A computer is the SUM of it's parts, not the GREATEST of it's parts. The parts need to work synnergistically for it to be fast, and the only way a single component can significantly affect the system as a whole is by being a bottleneck.
There is absolutely no reason to suspect a rootkit. They'll package everything in the OS, and attempting to hide the OS would be rather ineffective. Besides, rootkits generally hide compromised security, which implies that there needs to be some semblance of security originally. Of course the kernel will monitor everything you do, but to call anything they package in the console a rootkit is very likely a misnomer. The OS isn't infected, it's the infection.
You assume they're ALL completely stupid. Mostly they are, but it's possible for them to not mess up. It's extremely likely that there are some who do it flawlessly, regardless of the high probabilyty that any given one of them messes up. I am certain that I could form a botnet without being trackable. I also have no reason to do so, and would never trust any site that claimed to give me the scripts I would need enough to go anywhere near them, because I would expect them to hack into my computer and package viri in the scripts. Plus you probably need at least some programming knowledge to link the products that would enable such absolute security.
Wait... according to some mit thing reported in popsci, alluminum foil reduces virtually all bands not owned by the government, and amplifies those the government owns, so if he's the only one wearing a hat, and that's non-government propaganda... Illegal Radio Broadcasting!
Walk through beaurocratic offices, and write down the prices of things nobody ever wanted, nobody's allowed to use, and someone higher up decided they needed anyway.
For a secondary measurement, walk through beaurocratic offices and write down the discrepancy between the cost of what people got and the cost of what they need.
There are a lot of departments where there's a lot of waste. My dad is working in a ten-person office that has two color coppiers that they aren't allowed to touch for fear that someone will break them or waste money on ink. They all had desktops 2-3 years old replaced with docking laptops that nobody in the office has ever removed from the docks.
That's a several thousand dollars worth of useless equipment right there, and they have more. And maybe a few thousand dollars doesen't make much of a difference, but if you extrapolate those numbers to account for all government offices, that's a lot of money.
No, I mean the kind that says school boards need to prevent religious groups from having the same rights to school facilities that non religious groups have. I mean the kind that says students can be punished for praying in school despite freedom of speech. I mean the kind of judiciating that says bibles aren't permitted in school. I mean the kind that repeatedly defies the legislative bodies and the Supreme Court of the United States by systematically ruling against any christians involved. I mean the local policy makers who implement the policies that these lower courts deal with and uphold. I mean the ACLU filing suits inconsistently to get precedents that give wiccans rights that the ACLU attempts to keep christians from getting.
The ninth circuit court of appeals has historically been the worst, repeatedly contradicting the US Supreme Court, and ignoring prior rulings. For further reference, see HostilitytoReligiousExpression.pdf. Yes, they do classify some reasonable things as "hostility to religious expression", but there are also many examples of blatant discrimination. And "separation of church and state" is an artificial construct that is often blatantly misused. The constitution only says that "congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or abridging the free exercise thereof". There should be no distinction between the religious and the secular. And instead, the artificial 'separation of church and state' is used to justify discrimination against religious groups.
The president, congress, the supreme court, and state governers ultimately don't matter if the constitution and federal law aren't acted upon. At lower levels, people are being descriminated against de-facto, and since they rarely know to appeal, de-jure doesen't matter.
So maybe it's like parking at a store and looking in the window. You use their parking lot (bandwith), examine the wares in the window (port scanning on the hardware), and drive off, and even if you never actually intended to buy anything, they don't really care. Sysadmins have better things to do with their time than track and prosecute people who scan ports for research.
I'm sorry, it's politically incorrect to say anything that disagrees with anyone's religion.
Oh, wait, he's a christian? Ok, go ahead. That's an accepted hypocracy.
*end sarcasm*
Seriously, though, if a christian tried to "force their beliefs" on people, when though "truth is relative", the christian would be labeled intolerant and reprimanded. But people can randomly take potshots at christianity, and it's all ok because "christians are idiots". So either don't try to rock our worldview, or don't complain about our attempts to rock your worldview.
At least on slashdot, the atheocracy is legitimately formed by democracy. Unlike the United States, where judicial atheocracy oppresses religion in lower courts, and society doesen't even realize that many of the restrictions placed on religion have been repeadedly struck down by the Supreme Court.
