"It's hard to think of a fourth sequel that didn't really suck. There have been successful trilogies, but from then on, it's usually all downhill."
Bond tends to go up-and-down, I'll admit, but I wouldn't say they all sucked.
"'Police Academy 8' is in development, if anybody cares."
Now, if this isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is. Especially with Steve Guttenberg coming back. Did anyone see that remake of "The Poseidon Adventure" on NBC? Gads, is he old!
A Harvard Student and a Yale Student are in a bathroom taking a piss. The Yale Student finishes and goes to leave when the Harvard Student says, "At Harvard, they teach us to wash our hands after we urinate." The Yale Student replies, "At Yale, they teach us not to piss on our hands."
The Follow-Up:
From the stall, someone calls out, "Doesn't matter, guys. Somebody from Dartmouth was just here and pissed in the sink."
The first e-mail from space was sent from a Macintosh Portable, but it was not the first "portable computer" in space.
My mistake.
Thinking about this also reminded me of another funny Portable/PowerBook story. A friend of mine's sister went out and bought a Macintosh Portable after seeing the PowerBooks. She preferred the Portable because, living in New York City, she wanted a heavy machine that would be less easy to steal. She'd had her purse snatched once or twice and could see someone coming up, giving her a shove and running off with this nice and light PowerBook.
No one was going "run" while lugging a 25 pound Macintosh Portable.
(I had this great mental image of some guy running up, shoving her, grabbing the portable and--wham!--he's stuck in one place like he was attached to an anchor.)
The presentation was actually very well done, I thought--almost as good as a SteveNote. Back then, without Steve Jobs and his ego, essentially every group (desktop hardware, imaging, system software, etc.) gave a keynote on a different subject. Sculley gave the Monday keynote where he usually talked about the business side. Pretty boring stuff and Sculley wasn't that great a speaker anyway. Hell, even Bill Gates did a better presentation than Sculley (he was also there).
So we got this keynote from some VP of "Portable Computing." He started off talking about the Macintosh Portable and how they had finally identified the market for this device.
Cut to a shot of the space shuttle taking off.
Yup. The Macintosh Portable was the first personal computer in space (and I can hear the HP41c fans sharpening their knives). They showed it floating around the cabin of the shuttle, as light as a feather. They even showed something that everyone had wanted to see since the first Macintosh: A disk being ejected across the room.
Amusing.
The VP then showed off Apple Remote Access. One odd thing about his presentation, though, was that the computer he was using had no video-out. Thus, there was a guy standing behind him with a portable camera zoomed in on the screen. But if you paid attention--and I didn't until somebody mentioned it after the presentation--you could see the the edges around the screen were dark and a Macintosh Portable was sort of a light Macintosh SE grey. So ARA was being demoed on a PowerBook--we just couldn't see the whole thing.
Anyway, they were finally ready to unveil the replacement for the Macintosh Portable. They wheeled this table out onto the stage with a cloth covering a device. The VP whipped off the cloth to show us: A LaserWriter. Various chuckles from the audience. "Well, it's pretty portable..." the VP quipped as he tried to lift the LaserWriter (Apple LaserWriters weighed about 50 pounds). Suddenly, a disembodied voice from the booth called out: "Look in the paper tray." The VP reached into the paper tray and pulled out a PowerBook! And the audience went wild.
"So new, advanced, highly sophisticated hardware should be designed so that people can treat it like their 10 year-old VCR?"
Yes. That's what consumers expect. I'm not buying "new, advanced, highly sophisticated hardware." I'm buying a box to play video games.
"They don't have to put it in the entertainment center. A little coffee table to the side is all they need. So they can't put it in there with their A/V equipment... so what?"
Well, I rashly assume I can put it in my entertainment center for the following reasons:
It's a device designed to be hooked up to other elements in my entertainment center (ie, TV, Stereo, Windows Media Center)
I was able to put my original XBox in my entertainment center
I can put PS2s and GameCubes, which this competes against, in my entertainment center.
I mean, one of the ideas behind having an entertainment center is to put all the items in the same hunk of furniture rather than having them scattered about. So I have bought this big and beautiful entertainment center that holds all my devices and you're telling me that I now have to go out and buy a separate table to stick this thing on? And make sure it fits in with the rest of decor of the room.
