You're wrong though - I think you're missing the history of the operating systems and how things came to be the way they are:
In the beginning, EVERYONE was a superuser on Windows. Win3x has absolutely NO security. Win9x has absolutely NO security. OS/2 had minimal security. WinNT (NT/2K/XP/2K3) carries this baggage in the form of backwards compatibility, and unfortunately application developers have not changed their development habits to respect security concerns. So, this leaves users having to be power users at minimum, or far too often, local administrators, in order to run applications like Quickbooks, Garden Graphics (a niche market CAD package), many games, and countless other applications.
Sure, you can make Windows Install service run elevated so anyone can install an app, but that doesn't change the fact that once Joe "non-admin" User gets Quickbooks Pro installed, he still cannot run it until his account has local administrator privileges. Quickbooks requires that because they haven't changed their architecture to assume a locked down box - they assume that their software will be installed on the same old systems that Quickbooks 2.0 was installed on - Win3x or Win9x, with absolutely no security whatsoever (so in essence everyone was root).
This will never happen in Linux/Solaris/*nix because applications developers have had to contend with this from the very beginning of *nix at Bell Labs.
Linux is more resistant to spyware for the same reason that *BSD, Solaris, IRIX, HP/UX, and practically every other *nix and *nix-like OS out there is (indented for emphasis):
Unless you're enough of a fool to install code from untrusted sources as root, and you're enough of a fool to run anything but administrative tasks as root, damage will be confined to ~ (the *nix equivalent of %userprofile%). This is contrary to Windows where it's recommended you not have administrative rights but where in fact many applications demand that you be a local administrator or they refuse to run (Quickbooks Pro comes to mind here). So, even though some environments such as Gnome or KDE/kwin now feature browsers integrated into the desktop to some extent, if an exploit IS ever found in (konqueror|epiphany) the damage will be limited to ~ (the user's home directory space) and will not extend to the rest of the system because user-instantiated processes simply do not have access to areas outside of that userspace. <BOFH>However if you run as root or made yourself a member of the root group or another group with access to mission-critical directories, you deserve to lose data </BOFH>
Now, if you want to contend that Windows is more susceptible because people hate Microsoft, or because Windows is more dominant in the marketplace, or any other reason, read the above again. And again. And again. If you still don't understand or agree, read up on unix permissions, how the userspace works, the root account, and also Windows permissions and the history of why it is so difficult to lock down (poor programming practices, backwards compatibility requirements, etc.). There ARE Linux and Unix viruses, but tend not to spread (they're almost entirely "proof of concept" routines) BECAUSE of the nazi-like permissions in *nix-type operating systems. Not only do you need root access locally to spread damage beyond ~/ (and yes,/tmp files owned by ~) but you need root access on the system you are trying to infect as well. "It just ain't gonna happen" unless you have a truly clueless "sysadmin" or a lazy sack of shit sysadmin.
I submitted a defect report to the OOo team nearly a year ago about an Excel spreadsheet which OOo took 43 minutes to open but Microsoft Excel could open in under ten seconds - under wine! The spreadsheet came from The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In Windows, it still opened in under ten seconds even with Norton AntiVirus scans.
The next month I received a spreadsheet which took well over two HOURS for OOo to open, but that same spreadsheet opened in Excel (via wine) in under 30 seconds, and under Windows even with Norton AntiVirus it took well under one minute. These were by no means large; the first was about 1200 rows in each of three worksheets, and the second was about 2500 rows in each of three worksheets.
When the feedback came back, they marked the priority down and indicated that they are more focused on adding new functionality since it is more interesting than fixing minor bugs. WTF? IMHO this is a fatal defect for all intents and purposes. Were I the release engineer or QA director for OOo/Star Office, I would not let the product go out as a final release in that condition since it is a serious hindrance to corporate adoptation.
With that said, I use OOo far more than I use Microsoft Office because I hate Microsoft's current Anti-Customer "every customer is a crook" stance, however I cannot fault Microsoft where they get things right. Microsoft Office rocks! Microsoft Exchange rocks! OOo is functionally a good replacement for M$ Office, but performance sucks when it comes to I/O. Likewise, Postfix is great and all, but when it comes to groupware, there really are no (open source) groupware packages that come even close to Microsoft Exchange's and Outlook's combined feature sets; this is coming from both a user feature/experience perspective and a maintenance perspective. Sure, Exchange backups may suck, but its maintenance tools are excellent in terms of maintaining back end integrity (providing you keep up with it), plus Exchange handles attachments extremely intelligently on the back end. Why do I mention this? Because I am biased against Microsoft and I want to make that clear so my post is taken in the correct context.
