Mmm.... I understand your point, but disagree. I think a more appropriate contract would simply say that the provider reserves the right to substitute programming for equal numbers of alternate channels of programming, at will. That way, your "top 60" or "top 150" channels still have 60 or 150 channels in them at all times.
Perhaps, it could/would even be worded that "substitute programming will be of a reasonably similar nature". (Let's face it. If you subscribed to a satellite package mainly for the sports, you wouldn't fimd it acceptable if they pulled your ESPN channels and permanently replaced them with cartoon channels. You'd expect something sports related in the substitution.
Yes, but this didn't stop people from buying systems from Sun or Sparc in the past, or "big iron" from companies like IBM.
Only difference is, in this case, you're talking about machines that inter-operate well with the competition's offerings (Windows networking), and which have individual prices well below the above-mentioned computer products.
I agree that with only Apple building a computer than runs OS X, you might not have the bargaining "leverage" you'd get with a PC clone purchase. But Apple is in the business of selling computers. They're not likely to jack up prices considerably over what they charge today, per system. If people find them a good value at the current retail price, then surely, you can do at least a little better than that buying mass quantities of them.
If they were to go out of business (worst case scenario of the "sole supplier" issue), do you really think OS X would simply dry up and die? It might, but I'd bet against that. Even with 5% market share or so, Apple has many millions of users (many fanatically devoted to the platform). Do you think they'll all just shrug their shoulders, dump their Macs, and go back to Intel/Windows systems, if Apple folds? I forsee others starting production of Mac clones A.S.A.P. if Apple goes under.
Wow! So it does.... But that's a really awful contract provision, IMHO. Basically, it means the consumer could pay out big bucks for one of the largest channel packages, and suddenly be told "Sorry - we only carry 3 channels on that package now. Too bad!"
It seems to me like this could still be challenged in court, as an unreasonable contract clause, and have it rendered null and void. (After all, this might "fly" if Dish only sold their service in one "tier". But the only thing people pay more for on their network is additional programming. Then, this provision single-handedly gives Dish supposed authority to yank that out from under the customer whenever they please, without breaking the original contract agreement.)
Yes, probably so.... but since it's a *closed* system, this would presumably not ever happen unless part of a "nanotube" broke off and started floating around in the fluid, or something along those lines.
It's sort of like saying "A hard drive sounds like a cool idea. But wouldn't a small amount of dust gum it up?" Yep - but that's why they're sealed, air-tight, and initially built in clean rooms.
As a Dish customer myself with about 1 year left on my contract (America's Top 60), I fired off a letter complaining about the situation, and my wife called and requested that our account be suspended until the missing channels were returned to the package. (You're able to suspend your programming for up to, I believe, 90 days, without having to pay a fee for breaking your contract. They usually offer this for when you go on vacation, so you don't pay for time you're not using the satellite.)
Judging by the nearly 90 minute long wait time on hold to reach someone at Dish when she called in, I'd say they weren't feeling like they "easily pushed the consumers aside".
I think if this dispute went on much longer, Dish would be looking at a large class action lawsuit from everyone still bound by a contract. (After all, my contract was for a specific programming package I agreed to keep for a set length of time. By Dish yanking several key stations from my package, they're effectively breaking the terms of our original service agreement.)
Ok, wait a minute.... I'm not denying that open source *might* be the smartest way to spend taxpayer money for military computer use, but why do people keep insisting that Apple Mac systems are a "closed hardware environment" + "closed software environment"??
For at least the last 3 years, Apple has been supplying the OS X operating system on all of their computers. Unlike the old MacOS - this is based on BSD Unix! They even provide an X windowing environment, in case using the default "Aqua" GUI itself feels too "closed" to you. It seems to me the ability to recompile pretty much any BSD source and run on the Mac (not to mention the option of even forgoing Apple's own OS and using a flavor of Linux on the Mac, if you so desire) makes it far from completely "closed".
As for "closed hardware", sure - to some extent. (Probably, most notably, video cards - where your choices are pretty much between special "Mac editions" of select ATI Radeon products, or select nVidia products.) But with USB 2.0 and firewire, you can plug in and use most of today's printers, scanners, cameras, and external storage devices (hard drives, flash drives, removeables like zip, etc.). They've already got gigabit ethernet built into almost all models, so you should be pretty well set on your network card needs (and wireless G is an option for most every Mac too). Where's the big issue? It's kind of like me complaining that Dell makes "closed hardware" because I can't replace dead power supplies in some models with standard ATX replacements (they purposely swapped the wiring around).
Well, I could live without many of them, but darnit - the *main* use I get out of my Dish system is Nick and Kid's Nick. My 2 year old watches her favorite learning shows each morning on there (Blue's Clues, Dora, etc. etc.).
I don't consider any of that "dumbed down programming", really. On the contrary, it enourages a little bit of learning a foreign language at a young age, basic logic and reasoning, and the definitions of various words.