Maybe you don't care about interior decorating and design. I'm with you on that one. But there are plenty of consumers who do care--who want a nice looking living room. This is what I mean when I say that Microsoft is not that great a "consumer company." The box is supposed to work in my environment. I'm not supposed to have to change my environment for the box to work. That's the difference between a consumer device and, say, a corporate device. Yes, if I'm installing a rack of servers, I have to have appropriate air-conditioning and such in my data center.
"Do you put your computer in the cabinet with the A/V equipment? If not, then why not? It does audio, it does video, by your reasoning it belongs in that cabinet!"
Yes, but my computer does not interface with other items in the cabinet. I don't surf the web on my TV. I don't listen to music stored on my computer via the stereo (although I once got one of those FM transmitter thingies and plugged it into the computer. It got funnier because I then put on my wireless headphones so that I didn't have to disturb my roomate. So I had an FM signal traveling across the room to the stereo and then an infrared signal traveling back. It seemed kind of silly, so I just went and bought some plain ol' headphones).
Well, I hate to be a jerk about this, but frankly the "blame the consumer" strategy just doesn't flush with me.
Yes, you're right. The consumer is properly warned and it's their fault for using the device outside it's proper operating specifications.
My complaint, though, is that a consumer device requires these specifications. As others have said, I bought an "A/V Device Cabinet" for my audio/video devices. It works just fine with all of my previous audio/video devices, but not with an XBox? To me, this is something that Microsoft should have considered when building a consumer device. There is a concept of reasonableness and I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect my XBox 360 to fit in a standard A/V Device Cabinet. This should have been part of the design spec.
I don't own an XBox (or PS2 or any console for that matter). If I did, I would want to stick it in the same area as my TV and DVR. Nope. Can't do that. I'd probably have to stick it on top of the whole entertainment center, right next to the picture of my family, the nice "loving couple" statue that I bought a few years ago, the attractive wood-burned picture of the covered bridge, and the wine-bottles in their funky wooden wine-bottle holders. Needless to say--one of those things just doesn't fit in with the decor.
To me, this is why I don't think Microsoft is a good "consumer" company.
Microsoft essentially expects me to design my entertainment center around their XBox. I may not want to do that. No matter how attractive the device is, it may not fit in the rest of the decor of my room and I'd rather "hide" it. And, no, I don't want to go out and buy a brand-new entertainment center just for the XBox.
Like I said, the RTFM excuse gets Microsoft off the hook. But it certainly doesn't make me want to buy one of their products.
Well, "unjust" is debatable, in this case, but I'll try one on for size.
Go back to 1999 here in Westminster, CA. A guy, Truong Van Tran, hung a picture of Ho Chi Minh and a North Vietnamese flag in his video store. This caused about two months of protests by the Vietnamese community. In the end, the police found a way to bust him: Some of the videos he was selling in his story were pirated. He was arrested and sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Essentially, the community was looking for some way to get rid of this malcontent. Fortunately, the "video piracy" laws were on the books and they could bust him on that. The Judge was more than willing to give him the maximum sentence not because video piracy is such a heinous offense and the community was adamant that the laws concerning intellectual property must be observed, but because he had offended the community by displaying support for the hated North Vietnamese regime.
"For broadcasts the portion of a scan line that is visible can hold up to about 440 dots so a grid 480 high by 440 wide represents the maximum amount of picture detail possible."
Sigh. You need to pay attention. I'll say it again: marketshare is not the only element of the equation. Better code and better security procedures are a big part of it. I won't disagree. But to say that marketshare and obscurity--both definitions--don't fit into the equation is not seeing the forest through the trees.
Again, first we have the vulnerability. Parts of Mac OS X have vulnerabilities. So do parts of Windows. So what makes Windows different from Mac OS X?
One element is what you can do with a vulnerability. Under Windows, if you can get code to run, you can quietly take over the machine. The user of the machine will never be aware that they've been turned into a zombie. With Mac OS X, this is far more difficult or impossible. The user has to be involved, which requires some social engineering. So, if there's a bug in, say, some image libraries, I can turn a Windows machine into a zombie. If there's a bug in the same image libraries in Mac OS X, there's not a whole lot I can potentially do and remain undiscovered. So one element which makes Windows different from Mac OS X is what I can do with a vulnerability. If there's less I can do, there's less interest in exploiting the vulnerability.
That's where the better security comes in.