If you check the OOo bug tracker, you will see many, many reports of the very same defect I reported (the one cited above) and in each and every case this fatal defect has either been closed or the priority has been bumped down to "we'll fix bugs when Hell freezes over because fixing a broken architecture is boring, I'd rather add more bells and whistles and maybe an Easter egg or three"
I hope the OOo team gets their act together, because both OOo and StarOffice have incredible potential to truly compete with and possibly even overtake Microsoft Office in the future, but there are some critical issues (broken I/O) that they really need to address. I'd rather they address the issues now than wait for Massachusetts to deploy the suite only to find that with real-world Commonwealth data, the suite costs more in terms of wasted time than the Microsoft licenses would have cost. This is where Microsoft FUD would actually be factual, and then Microsoft can say "See, we told you so!" and come out smelling like roses.
I've looked for portable TV sets with DTV/HDTV reception. None exist. I've checked with my distributor, I've checked retail (Worst Buy, Circuit City, Sprawl*Mart, Amazon, Yahoo, etc.) and all the portable sets are --- all analog. I want a small television set for my kitchen and one for my living room, and I can find small analog televisions ranging from $10 (yes, $10!) all the way to $700 but none with digital reception capability
Likewise: I've looked for USB TV tuners or integral laptop tuners. Guess what? Unless I go for a DVB (european digital) tuners, which are pointless on this side of the pond, the only choice is - you got it - analog.
If I want a 36" television in my kitchen, or carry a desktop computer with a full PCI slot, there are certainly DTV/HDTV options, but I'm certainly not going to put a 36" television in my kitchen, and I'm not going to carry around a desktop computer with me when I am on the go. And a handheld DTV (as in 1.7" to 3.5" LCD television)? They do not exist.If I want to replace my old, old 1980s Casio LCD television (cracked LCD screen, and they no longer sell replacement displays for that model), I have to replace it with an analog unit which will be useless very soon.
Furthermore: I don't want HDTV. Stargate is just as entertaining at low-resolution NTSC as it would be at 1080i resolution. So I'd be able to see blemishes on Carter's face, or count the hairs on Jackson's head, or see the difference in his 5 o'clock shadow between scenes or even during a scene when there were multiple takes during shooting. Big f'n whoop. It won't be any more entertaining, and it certainly won't make boring drivel like Simple Life or Survivor suck any less.
How the FUCK are you people moderating? How the FUCK was my post off-topic, when it was in direct reference to both the parent post AND the overall topic? It was initially marked +2 insightful and now 0 Offtopic. Get off the crack, guys. This place is as bad as Fark.
First off, the "leaks" may be intentional to gain publicity and widespread public use, and since it's an unstable build and "illegitimately gotten" Microsoft can disavow any bugs, claiming it is a test build, beta, alpha, prerelease, or whatever other term they want to apply to a preproduction build (and rightfully so!). Companies leaking early builds, especially builds with drop-dead dates in multiple modules, is not unheard of. By doing this they can use pirate groups as a form of covert marketing and free press (screenshots and actual use of a product), not to mention Microsoft fanboys building free third-party Windows Vista support sites. Of course Microsoft would officially deny such leaks, but they'd be expected to either way, either due to anti-competitive tactics that could land them in court again, or due to concern about shareholder opinions, or even a superficial concern over what little integrity they have left.
Secondly, and yes this is nitpicking: You mean "pulling a 180" not a "pulling a 360" (please don't flame me for pointing this out, the primary intent of this post is contained in the first paragraph and this one is merely an incidental observation)
Access has its merits for small-scale apps used in VERY small offices or for homes.
Want an alternative? Check out OpenOffice.org Base.
Access is not intended to be a multiuser database. It "can" be done but requires fugly code to accomplish it.
I block only annoying animated ads, popups, and flash ads that throw themselves in a top layer on a page and get right in the way of the content. Why do advertisers do these things when they know they only piss people off and cause them to NOT buy from their clients?
