a) That wouldnt work. The eyeball needs to be alive.
How recently?
b) If your in that much danger then your screwed anyway.
Not necessarily.
If someone just wants your keys you can give them to him. If he requires your body parts as keys he'll take those. If those body parts require you to still be alive, then you get to go with them.
The only scenario with a reasonably high probability of you being left unscathed is the one in which you can give them the keys.
I don't want to work for an employer whose idea of security is to rely on a criminals distaste for violence, dismemberment, or kidnapping -- because I can't see any of those reliably slowing one down one bit.
It looks like Obama is gonna win the democratic nomination, unless something very bizarre happens. in 1998, Obama stated that he would Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons. that includes about half the shotguns, more than half of the pistols, and a fairly good chunk of the rifles in the U.S. There are also some quotes about putting in "thousands" of intelligence assets at the state & local level.
And if it came to an armed revolt, it would be like the US Army vs Iraq... no not Iraq... Iraq had tanks, rocket launchers, fighter planes, SAM installations, a proper disciplined armed forces each armed and trained with using automatic weapons, etc, etc, etc. And they couldn't hold off the US at all. What do you think some angry rabble with rifles and pistols is going to accomplish in a pitched battle?
Squat. Jack Squat.
If it ever comes to violent revolt, whether or not we're legally allowed to bear arms prior to the revolt is utterly irrelevant. We will immediately be reduced to guerrilla or terrorist tactics. We will be using home made explosives, and importing rockets, pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, grendades and ammo from black market arms dealers. We won't be much different than the Iraqi's current 'insurgents', and fighting for much the same reason... to take our own country back.
The only edge we'll have over the iraqis is that -hopefully- our own army will have a slightly harder time killing fellow americans. But if history has taught us anything that shouldn't be a much a deterrent as one would think it should be.
Wasn't one of the first Mac viruses spread by a mac printer?
There was a famous trojan that infected apple laser printers via postscript... but I don't think it 'spread' itself so it wasn't really a virus, nor would it qualify as a Mac virus because it didn't infect Macs, just some Apple Printers.
In any case I think it just lived on the printer. Although one of its effects was to change the password, something that could only be done a limited number of times for some demented reason, which meant eventually the printer would lock you out, and you couldn't reset the password without swapping in a bios or pram, or something along those lines.
Nonetheless, yes, laserprinters have been 'servers' in their own right for over 20 years, so this is hardly news. The same is true of NAS, Routers, managed switched, and so forth. And as for an 'IT security strategy" really, what can you do? Be aware its possible, and limit your attack surfaces to a level appropriate to the risk of them being compromised and the level of damage they could do if compromised.
For most of us, "Don't put your printer on the internet" is probably sufficient"IT security strategy"... although for higher security installations, something more detailed would be required.
Oh yeah, if want to be honest, you can sit in every game but then you are not experiencing the Wiimote at all
Yes and no. Mostly no.
The games I listed as being comfortable to sit down in lose really lose little by sitting. From gamers games like Metroid, Super Mario Galaxy, Need for Speed, or Zelda to casual games like Mario Party 8, Wii Playground, Big Brain Academy, or Wii Play there is no point or reason to stand up at all. The games do not require or benefit from increased range of motion, or the ability to mimic real activities.
In some games, like Wii Sports or Warioware Smooth moves where that is the point, then yeah not standing defeats the purpose... but those games are the minority...even amongst the casual games.
Uhh, that's like two times the RAM my current PC has (which also has a tad inferior processor and video card), and it runs just fine with any *nix flavor, even with all the desktop glossiness MS publicized and a tad more.
I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy? Oh noes, my Vista needs some more cheap ram.
Try running Vista on 512 MB and then we'll talk.
What would we say? That it was a bad idea and you should spend the $40 to upgrade your RAM?
Just prior to final descent, we'll just hand out cocktail napkins and bic pens to the whole cabin and they'll write whatever name they want on it.