However, there's also some other elements which you're ignoring. One is obscurity. I mentioned "both definitions." If you look up obscure in the dictionary, you'll see that it means something that is not common and something that is hidden. To tackle the "hidden" part first, this has to do with the amount of work necessary to reverse engineer a patch. Again, like above, it's the amount of work I have to do for the gain I can get. If I spend a month reverse engineering a patch to figure out what it fixed and all I can do with it is pop up a dialog box in the user's face that says, "You suck", it's not really worthwhile.
Brief tangent: Also, if I spend a month reverse-engineering a patch, I think it's more likely that--as a percentage--more people have applied the patch on the Mac side than on the Windows side. Personal opinion, this has to do with trust. When Microsoft announced Windows Auto-Update, the world was aghast. "Microsoft will be scanning my hard drive, finding all my pirated software, and calling lawyers! I don't want Microsoft auto-updating anything!" When Apple had the same thing in Mac OS X, people said, "Whew! Now I won't have to worry about security issues." People, generally, trust Apple. They don't trust Microsoft. Again, by the time I have my evil payload ready to roll, most of my intended victims will be protected against it. Less incentive to put in the effort in the first place.
Back to "obscurity", the second element is obviously how prevalent the machines are. You mention "Unix-based systems", but which one? Are we talking linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, IRIX, OpenBSD, or NetBSD? Also, remember the hardware underneath a "Unix-based system" may be Intel, POWER, PowerPC, SPARC, or MIPS. Heck, that problem alone would make me want to stay away! I need to have the hardware and software combinations in order to do the hack.
The final element is how the machines are being used. There are more Unix-based servers than Windows based servers, but there are more Windows-based clients than all platform-based servers. If I'm trying to build a botnet, I don't have that much interest in servers. If I'm trying to steal credit card numbers, I can either steal them from the server or the client. The client is much easier to hit and I can get lots of numbers through volume. I can get lots of numbers by hitting one server, but it'll be a lot more work. To draw a so-so analogy, is it better to rob 50 small-town bank branches or to rob Fort Knox? Robbing Fort Knox will get you more money than the 50 small-town banks, but it will be much more difficult.
That's why when people trot out the statistics, I have to question the interpretation. Could the lack of viruses for "Unix
Hear hear! Actually, my favorite was the one in ColorSync. Very scary stuff, because some programs ignore ColorSync profiles, so you might still be able to view your images. But Safari and IE do not ignore them...
As an aside, this is where the the comment about "Macs have no viruses because they have low marketshare" holds some sway with me. I agree with everyone who says Macs are more secure than Windows, don't get me wrong. Once your code is running, it's much tougher to do anything to spread a virus in the same way that viruses spread in Windows. But part of it is that nobody really does the immense amount of reverse engineering necessary to write a virus or worm based upon an a published vulnerability. While, with Windows, an entire cottage industry has been built to figure that stuff out because there's money in it.
These things, as with many things in life, do not stem from one reason. Windows has viruses because of poor security. Windows has lots of viruses because of marketshare. Macs have fewer viruses because of better security. Macs have no viruses because of marketshare.
Re:you mean Redhat wont support my modified code!?
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Open Source Not That Open?
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· Score: 5, Informative
"Ford wont honour my new vehicle warranty if I modify the engine?"
Ford will honor your new vehicle warranty if you modify the engine as long as the problem cannot reasonably be connected to the engine.
For example, if I install a high-flow air filter and a few months later the brakes stop working, Ford will honor my warranty. If I install a high-flow air filter and the cylinders break, Ford might be less willing to fix it under warranty. It would be up to Ford, by the way, to show that the damage was due to the modification and you can take them to court if you don't agree. Depending on what happens, it may not be worth it.
...and in the audible department, it's Oh-Ess-Ten. Not Oh-Ess-Ex.
(I'm reminded of when they announced OS X at WWDC '98 and we were told, specifically, that it is Mac O.S. Ten. Not "X". Then, at one of the printing workshops, some marketing bozo from Canon, I think, was up on stage talking about how excited they were to be developing printer drivers for Mac O.S. "X". Needless to say, the crowd wasn't real impressed.)
Well, you'd get fewer DVDs, but you wouldn't get better quality.
They could probably redo the films, but I would imagine that TOS, TNG, and DS9 are forever trapped at low resolution. I'm not sure about Voyager, but I'm pretty sure that Enterprise was done in HD.