Unobtrusive banner ads, "tasteful" animations (e.g., no strobing), etc. I don't block because a) they pay for content and b) they don't bother me
Well Microsoft obviously had to do SOMETHING to keep their revenue growing, what with OS/X server approaching a usable state and with Linux and *BSD growing rapidly in the server segment of the market.
I for one won't be upgrading Windows any more. Linux is free, works very well, and aside from kernel/module updates does not require rebooting for most patches and configuration changes, so the only time my Linux servers see outages is when the power goes out or if I need to change hardware configuration.
Sorry Microsoft. The _only_ reason I won't go with Windows and have been migating to Linux is your hostile anti-customer stance and polices, and this shift in your licensing policy took your anti-customer movement from bad to worse. I'm still migrating to Linux, and as soon as I find a suitable migration path for group scheduling, my Exchange 2000 server is going bye-bye and my disks/licenses will be going up on eBay (I love right of first sale. I own the media and licenses, and thus can transfer ownership, regardless of what you might think, and courts have consistently ruled otherwise to date)
I've also been recommending the OpenOffice.org office suite to clients, even though I'd make more money on Microsoft Office, The only cost to the customer is the time to download the suite, or if they want us to install it, the time to install and to burn a CD containing the source.
IMHO Microsoft is committing corporate suicide, albeit a long and painful one.
FWIW my v400 runs four days on a charge with the standard battery (talking 15-30 minutes per day), in contrast to two days for my previous phone, a Nokia 6120 with an extended life battery which would run three days on standby, less if I actually make or receive a call, and one day for my previous phone.
Before buying my V400 I absolutely detested camera phones, but I got tired of fixing my old Nokia so decided to upgrade. It seems that if I wanted to sync my address book with my PC or the option use my phone as a modem, I had to take a camera phone. Phones without cameras lack other useful features as well, it seems. So, I went with the V400, and I was surprised to find that although I hated the idea of camera phones, it comes in awfully handy. I use it on jobs, when shopping (photograph an item on a shelf at a brick-and-mortar store for comparison shopping online), etc.
Not only that, I can upload Pink Floyd songs like "Interstellar Overdrive" for unique and incredibly irritating ring tones. It's wondeful, I tell ya!:D Sadly, this is one of the few things I need to keep Windows around for - moto4lin can't transfer files yet.:(
Sure! MIT, GE, HP/DEC (they have two!), Apple, IBM, Halliburton are all squatting on Class A addresses, giving them allocations of 17 million IP addresses (34 million in the case of HP). That's definitely IP squatting.
Re: speed tracking on the Pike via EZPass or even the paper ticket - YES it is possible
I don't do EZPass.
If I were to drive at high speed on the pike, I'd take the paper ticket, smudge the time stamp or accidentally spill coffee on it, and run a magnet over the magnetic strip a few times.
EZPass is not the only way to track speed on the tolls. Check your paper ticket sometime. They DO stamp the time on the ticket when you pick it up, and I'm sure that when the ticket is printed the magnetic strip is read as well. As far as whether or not they actually check it at the other end, I have no idea.
It's not a good idea to speed out there anyhow, what with the unmarked and modified Intrepids (haw haw haw, slow piece of crap), unmarked SVO Rustangs (HAW HAW HAW still slow) and slightly faster Crapmaro, and not to mention Motorola and limited and controlled on/off ramps. I'll drive 180+ out on I-70 where you can see clear horizon to horizon in all directions, but not around here. I'll stick to just under the prevaling speed of traffic. Hell, it's not a good idea to speed in much of Taxachusetts since there are few good straightaways to do it.
Several years ago here in Taxachusetts I got pulled over at 149mph (after slowing down from MUCH faster) in my ZR-1 and got let go with just a verbal warning (I'd pulled over and waited when I saw the officer pull out of the rest stop in my rear view mirror. He was probably just grateful I didn't give him any crap and didn't bullshit as to why I was driving so damn fast) - since that bit of grace from a state trooper I haven't gone more than 10 over or so here in Taxachusetts, and am usually going slower than anyone else, whether I'm driving one of my 'Vettes or one of the trucks. When I take my car out west though, it's a different story.
. . . stores and banks never give out dollar coins unless you specifically ask for them, and even then, most stores won't have them and sometimes banks won't either.
