yeah RTB warranties are only worth it if you can afford to lose the machine for a while and also raise the issue of data security.
on site warranties are nice if you don't want to be bothered repairing stuff yourself and i also take the offering of a decent warranty at a reasonable price as a sign that the system must be reasonablly wall built.
btw i belive there are warranties where they just replace the broken parts and let you install them youself though i think they are only generally availible to larger customers.
However I suspect... and I may easily be wrong here... that it is the same card in both systems. I don't know much about Ethernet cards, and maybe someone else will comment on this point. afaict almost all modern motherboards have onboard gigabit ethernet.
Sure, it might take a while, but it would be possible. sure but with a decent hash algorithm the sun would most likely go red giant before you finished so its a non-issue.
For example, if someone can produce a page of text that has the same hash value as garbage, or as a video of a monkey, the value of the hash function is not diminished. due to the block based nature of many hash algorithms and the nature of many file formats, for many applications if someone can find ANY two inputs that give the same hash you are in shit, this is what has essentially happened with MD5 and is dangerously close (read: isn't known to have been done yet but someone with the NSAs rescources could almost certainly do it) with SHA1
The ideal hash is a hash where it is virtually impossible to find a collision now or in the forseeable future. Since every hash is vulnerable to the birthday attack we set that as our "perfect hash of a given length" and consider any reduction in the break time from that to be breakage of the hash.
This problem was mostly caused by lazy pc repair shops and neighboorhood kids. I can well belive that,
Its going to be so much less effort to stick in a slipstreamed pirate CD and enter your standard pirate VLK than to try and find the correct big brand oem recovery CD and try to convince it to work in a way that didn't wipe the entire system and leave it loaded with shitware or to use a generic oem CD and try to convince MS to activate the result.
At the end of the day time is money and doing it the legit way is so much more effort!
i suspect people find it harder to ring up a real person and lie to them than to punch some buttons on a computer.
also i suspect MS records thier activation phone calls. Its much easier to claim it wasn't you who did it with online activation and that probablly also gives some people a greater sense of security.
I remember someone saying on here a while ago that airport secuity was mostly about making terrorists nervous. I think this is a similar thing.
When you digest a message and obtain a hash it is obvious that there will be collisions. It is obvious that there will be many possible inputs that produce the same output.
however the actual chance of encountering two inputs that hash to the same value by accident is vanishingly small.
with SHA1 even finding two inputs that hash to the same value deliberately is very hard and finding a second input to match an existing output is considered virtually impossible.
If I show you some pictures of people can you tell which one is me? Would you let me on a plane with just a grainy picture? that is a very different situation because two photos of you will be far from identical. Secure hash functions are only usefull in the case where things are supposed to be identical (two copies of the same file for example).
Not quite, because spammers don't really pay for bandwidth. They steal the computing power and bandwidth from victims (virus infected machines) to set up botnets, and then leverage the stolen resources for their marketing business. it may be stolen but unless they are doing the stealing themselves it still has a price
i can't belive the crackers give the broadband connected windows boxes to the spammers free of charge.
there is no complete soloution to the problem of spam that doesn't bring much bigger problems (the only one i can think of is a centralised system with a group who bans spammers and tight control of new registrations)
but that doesn't make systems that reduce the ammount of spam i have to check manually useless to me.
spectrum use NEEDs to be regulated by the goverment (the alternative is a "who can shout loudest" type compertition. This will waste huge ammounts of energy , bring all existing systems which are built to be power frugal to thier knees and generally fuck up wireless communications for everyone) to thier knees and thier are far too many customers for congress to handle that directly.
yes thier definition of broadband is obviously designed not to count ISDN BRI (and i suspect there are other restrictions to discount leased lines which are way too expensive for homes/small buisnesses) but to count even the most crippled forms of dsl/cable.
Last time I did a Linux installation, I popped the CD in, booted and had to enter just *one* piece of information: my name. How could that be more intuitive? Have you ever done an XP installation to see how "non-intuitive" it is? my take on installing windows and linux is that windows is easier PROVIDED you have the original disks/manuals for all hardware to hand. Linux is easier otherwise.
Both windows and linux make it fairly easy to reach the "its installed and sort of working but some hardware is partially or totally disfunctional" point, with windows its then a matter of feeding in manufacturers drivers (easy if you have the disks/manuals to hand, anywhere from annoying to very hard depending on how unusual your hardware is otherwise).