Of course, since TNG is probably the bulk of the DVDs, you'd save some space there...
Re:Still Safe? Never safe
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Safe Cigarettes?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, first off, breathing smoke-free air is not a "right" at least last time I looked at the bill of rights.
Consider this concept of personal freedom: If I'm having a party, I have every right to tell my guests that I don't want them to smoke on property. My guests who smoke may choose not to come to my party because I won't let them smoke. They may choose to stand on the sidewalk in front of my house and smoke. They may choose to not smoke while at my party. They have the freedom to decide.
If I'm having a party, I have every right to tell my guests to light up. My guests who do not smoke can choose not to come to my party if they don't wish to inhale smoke. They may choose to avoid smokers and end up hanging out someplace where there are no smokers, such as on the sidewalk in front of my house. They may choose to put up with the smoke. They have the freedom to decide.
To me, personal freedom is about the right to choose. I don't have to agree with their choices. I may wish they wouldn't choose these things. I may not want to be around them when they choose these things. But that doesn't mean that I have the right to not allow them to choose.
Last night, I went out to dinner with a friend of mine. We were at a nice restaurant enjoying a quiet meal and conversation. Unfortunately, about half-way through our meal, a group of people came in and ended up sitting at a table close to us. They'd probably been sitting at the bar for an hour or so, so they were already a little drunk and loud. They ordered a couple of bottles of wine and started getting a little loud. It certainly was annoying. Were infringing on my "personal freedom" to enjoy a quiet dinner? Had I gone to the restaurant and complained, would I be infringing on their "personal freedom" to have a good time?
You'd prefer not to be annoyed by cigarette smoke while enjoying a night out and I can't say that I blame you. But to equate your preferences with "personal freedom" is a bit much. To go back to your term, "right", you don't have the "right" to make everybody else do what you want.
"[...] Even if the Lander mass was reduced by half it would still take a rocket 4 times as large as the one they are planning to land it on the moon. [...] Believe Chinese propaganda if you insist, but please don't pretend you are making any sense."
Well, then, what would keep them from launching it in four pieces? That's what I don't understand, and perhaps you can explain it to such a dolt as I.
As I look around the Internet, I see the Apollo CSM weighing in at 30 tons. I see the LM weighing in at 16 tons. We'll add another 14 tons for the engine and the fuel of the Apollo Saturn V third-stage--I can't find any details--to make it a grand total of 60 tons.
China, if all goes according to plan, will have a vehicle capable of lifting 25 tons in 7 years.
So we'll say that they send up three pieces. First, they send up the engine. After that, they send up the LM. After that, they send up the Service Module. Then they send up the astronauts. The astronauts dock with the service module. Then they go pick up the LM. Then they go pick up the engine. Then they head off.
I'll admit, I don't think anybody's ever done this before, but what's to say that China can't have a space "first"?
Again, maybe I'm missing something. I'll admit, I'm not an expert in these things. But is there anything that's keeping them from running a mission this way other than the fact that nobody has ever done it this way before?
"It is not at all feasible. Each craft would have meet basic mission requirements and be autonomous and storable in orbit or lunar orbit for months. A tall order for a country that has never docked spacecraft or developed high energy stages.. Then it would all have to come together perfectly at the time of the mission. Not likely."
You could have said the same about the United States when Kennedy said we would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade back in 1961. We had a nine year deadline (well eight-and-a-half, I suppose). The Chinese have set themselves a 12 year deadline. I'm sure that, with those extra few years, they can figure out how to build a better lunar lander than what we built in 1969.
That's assuming they do it the same way that NASA did--namely, one big rocket to heft everything up into orbit.
Suppose, instead, that they lift the rocket engine and fuel into orbit on one Long March. Then send the crew up in another Long March with the lander, etc. The crew gets into orbit, docks with the rocket engine, fires the engine and heads to the moon.
NASA didn't do it that way the first time around, though I believe they're going to do it that way this time around.
Slashdot Mirror
"It's hard to think of a fourth sequel that didn't really suck. There have been successful trilogies, but from then on, it's usually all downhill."
Bond tends to go up-and-down, I'll admit, but I wouldn't say they all sucked.
"'Police Academy 8' is in development, if anybody cares."
Now, if this isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is. Especially with Steve Guttenberg coming back. Did anyone see that remake of "The Poseidon Adventure" on NBC? Gads, is he old!
