The unregulated so-called "free market" will take care of everything, right? Just look at what great shape our economy is in...
Very little of our economy, or our health care system, can be described by "free market." Bonus points if you can identify which parts, if any, most resemble one.
It's also nice to know that, even in rough economic times, that the vast majority of Americans only go bankrupt because of catastrophic illness. It would suck if this were a normal occurrence, wouldn't it?
And, if your hospital or clinic looks like a "meat grinder," I think you have the wrong building. I'm guessing it's not really a hospital.
Show us the parse tree for English and we'll start using perfect grammar.
The problem is, the parse trees for most sentences in the language are ambiguous.
Further complicating the fact is that English may not be enumerable - I know the way most people speak it, it's not even a recognizable language, let alone decidable.
French, however, I hear is Turing decidable. Why else would they be so smug...
A rootkit modifies the kernel so that it intercepts all API calls, including the read() functions your scanner is using
Very true. SysInternals' "Rootkit Revealer" can defeat these to a certain extent. It installs itself as an interactive service (meaning kernel mode, like most rootkits, drivers, etc.). It then compares the results of API calls - like read() - with raw data on the disk, or the contents of the active processes list with the actual data structures maintained by the kernel.
It can generally see what's actually "there" because it's running at the same privileges as the rootkit - barring some kind of hypervisor trick. If regular API calls don't match with what's actually there, you have a rootkit.
I work at a help desk at my college, mostly removing viruses from student laptops and answering phones. Practically all the viruses I see on the Windows side of things are Trojans - half the time it's some fake-antivirus scareware that gives a million false positives to try to get you to by the "full version" for removal.
So, at least in my (limited) professional experience, it's mostly trojans already. People click on the "Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!" ads and do whatever they say.
But, I have seen a few infections on Macs - 2 on the same day, in fact. It would constantly change your DNS server to one that would resolve bank website addresses to phishing site. Scary.
But, I would posit that no software company will ever patch the user behind the keyboard, and everyone is already targeting that oversight quite effectively. Unless Mac OS HelloKitty prevents the user from installing software.
If the title had just been "devertebrated," we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
Incidentally,
Brad stared at Debra, a sweet stewardess, as Debra's stewardess cart swerved. "Tea?" Debra greeted Brad. Brad's face creased as Debra stared. Brad detested tea....
Microsoft has done enough to break backwards compatibility already. They should just go the whole hog and on their next iteration, do a ground-up security analysis and refactoring of their OS, instead of trying to prevent & remove malware that latches onto existing API problems that some software might use legitimately.
That was kind of the point with Vista. But, since most of the changes were "under the hood," people deride it as nothing but XP + bloated eye candy. Especially considering how unusable it was prior to SP1.
I mean, things like randomizing the addresses of system libraries in memory or Kernel Patch Protection or whatever the heck they're calling it now are/were great ideas, and it's about time that they implemented them. But, anti-virus vendors whined about KPP, and it was nerfed hardcore in a patch. (Bonus points for WoW-speak in an unrelated topic?)
Perhaps they could do a better job "breaking" things in Windows 7, and have "give private sandboxes to 'legacy' apps that don't use the new secure APIs." Something like Wow64:32-bit apps::sandbox:legacy apps. But, Windows 7 is looking more like "Vista REALLY-GOOD edition" than "omg break everything again for security" edition.
It doesn't surprise me that smart, greed oriented, affluent people will make use of their talent for some extra money, at whatever the cost to the public (who are largely now all have-nots).
When you have more money than $deity, why work through some shadowy patent illuminati? Especially when you could keep the money through your own shadowy corporation?
And since when are the public mostly "have-nots"? America's GNI per capita is $46k. The poorest 20% earn $20k a year, not counting the value of food stamps, welfare, "negative taxes" (Earned Income Tax Credit), Medicaid, etc.
Not that poverty is good or that inequality is nonexistent, but we're not about to have a worker's revolution because "pressure exceeds tolerance." I think everyone agrees that the patent system is messed up, but even the "haves" are bothered by that - I'd like to see what it costs Microsoft to maintain a massive defensive network of lawyers and patents compared to the royalties they've received for exercising them.
Through much trickery and chicanery (most of which involved attending one of Microsoft's developers conference), I got a full copy of Office 2007. They didn't actually print discs, like they did with Visual Studio 2005, they just provided a download link and a password.