I don't see why Dish doesn't go to an "a la carte" system with reasonable prices per channel, and require you to edit these orders either via an automated phone system, or on your set itself. (Any reasonably new Dish set-top box has the ability to pay your bill or change your programming packages with your remote.) I can see why it's not cost-effective for them to tie up service reps with these little requests - but surely, it'd work to automate it?
IMHO, you're already comparing two different things if you're talking about only the netcraft charts.
Most of the people saying "Windows is just as stable for me as Linux/BSD" are referring to using it as a workstation. Netcraft charts only measure relative uptimes in server environments.
I've used quite a few Linux releases over the years, and while I can guarantee most worked for me "rock solid stable" as things like web or ftp servers, they were fairly "quirky" if I did lots of different things with them inside an X environment with a Gnome or KDE type desktop.
By contrast, I can actually get quite reliable "uptime" out of a Win2K or XP system that's left on all the time, but the overall reliability performing tasks like web serving via IIS is *much* poorer than Apache on a Linux machine.
In other words, it really boils down to how well the respective OS's handle the applications you choose to run on them.... Right now, most of the "core" Internet server type services work much better on the Unix type OS's, while gaming and multimedia heavy things are likely to run better on a Windows environment. (Linux doesn't really have something like Microsoft's "Direct-X" support, for example.)
I've personally witnessed pretty much the same thing. My roommate had his truck broken into a few months ago, right in front of my house. Not only was his brand new Pioneer MP3 stereo system stolen, but so was his wallet and cellphone.
He actually was able to call his own cellphone and the thief picked up the line! It sounded like he had a number of ringing cellphones in the background, and appeared to be talking from his place. The thief wanted to work out a deal where we'd leave him a few hundred bucks at a pre-arranged drop off site, and he'd "trade" us back for the stolen goods!
(The best we could tell, this guy was going around looking for all the cellphones and other goods he could find in cars, and waiting for people to call their phones so he could "bargain" with them to scam them out of some cold, hard cash too.)
My friend tried to get the guy to agree to meet up with him in person at a local Denny's (and of course, was going to have either local police, or at least a bunch of friends waiting) - but the thief didn't go for it.
Failing to get anywhere that way, he reported the crime to the police - who basically did nothing, despite my roomate being able to log onto his cellphone provider's web site and get a detailed list of calls made that night. (Yes, the thief was actually calling all his friends on the stolen phones and chatting with them!)
He got all his credit cards cancelled, got a new driver's license issued, and of course, had the phone shut off -- but to this day, he never got a thing back. It's obvious the police never even tried, since this was a case practically handed to them, ready to handle as a "no brainer".
I think it's mainly a result of the "generation gap".... You've got parents who know very little about their own computers, and their kids who are pretty comfortable getting around online with it.
I've known quite a few kids/teens who got into loads of mischief with their PC, despite having otherwise caring and pretty observant parents.
Their folks were just sucked into the idea that their kids spending a lot of time on the computer had to be a "good thing", since they were learning "useful skills" and "doing something more educational than sitting around, watching TV".
There are plenty of things to blame parents for, but this is probably not really one of them. If you're the parent of a kid who is of "above average intelligence" and generally seems to stay out of trouble (not doing drugs and partying all night long, etc. etc.), and you're not too computer literate yourself -- just how much are you supposed to do when he/she figures out how to DoS corporate networks with his/her newfound online buddies?
Yep... but the real issue here isn't so much a problem with *Linux* and its defaults. It's much more an issue with giving the relatively clueless a server-grade operating system to use as their workstation!
Windows spares people from many of these fatal mistakes, simply by not offering the functionality. (EG. Accidently enabling an anonymous ftp server with read and write access to all directories.)
I think even Mac OS X would suffer from some of this, if it wasn't for the fact that Apple desperately wants to make some extra cash off selling a seperate "OS X Server" product. Therefore, many of the server-related services found in OS X are purposely pretty difficult to enable and use, unless you buy the "Server" version that provides control panels and menus to access them. (EG. Postfix or Sendmail, or SQL server support)
Why are you so certain businesss are relatively "immune" to these spyware/ad-ware problems?
I just spent the entire day working at a law office (several different law firms, actually, but all under one roof), and I removed spyware from 2 out of every 3 PCs I worked on there!
Firewalls do little to no good at stopping spyware. Sure, it can block the spyware application from "talking" to the outside world, but that's the most minor part of the problem. Infected PCs often have their windows TCP/IP sockets tampered with, which often breaks things like DNS resolution. Still other times, the poorly coded spyware hogs CPU resources, keeping machines pegged at 100% usage, and making them grind to a halt.
