I'm sure there's plenty of SG-1/Terminator/Borg/Matrix/{insert sci-fi show here} comparisons that will be made, but let's keep in mind that this technology is a very distant cousin, if anything.
This is great. Advertisers are not only bombarding us with ads presently, but they're going to bombard the future human space colonies with ads once the signal reaches them.
Now that's what I call looooooooong term thinking.
Software devel. could learn from Blizzard.
on
QA != Testing
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I find that software Q&A for applications/OS's/etc. for use by the general public is not necessarily the priority it should be due in part to the fact that they can always "patch" something if a bug arrises. But, on some occasions, patches are created after the damage is done. Although I will say that even if QA is a priority, there will always be a few bugs that will slip by the testing, due to the sheer amount of various situations that the software experiences (A plethora of different hardware setups, configurations, etc.)
However, one company that has stood out in this field is the video game developpers Blizzard Entertainment. Sure, they have a reputation of not being able to adhere to shipping dates, but for good reason: They want to make sure that the product they ship is near perfect. I'm sure we're all willing to wait a bit more if that time is being used to test products.
Good thought. There would only be one limitation: the camera lense could not have this invisibility field in front of it. If you've got a field that distorts visible light, that means your not going to have much visible light getting through. Sure, no one can see you, but you can't see them either without using equipment that would scan beyond the visible light spectrum inside the field
"Notably, plasma radar stealth has an opposite effect of the optical stealth. The aircraft would glow like a lightbulb, and leave a trail of glowing plasma in its wake. Also notably, aircraft at high hypersonic speeds induce a local plasma air environment, due to the tremendous energy of the aerodynamics."
Is it just me, or does this sound very familiar to what a UFO looks like, a large bright light? Even if optical stealth is compromised, if you applied this to spy drones, etc.., and with complete radar invisibility, then the public are going to think that they are UFO's and we all know how the military reacts when it gets calls about UFO's. It would make the perfect cover!
That's the procedure, with the exception of that last part. That last part is what we called "killing time". If it was a busy day, one call after another, we would usually try to stretch the time of some calls, and one of the best things to do that is to stick around during an installation. At least it "appeared" as if we were working... (after talking to one upset person after another over foolish activation policy, we needed to take a brake from time to time)
Not that I'm aware of. Usually you only need to re-activate when doing a fresh install. I've experience a few calls where windows required re-activation after some hardware changes were made, and I don't know if this prompting to re-activate was merely a glitch in the OS, or because of the new hardware Windows might have thought it was on a new machine.
Hopefully there's no MS programmer's reading this and decide to incorporate re-activation if the MBR is changed to load a non-windows bootloader. It's already a pain to get your Linux bootloader overriden once you install almost any version of Windows.
Your first point is true. As for people switching to Linux, and as much as I would love to see this happen, one must admit that at this particular time, Windows is one of the most user-friendly.... correction... easiest to learn OS's on the market. So for those people who are computer newbies, and there are many, they can't fathom using anything but windows. However, the Linux community is definitly catching up, with many distro's becoming easier to use without much knowledge about the OS. I can see the day come where UNIX OS's will have the same ease-of-use yet still retain it's defining qualities (security, customization, etc.)
As For those having to pay alot for the phone activation personnel, MS found a convenient way to save some cash there. By outsourcing to Canada and other countries, they usually don't have to pay as much in way of wages. As well, here and Canada anyways, the government gives large grants to companies, usually call centers since they hire alot of people. That way MS can get a foreign government to pay for a healthy chunk of their operation.
One thing MS knows how to do well is milk the cash cow.
I used to be a MS Windows Activation Specialist (a.k.a. the person you hate to call all the time if you format often) for a year in a call center in my hometown of Saint John, Canada. People who wanted to re-activate their Windows would have to answer my questions first. So I have first-hand experience of how much people hate having to call.
To be fair, we did get calls from people who, after we checked their Product ID, knew they were using a burnt copy. From this, you would surmise that this system is helping to fight against piracy, right? WRONG! As long as you answered the questions correctly (which mostly consists of why they need to reactivate), their's no problem. Thus you could call in, give a cheap excuse (The most used one being the "had to format", and even if this key's been used a hundred times, we had to activate again.)
The one thing I hated to have to tell people, and it happened often, was that they could only install a retail copy of windows onto one computer and one laptop (This policy might have changed, not too sure). I found this to be a silly rule, which often infuriated the user on the other end of the line. And if you have an OEM version on one computer but own two, sorry, your out of luck, you need to buy a retail ver. of windows for that second computer.
From my experience, it is my belief that the combination of both the Windows OS EULA and the activation process most likely caused more people to get pirated versions (I've had many people tell me they were going to this over the phone.)