The downloaded Office 2007 Professional installer is 385MB. They installed size is 429MB.
I also can't believe that Vista eats up 12 GB of hard disk space. My friend and I bought netbooks with 8GB solid state drives. I put Server 2003 on mine, and he installed Vista (the fool! on a netbook!). Obviously Vista can't take up 12 GB of space on an 8 GB SSD, but I'll admit there was some devilry involved with cutting out drivers he didn't need from the installer and slipstreaming SP1 in.
But, granted, 32GB is incredibly small. Even if you could boot Vista from floppies, you're still left with only 32 GB usable space. That's tiny, tiny, tiny. I survive with 8 GB on my netbook only because A) Server 2003, Office 2007, and a few other programs amount to only 4 GB, B) I have a 16GB SD card and an 8 GB flash drive I use for anything interesting and C) my home desktop is has terabyte RAID 0.
There are a few advantages to SSDs, though: no moving parts. I work at the help desk at college, and the "help desk" is evidently French for "student laptop repair." I'm one of two students allowed to touch them, and about a third of the laptops I've worked on have had failed hard drives. Not exactly a scientific sample, but a SSD won't have a head crash if your roommate drops a subwoofer on the keyboard. (No joke, his W, S, and F keys were missing.) They're also quiet - I mean, how much noise does your flash drive make? Quiet, durable, and presumably good thermals make for good laptop material.
Still, maybe a warranty and a 500 GB drive are worth the savings. Or maybe two 500 GB drives and a backup.
My understanding is that none of the manufacturers of wireless mics had actually licensed the spectrum - they were illegally squatting on it, broadcasting interference, and making a bunch of money in the process.
If that's true, it seems fair that nobody else should have to license it, either.
Yes... and try installing Windows XP on a RAID array without using a driver floppy disk. Even Houdini couldn't pull that one off! Linux on the other hand is a breeze. The array is automatically detected and the appropriate drivers are installed and initialized.
Vista automatically detects your RAID and installs drivers, too, though you'd probably want to use newer drivers than the ones on your Vista DVD. Vista will happily read the appropriate drivers off of a USB key. Or another CD.
Yes, it is unfortunate that XP is stuck on floppies. But, if you're running XP and are really that floppy adverse, slipstream them into the installer. It's not like Microsoft and other developers haven't written a bunch of programs for doing just that.
(Notice how my post performs better due to 64-bit Vista installed on a terabyte RAID 0! ^.^)
There is no way that I have discovered to get into a clamshell without running the risk of serious injury either from the metal blade that I have to use to cut it, or the plastic blade that is formed when using scissors and always ends up pointing into the path of my oncoming hand.
Some people weren't meant to open packages, and others will just never be destined to wield scissors. Which are you? ^.^
Most people in America are angrier than usual due to the worsening economic conditions caused by Bush's oil war which bankrupted the nation. That's what's really being reflected on the web. Bush and Cheney are basically war criminials. I'm hoping people take it their rage at the voting booths.
Oooh, mad libs!
Most people in America are sillier than usual due to the diabetes caused by Bush's evil, putrid, orphan-exploiting existence which caffeinated the nation. That's what's really being monkeyed on the web. Bush and Cheney are basically evil, putrid, orphan-exploiters. I'm hoping people take it their rage at the carnival.
Making the volume read-only does have a lot of disadvantages, but these can be worked around. I made a second "D" partition and moved my profile data there. (Another registry edit and a hardlink.) So, my My Documents data, Firefox profile/downloads, and everything else are permanent.
But, it does have its bonuses - speed and no need for antivirus. (You can download every virus on the internet - the infection will be lost on reboot
RAM usage is actually pretty light - typical use only consumes 32 MB. If it's working properly, the command "ewfmgr c:" will show you how much you're consuming.
With this kind of setup (My Documents moved to a separate partition), you'll never notice anything different. Unless you install a program, patch Windows, or play a game that stores save game data in the C drive, which will necessitate a "ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable -live" to write changes to disk. Memory consumption is surprisingly small (unless you defrag your drive without disabling it and rebooting ^^), and the performance gains are incredible.