This stuff often gets loaded, unwittingly, by a user who runs some seemingly legitimate app or utility downloaded off the net. (And sure, you can preach about locking systems down so users don't have permissions to install software on their PC, but that's not always feasible.) Smaller businesses like the afore-mentioned law firms don't even have a single full-time I.T. administrator. They just contract for occasional support help, billed at an hourly rate. It's not practical to have to "call the administrator" every time they need to update a package they use, or do a trial installation of a CD they get in the mail.
I'm basically with you on this... I do have satellite and right now, I pay about $25 a month for the "top 60" channels package they offer. I'm hardly sure it's worth the $25, really, except for one thing. My 2 year old daughter gets to watch her kids' shows in the morning. That, alone, adds a lot of value for me. When my sat. dish was down for a while, she quickly got bored of watching our collection of Disney movies on VHS tape. (Yeah, I could always go with the shows on PBS, I suppose.... but my local TV reception is terrible. I'd need to invest in a rooftop antenna first, and I see no reason to bother with all that.)
At least a couple times a month, there's something mildly entertaining to watch on satellite too - helping further justify the $25 per month expense.
I'd pass on spending much over, say, $30 a month for TV though. Just not worth it.
Bleah.... I beg to differ. I did love the original UT, but UT2K4 does a great job of adding updated/cool graphics, while still keeping the gameplay moving along at the right pace. The new game modes really add value, too. I think most of us feel like the "deathmatch" concept is just about worn out. CTF is fine, but I don't need to buy it over and over again in different titles.
UT2003 was somehow less enjoyable for me, with the annoying replacement for the sniper rifle (wouldn't really have been so bad, except that stupid static effect on the lightning gun's sights gave me a headache), and the feeling that everyone was running a little bit too quickly. It had the "eye candy" down, but at the expense of some gameplay details.
As for the games "requiring brains", I dunno. Playing the "realistic" 1st. person shooters is simply a differnt kind of entertainment. I'm not knocking them, but sometimes I just want a rather mindless "jump, run and kill" game. It's the modern day version of the old scrolling "shoot 'em up" like Zaxxon or something....
Actually, I recall this same issue with UT2003 for Mac and America's Army for Mac - and a fairly substantial improvement in audio speed was possible by simply replacing one of the audio libraries with a newer version.
You'd think UT2004 already had the latest audio libraries rolled into it, but you never know?
The most powerful way to bypass security has always been "social engineering" - so why would you think it'll be different for virii?
If people actually do wisen up and stop opening email attachments they're unsure about, the virus writers will just come up with more creative ways to convince you to run the code. Write a small applet that lets them play a contest game to win money - only, nobody is really going to win anything, and it drops a trojan horse on the PC. Send mail that looks like a legitimate attached form from the ISP, requesting some sort of info your ISP might actually need. (Heck, one popular method seems to currently be bundling "malware" with legitimate freeware apps people want to download and use - like p2p music sharing packages, pop-up blockers, and time synchronizing clients.) Who knows? This problem isn't going to go away just by trying to "educate it away", telling people not to read the stuff they get in their email.
Personally, I think virus scanners are generally a bit "behind the times" in this war. EG. How many scanners have you seen that allow starting up without having to boot the actual OS that's being used, so they can remove a virus without it getting a chance to execute in RAM first? Of these, how many can scan an NTFS file system when started up in that manner? (To my knowledge, only the expensive "Avast BART" product currently offers all of this.) Modern trojan horses and virii are often shutting down the virus scanner processes so scanners can't remove them. They even do such things as prevent "regedit" from running, so you can't just prune them from the registry and reboot. (Of course, so far, many are coded poorly enough so you can just rename regedit to something else and then run it -- but that's bound to change.)
Good question... I've always been informed that higher octane fuel polutes more, overall, simply because you get less gas mileage from it.
(Supposedly, each gallon of gasoline has less actual "energy" in it, because a greater percentage of it is simply additive used to increase the octane rating.)
Perhaps BP's statement would be correct, if they were achieving a higher octane by purifying the fuel further than lower octane fuels -- but it's my understanding that it's not done that way. I believe they simply mix more chemicals into the fuel to get a given octane rating above whatever it naturally has.
Interesting! Here in the United States, there seems to be a movement towards eliminating the higher octane fuels. I guess part of it is just simple supply and demand. People want to use whatever gasoline costs the least - and higher octane fuels are more expensive.
But also, most of the vehicles on our roads are designed/tuned to run fine on 87 octane gasoline. Anything more is unnecessary. The cars that need higher octane are usually either A) high performance sports cars, or B) cars in poor condition with lots of carbon deposit build-ups in the cylinder walls. Sometimes, I think our govt. is trying to squeeze out the use of the "more dangerous and resource consuming" performance cars, and forcing people to get the old cars in poor condition off the roads (or repaired) at the same time. Passing environmental legislation making higher octane fuels cost-prohibitive is one way to accomplish it.