Old University Joke from years ago:
A Harvard Student and a Yale Student are in a bathroom taking a piss. The Yale Student finishes and goes to leave when the Harvard Student says, "At Harvard, they teach us to wash our hands after we urinate." The Yale Student replies, "At Yale, they teach us not to piss on our hands."
The Follow-Up:
From the stall, someone calls out, "Doesn't matter, guys. Somebody from Dartmouth was just here and pissed in the sink."
You're right--mea culpa.
The first e-mail from space was sent from a Macintosh Portable, but it was not the first "portable computer" in space.
My mistake.
Thinking about this also reminded me of another funny Portable/PowerBook story. A friend of mine's sister went out and bought a Macintosh Portable after seeing the PowerBooks. She preferred the Portable because, living in New York City, she wanted a heavy machine that would be less easy to steal. She'd had her purse snatched once or twice and could see someone coming up, giving her a shove and running off with this nice and light PowerBook.
No one was going "run" while lugging a 25 pound Macintosh Portable.
(I had this great mental image of some guy running up, shoving her, grabbing the portable and--wham!--he's stuck in one place like he was attached to an anchor.)
...They were shown in 1991 at WWDC. I was there.
The presentation was actually very well done, I thought--almost as good as a SteveNote. Back then, without Steve Jobs and his ego, essentially every group (desktop hardware, imaging, system software, etc.) gave a keynote on a different subject. Sculley gave the Monday keynote where he usually talked about the business side. Pretty boring stuff and Sculley wasn't that great a speaker anyway. Hell, even Bill Gates did a better presentation than Sculley (he was also there).
So we got this keynote from some VP of "Portable Computing." He started off talking about the Macintosh Portable and how they had finally identified the market for this device.
Cut to a shot of the space shuttle taking off.
Yup. The Macintosh Portable was the first personal computer in space (and I can hear the HP41c fans sharpening their knives). They showed it floating around the cabin of the shuttle, as light as a feather. They even showed something that everyone had wanted to see since the first Macintosh: A disk being ejected across the room.
Amusing.
The VP then showed off Apple Remote Access. One odd thing about his presentation, though, was that the computer he was using had no video-out. Thus, there was a guy standing behind him with a portable camera zoomed in on the screen. But if you paid attention--and I didn't until somebody mentioned it after the presentation--you could see the the edges around the screen were dark and a Macintosh Portable was sort of a light Macintosh SE grey. So ARA was being demoed on a PowerBook--we just couldn't see the whole thing.
Anyway, they were finally ready to unveil the replacement for the Macintosh Portable. They wheeled this table out onto the stage with a cloth covering a device. The VP whipped off the cloth to show us: A LaserWriter. Various chuckles from the audience. "Well, it's pretty portable..." the VP quipped as he tried to lift the LaserWriter (Apple LaserWriters weighed about 50 pounds). Suddenly, a disembodied voice from the booth called out: "Look in the paper tray." The VP reached into the paper tray and pulled out a PowerBook! And the audience went wild.
Definitely one of the better Apple presentations.
Yes. You know kids tomorrow. I have to walk uphill through three feet of snow to get to school. Kids tomorrow won't understand that.
They'll probably be on my lawn, too.
Yes. That's what consumers expect. I'm not buying "new, advanced, highly sophisticated hardware." I'm buying a box to play video games.
"They don't have to put it in the entertainment center. A little coffee table to the side is all they need. So they can't put it in there with their A/V equipment... so what?"
Well, I rashly assume I can put it in my entertainment center for the following reasons:
I mean, one of the ideas behind having an entertainment center is to put all the items in the same hunk of furniture rather than having them scattered about. So I have bought this big and beautiful entertainment center that holds all my devices and you're telling me that I now have to go out and buy a separate table to stick this thing on? And make sure it fits in with the rest of decor of the room.
Maybe you don't care about interior decorating and design. I'm with you on that one. But there are plenty of consumers who do care--who want a nice looking living room. This is what I mean when I say that Microsoft is not that great a "consumer company." The box is supposed to work in my environment. I'm not supposed to have to change my environment for the box to work. That's the difference between a consumer device and, say, a corporate device. Yes, if I'm installing a rack of servers, I have to have appropriate air-conditioning and such in my data center.
"Do you put your computer in the cabinet with the A/V equipment? If not, then why not? It does audio, it does video, by your reasoning it belongs in that cabinet!"