I rarely see 50-cent coins either, nor two-dollar bills, yet both are still minted and circulated to banks on an ongoing basis.
You misspelled "'60s technology" (if you want to include on the FM and AM stereo broadcasting era), or "'20s technology" if referring to simply broadcasting any music over public airwaves.;)
Not to mention the capacitors, especially in the stereo processor your FM receiver has.
Want to know something that is even more insidious? Your brain is an information storage device - and unlicensed one at that. Who knows, tomorrow you may end up with an earworm of "toxic" or "oops I did it again" (I refuse to capitalize those titles:-p) going through your head 50 times tomorrow, and for each performance of that recording, RIAA member labels will not be compensated. Oh the horror! In the near future you will have to have to pay long-term memory licensing fees based on your IQ, because part of your IQ score is figured by testing your memory. There will also be licensing fees for your short-term memory, but if you're a potsmoker with little to no short term memory left, the requirement for you to pay the short-term memory RIAA licensing fee will be either prorated or waived depending on how chronic you are.
Think of the poor starving manufactured pop artists who can only afford two Gulfstream jets and one yacht!
I am really enjoying your new customer service policies, and you're winning a lot of great press! I mean, suing your own customers is a good way to encourage them to buy from you, right?
Four easy steps to big profits:
Sue customers who engage in an activity which is actually NOT illegal, although you've bribed enough courts to convince them to "interpret" law in the way that you see fit, and copy protect CDs and promote DRM-ladened techology replacements for CDs, eliminating Fair Use
Watch customers actually TURN TO P2P and quit buying from you in response to your hardball tactics
?????????
Profit(?)
It's a great business process and you should patent it. In fact it is such a winning idea that Microsoft has taken cue and now sues customers who refuse to upgrade, buy used but retired licenses, or turn to (in some cases free) competitors' products. With an idea that has Microsoft's backing, what could possibly go wrong?
You're making great press. After all, bad attention is better than no attention, right?
I, for one, no longer buy non-compelling CD releases (I consider material from Pink Floyd to be compelling) and will not buy anything from RIAA members until they recognize that try-before-you-buy works. The folks who would buy the CDs would not be willing to put up with the crappy sound quality usually found from P2P downloads. Most people rip using Windows Media Player or MusicMatch, both of which rip badly, but are "good enough" to learn whether or not one likes the music. In fact when Napster(I) was in its prime, I bought more music in the 13 months I used Napster than I did in the previous 13 YEARS I owned a CD player. Why? Because I'd search for random words, listen, and buy the material. If it weren't for Napster I'd never have discovered Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, I'd never have discovered that I actually have an appreciation for some of Chuck Mangione's and Henry Mancini's work and would have never, ever bought any of their material otherwise. P2P works and random downloads generate sales.
Since Napster's death there have been no real P2P alternatives (Limewire sucks. Gnutella sucks. Kazaa is spyware-ridden and Windows-centric, etc.) and as such I have not purchased any new music - because I haven't been exposed to any new music. I don't listen to playlist-driven radio stations (I refuse to listen to stations who give in to payola), I listen to talk radio and classical stations now, and occasionally a local oldies station with actual DJs. I abhor RIAA members' tactics and refuse to be a consumer being patronized by manufactured pop stations. Sure, some of the new material may be good, but let it earn airplay on its own merit, and not due to payola.
I'll have to live with Office 2000 under wine and OpenOffice.org. Sorry, Microsoft, Windows is banned from my personal computer and at my place of business it has only limited use. I'll use Microsoft Office again when you come out with the Linux build, and not before then.
Of course since we need the MSDN Universal kit, we'll still have the latest Office for Windows on hand but it likely will not be one of the installed programs on any of the Windows development machines unless we build something that a client insists be M$ Office-based.
Warning: this is a shameless and admittedly biased post as I am frustrated with ATI's crappy Linux drivers and their refusal to release a Linux driver for AiW tuner and VIVO support
<conspiracytheory> Perhaps ATI needs to make sure that they implement their Linux drivers in such a way that configuration and performance are spotty at best, and they also need to prepare the AiW and VIVO editions and refuse to include support for those features in the Linux driver, just to irritate the *bleep* out of their Linux customers, because they're a Microsoft whore?</conspiracytheory>
Hey, I warned you this post was going to be biased!
