If I may add to the discussion of the great and all-poweful joebert, and I hope I'm not digressing or veeering into the netherworld of off-topicness, but after taking a quick peek at the vision of joebert at his or hers extremely well-thought out web site at
Not 100% correct. Micro$oft frequently has patches which state, 'only use this patch if you are suffering from the following computing affliction.' Ok, not that exactly, but it is just a variation on, 'if it is not broken, do not minor patch it.'
Are talking about MS Hot Fixes? These are never distributed through any update service. They are only obtainable after speaking to an MS rep -(I did this just recently), who basically confirms that you do understand that the hot fixes are not regression-tested, should never be used in a production environment, etc., and then e-mails you a link to download the patch - which can only be extracted after you enter a password.
although I would more correctly call it snore-driving, because it's not hard at all to still find loads of unsecured wireless networks.
I totally agree that wireless equipment manufacturers should do more than make it real easy to set up a wireless network - maybe there should be an annoying pop-up reminding you to change the password and lock down the network - this could be built-into the configuration software and would pop-up every time you booted up or clicked on a web site
It's all linked - maybe not all of us can directly impact global warming by switching to nuclear power, but there are concrete alternatives to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
For instance, I just picked up my 2006 Toyota Prius today. It's replacing a five year old Toyota Rav 4 - nice car, but can't hold a candle to 55 MPG. My wife and I plan on commuting with the car and would not have done so because of the escalating cost of gas.
This option is not a cheap one and not for everyone, and yet it will almost double the fuel economy of the vehicle it replaced. Imagine the energy savings if the price of hybrid cars drops so that more people can afford them!
Microsoft will always get an immediate market share boost until OEM's like Dell, HP, etc, stop bundling the latest and greatest version of Windows with new PC's. In fact, during a 'transition" phase when MS debuts a new OS, OEM's usually charge more if you want the older OS. Then they simply stop shipping it as an option. Most people, including corporations, eventually bow to this form of "persuasion."
I have a suggestions for OEM's - get a fully-patched version/image of XP - make it available as an option when ordering new systems, and give people the choice of ordering Vista (risky business), or a fully-patched version of XP - maybe even tweaked to lock it down further than MS's default patches.
I don't hate GW - although given what he's done to this country, hate might be justified in his case. Hate doesn't solve things. I do believe that this
mis -administration will be one for the record books - inept in every sense of the word, and even given that career politicians do tend towards corruption, this one is so over the top that the mind becomes numb to the drum-beat of corruption and ineptitude.
Even with Bush's poll numbers sinking lower each day, Faux News and the other branches of the right-wing media machine continue to pump out the message of bad is good, war is peace, and every other Orwellian nightmare made real.
Impeach the bum - Clinton's impeachment was based on a dress that needed dry-cleaning - it resulted in no one being killed, bombed, maimed, or tortured. Bush's impeachment would be based on breaking the laws of this country he swore to uphold when he placed his hand on a holy book.
Well, no. But it didn't hurt that the key state in Florida had a recount controlled by GW's brother, now did it? And that there were all sorts of voting irregularities that would have stood out in third-world election, much less is this increasingly un-democatic country.
I don't think I can get calm again until this lying administration is out of office. But maybe you want more of the same? Hey - Bill Frist just won the Repugnicants straw poll! He's your man! Does it matter to you that he still hasn't been Is he the best the candidate repugnicants have? Snap!
The very last line in the article is chilling - "In a one-page order dated Wednesday, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on procedural grounds, freeing the state to examine the hard drives."
First the elections in 2000, and now aiding and abetting the dismantling of the right to free speech.
Way to go, GW - you really packed the court with "objective" jurists - as long as they rule to keep restricting freedoms.
I posted similar sentiments on my blog - "But this President's time in office will pass, and we will elect another in his stead. I can only hope that when the next President swears to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.," that Constitution will still be worth defending."
Oooohh - time for venting here! - All you say is so true. In my case, I worked for a big insurance brokerage firm. We were located in the World Trade Center. I changed my schedule that day to come in late - normally I was at my desk at 7:00 AM. I heard about the planes hitting the towers on the way into work. Mu boos and the Help Desk manager were killed, along with 173 others from my company.