Several years ago, I remember issuing one of our company's salespeople a brand new Toshiba laptop with all the extras. He immediately took it, placed it in his new leather carrying bag, and put it in the trunk of his car. Later that afternoon, someone had taken a crow-bar, pried his trunk open, and stolen the whole thing - while his car sat in the company parking lot!
Laptop theft is VERY popular, because of the ease of reselling them, the portability, and the fact that you don't look "out of place" carrying one around in public.
There are already software systems in place that report your stolen laptop's whereabouts as soon as the thief tries connecting it up to the Internet. Seems to me this might be rather effective, but you're likely to only find the poor soul who purchased it used, not knowing it was stolen - rather than the original thief.
I'm not sure about this alarm idea. Probably not bad if you want some extra assistance catching someone who does a "snatch and run" on your laptop in a restaurant or something - but I bet many more laptops are stolen right out of hotel rooms while the owner is at dinner, out of vehicles, etc.
Interesting.... I've always looked fairly carefully at the gas pumps because I drive a turbocharged car that pretty much requires premium (92 or 93 octane) gas. Otherwise, not only will it perform poorly, but it runs a risk of spark knock destroying the engine. (Turbos in cars act like artificially increased compression ratios in engines, at least during the time they're actually spooled up and producing "boost". Therefore, you have to run high enough octane fuel to deal with the engine when the turbo is spooled up - not just what it requires when not under much acceleration.)
I haven't yet seen a pump marked "premium unleaded" that wasn't labeled with a higher octane rating than the pump just marked "unleaded" next to it. I have, however, seen a few stations that don't offer 93 or even 92 octane gas anymore. They simply offer 87 and 89 (the later of which used to be "mid grade").
Right... except the interesting thing that happened with Win '98SE is that mysteriously, nearly all of the systems running '98 became '98SE boxes - despite '98SE not even being sold seperately as an "upgrade" version.
Except for the most staunch "anti piracy" types, most Win '98 users felt well within their rights to upgrade their older '98 release using "borrowed" copies of '98SE. People quickly saw through the explanation that it was "only created to address needs of newer systems it was bundled with", and decided MS owed them a copy of SE to fix crashes, bugs, and poor support for some of their devices (internal modems, etc.).
I think the same will happen if MS decides to charge for this "XP Reloaded" edition of XP. They'll get whatever sales they'd automatically get anyway because it's bundled with new system purchases, but the majority of current XP owners will just upgrade "on the sly" and wave around their old XP CD key and "authenticity" paperwork/stickers if asked if they really "bought their OS".
I hardly call Windows updates for home use "painless", for many people out there.
Just this morning, for example, I helped a guy get his older PC updated from Windows '98 to 2000 Professional. Problem is, he's using AOL dial-up with a 56K modem. Ever try downloading the latest Win2K service pack over a 56K modem? Now, how about the IE 6 service pack 1, not to mention the other misc. update patches MS has out as "critical updates", and then the handful of "recommended updates" which you probably want, also. Did you install MS Office on that machine afterwards? If so, guess what? More critical updates to download (MSDAC objects need a patch after they get added by Office)!
As far as I'm concerned, the average "home user" has the most painful upgrade experience of all. It can take close to an entire day to download everything needed via modem. (You can't even do it all at once, in a big batch, either, because a number of the patches have to be installed individually, followed by a reboot! So that means pretty much babysitting the machine all day, if you want to get everything updated without spreading it over days and days.)
Ultimately, aren't *all* computers really "disposable"? I mean, the average PC gets swapped out or upgraded within 3 years or less. Laptops run the same software packages that the desktops do, so they're subject to the exact same rate of depreciation....
About the only difference is the argument that a desktop system allows installation of faster CPUs, to prolong its lifespan -- but this is more of a "straw dummy" argument than reality. By the time you're ready to upgrade, Intel has usually moved on to a new model of CPU that doesn't fit the socket on your existing board.
As a rule, Apple systems have been "useful" for longer periods of time than their PC counterparts, so I take that into account when I look at the initial price. (If you don't believe me, do a quick search on eBay for an old Apple laptop like the "Pismo" model of the Powerbook, and see how much they fetch. Compare that to a PC laptop of the same era on there...)
Actually, that's one thing that really irritated me! When I bought my house, the water meter was in the basement, so the water co. kept mailing me out little paper cards to record my water usage on and drop in the mail, every month. Fine, but then they started demanding that I let a meter reader in at least once a year to verify what I put on the paper. Again, fine, except I was never home when they came to read meters - so I was always getting threatened with a water shutoff.
For this reason, I broke down and let them install an outside reader... but I was billed about $80 for it. IMHO, this should be the water company's responsibility, not the homeowner's responsibility. The local gas company doesn't make me pay for their outside meter, nor does the electric company, and Bell Telephone takes care of their box on the side of my house, up to where lines actually enter the building. So why are things different for the water co.?
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Govt. is typically illogical.... IMHO, let them pass this one as law, and THEN hit them with the questioning about their logic on cars vs. DVD's.