Yes, but my computer does not interface with other items in the cabinet. I don't surf the web on my TV. I don't listen to music stored on my computer via the stereo (although I once got one of those FM transmitter thingies and plugged it into the computer. It got funnier because I then put on my wireless headphones so that I didn't have to disturb my roomate. So I had an FM signal traveling across the room to the stereo and then an infrared signal traveling back. It seemed kind of silly, so I just went and bought some plain ol' headphones).
Well, I hate to be a jerk about this, but frankly the "blame the consumer" strategy just doesn't flush with me.
Yes, you're right. The consumer is properly warned and it's their fault for using the device outside it's proper operating specifications.
My complaint, though, is that a consumer device requires these specifications. As others have said, I bought an "A/V Device Cabinet" for my audio/video devices. It works just fine with all of my previous audio/video devices, but not with an XBox? To me, this is something that Microsoft should have considered when building a consumer device. There is a concept of reasonableness and I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect my XBox 360 to fit in a standard A/V Device Cabinet. This should have been part of the design spec.
I don't own an XBox (or PS2 or any console for that matter). If I did, I would want to stick it in the same area as my TV and DVR. Nope. Can't do that. I'd probably have to stick it on top of the whole entertainment center, right next to the picture of my family, the nice "loving couple" statue that I bought a few years ago, the attractive wood-burned picture of the covered bridge, and the wine-bottles in their funky wooden wine-bottle holders. Needless to say--one of those things just doesn't fit in with the decor.
To me, this is why I don't think Microsoft is a good "consumer" company.
Microsoft essentially expects me to design my entertainment center around their XBox. I may not want to do that. No matter how attractive the device is, it may not fit in the rest of the decor of my room and I'd rather "hide" it. And, no, I don't want to go out and buy a brand-new entertainment center just for the XBox.
Like I said, the RTFM excuse gets Microsoft off the hook. But it certainly doesn't make me want to buy one of their products.
"When a car is entered on the system it will 'ping' whenever it passes one of our cameras [...]"
Ah yes. The machine that goes 'ping'!
It's a version behind, but there is a Windows Media Player plug-in available for Mac OS X.
So we're halfway there...
Dear Sony,
I am boycotting all Sony products until the following demands have been met.
Thank you for your time.
Yup.
Well, "unjust" is debatable, in this case, but I'll try one on for size.
Go back to 1999 here in Westminster, CA. A guy, Truong Van Tran, hung a picture of Ho Chi Minh and a North Vietnamese flag in his video store. This caused about two months of protests by the Vietnamese community. In the end, the police found a way to bust him: Some of the videos he was selling in his story were pirated. He was arrested and sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Essentially, the community was looking for some way to get rid of this malcontent. Fortunately, the "video piracy" laws were on the books and they could bust him on that. The Judge was more than willing to give him the maximum sentence not because video piracy is such a heinous offense and the community was adamant that the laws concerning intellectual property must be observed, but because he had offended the community by displaying support for the hated North Vietnamese regime.
"iPod Killers for Christ..."
Oh man! I just found a new name for my punk rock band!
Thanks!
From the article you linked:
"For broadcasts the portion of a scan line that is visible can hold up to about 440 dots so a grid 480 high by 440 wide represents the maximum amount of picture detail possible."
In other words, 440 x 480.
Sigh. You need to pay attention. I'll say it again: marketshare is not the only element of the equation. Better code and better security procedures are a big part of it. I won't disagree. But to say that marketshare and obscurity--both definitions--don't fit into the equation is not seeing the forest through the trees.
Again, first we have the vulnerability. Parts of Mac OS X have vulnerabilities. So do parts of Windows. So what makes Windows different from Mac OS X?
One element is what you can do with a vulnerability. Under Windows, if you can get code to run, you can quietly take over the machine. The user of the machine will never be aware that they've been turned into a zombie. With Mac OS X, this is far more difficult or impossible. The user has to be involved, which requires some social engineering. So, if there's a bug in, say, some image libraries, I can turn a Windows machine into a zombie. If there's a bug in the same image libraries in Mac OS X, there's not a whole lot I can potentially do and remain undiscovered. So one element which makes Windows different from Mac OS X is what I can do with a vulnerability. If there's less I can do, there's less interest in exploiting the vulnerability.
That's where the better security comes in.