That would be the difference between cub scouts and boy scouts... cub scouts do nothing but are too stupid to know they aren't doing anything. Those of us who make it to boy scouts quickly learn that we're doing a lot of stuff we'd rather not bother with.
Actually a closer analogy would be driving by and counting open windows on all the houses on a street. You're allowed to drive, you're allowed to look at houses, and you're allowed to count. You're allowed to access the internet, you're allowed to send requests to servers, and you're allowed to analyze what they send you.
Every analogy you gave would involve the student trying to do harm. But the student isn't. The student is just trying to gather data.
It's more asking someone if they know karate than trying to hit them. And the person you label a "thief" is still in the customer area of the store with no intent of trespassing into an employee area or attempting to steal money.
Consider the following assertion:
Everything is in the state it is in because God arbitrarily decided it should be that way.
That's one entity. Why did He decide to do something? It was arbitrary. Why is everything arbitrary? Because God arbitrarily decided to do everything arbitrarily. How do we know God exists and did everything arbitrarily? Because it's the simplest explaination and occam's razor says the simplest explaination is best.
What does science give? A multitude of theories consisting of several entities that still don't explain very much. Which does occam's razor favor?
And even then, you're assuming occam's razor is true. The simplest explaination of any discrepancy is "Occam's razor is false". This refutes Occam's razor while satisfying occam's razor.
I honestly think it would be more practical for the designer of the chip to think in C++ than for the programmer to think in assembly. That way it's a 15 year wait for the architecture and a year for the first program, instead of a 5 year wait for the chip and a 30 year wait for the first useful program. Or... We could compile the C++ into assembly and use an assembly architecture and spend the minimum amount of time from the start of the processor design to the first program! I have prior art on compilers! I can make a fortu...
oh... that's what people already do... and here I thought I had a breakthrough concept...
And if it's all about media and communication, what's going to happen to all the other tasks computers perform? Are they going to not exist suddenly on the basis of the year?
I'm sorry, but it just doesen't make sense to say that there won't be any use for desktops by 2010 unless someone makes dumb terminals work, and gets people to not be paranoid that the remote server will be hacked and all their private data stolen. Desktops are cheaper than laptops, high end ones are more powerful than high-end laptops, and some people just don't like sitting at a desk working on a laptop. They are more customizable than devices designed for only one or two tasks. They can be upgraded as they get older. And ok... 3 boxes cost... how much? That's right: more than 1 box costs! And if you put them all in one to lower the cost again what do you get? That's right: A desktop!
It's clearly true that they will have a diminished marketshare. Are they going to die eventually? Yes. Will they be almost dead by 2010? No. Between change resistant people, the advangages desktops have, and the fact that any product capable of killing the desktop as we know in such a short ammount of time would essentially be a different type of desktop, the desktop isn't going to vanish by 2010.
A trust would be when one group has control of an industry. Antitrust laws are supposed to make sure trusts don't abuse their control. They prevent abuse of horizontal integration. Vertical integration does not create a trust, so any law aimed at controling companies that own all the resorces necessary for producing and distributing their products could not correctly be termed "Antitrust". (I am a Nomenclature-Nazi.)
And it would be hard to limit vertical integration, because where do you draw the line? Apple already designs, builds, and distributes it's own computers. If that's legal, why shouldn't scripting, filming, editing, and distributing films be legal? What about selling online? What about when stores have their own trucks to transport goods... shouldn't they have to pay someone else? And I guess oil companies with rigs and ships and refineries and trucks and stations should also be illegal...
There is no good way to regulate that. And no good reason to, because they can't use the lack of competition to raise prices or lower product quality. But sooner or later if they get too big they'll have to worry about antitrust laws.
Whether it's right for everybody wasn't the point. If they fulfilled their goal of having the product appeal to a huge audience, they got it right. They "just got it right" by creating a balanced set of features that appeal to a large number of people. Not by being the best product for every single person, but by being the best product to compete on the market.
And even if you do try to alter the connotation by rephrasing from "just got it right" to "got it just right", the same explainations still apply.
