I feel the same way but for different reasons. I think voting is like choosing the lesser of two evils since none of the candidates represent my beliefs exactly. Political muckraking is like a Linux vs. Microsoft flame-war that gets stirred up every four years when a new version comes out. Personally, I don't care which candidate can answer a phone at 3:00 AM, nor do I care about their personal lives.
Sometimes I think I should start my own political party. I'd probably call it something like "The Progressive Apathy and Indifference Party". The party slogan would just be "meh". All I would need to rise to power is enough United Statians who only give a small fraction of a rat's ass about politics to vote for me.
The scary thing is that a lot of people will opt in for this kind of device without thinking through all the possible consequences. I think it's illegal to photograph children for commercial purposes without parental consent. The device must get around this through a EULA or a contract when you sign up. The thought of the _possibility_ that some stranger could be watching my kids through this box is reason enough not to get one.
Maybe I should skip the tinfoil hat and go straight to work on a house sized Faraday Cage.
As long as the camera isn't sending data back to Comcast then I don't see what the big deal is. Sure the potential for abuse is there but the idea behind this technology is to make it easier for people to watch TV and to play Chinpokomon commercials whenever the kids are in the room and Girls Gone Wild ads when there's just me^H^H a guy on the couch.
Personally, I don't like to watch TV mostly because of the commercials. I don't need to be reminded that (product X) exists every 15 minutes, sometimes twice in one commercial break. I'd rather fall down a flight of stairs than go to the movies for similar reasons. I'm sure they make pills for people who think like me.
I recently bought a Linksys router and was pleasantly surprised to find that it had encryption enabled by default out of the box. I'm sure other manufacturers do the same thing. Hopefully the piggy-backing issue will fade away along with the old hardware.
I have a feeling that a lot of consumers will upgrade once 802.11n devices move into the main stream (since the guys at (insert name of store you hate most here) will tell them it will make their internet faster/more secure/whatever) and/or ISP's start using IPv6.
I don't think an IP address should ever be grounds for accusation its not like my IP address identifies my computer it only goes to my router there are many other computers and users behind it.
I agree. The problem is that some people (like the person I bought the router for) still think it's OK to directly connect to the internet without a firewall because they don't know any better. When I told this person that not having a firewall was like forcing your computer have unprotected sex with millions of other computers the person agreed to get one ASAP. Maybe routers should be called internet condoms.
For me it's not about trusting the update source, it's about having a copy of the updates ready for install on a computer when time is an issue. Not everyone has the bandwidth to suck down 270 Meg service packs... yet. I used Autopatcher frequently when I was an on site PC tech since it saved a lot of time for my clients.
The plot is much more sinister than we think.
Step 1: Cut cables
Step 2: Post story on Slashdot
Step 3: Have everyone ping Iranian servers to death to prove story wrong
Step 4: ???
Step 5: PROFIT!
I used to refer to Dell as the Intel factory outlet. Basically a company dedicated to showing off what Intel parts can do in concert with each other. A lot of my customers are surprised when I tell them that most computer manufacturers like Dell and HP use similar components to what you can buy yourself and wrap it up in a case with their logo on it that was also made by another company.
Google is much better off talking to the ODM's directly instead of using Dell as a middle man. In fact I think it would be more of a turn-off to some buyers to attach the Dell name to a product since more people have associated Dell with a negative experience than they have with Google. I've never heard of anybody getting angry over Google's search results but I have seen first hand what a Dell Dimension looks like after having 10 rounds of.45's put through it.
I work in the data recovery field and I can say that it _might_ be possible to recover overwritten data on older drives by messing with their calibration but at that point the likelihood of success has to be incredibly small. With the data density of modern drives being as high as 250Gb/in^2 you would need some serious equipment and a lot of time, money, and patience. In fact I imagine that if the data was that important that you would go to such lengths to recover it you should shoot yourself for not having a backup of it somewhere.
The recovery process for SSD media is actually similar to normal flash memory. In fact it's easier than normal drives since there are no heads and platters to worry about. So yes deleted files can still be recovered and drive scrubbing utilities will still work as intended.
Oh I definitely intend to read book 11 and 12 if it gets released. In fact I've recently started reading the series from the beginning hoping that book 12 would be released by the time I was ready for it.
I completely agree with you. It seemed like every even book after #2 was spent setting up a big event in the odd one to follow. I stopped in the middle of 10 because book 11 hadn't been released yet and I kind of lost momentum.
All things considered, whether you like his books or hated them, he kept on writing until the end like he promised and that's something worthy of respect.
I used it a lot as a PC tech. Microsoft might not realize that some people use dial-up still and downloading large updates isn't really practical. With Autopatcher all I had to do was pop in a CD or a thumb drive and get down to business patching up Windows. At least then I could be sure that when I left my clients computer fully patched up no matter what their connection was like. Way to go MS.