Linux tends to support more hardware out of the box but getting the remaining stuff (3D graphics and wireless are the biggies) working can require following fairly complex tutorials.
(The other thing that I wonder why other file systems haven't adopted is NTFS's alternate streams. They seem like they could be really useful for some stuff...) apple has the rescource fork which is kinda similar
but in general such features don't catch on because you can't rely on them being present(they caught on over in mac land in the past because the only FS supported them but even there apps are now moving away from them). If you want your applications data files to be able to survive being copied arround accross many different platforms using many different filesystems, many different network protocols and many different tools you stick to the lowest common denominator definition of what a file is (a sequence of octets of arbitary length whose meaning depends on the application reading it).
right, migration can be (though isn't always) expensive and so legacy systems will provide microsoft with a stream of income for years to come through upgrades expansions etc.
but legacy systems can only keep MS going for so long, they need to maintain a software ecosystem where windows is dominant so that those who can't (due to BSA threats or whatever) pirate software continue to buy thier software.
When people are designing cryptographic protocols, they always assume a perfect cipher, a perfect hash, etc. hmm, i think only and idiot would do that
surely the sensible approach would be:
1: work out the minimum keysize/hashsize that will be unfeasible to crack by brute force in the time you need the chipher/hash/whatever to remain solid using the equiment your enemy is expected to have. 2: add an allowance for mores law (say 1 bit per year you need it to remain solid for, 2 bits per year if its a hash in a scenario vulnerable to birthday attack) 3: add an allowance for algorithmic weaknesses (say double the key/hash lengths) 4: pick the next conviniant size up from this
this isn't perfect of course, we could get quantum computing or the algorithm could be totally brocken but its a good starting point.
That's an exceptionally ironic statement to make about an organization responsible for space exploration. no its not really, space exploration is HARD, fixing things in space is EVEN HARDER, a small fault can DOOM A MISSION and if the mission is manned KILL THE CREW (especially if it takes place during the crucial liftoff and landing phases).
so once you have a system that works you don't take making major changes to it lightly, any benifits of a new system have to be balanced carefully against the risk it poses.
That makes NO sense. If FOSS applications were equal to that of the closed source realm, people would be using them regardless of whether piracy was possible. firstly even if they were "equal" people would be likely to stick with what they were familiar with unless put under high pressure not to.
secondly even though windows/windows server/office/iis/.net and linux/samba/openoffice/apache/php aren't equal (they each have thier own strenghts and weaknesses) i'm sure there are plenty of people who use pirate MS software now who would rather put up with a switch to linux than pay for MS software. I'd imagine this is especially true in poorer countries where the time/money balance is somwhat different.
microsoft can't admit it but i'm postive they would preffer you to run pirate MS software than to run a linux based stack because while windows remains dominant some people will continue to pay for it (buisnesses threatened by the BSA, OEMs, the paranoid, those without access to a supply of pirate software, those who simply respect copyright etc)
afaict there are two seperate issues with using partman on vista partitions.
the first is the ntfsresize issue you mentioned.
the other is an issue that only applies to partitions creating using vistas installer which is that vistas installer doesn't cylinder align partitions and this causes partman to do the partition level resize wrong.
1: are all the propietry bits you want on your desktop linux system (crossover, cadega, theese new drivers etc) plus the overhead of a distro who can put it in one conviant package for OEMs more or less than an OEM windows licence 2: assuming they are cheaper is it possible to put sufficant shitware on the default install that the price advantage doesn't dissapear (iirc big brands make a fair bit out of shipping windows shitware, possiblly more than they pay out for the windows license)
we measure distances to places in units of time not altogether unreasonable, for many people the time it takes to get somewhere is more significant than the distance (the two are related to some degree but there are other factors too like speed limits and traffic congestion).
but comptuers tend to get thrown out after 5 some do but some stick arround for much longer, particularlly ones acting as say servers for some strange buisness app.
also just because a PC has been finished with by its first user does not mean that it will get scrapped immediately. Some do but others get taken home, given to charity, demoted within the organisation etc.
also at least in home use one of the main reasons PCs get thrown out afaict is malware infestation, hopefully XP SP2 and vista will go some way towards reducing that.
but i also think that caps are generally far better than TFA makes out (with the obvious exception of the known bad batch that went though a couple of years ago)
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yeah RTB warranties are only worth it if you can afford to lose the machine for a while and also raise the issue of data security.
on site warranties are nice if you don't want to be bothered repairing stuff yourself and i also take the offering of a decent warranty at a reasonable price as a sign that the system must be reasonablly wall built.
btw i belive there are warranties where they just replace the broken parts and let you install them youself though i think they are only generally availible to larger customers.