Why even that? I don't have to give you my name to walk accross town, take a bus, ride the ferry, or take a cab. Why exactly should you need to know if I'm on a plane? Why can't I just buy a ticket cash, and show up with my ticket? (for domestic flights)
When you get stopped for doing 135mph in a school zone, we'll expect when the officer asks you to identify yourself that'll you'll just be a sport and tell the truth about where to send the ticket.
I fail to see your point.
So you stopped, and then obligingly handed over your license and registration? Why do you do all that, sport?
If you were a hard core criminal/terrorist who didn't want to be identified you wouldn't carry your own driverse license, wouldn't own the car you were driving or at the very least would have counterfeit/copied/stolen plates, and quite probably wouldn't stop when you saw the cop's lights come on either.
And that's my point. The people who would pull over and turn over their drivers license are not the problem. The system already works for them. Making a more secure ID isn't going to affect them.
So who is it going to affect? The hardened criminals? The ones who won't carry a legitimate ID in the first place? The ones with the connections, know how, and will to have a counterfeit made for them? No... its not going to affect them either. They'll still find ways around the system.
So then, whats the point? I'm not saying we should eliminate all forms of ID. What we have in place has a lot of uses and is working well. But I fail to see the point of a massive system upgrade that will just result in the government having more information about law abiding citizens while just furthering the game of cat and mouse with the hard criminals another step. end result? organized criminals: status quo regular citizens: increased monitoring and inconvenience
And to add insult to injury we get to foot the bill for it.
If the printed information or chip output differ from the central copy, they know it has been tampered with
Or the chip got scrambled going through the xray machine. Or is just out and out defective. Or the chimp doing database maintenance screwed up. Or someone has a tampered with the central database.
If they can solve the question of "is this REALLY you" with an iris scan and a fingerprint, roughly 99.9% of the stolen document industry will disappear leaving only the most ridiculous James Bond worthy scenarios to worry about.
Right. Because if the computer says your you, well then we're done.
Nevermind that peoples records get mixed up all the time in the real world databases we already have, not to mention the growing problem of identity theft.
And once the drug smuggling criminals know they need a passport with iris and fingerprint matching a central authority, then that's what they'll bring. They'll find a way of getting it done. Whether they are wearing somewhat unlikely james bond contacts and fingertips... or just had the foresight of applying for a passport using a stolen, borrowed, or purchased identity, or bribed/blackmailed some flunky somewhere to add them to the database.
So in reality, 99 times out 100 a database mismatch is going to be just that, a problem with the database and some innocent getting raked over the coals in a system that can't believe their precious computer could be wrong... ergo you must be a terrorist.
Meanwhile the drug dealers confidently stroll through.
And what are -you- going to do if I manage to get a passport with your name on it, but my iris scan and fingerprint, and not only that, but that is the iris and fingerprint resides in the central database too. Don't think it can't happen. It already has in other biometric systems. And then when you go in to renew your passport, they'll tell you your iris doesn't match what's in the system.... actually no... they won't tell you that, they'll politely ask you to stand over their for a minute, and then when you are surrounded by men with guns you can try and convince them your you while they haul you off to be 'agressively interrogated'.
It says a lot about Scientology - and actors - that so many actors buy into Scientology.
No. It just tells you about Scientology. And people I guess. But nothing about actors.
These are the actors from the very same tiny group of the overall population who also feel they should tell you how you should be voting, how the war against terrorism should be run, and why their opinions matter more than anyone else's do, and deserve more airtime (and make-up) than any "ordinary" citizen. The people who drop out of college, and even high school - and are proud of that fact!
No. Actors tell us how we should be voting because we keep asking them. We ask them how to dress, how to talk, where to eat, how to vote... we pay them to entertain us. They aren't special, and they aren't born thinking they are. We train them. We put them on TV, we interview them. We follow the minutia of their lives.
They don't force themselves on us. WE chase them. Sure, at this point its become a bit symbiotic, they use the fact we can't get enough of them to further inflate their value and the activists among them spread their views, but the fundamental issue is US. If we the public could stop caring about them... if we treated them like any other professional like a bricklayer, electrictian, IT admin, PHB, or whatever, the constant media coverage would vanish. E!TV would go away. Tabloids would print something else. Etc.