It's more leverage for us if it's already written into law.
Mmm.... I understand your point, but disagree. I think a more appropriate contract would simply say that the provider reserves the right to substitute programming for equal numbers of alternate channels of programming, at will. That way, your "top 60" or "top 150" channels still have 60 or 150 channels in them at all times.
Perhaps, it could/would even be worded that "substitute programming will be of a reasonably similar nature". (Let's face it. If you subscribed to a satellite package mainly for the sports, you wouldn't fimd it acceptable if they pulled your ESPN channels and permanently replaced them with cartoon channels. You'd expect something sports related in the substitution.
Yes, but this didn't stop people from buying systems from Sun or Sparc in the past, or "big iron" from companies like IBM.
Only difference is, in this case, you're talking about machines that inter-operate well with the competition's offerings (Windows networking), and which have individual prices well below the above-mentioned computer products.
I agree that with only Apple building a computer than runs OS X, you might not have the bargaining "leverage" you'd get with a PC clone purchase. But Apple is in the business of selling computers. They're not likely to jack up prices considerably over what they charge today, per system. If people find them a good value at the current retail price, then surely, you can do at least a little better than that buying mass quantities of them.
If they were to go out of business (worst case scenario of the "sole supplier" issue), do you really think OS X would simply dry up and die? It might, but I'd bet against that. Even with 5% market share or so, Apple has many millions of users (many fanatically devoted to the platform). Do you think they'll all just shrug their shoulders, dump their Macs, and go back to Intel/Windows systems, if Apple folds? I forsee others starting production of Mac clones A.S.A.P. if Apple goes under.
Wow! So it does.... But that's a really awful contract provision, IMHO. Basically, it means the consumer could pay out big bucks for one of the largest channel packages, and suddenly be told "Sorry - we only carry 3 channels on that package now. Too bad!"
It seems to me like this could still be challenged in court, as an unreasonable contract clause, and have it rendered null and void. (After all, this might "fly" if Dish only sold their service in one "tier". But the only thing people pay more for on their network is additional programming. Then, this provision single-handedly gives Dish supposed authority to yank that out from under the customer whenever they please, without breaking the original contract agreement.)
Yes, probably so.... but since it's a *closed* system, this would presumably not ever happen unless part of a "nanotube" broke off and started floating around in the fluid, or something along those lines.
It's sort of like saying "A hard drive sounds like a cool idea. But wouldn't a small amount of dust gum it up?" Yep - but that's why they're sealed, air-tight, and initially built in clean rooms.
As a Dish customer myself with about 1 year left on my contract (America's Top 60), I fired off a letter complaining about the situation, and my wife called and requested that our account be suspended until the missing channels were returned to the package. (You're able to suspend your programming for up to, I believe, 90 days, without having to pay a fee for breaking your contract. They usually offer this for when you go on vacation, so you don't pay for time you're not using the satellite.)
Judging by the nearly 90 minute long wait time on hold to reach someone at Dish when she called in, I'd say they weren't feeling like they "easily pushed the consumers aside".
I think if this dispute went on much longer, Dish would be looking at a large class action lawsuit from everyone still bound by a contract. (After all, my contract was for a specific programming package I agreed to keep for a set length of time. By Dish yanking several key stations from my package, they're effectively breaking the terms of our original service agreement.)
Ok, wait a minute.... I'm not denying that open source *might* be the smartest way to spend taxpayer money for military computer use, but why do people keep insisting that Apple Mac systems are a "closed hardware environment" + "closed software environment"??
For at least the last 3 years, Apple has been supplying the OS X operating system on all of their computers. Unlike the old MacOS - this is based on BSD Unix! They even provide an X windowing environment, in case using the default "Aqua" GUI itself feels too "closed" to you. It seems to me the ability to recompile pretty much any BSD source and run on the Mac (not to mention the option of even forgoing Apple's own OS and using a flavor of Linux on the Mac, if you so desire) makes it far from completely "closed".
As for "closed hardware", sure - to some extent. (Probably, most notably, video cards - where your choices are pretty much between special "Mac editions" of select ATI Radeon products, or select nVidia products.) But with USB 2.0 and firewire, you can plug in and use most of today's printers, scanners, cameras, and external storage devices (hard drives, flash drives, removeables like zip, etc.). They've already got gigabit ethernet built into almost all models, so you should be pretty well set on your network card needs (and wireless G is an option for most every Mac too). Where's the big issue? It's kind of like me complaining that Dell makes "closed hardware" because I can't replace dead power supplies in some models with standard ATX replacements (they purposely swapped the wiring around).
Well, I could live without many of them, but darnit - the *main* use I get out of my Dish system is Nick and Kid's Nick. My 2 year old watches her favorite learning shows each morning on there (Blue's Clues, Dora, etc. etc.).