After IT rebuilt the NY offices - (actually 3 offices - one temporay, two permanent, working all kinds of crazy overtime - which meant no extra pay since I was management), our wonderful CIO said the magic word - outsourcing. She got a 5 million parachute and promptly bailed out.
BTW, this wonderful company also accepted 20 million dollars to "retain and hire" employees in New York. Guess those HR honchos got the meaning backwards - they thought it meant outsource and fire
IT was outsourced not once but twice - the original company outsourced to contractor
But hey - IT is a cost center - gotta get those costs down at all costs.
Not so Insightfully moderated by spelling charlatans!
Hmph! Please add this post to my next Meta-Moderator list - thank you very much!
Re:Neils Ferguson - seems to know his stuff
on
No Backdoor in Vista
·
· Score: 1
Troll? Maybe, but I don't mind replying. Look, Neils doesn't need MS - they need him. If he codes his part up to his own standards, he is being ethical.
If he compromised his standards, he's guilty as charged. Your paintbrush is a bit too broad. So everyone who works for MS is unethical? Can't be.
Do you have jobs waiting for all of them if they resign tomorrow to protest their employer's behavior?
In a perfect world, we'd all have the freedom to work for only ethical companies. In this world, children need food, clothing, yadda yadda.
By the way, how much money have you contributed to fighting disease in Africa?
Neils Ferguson - seems to know his stuff
on
No Backdoor in Vista
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Anyhow - he seems quite smart enough to do what the BBC article mentions, but after reading his site a bit, I think the guy would have a real problem if asked to code a backdoor. He seems to be ethical.
Tin hat conspiracy weavers would say that unbeknownst to Neils, who is a front, that there is yet another team coding the backdoor.
And yet, as long as you use a OS that will not release its' source code, suspicions will always lurk about something.
While looking for work a year ago, I attended a job search seminar - one of the persons I met there was a former executive at Toys R Us - he briefly summed up what killed the Toys R Us business model - Walmart.
Walmart simply sucked away any profit margins the Toys R Us Franchise once had - especially during the biggest toy buying season - Christmas.
According to him, going online with Amazon was a desparation move to gain some profitability back from Walmart - managed by Toys R Us execs who had not a clue about managing an online store.
Heading towards the land of off-topic, he boldy goes...
I am taking Mandriva for a test spin on a underpowered VIA motherboard - 800 Mhz and only 184 megs of RAM. This is a temporary system - I just got the replacement motherboard yesterday to rebuild a fried MB - it'll use the salvaged Intel 2.26 Ghz CPU.
Now maybe this is unfair due to the limited amount of RAM (it was all I had in my parts bin that was PC100), but I was going to build a MP3 player with the VIA, now I don't think it'd do the job.
Playback of MP3 files was choppy on this Mandriva/VIA platform, and if it can't play my MP3's, then it'll have to be just a backup browser/e-mail system.
In addition - Konqueror has crashed a few times, and the font rendering in Mandriva with some type of fonts is poor - for instance - a capital H looks like two lower-case L's, because the H crossbar can barely be seen.
Basic installation of Mandriva went smoothly - it gets an "A" for installation.
Doing what I have been doing since my first attempt to copy a record to a cassette tape - this was in 1965/66? I'd pipe the audio output into the line-in jack of my Lafayette (now defunct electronics retailer) cassette recorder, and record away.
The output of any sound card played into another PC will work the same. No complex software encoding/decoding necessary - rip it right to MP3 or the audio format of your choice.
Sound quality is still dependent on the iTunes file, but it will still sound pretty good - even though it is no longer digital.
How many Muslims are listening to a right-wing radio host everyday? Maybe only the same three that called in. Someone who probably bashes Muslims in every other sentence is not likely to have a rally coalesce around his call for anything.
While the smallest chunk of silicon we could lay down would be one atom of it, there are things far smaller. In fact you can go something like 26 more levels of magnitude smaller before you start reaching the feasable limit of measurable existance. And yes, subatomic particles could theoretically be used in processors.