I highly recommend it - I set this up for my grandparents' old desktop. They were happy that it magically ran a lot faster, they never noticed anything different (their Outlook.PSTs and My Documents folder were automagically on another partition), and I was happy because it kept grandkids/well-meaning relatives from breaking their machine.
Sure, I can try explaining a little bit. And those "RTFA" posts are definitely not helpful; it was a pain for me (in my infinite wisdom, of course) to get EWF installed and working correctly, and I had step-by-step instructions.
These are from the Aspire One User forums, but these instructions work for most any Windows computer. The short of it is to get EWF drivers, you have to download an XP Embedded ISO image from Microsoft and rip apart an installer. Installing the drivers requires installing some very specific registry keys and running a command-line instruction from the CD you downloaded. After a reboot, you're running with EWF.
What EWF does exactly is it makes a specific drive, say C, "read-only." Any writes to your C drive with EWF enabled (in RAM-Reg mode, or whatever it's called) are trapped in memory instead. Reads to changed files are read from memory.
So, you have a slowly enlarging cache of changed files; it's pretty much the NTFS journal stored in RAM instead of committed to disk. This means if you save a file to your C drive, it appears to be saved (because Windows is reading that part of the file system from memory) but it's gone when you reboot. (So, have a second "save" partition.) You can enable/disable the Enhanced Write Filter at any time if, say, you need to install a patch or a program.
It's pretty fun; you can delete all of the icons on your desktop and everything you can out of your Windows drive and, because those changes were never committed to disk, only temporarily stored in memory, everything's back as it was when you reboot. It can also be dangerous - don't defrag or chkdsk or anything silly like that with it enabled, because all available memory will fill up and then you'll get "delayed write" errors and Windows will hardlock.
Also, turn off your paging file if you install EWF drivers. There is no point in caching memory to disk if any changes to disk are being cached in memory.
It pretty much freezes your computer eternally in one state - it functions as normal, except changes to a EWF protected drive only appear to be saved. You'd want to do this because, well, everything runs much faster. Take Outlook 2007 - you run it, it loads your PST file and makes changes to it. That PST file is now cached in memory, and any further access to it is memory-fast instead of disk-fast. Programs load a lot faster, and the machine boots a lot faster. It acts like a much faster laptop than it is because the disk is used only for reads, and never for any subsequent writes.
The reason it's in an XP Embedded CD is because it's designed to let you run Windows off of a CD or a non-writeable flash card. It's also very handy for saving your solid-state drive from burning out because of the million+ writes per second Windows feels compelled to do.
It's a pain to get working, but you'll know it's working when 1) your computer runs faster and 2) any new icons you make on your desktop (assuming you "Froze" your C drive) disappear when you reboot.
Oddly enough, it's kinda like Vista's Super-Fetch.
I have an Acer Aspire One netbook. It has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor (with hyperthreading, evidently), 1.5GB of RAM (I upgraded it from 512MB), an 8GB SSD drive, and a 1024x600 screen.
It came with "Linpus" (a horrid distro of Linux), which inspired me to try to install a different operating system. (It performed OK, but they did their best to hide any advanced functionality like, you know, installing a program. No package manager for you!).
If you're a college student, Google "Microsoft DreamSpark." Ballmer is giving out free, full licenses to Windows Server 2003 and 2008, amongst other things, presumably to brainwash the latest generation of human capital. So, I installed Server 2003 Standard on my tiny little netbook and got some Enhanced Write Filter drivers from an XP Embedded ISO. It runs amazingly fast (EWF drivers are similar to what Live CDs use - writes are committed to memory instead of disk, which makes fetching those files later extremely fast), and can even play World of Warcraft.
So, what I suggest you do is figure out how to get Enhanced Write Filter drivers working on your machine. Prior to installing them on my machine, Firefox was almost unusable - scrolling down one line would cause a torrent of disk activity, which would lock the machine until it was finished. (Windows really isn't meant for solid state drives, it seems.) After installing those drivers, it boots faster than my gaming rig, and is hyper-responsive.
Since Tablet XP seems to have the proper handwriting support you want, try installing those drivers. It made my Server 2003 install perform leaps and bounds better; I'm sure it'll help XP Tablet, too.
The bold-faced part of your quote is Marlin-enabled device, not just a "Marlin device." I think they're open-sourcing the DRM scheme because they want it on as many players (from different companies) as humanly possible.