However, there's also some other elements which you're ignoring. One is obscurity. I mentioned "both definitions." If you look up obscure in the dictionary, you'll see that it means something that is not common and something that is hidden. To tackle the "hidden" part first, this has to do with the amount of work necessary to reverse engineer a patch. Again, like above, it's the amount of work I have to do for the gain I can get. If I spend a month reverse engineering a patch to figure out what it fixed and all I can do with it is pop up a dialog box in the user's face that says, "You suck", it's not really worthwhile.
Brief tangent: Also, if I spend a month reverse-engineering a patch, I think it's more likely that--as a percentage--more people have applied the patch on the Mac side than on the Windows side. Personal opinion, this has to do with trust. When Microsoft announced Windows Auto-Update, the world was aghast. "Microsoft will be scanning my hard drive, finding all my pirated software, and calling lawyers! I don't want Microsoft auto-updating anything!" When Apple had the same thing in Mac OS X, people said, "Whew! Now I won't have to worry about security issues." People, generally, trust Apple. They don't trust Microsoft. Again, by the time I have my evil payload ready to roll, most of my intended victims will be protected against it. Less incentive to put in the effort in the first place.
Back to "obscurity", the second element is obviously how prevalent the machines are. You mention "Unix-based systems", but which one? Are we talking linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, IRIX, OpenBSD, or NetBSD? Also, remember the hardware underneath a "Unix-based system" may be Intel, POWER, PowerPC, SPARC, or MIPS. Heck, that problem alone would make me want to stay away! I need to have the hardware and software combinations in order to do the hack.
The final element is how the machines are being used. There are more Unix-based servers than Windows based servers, but there are more Windows-based clients than all platform-based servers. If I'm trying to build a botnet, I don't have that much interest in servers. If I'm trying to steal credit card numbers, I can either steal them from the server or the client. The client is much easier to hit and I can get lots of numbers through volume. I can get lots of numbers by hitting one server, but it'll be a lot more work. To draw a so-so analogy, is it better to rob 50 small-town bank branches or to rob Fort Knox? Robbing Fort Knox will get you more money than the 50 small-town banks, but it will be much more difficult.
That's why when people trot out the statistics, I have to question the interpretation. Could the lack of viruses for "Unix
Hear hear! Actually, my favorite was the one in ColorSync. Very scary stuff, because some programs ignore ColorSync profiles, so you might still be able to view your images. But Safari and IE do not ignore them...
As an aside, this is where the the comment about "Macs have no viruses because they have low marketshare" holds some sway with me. I agree with everyone who says Macs are more secure than Windows, don't get me wrong. Once your code is running, it's much tougher to do anything to spread a virus in the same way that viruses spread in Windows. But part of it is that nobody really does the immense amount of reverse engineering necessary to write a virus or worm based upon an a published vulnerability. While, with Windows, an entire cottage industry has been built to figure that stuff out because there's money in it.
These things, as with many things in life, do not stem from one reason. Windows has viruses because of poor security. Windows has lots of viruses because of marketshare. Macs have fewer viruses because of better security. Macs have no viruses because of marketshare.
"Ford wont honour my new vehicle warranty if I modify the engine?"
Ford will honor your new vehicle warranty if you modify the engine as long as the problem cannot reasonably be connected to the engine.
For example, if I install a high-flow air filter and a few months later the brakes stop working, Ford will honor my warranty. If I install a high-flow air filter and the cylinders break, Ford might be less willing to fix it under warranty. It would be up to Ford, by the way, to show that the damage was due to the modification and you can take them to court if you don't agree. Depending on what happens, it may not be worth it.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is the federal regulation in this case.
This may be off-topic, but it's a common myth that if a person modifies their car, they lose their entire warranty. It's not true.
...and in the audible department, it's Oh-Ess-Ten. Not Oh-Ess-Ex.
(I'm reminded of when they announced OS X at WWDC '98 and we were told, specifically, that it is Mac O.S. Ten. Not "X". Then, at one of the printing workshops, some marketing bozo from Canon, I think, was up on stage talking about how excited they were to be developing printer drivers for Mac O.S. "X". Needless to say, the crowd wasn't real impressed.)
Okay, let's see...
There's AbiWord. I wasn't real impressed, but you could try that out. Also check out Mariner Write, Z-Write, and, of course, NisusWriter. You might also check out ThinkFree Office.