The process designation refers to the the distance between the source and drain in the FETs (transistors) on a processor. Keep in mind that this distance is by no means the smallest thing in the processor - the actual gate oxide layer is tiny by comparison, with Intel's 65nm process having only 1.2nm of the stuff. That's less than 11 atoms thick.
Speaking just to the power-savings benefit of using a mobile CPU in a home system, unless you are running a home server, the best way to conserve power in any PC would be to turn it off.
So boot it up each morning, make the coffee and toast, and by the time you sit back down in front of Unbuntu, Mandriva, BSD, SUSE or that friendly chair-throwing group from Redmond, you can feel better about not burning up more oil to play solitaire (YOU'RE FIRED).
if he motherboard is upgraded or replaced for reasons other than a defect, then a new computer has been created and the license of new operating system software is required.
I hope you're wrong, and I think you might be. Anyway, I'll soon find out if things have changed, as my old motherboard gave up the ghost recently. I would think that this qualifies as a defect. I plan to get another MB and put most of the same pieces, CPU, sound card, HD - maybe add a new video card.
In the past, I have been able to call MS and get a license key without a problem. Once they issued a key when I had installed XP on a company laptop. When I left the company, it only took one call to get a license to put it on my home desktop system.
I'm getting a MacBook anyway - ship date is 3/4, so all this is kind of moot, but I will report back if MS says no to re-installing my fully legal copy of XP Pro.
Slashdot Mirror
If I may add to the discussion of the great and all-poweful joebert, and I hope I'm not digressing or veeering into the netherworld of off-topicness, but after taking a quick peek at the vision of joebert at his or hers extremely well-thought out web site at
http://www.joebertvision.net (do take a peek, now, if you don't mind)
I'd like to state, IMHO, that NOT ONE PERSON IN THE WORLD HAS THE PATIENCE FOR ANY WEB SITE THAT IS UNDER CONTRUCTION!
I feel much better now, thank you.
Are talking about MS Hot Fixes? These are never distributed through any update service. They are only obtainable after speaking to an MS rep -(I did this just recently), who basically confirms that you do understand that the hot fixes are not regression-tested, should never be used in a production environment, etc., and then e-mails you a link to download the patch - which can only be extracted after you enter a password.
Just recently I did a little "war-driving,"
although I would more correctly call it snore-driving, because it's not hard at all to still find loads of unsecured wireless networks.I totally agree that wireless equipment manufacturers should do more than make it real easy to set up a wireless network - maybe there should be an annoying pop-up reminding you to change the password and lock down the network - this could be built-into the configuration software and would pop-up every time you booted up or clicked on a web site
I can dream, can't I?/p
It's all linked - maybe not all of us can directly impact global warming by switching to nuclear power, but there are concrete alternatives to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
For instance, I just picked up my 2006 Toyota Prius today. It's replacing a five year old Toyota Rav 4 - nice car, but can't hold a candle to 55 MPG. My wife and I plan on commuting with the car and would not have done so because of the escalating cost of gas.
This option is not a cheap one and not for everyone, and yet it will almost double the fuel economy of the vehicle it replaced. Imagine the energy savings if the price of hybrid cars drops so that more people can afford them!
Think globally - act locally.
OMG - I CAN'T BELIEVE IT BUT IT'S SO VERY TRUE! BILLY AND JOEY ARE BEST BUDS AND HAVE AGREED TO RELEASE OS X FOR THE PC MARKET!!!!
This is so awesome I even figured out how to type in upper and lower case! What a OMG awesome totally cool thing to happen all in one day!!!!
Microsoft will always get an immediate market share boost until OEM's like Dell, HP, etc, stop bundling the latest and greatest version of Windows with new PC's. In fact, during a 'transition" phase when MS debuts a new OS, OEM's usually charge more if you want the older OS. Then they simply stop shipping it as an option. Most people, including corporations, eventually bow to this form of "persuasion."
I have a suggestions for OEM's - get a fully-patched version/image of XP - make it available as an option when ordering new systems, and give people the choice of ordering Vista (risky business), or a fully-patched version of XP - maybe even tweaked to lock it down further than MS's default patches.