But it should be obvious... Stealing something that can be used to steal an identity should be illegal, but it should not be called the same thing as actually stealing the identity. Yes, I am a Nomenclature Nazi. And as for the uncle's (at least that seems like a logical name for a child of the grandparent) comment that my thinking is in line with congress's, I didn't know there were any bills to alter the nomenclature... Maybe to alter punishments, but my point was all about the nomenclature.
I still fail to see why taking someone else's financial data is considered identity theft. Having someone's SSN is not identity theft. It might be a good place to start in order to assume their identity, but the number itself is an identifier, not an identity. There's a distinction between an identity and an identifier. So what if I have the serial number of a computer? It doesen't mean I've stolen that computer's identity. A picture can also be used as an identifier, but posessing a yearbook isn't posessing their identity.
I'm not saying that stealing a social security number, pin number, driver's license, etc. shouldn't be a crime, but until that identifier is used falsely, it should be called identifier theft, not identity theft. Because that just makes sense.
So far all it has proved to be is ugly. IE5 looked and worked better. Plus there's a learning curve on something that doesen't work as well. Seriously, Firefox looks more akin to modern IE than IE7 does right now. So when it becomes a choice between a slight learning curve and a major one for an uglier, less functional alternative, there will be a much better chance of people moving to firefox.
If they release it remotely like how it is now, the change-is-bad people have a good chance of choosing firefox over IE7.
inevitably this evolves into a situation that can be somewhat adequately described as a "firefight" when my wife comes in the room throwing things at me in an effort to silence my combat simulations.
I think it was intended as a joke saying that there actually is combat, albeit his wife throwing things instead of enemy soldiers firing things, when he uses his surround sound system. Not that it's a perfect combat situation.
Slashdot Mirror
A computer is the SUM of it's parts, not the GREATEST of it's parts. The parts need to work synnergistically for it to be fast, and the only way a single component can significantly affect the system as a whole is by being a bottleneck.
He didn't boot you, because once he's posted on the page, he can't mod. Someone did, but it wasn't him.
um... those would be RADIO waves... not sound waves. Which sort of follow similar rules (being waves and all), but are definitely different...
There is absolutely no reason to suspect a rootkit. They'll package everything in the OS, and attempting to hide the OS would be rather ineffective. Besides, rootkits generally hide compromised security, which implies that there needs to be some semblance of security originally. Of course the kernel will monitor everything you do, but to call anything they package in the console a rootkit is very likely a misnomer. The OS isn't infected, it's the infection.
I am a nomenclature-nazi.
You assume they're ALL completely stupid. Mostly they are, but it's possible for them to not mess up. It's extremely likely that there are some who do it flawlessly, regardless of the high probabilyty that any given one of them messes up. I am certain that I could form a botnet without being trackable. I also have no reason to do so, and would never trust any site that claimed to give me the scripts I would need enough to go anywhere near them, because I would expect them to hack into my computer and package viri in the scripts. Plus you probably need at least some programming knowledge to link the products that would enable such absolute security.
Wait... according to some mit thing reported in popsci, alluminum foil reduces virtually all bands not owned by the government, and amplifies those the government owns, so if he's the only one wearing a hat, and that's non-government propaganda... Illegal Radio Broadcasting!
Walk through beaurocratic offices, and write down the prices of things nobody ever wanted, nobody's allowed to use, and someone higher up decided they needed anyway.
For a secondary measurement, walk through beaurocratic offices and write down the discrepancy between the cost of what people got and the cost of what they need.
There are a lot of departments where there's a lot of waste. My dad is working in a ten-person office that has two color coppiers that they aren't allowed to touch for fear that someone will break them or waste money on ink. They all had desktops 2-3 years old replaced with docking laptops that nobody in the office has ever removed from the docks.
That's a several thousand dollars worth of useless equipment right there, and they have more. And maybe a few thousand dollars doesen't make much of a difference, but if you extrapolate those numbers to account for all government offices, that's a lot of money.