Try checking out the Macintosh Products Guide for more information.
Well, you'd get fewer DVDs, but you wouldn't get better quality.
They could probably redo the films, but I would imagine that TOS, TNG, and DS9 are forever trapped at low resolution. I'm not sure about Voyager, but I'm pretty sure that Enterprise was done in HD.
Of course, since TNG is probably the bulk of the DVDs, you'd save some space there...
Well, first off, breathing smoke-free air is not a "right" at least last time I looked at the bill of rights.
Consider this concept of personal freedom: If I'm having a party, I have every right to tell my guests that I don't want them to smoke on property. My guests who smoke may choose not to come to my party because I won't let them smoke. They may choose to stand on the sidewalk in front of my house and smoke. They may choose to not smoke while at my party. They have the freedom to decide.
If I'm having a party, I have every right to tell my guests to light up. My guests who do not smoke can choose not to come to my party if they don't wish to inhale smoke. They may choose to avoid smokers and end up hanging out someplace where there are no smokers, such as on the sidewalk in front of my house. They may choose to put up with the smoke. They have the freedom to decide.
To me, personal freedom is about the right to choose. I don't have to agree with their choices. I may wish they wouldn't choose these things. I may not want to be around them when they choose these things. But that doesn't mean that I have the right to not allow them to choose.
Last night, I went out to dinner with a friend of mine. We were at a nice restaurant enjoying a quiet meal and conversation. Unfortunately, about half-way through our meal, a group of people came in and ended up sitting at a table close to us. They'd probably been sitting at the bar for an hour or so, so they were already a little drunk and loud. They ordered a couple of bottles of wine and started getting a little loud. It certainly was annoying. Were infringing on my "personal freedom" to enjoy a quiet dinner? Had I gone to the restaurant and complained, would I be infringing on their "personal freedom" to have a good time?
You'd prefer not to be annoyed by cigarette smoke while enjoying a night out and I can't say that I blame you. But to equate your preferences with "personal freedom" is a bit much. To go back to your term, "right", you don't have the "right" to make everybody else do what you want.
"[...] Even if the Lander mass was reduced by half it would still take a rocket 4 times as large as the one they are planning to land it on the moon. [...] Believe Chinese propaganda if you insist, but please don't pretend you are making any sense."
Well, then, what would keep them from launching it in four pieces? That's what I don't understand, and perhaps you can explain it to such a dolt as I.
As I look around the Internet, I see the Apollo CSM weighing in at 30 tons. I see the LM weighing in at 16 tons. We'll add another 14 tons for the engine and the fuel of the Apollo Saturn V third-stage--I can't find any details--to make it a grand total of 60 tons.
China, if all goes according to plan, will have a vehicle capable of lifting 25 tons in 7 years.
So we'll say that they send up three pieces. First, they send up the engine. After that, they send up the LM. After that, they send up the Service Module. Then they send up the astronauts. The astronauts dock with the service module. Then they go pick up the LM. Then they go pick up the engine. Then they head off.
I'll admit, I don't think anybody's ever done this before, but what's to say that China can't have a space "first"?
Again, maybe I'm missing something. I'll admit, I'm not an expert in these things. But is there anything that's keeping them from running a mission this way other than the fact that nobody has ever done it this way before?
"It is not at all feasible. Each craft would have meet basic mission requirements and be autonomous and storable in orbit or lunar orbit for months. A tall order for a country that has never docked spacecraft or developed high energy stages.. Then it would all have to come together perfectly at the time of the mission. Not likely."
You could have said the same about the United States when Kennedy said we would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade back in 1961. We had a nine year deadline (well eight-and-a-half, I suppose). The Chinese have set themselves a 12 year deadline. I'm sure that, with those extra few years, they can figure out how to build a better lunar lander than what we built in 1969.
That's assuming they do it the same way that NASA did--namely, one big rocket to heft everything up into orbit.
Suppose, instead, that they lift the rocket engine and fuel into orbit on one Long March. Then send the crew up in another Long March with the lander, etc. The crew gets into orbit, docks with the rocket engine, fires the engine and heads to the moon.
NASA didn't do it that way the first time around, though I believe they're going to do it that way this time around.
"Americans landed on the moon first and put a flag there."
Chinese then land on the moon and take the flag down and put up their own.
"Flag? What flag? It was a hoax. There was no flag here. We are the first!"