/em Pours out a '40 for the departed Autopatcher ; ;
The game developers get revenue even if someone pirates the game this way. A work around might be to find a way to block the ad servers like Ad-Block does for Firefox, but then you might have 404 error textures in game.
Autopatcher is really good. Basically it's just a GUI that lets you select what updates you want to install and runs the appropriate installer for that update, they don't repackage or modify the updates from MS. I used it a lot when I worked as a PC tech. I burned it onto a CD and took it with me on service calls so I could install updates on clients computers without having to depend on their internet connection. Just my $0.02.
This reminds me of the Sega Genesis back in the good ol' days of gaming. Sega came out with the 32X and Sega CD (Mega Drive) add-ons but only a few companies would develop games that would work with them since only a relatively small audience had them. The same is true with the PS2 hard drive. I don't think many software publishers will actually use HD-DVD unles MS twists their arm.
I remember reading awhile back about a guy who had his finger chopped off by a thief who was trying to steal his biometric sensor equipped car. What if a thief cut off both of your thumbs? How would you call your bank and credit card companies?
As a CS student I would say definately give a list of approved IDE's. I know a lot of people who used Visual Studio to write C and C++ programs that were supposed to compile on the department's non-x86 Linux server. If your app wouldn't compile without errors you got a 0 for 25% of your semester grade. Needless to say gcc barfed out hundreds of errors despite the fact that VS compiled and ran the program fine. On a side note, the binaries VS generated were also about 10 to 20 times larger than those generated by gcc, not a big deal since the assignments required less than 1000 lines of code but interesting none the less.
"when was the last time you saw Windows bluescreen?"
Windows XP x64 edition gave me a BSOD yesterday while installing IDE RAID drivers.
Windows has improved since the days of Win 98 though. I remember whenever Internet Explorer crashed it would take the rest of the OS with it (I switched to Netscape after that happened one time too many). Windows 2000 really impressed me with it's ability to recover from application errors without having to lose whatever else I was working on.
I can't help but think about all the Ad revenue this asshat generates for the sites that publish his work. The sites that he writes for may not care so much about the accuracy or sanity of his ramblings as long as the checks keep rolling in. If you really don't like the man then simply don't read his articles. Maybe if enough people boycot him then (hopefully) he will fade off into obscurity.
I had a similar problem only with people trying to fax a utility company with a number one off from mine. It would really piss me off when people would have their fax auto-redial 30 seconds after I hung up on it. I eventually resorted to using my company fax to send them a hundred copies of "Stop faxing my phone!" If someone faxed me while I was at home I put my phone next to my PC speakers and played Counter Strike or if the timing was right, a porno.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes I think I should start my own political party. I'd probably call it something like "The Progressive Apathy and Indifference Party". The party slogan would just be "meh". All I would need to rise to power is enough United Statians who only give a small fraction of a rat's ass about politics to vote for me.
The scary thing is that a lot of people will opt in for this kind of device without thinking through all the possible consequences. I think it's illegal to photograph children for commercial purposes without parental consent. The device must get around this through a EULA or a contract when you sign up. The thought of the _possibility_ that some stranger could be watching my kids through this box is reason enough not to get one.
Maybe I should skip the tinfoil hat and go straight to work on a house sized Faraday Cage.
Personally, I don't like to watch TV mostly because of the commercials. I don't need to be reminded that (product X) exists every 15 minutes, sometimes twice in one commercial break. I'd rather fall down a flight of stairs than go to the movies for similar reasons. I'm sure they make pills for people who think like me.
I have a feeling that a lot of consumers will upgrade once 802.11n devices move into the main stream (since the guys at (insert name of store you hate most here) will tell them it will make their internet faster/more secure/whatever) and/or ISP's start using IPv6.
I don't think an IP address should ever be grounds for accusation its not like my IP address identifies my computer it only goes to my router there are many other computers and users behind it.I agree. The problem is that some people (like the person I bought the router for) still think it's OK to directly connect to the internet without a firewall because they don't know any better. When I told this person that not having a firewall was like forcing your computer have unprotected sex with millions of other computers the person agreed to get one ASAP. Maybe routers should be called internet condoms.
I don't pay Google to provide me with a service. If an ISP wants to inject ads into your browser they should at least give you a discount.
Tip: data can be saved to a USB Drive thus eliminating waste!
For me it's not about trusting the update source, it's about having a copy of the updates ready for install on a computer when time is an issue. Not everyone has the bandwidth to suck down 270 Meg service packs... yet. I used Autopatcher frequently when I was an on site PC tech since it saved a lot of time for my clients.