No, I mean the kind that says school boards need to prevent religious groups from having the same rights to school facilities that non religious groups have. I mean the kind that says students can be punished for praying in school despite freedom of speech. I mean the kind of judiciating that says bibles aren't permitted in school. I mean the kind that repeatedly defies the legislative bodies and the Supreme Court of the United States by systematically ruling against any christians involved. I mean the local policy makers who implement the policies that these lower courts deal with and uphold. I mean the ACLU filing suits inconsistently to get precedents that give wiccans rights that the ACLU attempts to keep christians from getting.
The ninth circuit court of appeals has historically been the worst, repeatedly contradicting the US Supreme Court, and ignoring prior rulings. For further reference, see HostilitytoReligiousExpression.pdf. Yes, they do classify some reasonable things as "hostility to religious expression", but there are also many examples of blatant discrimination. And "separation of church and state" is an artificial construct that is often blatantly misused. The constitution only says that "congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or abridging the free exercise thereof". There should be no distinction between the religious and the secular. And instead, the artificial 'separation of church and state' is used to justify discrimination against religious groups.
The president, congress, the supreme court, and state governers ultimately don't matter if the constitution and federal law aren't acted upon. At lower levels, people are being descriminated against de-facto, and since they rarely know to appeal, de-jure doesen't matter.
So maybe it's like parking at a store and looking in the window. You use their parking lot (bandwith), examine the wares in the window (port scanning on the hardware), and drive off, and even if you never actually intended to buy anything, they don't really care. Sysadmins have better things to do with their time than track and prosecute people who scan ports for research.
I'm sorry, it's politically incorrect to say anything that disagrees with anyone's religion.
Oh, wait, he's a christian? Ok, go ahead. That's an accepted hypocracy.
*end sarcasm*
Seriously, though, if a christian tried to "force their beliefs" on people, when though "truth is relative", the christian would be labeled intolerant and reprimanded. But people can randomly take potshots at christianity, and it's all ok because "christians are idiots". So either don't try to rock our worldview, or don't complain about our attempts to rock your worldview.
At least on slashdot, the atheocracy is legitimately formed by democracy. Unlike the United States, where judicial atheocracy oppresses religion in lower courts, and society doesen't even realize that many of the restrictions placed on religion have been repeadedly struck down by the Supreme Court.
Because we're from america. Do you need any more reason for our inability to comprehend things that the rest of the world accepts?
That would be the difference between cub scouts and boy scouts... cub scouts do nothing but are too stupid to know they aren't doing anything. Those of us who make it to boy scouts quickly learn that we're doing a lot of stuff we'd rather not bother with.
Actually a closer analogy would be driving by and counting open windows on all the houses on a street. You're allowed to drive, you're allowed to look at houses, and you're allowed to count. You're allowed to access the internet, you're allowed to send requests to servers, and you're allowed to analyze what they send you.
Every analogy you gave would involve the student trying to do harm. But the student isn't. The student is just trying to gather data.
It's more asking someone if they know karate than trying to hit them. And the person you label a "thief" is still in the customer area of the store with no intent of trespassing into an employee area or attempting to steal money.
Consider the following assertion:
Everything is in the state it is in because God arbitrarily decided it should be that way.
That's one entity. Why did He decide to do something? It was arbitrary. Why is everything arbitrary? Because God arbitrarily decided to do everything arbitrarily. How do we know God exists and did everything arbitrarily? Because it's the simplest explaination and occam's razor says the simplest explaination is best.
What does science give? A multitude of theories consisting of several entities that still don't explain very much. Which does occam's razor favor? And even then, you're assuming occam's razor is true. The simplest explaination of any discrepancy is "Occam's razor is false". This refutes Occam's razor while satisfying occam's razor.
I honestly think it would be more practical for the designer of the chip to think in C++ than for the programmer to think in assembly. That way it's a 15 year wait for the architecture and a year for the first program, instead of a 5 year wait for the chip and a 30 year wait for the first useful program. Or... We could compile the C++ into assembly and use an assembly architecture and spend the minimum amount of time from the start of the processor design to the first program! I have prior art on compilers! I can make a fortu...
oh... that's what people already do... and here I thought I had a breakthrough concept...
And if it's all about media and communication, what's going to happen to all the other tasks computers perform? Are they going to not exist suddenly on the basis of the year?