I don't consider any of that "dumbed down programming", really. On the contrary, it enourages a little bit of learning a foreign language at a young age, basic logic and reasoning, and the definitions of various words.
I don't see why Dish doesn't go to an "a la carte" system with reasonable prices per channel, and require you to edit these orders either via an automated phone system, or on your set itself. (Any reasonably new Dish set-top box has the ability to pay your bill or change your programming packages with your remote.) I can see why it's not cost-effective for them to tie up service reps with these little requests - but surely, it'd work to automate it?
IMHO, you're already comparing two different things if you're talking about only the netcraft charts.
Most of the people saying "Windows is just as stable for me as Linux/BSD" are referring to using it as a workstation. Netcraft charts only measure relative uptimes in server environments.
I've used quite a few Linux releases over the years, and while I can guarantee most worked for me "rock solid stable" as things like web or ftp servers, they were fairly "quirky" if I did lots of different things with them inside an X environment with a Gnome or KDE type desktop.
By contrast, I can actually get quite reliable "uptime" out of a Win2K or XP system that's left on all the time, but the overall reliability performing tasks like web serving via IIS is *much* poorer than Apache on a Linux machine.
In other words, it really boils down to how well the respective OS's handle the applications you choose to run on them.... Right now, most of the "core" Internet server type services work much better on the Unix type OS's, while gaming and multimedia heavy things are likely to run better on a Windows environment. (Linux doesn't really have something like Microsoft's "Direct-X" support, for example.)
I've personally witnessed pretty much the same thing. My roommate had his truck broken into a few months ago, right in front of my house. Not only was his brand new Pioneer MP3 stereo system stolen, but so was his wallet and cellphone.
He actually was able to call his own cellphone and the thief picked up the line! It sounded like he had a number of ringing cellphones in the background, and appeared to be talking from his place. The thief wanted to work out a deal where we'd leave him a few hundred bucks at a pre-arranged drop off site, and he'd "trade" us back for the stolen goods!
(The best we could tell, this guy was going around looking for all the cellphones and other goods he could find in cars, and waiting for people to call their phones so he could "bargain" with them to scam them out of some cold, hard cash too.)
My friend tried to get the guy to agree to meet up with him in person at a local Denny's (and of course, was going to have either local police, or at least a bunch of friends waiting) - but the thief didn't go for it.
Failing to get anywhere that way, he reported the crime to the police - who basically did nothing, despite my roomate being able to log onto his cellphone provider's web site and get a detailed list of calls made that night. (Yes, the thief was actually calling all his friends on the stolen phones and chatting with them!)
He got all his credit cards cancelled, got a new driver's license issued, and of course, had the phone shut off -- but to this day, he never got a thing back. It's obvious the police never even tried, since this was a case practically handed to them, ready to handle as a "no brainer".
I think it's mainly a result of the "generation gap".... You've got parents who know very little about their own computers, and their kids who are pretty comfortable getting around online with it.
I've known quite a few kids/teens who got into loads of mischief with their PC, despite having otherwise caring and pretty observant parents.
Their folks were just sucked into the idea that their kids spending a lot of time on the computer had to be a "good thing", since they were learning "useful skills" and "doing something more educational than sitting around, watching TV".
There are plenty of things to blame parents for, but this is probably not really one of them. If you're the parent of a kid who is of "above average intelligence" and generally seems to stay out of trouble (not doing drugs and partying all night long, etc. etc.), and you're not too computer literate yourself -- just how much are you supposed to do when he/she figures out how to DoS corporate networks with his/her newfound online buddies?
Yep... but the real issue here isn't so much a problem with *Linux* and its defaults. It's much more an issue with giving the relatively clueless a server-grade operating system to use as their workstation!
Windows spares people from many of these fatal mistakes, simply by not offering the functionality. (EG. Accidently enabling an anonymous ftp server with read and write access to all directories.)
I think even Mac OS X would suffer from some of this, if it wasn't for the fact that Apple desperately wants to make some extra cash off selling a seperate "OS X Server" product. Therefore, many of the server-related services found in OS X are purposely pretty difficult to enable and use, unless you buy the "Server" version that provides control panels and menus to access them. (EG. Postfix or Sendmail, or SQL server support)
Why are you so certain businesss are relatively "immune" to these spyware/ad-ware problems?
I just spent the entire day working at a law office (several different law firms, actually, but all under one roof), and I removed spyware from 2 out of every 3 PCs I worked on there!
Firewalls do little to no good at stopping spyware. Sure, it can block the spyware application from "talking" to the outside world, but that's the most minor part of the problem. Infected PCs often have their windows TCP/IP sockets tampered with, which often breaks things like DNS resolution. Still other times, the poorly coded spyware hogs CPU resources, keeping machines pegged at 100% usage, and making them grind to a halt.