Which leads to interesting problems. Will Marlin have the one and only licensing server? Could each studio run their own server to license their own content under this scheme? Could I run my own h4x0r sever to license everything to myself?
Ideally, this would be some kind of Steam/iTunes hybrid: download the music you bought as many times as you want on as many machines as you want. (You could look at the users with most machines activated to see who activated the entire internet.)
But, that's just a pipe dream and completely unrelated to what's in the article I haven't read (natch.)
It will also be an interesting test case of the music industry's pet theories (if it "works:")
Piracy costs us money.
DRM stops/lessens piracy.
DRM will make us more money.
If all 3 are true, and the music industry is "competitive," DRM would mean falling prices on song tracks. If this is implemented and we don't see falling music prices, then one, many, or all of these 4 assumptions have been demonstrated incorrect.
My college actually does this - MAC addresses of personal devices are registered to your Novell account. (Unregistered devices get no access!) Each user gets 113KB/s (I think they were going for 1000 Kbps) capped across all of their devices.
We have a massive packet shaper. Faculty and lab machines get higher priority, and the "server" subclass operates outside of the shaper. So, your massive astrophysics lab would probably be on a lab machine or a specially purposed machine, or you could ask nicely and they could register your personal machine on a separate throttling class.
Our bandwidth is horrible - a lot of the buildings are using sub-cat5 cables, for example - but they did buy an additional 10Mbps on their WAN line. Given the inability to get the powers-that-be on campus to get more bandwidth, the caps and shaping help keep YouTube from drowning out EBSCO and JSTOR.
Slashdot Mirror
Smart people influence the stupid people, eh? Sorry, but explain eight years of Bush to me then.
You haven't been influenced yet? :P
The unregulated so-called "free market" will take care of everything, right? Just look at what great shape our economy is in...
Very little of our economy, or our health care system, can be described by "free market." Bonus points if you can identify which parts, if any, most resemble one.
It's also nice to know that, even in rough economic times, that the vast majority of Americans only go bankrupt because of catastrophic illness. It would suck if this were a normal occurrence, wouldn't it?
And, if your hospital or clinic looks like a "meat grinder," I think you have the wrong building. I'm guessing it's not really a hospital.
In other countries it's much cheaper.
Yes, but coverage is cheap if you have two countries splitting the cost of your cell phone tower. :P
The US kind of donates the building and practically the entirety of the peacekeeping budget, not to mention troops.
Other countries get paid per soldier per day contributed towards peacekeeping missions, which third world nations with bored armies love.
Show us the parse tree for English and we'll start using perfect grammar.
The problem is, the parse trees for most sentences in the language are ambiguous.
Further complicating the fact is that English may not be enumerable - I know the way most people speak it, it's not even a recognizable language, let alone decidable.
French, however, I hear is Turing decidable. Why else would they be so smug...
1 in a million is 1 too many.
There are only a million website?!
A rootkit modifies the kernel so that it intercepts all API calls, including the read() functions your scanner is using
Very true. SysInternals' "Rootkit Revealer" can defeat these to a certain extent. It installs itself as an interactive service (meaning kernel mode, like most rootkits, drivers, etc.). It then compares the results of API calls - like read() - with raw data on the disk, or the contents of the active processes list with the actual data structures maintained by the kernel.
It can generally see what's actually "there" because it's running at the same privileges as the rootkit - barring some kind of hypervisor trick. If regular API calls don't match with what's actually there, you have a rootkit.
I work at a help desk at my college, mostly removing viruses from student laptops and answering phones. Practically all the viruses I see on the Windows side of things are Trojans - half the time it's some fake-antivirus scareware that gives a million false positives to try to get you to by the "full version" for removal.
So, at least in my (limited) professional experience, it's mostly trojans already. People click on the "Your computer is broadcasting an IP address!" ads and do whatever they say.
But, I have seen a few infections on Macs - 2 on the same day, in fact. It would constantly change your DNS server to one that would resolve bank website addresses to phishing site. Scary.
But, I would posit that no software company will ever patch the user behind the keyboard, and everyone is already targeting that oversight quite effectively. Unless Mac OS HelloKitty prevents the user from installing software.
If the title had just been "devertebrated," we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
Incidentally,
Brad stared at Debra, a sweet stewardess, as Debra's stewardess cart swerved. "Tea?" Debra greeted Brad. Brad's face creased as Debra stared. Brad detested tea....