I don't hate GW - although given what he's done to this country, hate might be justified in his case. Hate doesn't solve things. I do believe that this mis -administration will be one for the record books - inept in every sense of the word, and even given that career politicians do tend towards corruption, this one is so over the top that the mind becomes numb to the drum-beat of corruption and ineptitude.
Even with Bush's poll numbers sinking lower each day, Faux News and the other branches of the right-wing media machine continue to pump out the message of bad is good, war is peace, and every other Orwellian nightmare made real.
Impeach the bum - Clinton's impeachment was based on a dress that needed dry-cleaning - it resulted in no one being killed, bombed, maimed, or tortured. Bush's impeachment would be based on breaking the laws of this country he swore to uphold when he placed his hand on a holy book.
The best candidate the Repugnicants have!
Well, no. But it didn't hurt that the key state in Florida had a recount controlled by GW's brother, now did it? And that there were all sorts of voting irregularities that would have stood out in third-world election, much less is this increasingly un-democatic country. I don't think I can get calm again until this lying administration is out of office. But maybe you want more of the same? Hey - Bill Frist just won the Repugnicants straw poll! He's your man! Does it matter to you that he still hasn't been Is he the best the candidate repugnicants have? Snap!
The very last line in the article is chilling - "In a one-page order dated Wednesday, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on procedural grounds, freeing the state to examine the hard drives."
First the elections in 2000, and now aiding and abetting the dismantling of the right to free speech.
Way to go, GW - you really packed the court with "objective" jurists - as long as they rule to keep restricting freedoms.
I posted similar sentiments on my blog - "But this President's time in office will pass, and we will elect another in his stead. I can only hope that when the next President swears to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.," that Constitution will still be worth defending."
Oooohh - time for venting here! - All you say is so true. In my case, I worked for a big insurance brokerage firm. We were located in the World Trade Center. I changed my schedule that day to come in late - normally I was at my desk at 7:00 AM. I heard about the planes hitting the towers on the way into work. Mu boos and the Help Desk manager were killed, along with 173 others from my company.
After IT rebuilt the NY offices - (actually 3 offices - one temporay, two permanent, working all kinds of crazy overtime - which meant no extra pay since I was management), our wonderful CIO said the magic word - outsourcing. She got a 5 million parachute and promptly bailed out.
BTW, this wonderful company also accepted 20 million dollars to "retain and hire" employees in New York. Guess those HR honchos got the meaning backwards - they thought it meant outsource and fire
IT was outsourced not once but twice - the original company outsourced to contractor
But hey - IT is a cost center - gotta get those costs down at all costs.
It's Recognition!
andNovell - (sans E)
Not so Insightfully moderated by spelling charlatans!
Hmph! Please add this post to my next Meta-Moderator list - thank you very much!
Troll? Maybe, but I don't mind replying. Look, Neils doesn't need MS - they need him. If he codes his part up to his own standards, he is being ethical.
If he compromised his standards, he's guilty as charged. Your paintbrush is a bit too broad. So everyone who works for MS is unethical? Can't be.
Do you have jobs waiting for all of them if they resign tomorrow to protest their employer's behavior?
In a perfect world, we'd all have the freedom to work for only ethical companies. In this world, children need food, clothing, yadda yadda.
By the way, how much money have you contributed to fighting disease in Africa?
I sent Neils an invitation to respond to this thread. Don't know if he'll get it, but I found his website on Google (put down that chair Steve....take deep breaths)
Anyhow - he seems quite smart enough to do what the BBC article mentions, but after reading his site a bit, I think the guy would have a real problem if asked to code a backdoor. He seems to be ethical.
Tin hat conspiracy weavers would say that unbeknownst to Neils, who is a front, that there is yet another team coding the backdoor.
And yet, as long as you use a OS that will not release its' source code, suspicions will always lurk about something.
While looking for work a year ago, I attended a job search seminar - one of the persons I met there was a former executive at Toys R Us - he briefly summed up what killed the Toys R Us business model - Walmart.
Walmart simply sucked away any profit margins the Toys R Us Franchise once had - especially during the biggest toy buying season - Christmas.