So... bottom line. Actors are regular people who after spending years in the spotlight often develop some ego issues. But its we the public that first manufacture and then nurture their defective personalities. The industry surrounding them from the media circus, to the agents and publicists exists because -we- demand it.
Now, scientology KNOWS the public is obsessed with celebrity. So they court celebrities. They literally wine and dine them, and then take them back home to (mind) fuck. The CoS wants big prime-time A-list scientologists as evangilists, and they'll do or pay whatever it takes to seduce them. Plus, once solidly hooked, they have considerable funds and assets for the church to get its fingers into to fund its next celebrity acquisition, its legal battles, and so on.
So again, if we the public could stop obsessing over celebrities, CoS would lose interest in converting them. Or, more accurately, its interest would drop to the same level it has in converting the rest of us.
Of course you can. How do you think new locksmiths come into being? They pay to go to locksmith school or apprentice with an existing locksmith.
Where in either case they are introduced to the ethical considerations of the profession, and are expected to agree to them in order to receive training. That's part of being taught to be a locksmith.
In some jurisdictions with licensing you actually even need a separate license to -teach- locksmithing, recognition of the fact that some discretion is appropriate.
Not that I agree that information about locks should be withheld per se; in fact framed like that I don't agree. But that's not the point, the point is that this tension exists, and it underscores society's struggle with the issue.
And a similar tension and struggle is appropriate with respect to security research, where on the one hand we don't want to lock information up, but on the other we find it ethically repugnant to sell exploits to the highest bidder while calling oneself a 'professional'.
How does your argument differ from the profession of a lock smith? They know how to get in your house, and you can pay them to get you into your house.
Great analagy! Lets work with that.
Can you pay a locksmith to open someone elses house for you? Can you pay him to show you how so you can do it yourself?
Of course not.
But it goes further than that... locksmiths are both Licensed, and Bonded in most civilised countries to help prevent exactly these sorts of activities, as well as any other sort of unethical activities he'd be able commit.
Now if the locksmith discovered some fatal flaw of some widely distributed type of lock, I wouldn't say he's obligated to turn the information over to the lock manufacturer. And if he wants to sell them the information that's fine too.
But in the meantime, he still can't go around disclosing the information (for money or otherwise) or using it himself, outside of the ehtical constraints of his trade. (that is of only openining locks for the owners, at their specific request.)
Your locksmith analagy is apt. Perhaps security researchers should also be licensed and bonded before they are allowed to to work professionally and provide services to the public. (Hobbyists hackers would still be free to bang away at their own locks in their own homes.)
Could have made the DTD a unique ID, rather than an address.
An address is effectively a unique ID.
And the advantage of an address is that its a logical place to put the DTD if you don't happen to have your own copy. Its a unique id and a map to where to get it if you don't already have it.
What were they thinking?
They were thinking people wouldn't needlessly continually redownload the same page over and over and over again.
The root dns servers operate under the same assumption. Do you think they were crazy too? After all, you can force your dns queries to go through the route servers every time if you really want to. Your not supposed to, and doing so needlessly puts more load on them, but you could.
Yeah, that's actually pretty clever. But the issue, for me at least, is that I only don't want it to ring for people not in my address book -after hours-, (and I don't want to have to change ring tones manually every morning and evening.)
Its a simple feature. It boggles my mind it hasn't been implemented yet. If phones were an open platform it would have been. This is an itch someone would have scratched by now and written the code for... perhaps even me.
What percentage of regular warrants the FBI asks for get denied? FISA rates should be about the same I'd think, don't you.
It -might- not be meaningful that so few have been rejected, but it -is- interesting, and it immediately suggests that additional investigation should be done.
Some guy at Microsoft agrees that the DirectX10 **API** could have been implemented on XP? Ok. No question. It wouldn't be DirectX10 though. It would be a 'version of the directx10 api implemented on XP'.
Sort of like WINE. It implements Windows API's right? Would you call it Windows XP? I know I certainly wouldn't.