Microsoft has done enough to break backwards compatibility already. They should just go the whole hog and on their next iteration, do a ground-up security analysis and refactoring of their OS, instead of trying to prevent & remove malware that latches onto existing API problems that some software might use legitimately.
That was kind of the point with Vista. But, since most of the changes were "under the hood," people deride it as nothing but XP + bloated eye candy. Especially considering how unusable it was prior to SP1.
I mean, things like randomizing the addresses of system libraries in memory or Kernel Patch Protection or whatever the heck they're calling it now are/were great ideas, and it's about time that they implemented them. But, anti-virus vendors whined about KPP, and it was nerfed hardcore in a patch. (Bonus points for WoW-speak in an unrelated topic?)
Perhaps they could do a better job "breaking" things in Windows 7, and have "give private sandboxes to 'legacy' apps that don't use the new secure APIs." Something like Wow64:32-bit apps::sandbox:legacy apps. But, Windows 7 is looking more like "Vista REALLY-GOOD edition" than "omg break everything again for security" edition.
Your tax money "buys" you a government which, after all, presumably wouldn't exist without your generous donations.
"Civilization" is one of those perks that government is supposed to provide. How successfully is another story.
It doesn't surprise me that smart, greed oriented, affluent people will make use of their talent for some extra money, at whatever the cost to the public (who are largely now all have-nots).
When you have more money than $deity, why work through some shadowy patent illuminati? Especially when you could keep the money through your own shadowy corporation?
And since when are the public mostly "have-nots"? America's GNI per capita is $46k. The poorest 20% earn $20k a year, not counting the value of food stamps, welfare, "negative taxes" (Earned Income Tax Credit), Medicaid, etc.
Not that poverty is good or that inequality is nonexistent, but we're not about to have a worker's revolution because "pressure exceeds tolerance." I think everyone agrees that the patent system is messed up, but even the "haves" are bothered by that - I'd like to see what it costs Microsoft to maintain a massive defensive network of lawyers and patents compared to the royalties they've received for exercising them.
I, too, call Shenanigans on that.
Through much trickery and chicanery (most of which involved attending one of Microsoft's developers conference), I got a full copy of Office 2007. They didn't actually print discs, like they did with Visual Studio 2005, they just provided a download link and a password.
The downloaded Office 2007 Professional installer is 385MB. They installed size is 429MB.
I also can't believe that Vista eats up 12 GB of hard disk space. My friend and I bought netbooks with 8GB solid state drives. I put Server 2003 on mine, and he installed Vista (the fool! on a netbook!). Obviously Vista can't take up 12 GB of space on an 8 GB SSD, but I'll admit there was some devilry involved with cutting out drivers he didn't need from the installer and slipstreaming SP1 in.
But, granted, 32GB is incredibly small. Even if you could boot Vista from floppies, you're still left with only 32 GB usable space. That's tiny, tiny, tiny. I survive with 8 GB on my netbook only because A) Server 2003, Office 2007, and a few other programs amount to only 4 GB, B) I have a 16GB SD card and an 8 GB flash drive I use for anything interesting and C) my home desktop is has terabyte RAID 0.
There are a few advantages to SSDs, though: no moving parts. I work at the help desk at college, and the "help desk" is evidently French for "student laptop repair." I'm one of two students allowed to touch them, and about a third of the laptops I've worked on have had failed hard drives. Not exactly a scientific sample, but a SSD won't have a head crash if your roommate drops a subwoofer on the keyboard. (No joke, his W, S, and F keys were missing.) They're also quiet - I mean, how much noise does your flash drive make? Quiet, durable, and presumably good thermals make for good laptop material.
Still, maybe a warranty and a 500 GB drive are worth the savings. Or maybe two 500 GB drives and a backup.
You can't blame the recession when M$ underperforms the economy in general and other companies do better.
The part of the post before the "$" was insightful. Somebody hijacked twitter's account!
My understanding is that none of the manufacturers of wireless mics had actually licensed the spectrum - they were illegally squatting on it, broadcasting interference, and making a bunch of money in the process.
If that's true, it seems fair that nobody else should have to license it, either.