According to him, going online with Amazon was a desparation move to gain some profitability back from Walmart - managed by Toys R Us execs who had not a clue about managing an online store.
and yet there has not been a single such case filed by Google for AdSense abuse
No? What about this one?
Found using Google, BTW.
Dude! Sarcasm will get you nowhere. Guess you thought that's what I still do? No, haven't had that Lafayette cassette recorder in quite a while.
My point was that all the DRM in the world will not stop copying. There's always another way. Even analog. There. I said it. Heresy. Analog.
Well, gotta put some wood on the fire, milk the cows, and listen to Amos and Andy on the crystal radio. See ya!
Heading towards the land of off-topic, he boldy goes...
I am taking Mandriva for a test spin on a underpowered VIA motherboard - 800 Mhz and only 184 megs of RAM. This is a temporary system - I just got the replacement motherboard yesterday to rebuild a fried MB - it'll use the salvaged Intel 2.26 Ghz CPU.
Now maybe this is unfair due to the limited amount of RAM (it was all I had in my parts bin that was PC100), but I was going to build a MP3 player with the VIA, now I don't think it'd do the job.
Playback of MP3 files was choppy on this Mandriva/VIA platform, and if it can't play my MP3's, then it'll have to be just a backup browser/e-mail system.
In addition - Konqueror has crashed a few times, and the font rendering in Mandriva with some type of fonts is poor - for instance - a capital H looks like two lower-case L's, because the H crossbar can barely be seen.
Basic installation of Mandriva went smoothly - it gets an "A" for installation.
Doing what I have been doing since my first attempt to copy a record to a cassette tape - this was in 1965/66? I'd pipe the audio output into the line-in jack of my Lafayette (now defunct electronics retailer) cassette recorder, and record away.
The output of any sound card played into another PC will work the same. No complex software encoding/decoding necessary - rip it right to MP3 or the audio format of your choice.
Sound quality is still dependent on the iTunes file, but it will still sound pretty good - even though it is no longer digital.
My 2 pennies..
The key phrase here is "A local right wing host"
How many Muslims are listening to a right-wing radio host everyday? Maybe only the same three that called in. Someone who probably bashes Muslims in every other sentence is not likely to have a rally coalesce around his call for anything.
While the smallest chunk of silicon we could lay down would be one atom of it, there are things far smaller. In fact you can go something like 26 more levels of magnitude smaller before you start reaching the feasable limit of measurable existance. And yes, subatomic particles could theoretically be used in processors.
The process designation refers to the the distance between the source and drain in the FETs (transistors) on a processor. Keep in mind that this distance is by no means the smallest thing in the processor - the actual gate oxide layer is tiny by comparison, with Intel's 65nm process having only 1.2nm of the stuff. That's less than 11 atoms thick.
Found this on a thread at bit-tech.net forums.
Speaking just to the power-savings benefit of using a mobile CPU in a home system, unless you are running a home server, the best way to conserve power in any PC would be to turn it off.
This link notes one person's cost of leaving systems powered up, a little more than $23.00 USD per month.
So boot it up each morning, make the coffee and toast, and by the time you sit back down in front of Unbuntu, Mandriva, BSD, SUSE or that friendly chair-throwing group from Redmond, you can feel better about not burning up more oil to play solitaire (YOU'RE FIRED).
if he motherboard is upgraded or replaced for reasons other than a defect, then a new computer has been created and the license of new operating system software is required.
I hope you're wrong, and I think you might be. Anyway, I'll soon find out if things have changed, as my old motherboard gave up the ghost recently. I would think that this qualifies as a defect. I plan to get another MB and put most of the same pieces, CPU, sound card, HD - maybe add a new video card.
In the past, I have been able to call MS and get a license key without a problem. Once they issued a key when I had installed XP on a company laptop. When I left the company, it only took one call to get a license to put it on my home desktop system.
I'm getting a MacBook anyway - ship date is 3/4, so all this is kind of moot, but I will report back if MS says no to re-installing my fully legal copy of XP Pro.
It's time to create a new net for geeks only.
I thought that place was called Slashdot!