I really don't care what they call it, what's important is if they can enforce it! The CAN-SPAM act has had some results, but it is still a far cry from stopping the majority of spam. The question lies in whether this bill is going to be used to prosecute the people resposible for the spyware, or if it's just been made to make people think that the government is going to address the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure there's plenty of SG-1/Terminator/Borg/Matrix/{insert sci-fi show here} comparisons that will be made, but let's keep in mind that this technology is a very distant cousin, if anything.
This is great. Advertisers are not only bombarding us with ads presently, but they're going to bombard the future human space colonies with ads once the signal reaches them.
Now that's what I call looooooooong term thinking.
I find that software Q&A for applications/OS's/etc. for use by the general public is not necessarily the priority it should be due in part to the fact that they can always "patch" something if a bug arrises. But, on some occasions, patches are created after the damage is done. Although I will say that even if QA is a priority, there will always be a few bugs that will slip by the testing, due to the sheer amount of various situations that the software experiences (A plethora of different hardware setups, configurations, etc.)
However, one company that has stood out in this field is the video game developpers Blizzard Entertainment. Sure, they have a reputation of not being able to adhere to shipping dates, but for good reason: They want to make sure that the product they ship is near perfect. I'm sure we're all willing to wait a bit more if that time is being used to test products.
Good thought. There would only be one limitation: the camera lense could not have this invisibility field in front of it. If you've got a field that distorts visible light, that means your not going to have much visible light getting through. Sure, no one can see you, but you can't see them either without using equipment that would scan beyond the visible light spectrum inside the field
Is it just me, or does this sound very familiar to what a UFO looks like, a large bright light? Even if optical stealth is compromised, if you applied this to spy drones, etc.., and with complete radar invisibility, then the public are going to think that they are UFO's and we all know how the military reacts when it gets calls about UFO's. It would make the perfect cover!
Although it wouldn't be the first time a spy drone was thought to a ufo by the general public:, 00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66588
That's the procedure, with the exception of that last part. That last part is what we called "killing time". If it was a busy day, one call after another, we would usually try to stretch the time of some calls, and one of the best things to do that is to stick around during an installation. At least it "appeared" as if we were working... (after talking to one upset person after another over foolish activation policy, we needed to take a brake from time to time)
Not that I'm aware of. Usually you only need to re-activate when doing a fresh install. I've experience a few calls where windows required re-activation after some hardware changes were made, and I don't know if this prompting to re-activate was merely a glitch in the OS, or because of the new hardware Windows might have thought it was on a new machine.
Hopefully there's no MS programmer's reading this and decide to incorporate re-activation if the MBR is changed to load a non-windows bootloader. It's already a pain to get your Linux bootloader overriden once you install almost any version of Windows.
Your first point is true. As for people switching to Linux, and as much as I would love to see this happen, one must admit that at this particular time, Windows is one of the most user-friendly.... correction... easiest to learn OS's on the market. So for those people who are computer newbies, and there are many, they can't fathom using anything but windows. However, the Linux community is definitly catching up, with many distro's becoming easier to use without much knowledge about the OS. I can see the day come where UNIX OS's will have the same ease-of-use yet still retain it's defining qualities (security, customization, etc.)
As For those having to pay alot for the phone activation personnel, MS found a convenient way to save some cash there. By outsourcing to Canada and other countries, they usually don't have to pay as much in way of wages. As well, here and Canada anyways, the government gives large grants to companies, usually call centers since they hire alot of people. That way MS can get a foreign government to pay for a healthy chunk of their operation.
One thing MS knows how to do well is milk the cash cow.
I used to be a MS Windows Activation Specialist (a.k.a. the person you hate to call all the time if you format often) for a year in a call center in my hometown of Saint John, Canada. People who wanted to re-activate their Windows would have to answer my questions first. So I have first-hand experience of how much people hate having to call. To be fair, we did get calls from people who, after we checked their Product ID, knew they were using a burnt copy. From this, you would surmise that this system is helping to fight against piracy, right? WRONG! As long as you answered the questions correctly (which mostly consists of why they need to reactivate), their's no problem. Thus you could call in, give a cheap excuse (The most used one being the "had to format", and even if this key's been used a hundred times, we had to activate again.) The one thing I hated to have to tell people, and it happened often, was that they could only install a retail copy of windows onto one computer and one laptop (This policy might have changed, not too sure). I found this to be a silly rule, which often infuriated the user on the other end of the line. And if you have an OEM version on one computer but own two, sorry, your out of luck, you need to buy a retail ver. of windows for that second computer. From my experience, it is my belief that the combination of both the Windows OS EULA and the activation process most likely caused more people to get pirated versions (I've had many people tell me they were going to this over the phone.)
I really don't care what they call it, what's important is if they can enforce it! The CAN-SPAM act has had some results, but it is still a far cry from stopping the majority of spam. The question lies in whether this bill is going to be used to prosecute the people resposible for the spyware, or if it's just been made to make people think that the government is going to address the issue.