Yes... and try installing Windows XP on a RAID array without using a driver floppy disk. Even Houdini couldn't pull that one off! Linux on the other hand is a breeze. The array is automatically detected and the appropriate drivers are installed and initialized.
Vista automatically detects your RAID and installs drivers, too, though you'd probably want to use newer drivers than the ones on your Vista DVD. Vista will happily read the appropriate drivers off of a USB key. Or another CD.
Yes, it is unfortunate that XP is stuck on floppies. But, if you're running XP and are really that floppy adverse, slipstream them into the installer. It's not like Microsoft and other developers haven't written a bunch of programs for doing just that.
(Notice how my post performs better due to 64-bit Vista installed on a terabyte RAID 0! ^.^)
There is no way that I have discovered to get into a clamshell without running the risk of serious injury either from the metal blade that I have to use to cut it, or the plastic blade that is formed when using scissors and always ends up pointing into the path of my oncoming hand.
Some people weren't meant to open packages, and others will just never be destined to wield scissors. Which are you? ^.^
Most people in America are angrier than usual due to the worsening economic conditions caused by Bush's oil war which bankrupted the nation. That's what's really being reflected on the web. Bush and Cheney are basically war criminials. I'm hoping people take it their rage at the voting booths.
Oooh, mad libs!
Most people in America are sillier than usual due to the diabetes caused by Bush's evil, putrid, orphan-exploiting existence which caffeinated the nation. That's what's really being monkeyed on the web. Bush and Cheney are basically evil, putrid, orphan-exploiters. I'm hoping people take it their rage at the carnival.
But, I think my version made more sense.
My PC is eight years old, you insensitive clod!
Then why are you even trying to get a dev kit? Do you think you're going to write your game with a PS2 controller?
Making the volume read-only does have a lot of disadvantages, but these can be worked around. I made a second "D" partition and moved my profile data there. (Another registry edit and a hardlink.) So, my My Documents data, Firefox profile/downloads, and everything else are permanent.
But, it does have its bonuses - speed and no need for antivirus. (You can download every virus on the internet - the infection will be lost on reboot
RAM usage is actually pretty light - typical use only consumes 32 MB. If it's working properly, the command "ewfmgr c:" will show you how much you're consuming.
With this kind of setup (My Documents moved to a separate partition), you'll never notice anything different. Unless you install a program, patch Windows, or play a game that stores save game data in the C drive, which will necessitate a "ewfmgr c: -commitanddisable -live" to write changes to disk. Memory consumption is surprisingly small (unless you defrag your drive without disabling it and rebooting ^^), and the performance gains are incredible.
I highly recommend it - I set this up for my grandparents' old desktop. They were happy that it magically ran a lot faster, they never noticed anything different (their Outlook .PSTs and My Documents folder were automagically on another partition), and I was happy because it kept grandkids/well-meaning relatives from breaking their machine.
Sure, I can try explaining a little bit. And those "RTFA" posts are definitely not helpful; it was a pain for me (in my infinite wisdom, of course) to get EWF installed and working correctly, and I had step-by-step instructions.
These are from the Aspire One User forums, but these instructions work for most any Windows computer. The short of it is to get EWF drivers, you have to download an XP Embedded ISO image from Microsoft and rip apart an installer. Installing the drivers requires installing some very specific registry keys and running a command-line instruction from the CD you downloaded. After a reboot, you're running with EWF.
What EWF does exactly is it makes a specific drive, say C, "read-only." Any writes to your C drive with EWF enabled (in RAM-Reg mode, or whatever it's called) are trapped in memory instead. Reads to changed files are read from memory.
So, you have a slowly enlarging cache of changed files; it's pretty much the NTFS journal stored in RAM instead of committed to disk. This means if you save a file to your C drive, it appears to be saved (because Windows is reading that part of the file system from memory) but it's gone when you reboot. (So, have a second "save" partition.) You can enable/disable the Enhanced Write Filter at any time if, say, you need to install a patch or a program.
It's pretty fun; you can delete all of the icons on your desktop and everything you can out of your Windows drive and, because those changes were never committed to disk, only temporarily stored in memory, everything's back as it was when you reboot. It can also be dangerous - don't defrag or chkdsk or anything silly like that with it enabled, because all available memory will fill up and then you'll get "delayed write" errors and Windows will hardlock.