You intake uranium every day in your food anyhow, and it's actually a very common element (just not the isotopes used to build nukes). It's in everyone's drinking water. http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/uranium .htm has some info you'll want to read.
Slashdot Mirror
[quote] How about fossilized whale skeletons with vestigal legs? [/quote] YM pelvic bones, which whales today still have and use to breed.
You're wrong though - I think you're missing the history of the operating systems and how things came to be the way they are:
In the beginning, EVERYONE was a superuser on Windows. Win3x has absolutely NO security. Win9x has absolutely NO security. OS/2 had minimal security. WinNT (NT/2K/XP/2K3) carries this baggage in the form of backwards compatibility, and unfortunately application developers have not changed their development habits to respect security concerns. So, this leaves users having to be power users at minimum, or far too often, local administrators, in order to run applications like Quickbooks, Garden Graphics (a niche market CAD package), many games, and countless other applications.
Sure, you can make Windows Install service run elevated so anyone can install an app, but that doesn't change the fact that once Joe "non-admin" User gets Quickbooks Pro installed, he still cannot run it until his account has local administrator privileges. Quickbooks requires that because they haven't changed their architecture to assume a locked down box - they assume that their software will be installed on the same old systems that Quickbooks 2.0 was installed on - Win3x or Win9x, with absolutely no security whatsoever (so in essence everyone was root).
This will never happen in Linux/Solaris/*nix because applications developers have had to contend with this from the very beginning of *nix at Bell Labs.
Linux is more resistant to spyware for the same reason that *BSD, Solaris, IRIX, HP/UX, and practically every other *nix and *nix-like OS out there is (indented for emphasis):
Now, if you want to contend that Windows is more susceptible because people hate Microsoft, or because Windows is more dominant in the marketplace, or any other reason, read the above again. And again. And again. If you still don't understand or agree, read up on unix permissions, how the userspace works, the root account, and also Windows permissions and the history of why it is so difficult to lock down (poor programming practices, backwards compatibility requirements, etc.). There ARE Linux and Unix viruses, but tend not to spread (they're almost entirely "proof of concept" routines) BECAUSE of the nazi-like permissions in *nix-type operating systems. Not only do you need root access locally to spread damage beyond ~/ (and yes, /tmp files owned by ~) but you need root access on the system you are trying to infect as well. "It just ain't gonna happen" unless you have a truly clueless "sysadmin" or a lazy sack of shit sysadmin.
I submitted a defect report to the OOo team nearly a year ago about an Excel spreadsheet which OOo took 43 minutes to open but Microsoft Excel could open in under ten seconds - under wine! The spreadsheet came from The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In Windows, it still opened in under ten seconds even with Norton AntiVirus scans.
The next month I received a spreadsheet which took well over two HOURS for OOo to open, but that same spreadsheet opened in Excel (via wine) in under 30 seconds, and under Windows even with Norton AntiVirus it took well under one minute. These were by no means large; the first was about 1200 rows in each of three worksheets, and the second was about 2500 rows in each of three worksheets.
When the feedback came back, they marked the priority down and indicated that they are more focused on adding new functionality since it is more interesting than fixing minor bugs. WTF? IMHO this is a fatal defect for all intents and purposes. Were I the release engineer or QA director for OOo/Star Office, I would not let the product go out as a final release in that condition since it is a serious hindrance to corporate adoptation.
With that said, I use OOo far more than I use Microsoft Office because I hate Microsoft's current Anti-Customer "every customer is a crook" stance, however I cannot fault Microsoft where they get things right. Microsoft Office rocks! Microsoft Exchange rocks! OOo is functionally a good replacement for M$ Office, but performance sucks when it comes to I/O. Likewise, Postfix is great and all, but when it comes to groupware, there really are no (open source) groupware packages that come even close to Microsoft Exchange's and Outlook's combined feature sets; this is coming from both a user feature/experience perspective and a maintenance perspective. Sure, Exchange backups may suck, but its maintenance tools are excellent in terms of maintaining back end integrity (providing you keep up with it), plus Exchange handles attachments extremely intelligently on the back end. Why do I mention this? Because I am biased against Microsoft and I want to make that clear so my post is taken in the correct context.