I'm sorry, but it just doesen't make sense to say that there won't be any use for desktops by 2010 unless someone makes dumb terminals work, and gets people to not be paranoid that the remote server will be hacked and all their private data stolen. Desktops are cheaper than laptops, high end ones are more powerful than high-end laptops, and some people just don't like sitting at a desk working on a laptop. They are more customizable than devices designed for only one or two tasks. They can be upgraded as they get older. And ok... 3 boxes cost... how much? That's right: more than 1 box costs! And if you put them all in one to lower the cost again what do you get? That's right: A desktop!
It's clearly true that they will have a diminished marketshare. Are they going to die eventually? Yes. Will they be almost dead by 2010? No. Between change resistant people, the advangages desktops have, and the fact that any product capable of killing the desktop as we know in such a short ammount of time would essentially be a different type of desktop, the desktop isn't going to vanish by 2010.
A trust would be when one group has control of an industry. Antitrust laws are supposed to make sure trusts don't abuse their control. They prevent abuse of horizontal integration. Vertical integration does not create a trust, so any law aimed at controling companies that own all the resorces necessary for producing and distributing their products could not correctly be termed "Antitrust". (I am a Nomenclature-Nazi.)
And it would be hard to limit vertical integration, because where do you draw the line? Apple already designs, builds, and distributes it's own computers. If that's legal, why shouldn't scripting, filming, editing, and distributing films be legal? What about selling online? What about when stores have their own trucks to transport goods... shouldn't they have to pay someone else? And I guess oil companies with rigs and ships and refineries and trucks and stations should also be illegal...
There is no good way to regulate that. And no good reason to, because they can't use the lack of competition to raise prices or lower product quality. But sooner or later if they get too big they'll have to worry about antitrust laws.
Whether it's right for everybody wasn't the point. If they fulfilled their goal of having the product appeal to a huge audience, they got it right. They "just got it right" by creating a balanced set of features that appeal to a large number of people. Not by being the best product for every single person, but by being the best product to compete on the market.
And even if you do try to alter the connotation by rephrasing from "just got it right" to "got it just right", the same explainations still apply.
Thank you for providing the first reasonable explaination I have ever seen for a situation where buttons are better than the scrollwheel.
But it should be obvious... Stealing something that can be used to steal an identity should be illegal, but it should not be called the same thing as actually stealing the identity. Yes, I am a Nomenclature Nazi. And as for the uncle's (at least that seems like a logical name for a child of the grandparent) comment that my thinking is in line with congress's, I didn't know there were any bills to alter the nomenclature... Maybe to alter punishments, but my point was all about the nomenclature.
Mod parent up... I don't know why the parent was modded down, but I do know that there are almost no good reasons to put that kind of data on a laptop
I still fail to see why taking someone else's financial data is considered identity theft. Having someone's SSN is not identity theft. It might be a good place to start in order to assume their identity, but the number itself is an identifier, not an identity. There's a distinction between an identity and an identifier. So what if I have the serial number of a computer? It doesen't mean I've stolen that computer's identity. A picture can also be used as an identifier, but posessing a yearbook isn't posessing their identity.
I'm not saying that stealing a social security number, pin number, driver's license, etc. shouldn't be a crime, but until that identifier is used falsely, it should be called identifier theft, not identity theft. Because that just makes sense.
So far all it has proved to be is ugly. IE5 looked and worked better. Plus there's a learning curve on something that doesen't work as well. Seriously, Firefox looks more akin to modern IE than IE7 does right now. So when it becomes a choice between a slight learning curve and a major one for an uglier, less functional alternative, there will be a much better chance of people moving to firefox.
If they release it remotely like how it is now, the change-is-bad people have a good chance of choosing firefox over IE7.
No, they can't legally purchase legislation... Or maybe it's lawmakers can't legally sell legislation...
Either way, corruption IS illegal. So even if legislation can be bought, it can't be done legally.
inevitably this evolves into a situation that can be somewhat adequately described as a "firefight" when my wife comes in the room throwing things at me in an effort to silence my combat simulations.
I think it was intended as a joke saying that there actually is combat, albeit his wife throwing things instead of enemy soldiers firing things, when he uses his surround sound system. Not that it's a perfect combat situation.