The plot is much more sinister than we think. Step 1: Cut cables Step 2: Post story on Slashdot Step 3: Have everyone ping Iranian servers to death to prove story wrong Step 4: ??? Step 5: PROFIT!
I used to refer to Dell as the Intel factory outlet. Basically a company dedicated to showing off what Intel parts can do in concert with each other. A lot of my customers are surprised when I tell them that most computer manufacturers like Dell and HP use similar components to what you can buy yourself and wrap it up in a case with their logo on it that was also made by another company. Google is much better off talking to the ODM's directly instead of using Dell as a middle man. In fact I think it would be more of a turn-off to some buyers to attach the Dell name to a product since more people have associated Dell with a negative experience than they have with Google. I've never heard of anybody getting angry over Google's search results but I have seen first hand what a Dell Dimension looks like after having 10 rounds of .45's put through it.
I work in the data recovery field and I can say that it _might_ be possible to recover overwritten data on older drives by messing with their calibration but at that point the likelihood of success has to be incredibly small. With the data density of modern drives being as high as 250Gb/in^2 you would need some serious equipment and a lot of time, money, and patience. In fact I imagine that if the data was that important that you would go to such lengths to recover it you should shoot yourself for not having a backup of it somewhere.
The recovery process for SSD media is actually similar to normal flash memory. In fact it's easier than normal drives since there are no heads and platters to worry about. So yes deleted files can still be recovered and drive scrubbing utilities will still work as intended.
Is that a reference to Real Genius?
Oh I definitely intend to read book 11 and 12 if it gets released. In fact I've recently started reading the series from the beginning hoping that book 12 would be released by the time I was ready for it.
I completely agree with you. It seemed like every even book after #2 was spent setting up a big event in the odd one to follow. I stopped in the middle of 10 because book 11 hadn't been released yet and I kind of lost momentum. All things considered, whether you like his books or hated them, he kept on writing until the end like he promised and that's something worthy of respect.
/em Pours out a '40 for the departed Autopatcher ; ;
The game developers get revenue even if someone pirates the game this way. A work around might be to find a way to block the ad servers like Ad-Block does for Firefox, but then you might have 404 error textures in game.
Autopatcher is really good. Basically it's just a GUI that lets you select what updates you want to install and runs the appropriate installer for that update, they don't repackage or modify the updates from MS. I used it a lot when I worked as a PC tech. I burned it onto a CD and took it with me on service calls so I could install updates on clients computers without having to depend on their internet connection. Just my $0.02.
This reminds me of the Sega Genesis back in the good ol' days of gaming. Sega came out with the 32X and Sega CD (Mega Drive) add-ons but only a few companies would develop games that would work with them since only a relatively small audience had them. The same is true with the PS2 hard drive. I don't think many software publishers will actually use HD-DVD unles MS twists their arm.
I remember reading awhile back about a guy who had his finger chopped off by a thief who was trying to steal his biometric sensor equipped car. What if a thief cut off both of your thumbs? How would you call your bank and credit card companies?
As a CS student I would say definately give a list of approved IDE's. I know a lot of people who used Visual Studio to write C and C++ programs that were supposed to compile on the department's non-x86 Linux server. If your app wouldn't compile without errors you got a 0 for 25% of your semester grade. Needless to say gcc barfed out hundreds of errors despite the fact that VS compiled and ran the program fine. On a side note, the binaries VS generated were also about 10 to 20 times larger than those generated by gcc, not a big deal since the assignments required less than 1000 lines of code but interesting none the less.
They're surpressing Free Energy because it doesn't exist! (This message brought to you by your local electric company)
Windows XP x64 edition gave me a BSOD yesterday while installing IDE RAID drivers.
Windows has improved since the days of Win 98 though. I remember whenever Internet Explorer crashed it would take the rest of the OS with it (I switched to Netscape after that happened one time too many). Windows 2000 really impressed me with it's ability to recover from application errors without having to lose whatever else I was working on.
I can't help but think about all the Ad revenue this asshat generates for the sites that publish his work. The sites that he writes for may not care so much about the accuracy or sanity of his ramblings as long as the checks keep rolling in. If you really don't like the man then simply don't read his articles. Maybe if enough people boycot him then (hopefully) he will fade off into obscurity.
Oh the irony! I should've known I was asking for that.
I had a similar problem only with people trying to fax a utility company with a number one off from mine. It would really piss me off when people would have their fax auto-redial 30 seconds after I hung up on it. I eventually resorted to using my company fax to send them a hundred copies of "Stop faxing my phone!" If someone faxed me while I was at home I put my phone next to my PC speakers and played Counter Strike or if the timing was right, a porno.
If the people with mod points actually read the article themselves 90% of the replies to this article would be modded "Off Topic".