If you check the OOo bug tracker, you will see many, many reports of the very same defect I reported (the one cited above) and in each and every case this fatal defect has either been closed or the priority has been bumped down to "we'll fix bugs when Hell freezes over because fixing a broken architecture is boring, I'd rather add more bells and whistles and maybe an Easter egg or three"
I hope the OOo team gets their act together, because both OOo and StarOffice have incredible potential to truly compete with and possibly even overtake Microsoft Office in the future, but there are some critical issues (broken I/O) that they really need to address. I'd rather they address the issues now than wait for Massachusetts to deploy the suite only to find that with real-world Commonwealth data, the suite costs more in terms of wasted time than the Microsoft licenses would have cost. This is where Microsoft FUD would actually be factual, and then Microsoft can say "See, we told you so!" and come out smelling like roses.
A big hurdle to DTV acceptance is availability.
I've looked for portable TV sets with DTV/HDTV reception. None exist. I've checked with my distributor, I've checked retail (Worst Buy, Circuit City, Sprawl*Mart, Amazon, Yahoo, etc.) and all the portable sets are --- all analog. I want a small television set for my kitchen and one for my living room, and I can find small analog televisions ranging from $10 (yes, $10!) all the way to $700 but none with digital reception capability
Likewise: I've looked for USB TV tuners or integral laptop tuners. Guess what? Unless I go for a DVB (european digital) tuners, which are pointless on this side of the pond, the only choice is - you got it - analog.
If I want a 36" television in my kitchen, or carry a desktop computer with a full PCI slot, there are certainly DTV/HDTV options, but I'm certainly not going to put a 36" television in my kitchen, and I'm not going to carry around a desktop computer with me when I am on the go. And a handheld DTV (as in 1.7" to 3.5" LCD television)? They do not exist.If I want to replace my old, old 1980s Casio LCD television (cracked LCD screen, and they no longer sell replacement displays for that model), I have to replace it with an analog unit which will be useless very soon.
Furthermore: I don't want HDTV. Stargate is just as entertaining at low-resolution NTSC as it would be at 1080i resolution. So I'd be able to see blemishes on Carter's face, or count the hairs on Jackson's head, or see the difference in his 5 o'clock shadow between scenes or even during a scene when there were multiple takes during shooting. Big f'n whoop. It won't be any more entertaining, and it certainly won't make boring drivel like Simple Life or Survivor suck any less.
$.02
How the FUCK are you people moderating? How the FUCK was my post off-topic, when it was in direct reference to both the parent post AND the overall topic? It was initially marked +2 insightful and now 0 Offtopic. Get off the crack, guys. This place is as bad as Fark.
First off, the "leaks" may be intentional to gain publicity and widespread public use, and since it's an unstable build and "illegitimately gotten" Microsoft can disavow any bugs, claiming it is a test build, beta, alpha, prerelease, or whatever other term they want to apply to a preproduction build (and rightfully so!). Companies leaking early builds, especially builds with drop-dead dates in multiple modules, is not unheard of. By doing this they can use pirate groups as a form of covert marketing and free press (screenshots and actual use of a product), not to mention Microsoft fanboys building free third-party Windows Vista support sites. Of course Microsoft would officially deny such leaks, but they'd be expected to either way, either due to anti-competitive tactics that could land them in court again, or due to concern about shareholder opinions, or even a superficial concern over what little integrity they have left. Secondly, and yes this is nitpicking: You mean "pulling a 180" not a "pulling a 360" (please don't flame me for pointing this out, the primary intent of this post is contained in the first paragraph and this one is merely an incidental observation)
Access has its merits for small-scale apps used in VERY small offices or for homes. Want an alternative? Check out OpenOffice.org Base. Access is not intended to be a multiuser database. It "can" be done but requires fugly code to accomplish it.
I block only annoying animated ads, popups, and flash ads that throw themselves in a top layer on a page and get right in the way of the content. Why do advertisers do these things when they know they only piss people off and cause them to NOT buy from their clients?
Unobtrusive banner ads, "tasteful" animations (e.g., no strobing), etc. I don't block because a) they pay for content and b) they don't bother me
Well Microsoft obviously had to do SOMETHING to keep their revenue growing, what with OS/X server approaching a usable state and with Linux and *BSD growing rapidly in the server segment of the market.
I for one won't be upgrading Windows any more. Linux is free, works very well, and aside from kernel/module updates does not require rebooting for most patches and configuration changes, so the only time my Linux servers see outages is when the power goes out or if I need to change hardware configuration.