However I suspect... and I may easily be wrong here... that it is the same card in both systems. I don't know much about Ethernet cards, and maybe someone else will comment on this point.
afaict almost all modern motherboards have onboard gigabit ethernet.
Sure, it might take a while, but it would be possible.
sure but with a decent hash algorithm the sun would most likely go red giant before you finished so its a non-issue.
For example, if someone can produce a page of text that has the same hash value as garbage, or as a video of a monkey, the value of the hash function is not diminished.
due to the block based nature of many hash algorithms and the nature of many file formats, for many applications if someone can find ANY two inputs that give the same hash you are in shit, this is what has essentially happened with MD5 and is dangerously close (read: isn't known to have been done yet but someone with the NSAs rescources could almost certainly do it) with SHA1
The ideal hash is a hash where it is virtually impossible to find a collision now or in the forseeable future. Since every hash is vulnerable to the birthday attack we set that as our "perfect hash of a given length" and consider any reduction in the break time from that to be breakage of the hash.
This problem was mostly caused by lazy pc repair shops and neighboorhood kids.
I can well belive that,
Its going to be so much less effort to stick in a slipstreamed pirate CD and enter your standard pirate VLK than to try and find the correct big brand oem recovery CD and try to convince it to work in a way that didn't wipe the entire system and leave it loaded with shitware or to use a generic oem CD and try to convince MS to activate the result.
At the end of the day time is money and doing it the legit way is so much more effort!
i suspect people find it harder to ring up a real person and lie to them than to punch some buttons on a computer.
also i suspect MS records thier activation phone calls. Its much easier to claim it wasn't you who did it with online activation and that probablly also gives some people a greater sense of security.
I remember someone saying on here a while ago that airport secuity was mostly about making terrorists nervous. I think this is a similar thing.
When you digest a message and obtain a hash it is obvious that there will be collisions.
It is obvious that there will be many possible inputs that produce the same output.
however the actual chance of encountering two inputs that hash to the same value by accident is vanishingly small.
with SHA1 even finding two inputs that hash to the same value deliberately is very hard and finding a second input to match an existing output is considered virtually impossible.
If I show you some pictures of people can you tell which one is me? Would you let me on a plane with just a grainy picture?
that is a very different situation because two photos of you will be far from identical. Secure hash functions are only usefull in the case where things are supposed to be identical (two copies of the same file for example).
Not quite, because spammers don't really pay for bandwidth. They steal the computing power and bandwidth from victims (virus infected machines) to set up botnets, and then leverage the stolen resources for their marketing business.
it may be stolen but unless they are doing the stealing themselves it still has a price
i can't belive the crackers give the broadband connected windows boxes to the spammers free of charge.
there is no complete soloution to the problem of spam that doesn't bring much bigger problems (the only one i can think of is a centralised system with a group who bans spammers and tight control of new registrations)
but that doesn't make systems that reduce the ammount of spam i have to check manually useless to me.
remove the second "to thier knees"
spectrum use NEEDs to be regulated by the goverment (the alternative is a "who can shout loudest" type compertition. This will waste huge ammounts of energy , bring all existing systems which are built to be power frugal to thier knees and generally fuck up wireless communications for everyone) to thier knees and thier are far too many customers for congress to handle that directly.
yes thier definition of broadband is obviously designed not to count ISDN BRI (and i suspect there are other restrictions to discount leased lines which are way too expensive for homes/small buisnesses) but to count even the most crippled forms of dsl/cable.
Last time I did a Linux installation, I popped the CD in, booted and had to enter just *one* piece of information: my name. How could that be more intuitive? Have you ever done an XP installation to see how "non-intuitive" it is?
my take on installing windows and linux is that windows is easier PROVIDED you have the original disks/manuals for all hardware to hand. Linux is easier otherwise.
Both windows and linux make it fairly easy to reach the "its installed and sort of working but some hardware is partially or totally disfunctional" point, with windows its then a matter of feeding in manufacturers drivers (easy if you have the disks/manuals to hand, anywhere from annoying to very hard depending on how unusual your hardware is otherwise).
Linux tends to support more hardware out of the box but getting the remaining stuff (3D graphics and wireless are the biggies) working can require following fairly complex tutorials.