This stuff often gets loaded, unwittingly, by a user who runs some seemingly legitimate app or utility downloaded off the net. (And sure, you can preach about locking systems down so users don't have permissions to install software on their PC, but that's not always feasible.) Smaller businesses like the afore-mentioned law firms don't even have a single full-time I.T. administrator. They just contract for occasional support help, billed at an hourly rate. It's not practical to have to "call the administrator" every time they need to update a package they use, or do a trial installation of a CD they get in the mail.
I'm basically with you on this... I do have satellite and right now, I pay about $25 a month for the "top 60" channels package they offer. I'm hardly sure it's worth the $25, really, except for one thing. My 2 year old daughter gets to watch her kids' shows in the morning. That, alone, adds a lot of value for me. When my sat. dish was down for a while, she quickly got bored of watching our collection of Disney movies on VHS tape. (Yeah, I could always go with the shows on PBS, I suppose.... but my local TV reception is terrible. I'd need to invest in a rooftop antenna first, and I see no reason to bother with all that.)
At least a couple times a month, there's something mildly entertaining to watch on satellite too - helping further justify the $25 per month expense.
I'd pass on spending much over, say, $30 a month for TV though. Just not worth it.
Bleah.... I beg to differ.
I did love the original UT, but UT2K4 does a great job of adding updated/cool graphics, while still keeping the gameplay moving along at the right pace. The new game modes really add value, too. I think most of us feel like the "deathmatch" concept is just about worn out. CTF is fine, but I don't need to buy it over and over again in different titles.
UT2003 was somehow less enjoyable for me, with the annoying replacement for the sniper rifle (wouldn't really have been so bad, except that stupid static effect on the lightning gun's sights gave me a headache), and the feeling that everyone was running a little bit too quickly. It had the "eye candy" down, but at the expense of some gameplay details.
As for the games "requiring brains", I dunno. Playing the "realistic" 1st. person shooters is simply a differnt kind of entertainment. I'm not knocking them, but sometimes I just want a rather mindless "jump, run and kill" game. It's the modern day version of the old scrolling "shoot 'em up" like Zaxxon or something....
Actually, I recall this same issue with UT2003 for Mac and America's Army for Mac - and a fairly substantial improvement in audio speed was possible by simply replacing one of the audio libraries with a newer version.
You'd think UT2004 already had the latest audio libraries rolled into it, but you never know?
The most powerful way to bypass security has always been "social engineering" - so why would you think it'll be different for virii?
If people actually do wisen up and stop opening email attachments they're unsure about, the virus writers will just come up with more creative ways to convince you to run the code. Write a small applet that lets them play a contest game to win money - only, nobody is really going to win anything, and it drops a trojan horse on the PC. Send mail that looks like a legitimate attached form from the ISP, requesting some sort of info your ISP might actually need. (Heck, one popular method seems to currently be bundling "malware" with legitimate freeware apps people want to download and use - like p2p music sharing packages, pop-up blockers, and time synchronizing clients.) Who knows? This problem isn't going to go away just by trying to "educate it away", telling people not to read the stuff they get in their email.
Personally, I think virus scanners are generally a bit "behind the times" in this war. EG. How many scanners have you seen that allow starting up without having to boot the actual OS that's being used, so they can remove a virus without it getting a chance to execute in RAM first? Of these, how many can scan an NTFS file system when started up in that manner? (To my knowledge, only the expensive "Avast BART" product currently offers all of this.) Modern trojan horses and virii are often shutting down the virus scanner processes so scanners can't remove them. They even do such things as prevent "regedit" from running, so you can't just prune them from the registry and reboot. (Of course, so far, many are coded poorly enough so you can just rename regedit to something else and then run it -- but that's bound to change.)
Good question... I've always been informed that higher octane fuel polutes more, overall, simply because you get less gas mileage from it.
(Supposedly, each gallon of gasoline has less actual "energy" in it, because a greater percentage of it is simply additive used to increase the octane rating.)
Perhaps BP's statement would be correct, if they were achieving a higher octane by purifying the fuel further than lower octane fuels -- but it's my understanding that it's not done that way. I believe they simply mix more chemicals into the fuel to get a given octane rating above whatever it naturally has.
Interesting! Here in the United States, there seems to be a movement towards eliminating the higher octane fuels. I guess part of it is just simple supply and demand. People want to use whatever gasoline costs the least - and higher octane fuels are more expensive.
But also, most of the vehicles on our roads are designed/tuned to run fine on 87 octane gasoline. Anything more is unnecessary. The cars that need higher octane are usually either A) high performance sports cars, or B) cars in poor condition with lots of carbon deposit build-ups in the cylinder walls. Sometimes, I think our govt. is trying to squeeze out the use of the "more dangerous and resource consuming" performance cars, and forcing people to get the old cars in poor condition off the roads (or repaired) at the same time. Passing environmental legislation making higher octane fuels cost-prohibitive is one way to accomplish it.