Sorry Microsoft. The _only_ reason I won't go with Windows and have been migating to Linux is your hostile anti-customer stance and polices, and this shift in your licensing policy took your anti-customer movement from bad to worse. I'm still migrating to Linux, and as soon as I find a suitable migration path for group scheduling, my Exchange 2000 server is going bye-bye and my disks/licenses will be going up on eBay (I love right of first sale. I own the media and licenses, and thus can transfer ownership, regardless of what you might think, and courts have consistently ruled otherwise to date)
I've also been recommending the OpenOffice.org office suite to clients, even though I'd make more money on Microsoft Office, The only cost to the customer is the time to download the suite, or if they want us to install it, the time to install and to burn a CD containing the source.
IMHO Microsoft is committing corporate suicide, albeit a long and painful one.
Funny: Paying for purchases with nothing but $2 bills
More funny: Clerks calling the police, accusing you of trying to pass fake currency
Hilarious: the officer telling the clerk she's a fucking retard
This has GOT to be a joke. Did I somehow sleep through the winter and wake up on April 1?
Time to RTFA. . .
FWIW my v400 runs four days on a charge with the standard battery (talking 15-30 minutes per day), in contrast to two days for my previous phone, a Nokia 6120 with an extended life battery which would run three days on standby, less if I actually make or receive a call, and one day for my previous phone.
:D Sadly, this is one of the few things I need to keep Windows around for - moto4lin can't transfer files yet. :(
Before buying my V400 I absolutely detested camera phones, but I got tired of fixing my old Nokia so decided to upgrade. It seems that if I wanted to sync my address book with my PC or the option use my phone as a modem, I had to take a camera phone. Phones without cameras lack other useful features as well, it seems. So, I went with the V400, and I was surprised to find that although I hated the idea of camera phones, it comes in awfully handy. I use it on jobs, when shopping (photograph an item on a shelf at a brick-and-mortar store for comparison shopping online), etc.
Not only that, I can upload Pink Floyd songs like "Interstellar Overdrive" for unique and incredibly irritating ring tones. It's wondeful, I tell ya!
Sure! MIT, GE, HP/DEC (they have two!), Apple, IBM, Halliburton are all squatting on Class A addresses, giving them allocations of 17 million IP addresses (34 million in the case of HP). That's definitely IP squatting.
;)
Oh wait, that isn't what you meant, is it. . .
Re: speed tracking on the Pike via EZPass or even the paper ticket - YES it is possible
I don't do EZPass.
If I were to drive at high speed on the pike, I'd take the paper ticket, smudge the time stamp or accidentally spill coffee on it, and run a magnet over the magnetic strip a few times.
EZPass is not the only way to track speed on the tolls. Check your paper ticket sometime. They DO stamp the time on the ticket when you pick it up, and I'm sure that when the ticket is printed the magnetic strip is read as well. As far as whether or not they actually check it at the other end, I have no idea.
It's not a good idea to speed out there anyhow, what with the unmarked and modified Intrepids (haw haw haw, slow piece of crap), unmarked SVO Rustangs (HAW HAW HAW still slow) and slightly faster Crapmaro, and not to mention Motorola and limited and controlled on/off ramps. I'll drive 180+ out on I-70 where you can see clear horizon to horizon in all directions, but not around here. I'll stick to just under the prevaling speed of traffic. Hell, it's not a good idea to speed in much of Taxachusetts since there are few good straightaways to do it.
Several years ago here in Taxachusetts I got pulled over at 149mph (after slowing down from MUCH faster) in my ZR-1 and got let go with just a verbal warning (I'd pulled over and waited when I saw the officer pull out of the rest stop in my rear view mirror. He was probably just grateful I didn't give him any crap and didn't bullshit as to why I was driving so damn fast) - since that bit of grace from a state trooper I haven't gone more than 10 over or so here in Taxachusetts, and am usually going slower than anyone else, whether I'm driving one of my 'Vettes or one of the trucks. When I take my car out west though, it's a different story.
Here in America, the media refers to terrorists as "militants" out of fear that calling terrorists "terrorists" will somehow offend the *bleep*ers.