(The other thing that I wonder why other file systems haven't adopted is NTFS's alternate streams. They seem like they could be really useful for some stuff...)
apple has the rescource fork which is kinda similar
but in general such features don't catch on because you can't rely on them being present(they caught on over in mac land in the past because the only FS supported them but even there apps are now moving away from them). If you want your applications data files to be able to survive being copied arround accross many different platforms using many different filesystems, many different network protocols and many different tools you stick to the lowest common denominator definition of what a file is (a sequence of octets of arbitary length whose meaning depends on the application reading it).
right, migration can be (though isn't always) expensive and so legacy systems will provide microsoft with a stream of income for years to come through upgrades expansions etc.
but legacy systems can only keep MS going for so long, they need to maintain a software ecosystem where windows is dominant so that those who can't (due to BSA threats or whatever) pirate software continue to buy thier software.
When people are designing cryptographic protocols, they always assume a perfect cipher, a perfect hash, etc.
hmm, i think only and idiot would do that
surely the sensible approach would be:
1: work out the minimum keysize/hashsize that will be unfeasible to crack by brute force in the time you need the chipher/hash/whatever to remain solid using the equiment your enemy is expected to have.
2: add an allowance for mores law (say 1 bit per year you need it to remain solid for, 2 bits per year if its a hash in a scenario vulnerable to birthday attack)
3: add an allowance for algorithmic weaknesses (say double the key/hash lengths)
4: pick the next conviniant size up from this
this isn't perfect of course, we could get quantum computing or the algorithm could be totally brocken but its a good starting point.
That's an exceptionally ironic statement to make about an organization responsible for space exploration.
no its not really, space exploration is HARD, fixing things in space is EVEN HARDER, a small fault can DOOM A MISSION and if the mission is manned KILL THE CREW (especially if it takes place during the crucial liftoff and landing phases).
so once you have a system that works you don't take making major changes to it lightly, any benifits of a new system have to be balanced carefully against the risk it poses.
That makes NO sense. If FOSS applications were equal to that of the closed source realm, people would be using them regardless of whether piracy was possible.
firstly even if they were "equal" people would be likely to stick with what they were familiar with unless put under high pressure not to.
secondly even though windows/windows server/office/iis/.net and linux/samba/openoffice/apache/php aren't equal (they each have thier own strenghts and weaknesses) i'm sure there are plenty of people who use pirate MS software now who would rather put up with a switch to linux than pay for MS software. I'd imagine this is especially true in poorer countries where the time/money balance is somwhat different.
microsoft can't admit it but i'm postive they would preffer you to run pirate MS software than to run a linux based stack because while windows remains dominant some people will continue to pay for it (buisnesses threatened by the BSA, OEMs, the paranoid, those without access to a supply of pirate software, those who simply respect copyright etc)
afaict there are two seperate issues with using partman on vista partitions.
the first is the ntfsresize issue you mentioned.
the other is an issue that only applies to partitions creating using vistas installer which is that vistas installer doesn't cylinder align partitions and this causes partman to do the partition level resize wrong.
so the real questions are
1: are all the propietry bits you want on your desktop linux system (crossover, cadega, theese new drivers etc) plus the overhead of a distro who can put it in one conviant package for OEMs more or less than an OEM windows licence
2: assuming they are cheaper is it possible to put sufficant shitware on the default install that the price advantage doesn't dissapear (iirc big brands make a fair bit out of shipping windows shitware, possiblly more than they pay out for the windows license)
unfortunately the succcesfully persuaded targets of the marketing tend to be more significant to the company than the actions of any boycott.
yes marketers are paid to be annoying attention seeking bastards.
worse still they tend to do it from behind the cloak of those they work for so noone can make thier lives hell in return.
we measure distances to places in units of time
not altogether unreasonable, for many people the time it takes to get somewhere is more significant than the distance (the two are related to some degree but there are other factors too like speed limits and traffic congestion).
i thought acrobats default was to scale to whatever size your printer drivers were set up for........
but comptuers tend to get thrown out after 5
some do but some stick arround for much longer, particularlly ones acting as say servers for some strange buisness app.
also just because a PC has been finished with by its first user does not mean that it will get scrapped immediately. Some do but others get taken home, given to charity, demoted within the organisation etc.
also at least in home use one of the main reasons PCs get thrown out afaict is malware infestation, hopefully XP SP2 and vista will go some way towards reducing that.
but i also think that caps are generally far better than TFA makes out (with the obvious exception of the known bad batch that went though a couple of years ago)