Also, turn off your paging file if you install EWF drivers. There is no point in caching memory to disk if any changes to disk are being cached in memory.
It pretty much freezes your computer eternally in one state - it functions as normal, except changes to a EWF protected drive only appear to be saved. You'd want to do this because, well, everything runs much faster. Take Outlook 2007 - you run it, it loads your PST file and makes changes to it. That PST file is now cached in memory, and any further access to it is memory-fast instead of disk-fast. Programs load a lot faster, and the machine boots a lot faster. It acts like a much faster laptop than it is because the disk is used only for reads, and never for any subsequent writes.
The reason it's in an XP Embedded CD is because it's designed to let you run Windows off of a CD or a non-writeable flash card. It's also very handy for saving your solid-state drive from burning out because of the million+ writes per second Windows feels compelled to do.
It's a pain to get working, but you'll know it's working when 1) your computer runs faster and 2) any new icons you make on your desktop (assuming you "Froze" your C drive) disappear when you reboot.
Oddly enough, it's kinda like Vista's Super-Fetch.
I have an Acer Aspire One netbook. It has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor (with hyperthreading, evidently), 1.5GB of RAM (I upgraded it from 512MB), an 8GB SSD drive, and a 1024x600 screen.
It came with "Linpus" (a horrid distro of Linux), which inspired me to try to install a different operating system. (It performed OK, but they did their best to hide any advanced functionality like, you know, installing a program. No package manager for you!).
If you're a college student, Google "Microsoft DreamSpark." Ballmer is giving out free, full licenses to Windows Server 2003 and 2008, amongst other things, presumably to brainwash the latest generation of human capital. So, I installed Server 2003 Standard on my tiny little netbook and got some Enhanced Write Filter drivers from an XP Embedded ISO. It runs amazingly fast (EWF drivers are similar to what Live CDs use - writes are committed to memory instead of disk, which makes fetching those files later extremely fast), and can even play World of Warcraft.
So, what I suggest you do is figure out how to get Enhanced Write Filter drivers working on your machine. Prior to installing them on my machine, Firefox was almost unusable - scrolling down one line would cause a torrent of disk activity, which would lock the machine until it was finished. (Windows really isn't meant for solid state drives, it seems.) After installing those drivers, it boots faster than my gaming rig, and is hyper-responsive.
Since Tablet XP seems to have the proper handwriting support you want, try installing those drivers. It made my Server 2003 install perform leaps and bounds better; I'm sure it'll help XP Tablet, too.
The bold-faced part of your quote is Marlin-enabled device, not just a "Marlin device." I think they're open-sourcing the DRM scheme because they want it on as many players (from different companies) as humanly possible.
Which leads to interesting problems. Will Marlin have the one and only licensing server? Could each studio run their own server to license their own content under this scheme? Could I run my own h4x0r sever to license everything to myself?
Ideally, this would be some kind of Steam/iTunes hybrid: download the music you bought as many times as you want on as many machines as you want. (You could look at the users with most machines activated to see who activated the entire internet.)
But, that's just a pipe dream and completely unrelated to what's in the article I haven't read (natch.)
It will also be an interesting test case of the music industry's pet theories (if it "works:")
If all 3 are true, and the music industry is "competitive," DRM would mean falling prices on song tracks. If this is implemented and we don't see falling music prices, then one, many, or all of these 4 assumptions have been demonstrated incorrect.
My college actually does this - MAC addresses of personal devices are registered to your Novell account. (Unregistered devices get no access!) Each user gets 113KB/s (I think they were going for 1000 Kbps) capped across all of their devices.
We have a massive packet shaper. Faculty and lab machines get higher priority, and the "server" subclass operates outside of the shaper. So, your massive astrophysics lab would probably be on a lab machine or a specially purposed machine, or you could ask nicely and they could register your personal machine on a separate throttling class.
Our bandwidth is horrible - a lot of the buildings are using sub-cat5 cables, for example - but they did buy an additional 10Mbps on their WAN line. Given the inability to get the powers-that-be on campus to get more bandwidth, the caps and shaping help keep YouTube from drowning out EBSCO and JSTOR.
(And about the FireWire: people were whining when the iMac didn't have a floppy drive too.)
Yes, yes... But floppy drives are actually useful.
I like my removable disks eSATA and my DV footage beamed directly into my skull, TYVM!