. . . stores and banks never give out dollar coins unless you specifically ask for them, and even then, most stores won't have them and sometimes banks won't either. I rarely see 50-cent coins either, nor two-dollar bills, yet both are still minted and circulated to banks on an ongoing basis.
I think what Microsoft really needs is a lobotomy.
You misspelled "'60s technology" (if you want to include on the FM and AM stereo broadcasting era), or "'20s technology" if referring to simply broadcasting any music over public airwaves. ;)
Not to mention the capacitors, especially in the stereo processor your FM receiver has.
Want to know something that is even more insidious? Your brain is an information storage device - and unlicensed one at that. Who knows, tomorrow you may end up with an earworm of "toxic" or "oops I did it again" (I refuse to capitalize those titles :-p) going through your head 50 times tomorrow, and for each performance of that recording, RIAA member labels will not be compensated. Oh the horror! In the near future you will have to have to pay long-term memory licensing fees based on your IQ, because part of your IQ score is figured by testing your memory. There will also be licensing fees for your short-term memory, but if you're a potsmoker with little to no short term memory left, the requirement for you to pay the short-term memory RIAA licensing fee will be either prorated or waived depending on how chronic you are.
Think of the poor starving manufactured pop artists who can only afford two Gulfstream jets and one yacht!
Hey RIAA members:
I am really enjoying your new customer service policies, and you're winning a lot of great press! I mean, suing your own customers is a good way to encourage them to buy from you, right?
Four easy steps to big profits:
It's a great business process and you should patent it. In fact it is such a winning idea that Microsoft has taken cue and now sues customers who refuse to upgrade, buy used but retired licenses, or turn to (in some cases free) competitors' products. With an idea that has Microsoft's backing, what could possibly go wrong?
You're making great press. After all, bad attention is better than no attention, right?
I, for one, no longer buy non-compelling CD releases (I consider material from Pink Floyd to be compelling) and will not buy anything from RIAA members until they recognize that try-before-you-buy works. The folks who would buy the CDs would not be willing to put up with the crappy sound quality usually found from P2P downloads. Most people rip using Windows Media Player or MusicMatch, both of which rip badly, but are "good enough" to learn whether or not one likes the music. In fact when Napster(I) was in its prime, I bought more music in the 13 months I used Napster than I did in the previous 13 YEARS I owned a CD player. Why? Because I'd search for random words, listen, and buy the material. If it weren't for Napster I'd never have discovered Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, I'd never have discovered that I actually have an appreciation for some of Chuck Mangione's and Henry Mancini's work and would have never, ever bought any of their material otherwise. P2P works and random downloads generate sales.
Since Napster's death there have been no real P2P alternatives (Limewire sucks. Gnutella sucks. Kazaa is spyware-ridden and Windows-centric, etc.) and as such I have not purchased any new music - because I haven't been exposed to any new music. I don't listen to playlist-driven radio stations (I refuse to listen to stations who give in to payola), I listen to talk radio and classical stations now, and occasionally a local oldies station with actual DJs. I abhor RIAA members' tactics and refuse to be a consumer being patronized by manufactured pop stations. Sure, some of the new material may be good, but let it earn airplay on its own merit, and not due to payola.
I'll have to live with Office 2000 under wine and OpenOffice.org. Sorry, Microsoft, Windows is banned from my personal computer and at my place of business it has only limited use. I'll use Microsoft Office again when you come out with the Linux build, and not before then. Of course since we need the MSDN Universal kit, we'll still have the latest Office for Windows on hand but it likely will not be one of the installed programs on any of the Windows development machines unless we build something that a client insists be M$ Office-based.
Warning: this is a shameless and admittedly biased post as I am frustrated with ATI's crappy Linux drivers and their refusal to release a Linux driver for AiW tuner and VIVO support
<conspiracytheory> Perhaps ATI needs to make sure that they implement their Linux drivers in such a way that configuration and performance are spotty at best, and they also need to prepare the AiW and VIVO editions and refuse to include support for those features in the Linux driver, just to irritate the *bleep* out of their Linux customers, because they're a Microsoft whore?</conspiracytheory>
Hey, I warned you this post was going to be biased!
You intake uranium every day in your food anyhow, and it's actually a very common element (just not the isotopes used to build nukes). It's in everyone's drinking water. http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/uranium .htm has some info you'll want to read.
Or why not "51st US State" or better yet thanks to current treaties, "US Protectorate" :D