Several years ago, I remember issuing one of our company's salespeople a brand new Toshiba laptop with all the extras. He immediately took it, placed it in his new leather carrying bag, and put it in the trunk of his car. Later that afternoon, someone had taken a crow-bar, pried his trunk open, and stolen the whole thing - while his car sat in the company parking lot!
Laptop theft is VERY popular, because of the ease of reselling them, the portability, and the fact that you don't look "out of place" carrying one around in public.
There are already software systems in place that report your stolen laptop's whereabouts as soon as the thief tries connecting it up to the Internet. Seems to me this might be rather effective, but you're likely to only find the poor soul who purchased it used, not knowing it was stolen - rather than the original thief.
I'm not sure about this alarm idea. Probably not bad if you want some extra assistance catching someone who does a "snatch and run" on your laptop in a restaurant or something - but I bet many more laptops are stolen right out of hotel rooms while the owner is at dinner, out of vehicles, etc.
Interesting.... I've always looked fairly carefully at the gas pumps because I drive a turbocharged car that pretty much requires premium (92 or 93 octane) gas. Otherwise, not only will it perform poorly, but it runs a risk of spark knock destroying the engine. (Turbos in cars act like artificially increased compression ratios in engines, at least during the time they're actually spooled up and producing "boost". Therefore, you have to run high enough octane fuel to deal with the engine when the turbo is spooled up - not just what it requires when not under much acceleration.)
I haven't yet seen a pump marked "premium unleaded" that wasn't labeled with a higher octane rating than the pump just marked "unleaded" next to it. I have, however, seen a few stations that don't offer 93 or even 92 octane gas anymore. They simply offer 87 and 89 (the later of which used to be "mid grade").
Right... except the interesting thing that happened with Win '98SE is that mysteriously, nearly all of the systems running '98 became '98SE boxes - despite '98SE not even being sold seperately as an "upgrade" version.
Except for the most staunch "anti piracy" types, most Win '98 users felt well within their rights to upgrade their older '98 release using "borrowed" copies of '98SE. People quickly saw through the explanation that it was "only created to address needs of newer systems it was bundled with", and decided MS owed them a copy of SE to fix crashes, bugs, and poor support for some of their devices (internal modems, etc.).
I think the same will happen if MS decides to charge for this "XP Reloaded" edition of XP. They'll get whatever sales they'd automatically get anyway because it's bundled with new system purchases, but the majority of current XP owners will just upgrade "on the sly" and wave around their old XP CD key and "authenticity" paperwork/stickers if asked if they really "bought their OS".
I hardly call Windows updates for home use "painless", for many people out there.
Just this morning, for example, I helped a guy get his older PC updated from Windows '98 to 2000 Professional. Problem is, he's using AOL dial-up with a 56K modem. Ever try downloading the latest Win2K service pack over a 56K modem? Now, how about the IE 6 service pack 1, not to mention the other misc. update patches MS has out as "critical updates", and then the handful of "recommended updates" which you probably want, also. Did you install MS Office on that machine afterwards? If so, guess what? More critical updates to download (MSDAC objects need a patch after they get added by Office)!
As far as I'm concerned, the average "home user" has the most painful upgrade experience of all. It can take close to an entire day to download everything needed via modem. (You can't even do it all at once, in a big batch, either, because a number of the patches have to be installed individually, followed by a reboot! So that means pretty much babysitting the machine all day, if you want to get everything updated without spreading it over days and days.)
Ultimately, aren't *all* computers really "disposable"? I mean, the average PC gets swapped out or upgraded within 3 years or less. Laptops run the same software packages that the desktops do, so they're subject to the exact same rate of depreciation....
About the only difference is the argument that a desktop system allows installation of faster CPUs, to prolong its lifespan -- but this is more of a "straw dummy" argument than reality. By the time you're ready to upgrade, Intel has usually moved on to a new model of CPU that doesn't fit the socket on your existing board.
As a rule, Apple systems have been "useful" for longer periods of time than their PC counterparts, so I take that into account when I look at the initial price. (If you don't believe me, do a quick search on eBay for an old Apple laptop like the "Pismo" model of the Powerbook, and see how much they fetch. Compare that to a PC laptop of the same era on there...)
Actually, that's one thing that really irritated me! When I bought my house, the water meter was in the basement, so the water co. kept mailing me out little paper cards to record my water usage on and drop in the mail, every month. Fine, but then they started demanding that I let a meter reader in at least once a year to verify what I put on the paper. Again, fine, except I was never home when they came to read meters - so I was always getting threatened with a water shutoff.
... but I was billed about $80 for it. IMHO, this should be the water company's responsibility, not the homeowner's responsibility. The local gas company doesn't make me pay for their outside meter, nor does the electric company, and Bell Telephone takes care of their box on the side of my house, up to where lines actually enter the building. So why are things different for the water co.?
For this reason, I broke down and let them install an outside reader