http://www.eugenechen.ca/files/coop_no_2_a_mobile
http://www.eugenechen.ca/index.php?pagename=wirele ss
(PDF is recommended - the PNGs actually take longer to download than the whole PDF)I don't think it's a jump in logic; my point was that of the 20% which could be anything or nothing, I am assuming thus that those are failures not resulting from "unauthorized use of leaked or stolen volume license keys". Thus, if WGA fails to rectify you as a geniune Windows XP owner, and you're one of those in the 20% that will be inconvenienced.
Through its spokeswoman, Microsoft said that "80% of all WGA validation failures are due to unauthorized use of leaked or stolen volume license keys."
That can partially explain why WGA will not cause the "killing" of computers with XP. That said, it's a 20% of their no-corporate users (large-volume purchasers of XP are exempt from installing WGA from TFA) that will be having problems trying to get things to update and work.
An essay regarding the mentioned topic, and I thought it might be interesting to a few people. The are many non-technical paragraphs that draw to the author's conclusions, and those should be readable by all.
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv?request= get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Summary:
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field.
In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone#Driving_ controversy
Any action that distracts the driver from driving as much as drunk driving really should be outlawed to the same degree that drunk driving is.
From TFA, the video of the ant with stilts (worth a watch):
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/av/dn94 36.mpg
Thought it was pretty neat; the ant begins to look like a spider with the longer legs. The video didn't seem to have any additional bearing to the study, though. You'd need to read TFA for how the stilts helped in their conclusion.
http://news.com.com/5208-1029-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=18274&messageID=157697&start=-16
With the possibility of barring access to Windows...
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/29/165 7241
... then how much of downtime must a user suffer from this?
For the engineers in the room...
http://www.ece.ualberta.ca/~jchen/
Article from the Globe & Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060628.TEETH28/TPStory/National
Asked questions about what he would have done about Doom differently (he would've hired a great level designer), what was wrong with Doom (nothing, talked about how the game was designed), how he would do if he would make another Doom (pitch black, something new like stuff from HL 2), when he knew he hit it big (after seeing the numbers), what he thought of sequels (would only do one), what other projects he did and what he learned (he likes creation, and not so much cleanup), what he is doing (his new company, that he's working on something new that so far hasn't been done).
Strange thing to me was that I saw mostly DOOM III video gameplay (no DOOM I or II gameplay video - difficult to find?), and there was HL 2 showed for a quick bit.
With quite a number of dissentors here about the validity of the article, I thought to mention that Canada has a similar levee applied to blank media, and that from what I've heard it's one of the biggest reasons as to why it's difficult to make illegal copying in Canada.
That said, introducing a tax to cover possibly illegal acts and then making the action criminal altogether doesn't make much sense. Basically another good point to disprove the article's claims.
...not really bandwidth, but storage.
I've been lucky to head to a couple of optics conferences, and with the keynote presentations that has been the one surprising thing (to me as a layman) that comes up time after time.
10Gbps throughput via optics is great; in fact, with the use of optics, the amount of data that can be collected for, say, scanning living tissue, is enormous. Finding a storage mechanism large enough and fast enough to store seemingly infinite amount of information, though, have been the researchers' concern.
What did they think was a solution for this? You guessed it, optical storage.
What you're saying about CCTVs might be true in the UK, but I know for a fact that isn't the case in many of the internet cafe's I've seen in Asia. There are many low profile ones around, and I don't think it's a common misconception to note that security in some of these are less than perfect
Could you also happen to quote VXers who have been arrested from cybercafes? I'm certainly not saying that you're wrong, but it would be interesting to read something like that, on how they nab the person.
Finally, as intimated in my parent post, I don't believe that internet cafes are the platforms for abuse. I'm just saying that the opportunity is there, noting that internet cafes are public areas that generally require only payment and not identification.
It's not purely a 100 mbit thing. But in terms of unaccountable internet usage, internet cafes generally do not record their user's information, and the opportunity for abuse or misuse is certainly there.
Let's say that someone who's created a devastating virus decides to release in the wild. When it gets down to it, when the authorities *really* want to find out the responsible person(s), it's still possible to track the virus back to it's originating source.
What if the person decided to release his virus through an internet cafe? There are no personally identifiable information, especially if the person waltzs into a cafe he/she has never been into, puts down money, and puts up the virus. What happens then? I realise this could happen with unrestricted free wifi, but an internet cafe is a public area that's open for business - with wireless routers strongly recommending passwords before allowing wireless use, the platform for this sort of abuse is lessening (unless of course it gets hijacked, but that's of a different concern then).
What sort of larger abuse could present itself from larger bandwidth? Especially when your infrastructural guru consists of young, unexperienced techs?
I had a chance to tour the original NINT facility (not the new one), and I recall a few interesting facts from it. Perhaps most interesting is that the original facility resides at a higher level (read: not basement or 1st floor), and while that means little to most of us, apparently the vibration of a building at that height - in MICROmeters - does effect NANO-research. I suppose that when you do research that's so intensive, factors you've never considered become critical in design, and the essential need for shielding from vibration and electrical interference is partially the reason for the cost of the building.
Wikipedia:o r_Nanotechnology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_f
Press Release:= 47344
http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/news.cfm?story
Already done.
For a patent application to go through, the application is subject to a panel of industry experts on a particular subject to see if, among other things, the patent being filed is a new, unique and unobvious development.
If, for example, a new light-weight, strong-as-steel metal were just recently introduced into the marketplace, someone else couldn't patent it for the application of using it as a replacement material for cars - and then hold the auto industry for ransom and demand licensing fees. A jury of experts (I'm not sure how they select this, but I know they must be in the field that the patent application is for) disallows this and do stop a number of patent applications with really broad claims.
With so many patents to look through and so many claims to try to analyse, I think it's very possible for a few claims to go through when they shouldn't (because another patent covers this or some form of prior art - like already-known public knowledge).
... same reasons you have video in Powerpoint.
I realise they aren't the same - Powerpoint is for presentations, and therefore it makes sense for the videos to be put in there.
With Word, and I've done this before, you can send a full document with the embedded video *inside* the word document - not just a link. In that sense you can have a complete word document sent to someone - he/she would read it and then see that a video can be played - and then double click to play it.
The effect is pretty good, and assuming the document was done relatively well, the whole package - the word document and the video inside- makes it look pretty professional.
That said, I wonder if the videos in Powerpoint would work if the ones in Word won't - I suspect they use the same API/program calls.
As an engineering student, I understand that there are quite a number of theories that baffle science today - superconductors, as noted in the article, was not explainable until the advancement of scientific tools to measure them.
As a human being, however, I find that there are even more inexplicable things - things that make absolutely no sense in this world. I caution to note that I admit that I have little knowledge on the overall affairs and the advancements to correct these, but:
#14: In a world where millions die of diabetes per year, there is a comparable sum of people who die of starvation.
...#15...#16... ... The list goes on and on. The AIDs epidemic in underdeveloped countries. The continual sale of slaves. The horrifying acceptance that my kid brother can watch local news cover a brutal homocide with scenes of blood and the coverage of shootings without twitching, completely disaffected by it.
Scientific questions have their place in this world (answering them is how we as a species have advanced technologically) - I just thought we might want to remind ourselves of the baffling questions that many of us don't wish to know or answer.
At the chance of being modded "flamebait", I'm wondering, after looking through the initial posts, if everyone is just pot-shotting Microsoft.
There's no question about XP's vulnerabilities - on a fresh install, connecting to the internet without a firewall means pc-suicide. On that note I make sure I install the service packs (through a CD or something) before I connect a new PC online.
In this case, however, I believe the target was at the server version(s) of Windows. Is it that hard to believe that their server, which happens to be their product they sell directly to companies on the basis of being secure with an arguably lower TCO, might be more secure?
Remember, it's not MS Office. It's not Windows XP (Pro or Home, so my "biz" argument on this front fails - but again, not the right topic). It's not programs most people run -
Does the failure of several of their services automatically means that everything they do is wrong, completely flawed, full of only FUD without any merits?
How many people here run Windows Server 2003? Especially those who have based Microsoft products to no end before?
I remember a time when Windows 95 was slammed for being kinda "flunky", but those who used NT 4 then would swear by it.
Slamming is fine, don't get me wrong - I think Office without security to prevent VBA from taking over your computer, the fact that XP 1 came without a server - are oversights of products that need to be talked about.
But if the rush to reply about news for a company revolves around bashing their words senselessly without being on target, that diminishes our legitimacy in pointing out on the problems they have.
To the rest of the world and the IT community, we'd just seem drones - and will be taken to be just so.
It's a pretty interesting application that I've installed and still kept. The idea is pretty decent - for someone who considers himself a power user of the computer, the allowance of a much larger (albeit virtual) desktop allows for the more efficient use of space and extends the ability to multitask visually (beyond XP's standard taskbar).
It's pretty cool to show it to the people you know as well... It's interesting to flip and twirl windows (which I believe are just snapshots of your windows) around in a 3D globe, and the background pictures (360 degrees) are a nice touch.