For them to backport directX10 to XP they either'd have to update XP to become essentially Vista which is not really an option, or the XP version would be so completely its own version that the only thing they'd really have in common is that -- it would be directX9 with some directx10 api extensions vs honest to god directx10. See the difference? Its like WINE vs Windows XP.
WINE is not windows. It can run some windows software. It implements a lot of the same API functions in a predictable and equivalent manner.. but its still not XP in any meaningful sense. At best its compatible with XP.
And yes, MS could have released something that was -compatible- with (most of) directx10 for XP, and they chose not to for marketing and so forth. But that's a separate issue.
It forces me to take action- to look, or to shut the phone up from reminding me of a missed call or junk voicemail.
No. That's your crappy ass phone.
It *should* feature call management features to allow you to do stuff like:
I only want the missed call notifier to beep if:
a) its my wife or immediate family
b) the emergency number from the alarm company
c) its someone in my address book between 9 and 5
d) unless its -that guy- in which case don't ever beep. Hell don't even ring. otherwise, if I miss the call, don't beep, ill see the notification when i check the phone.
Me, I want the missed call beeps during the day. But after 5pm, no. After midnight... HELL NO.
Similiarly I should be able to set ring rules in the same way.
Why don't we have features like this? I can say that my Primus VOIP service actually does... but why not my cellphone? My only theory is that the network desperately wants me to use my phone... although since I have unlimited incoming calls on my package, really, better screening would save them money. Not me.
Instead what do we get? The ability to assign different ring tones (purchased at $3+/each) to different contacts. Hurrah. Just another indicator of how fucked up it is to have the device provided by the network.
Its always: "What can the phone do to make you consume more services?" Instead of "What does the consumer actually want?"
This didn't require a new operating system: it's been possible on NT-series kernels since forever.
I guess you didn't do much with it. A wide swathe of games including high profile titles like HalfLife are a royal pain to get working in a standard user account. Not to mention a certain unnamed accounting software package I've had the misfortune of working with, software that I use to program two-way Motorola radios (all it does is communicate over a serial port).
Still other software I've used, will only run properly on the account it is installed in, and of course you can only install it as an administrator. Which means you can get it working in a limited account if you elevate the account to an admin, and then turn it back down to a limited account afterwards which is a hassle, (and not really an option in Vista) if it doesn't just work with run as administrator -- which because its running as administrator installs to the administrator profile instead of the logged in user. etc etc etc
but I'm not the mass market.
No your not. Quite the opposite.
The local best buy has macs and PCs lined up, and yeah, people did gravitate to the Mac's first because of the ooo shiny. And then a bunch of PC OEMs started releasing all their screens as 'glossy' and suddenly those looked the shiniest... and so Mac's also launched the 'glossy' screens... this idiotic game of making it shiny may seem irrelevant to you... but it makes a much bigger difference to people than you might believe, or want to believe for that matter.
Now, I'm assuming this was because I was changing items that were cascading in from the "All Users" start menu, but it really annoyed the hell out of me.
Sounds about right.
Consider this: Vista will actually let you drag icons around from system folder to system folder that you don't have permission to modify (which is what the all users start menu really is), but it will prompt you each time for escalation, while Linux would just say 'Access Denied' if you tried that.
The right way to make a lot of changes to the start menu structure without a ton of UAC prompts would be to run a file explorer as administrator. (sound familiar -- akin to sudo running a file explorer in linux.)
As I said, the lock metaphor from OSX would be ideal... you open the lock, then make as many changes as you like.
That said, worrying about the start menu is less of an issue with Vista, because most people just use the search function of the vista start menu, the the first few letters of the program, rather than browse the menu structure directly. The same as thy do on OSX using spotlight.
Because it is a crime to be gay in most Islamic countries...punishable by torture and/or death
Its still a crime to have gay sex in parts of the U.S., and we won't openly allow them them in the military. We abolished slavery when? Segregation of Black's when? Allowed women to vote when?
And the US only executed 1/2 as many people as Iran last year.
Yeah, we're ahead of them in civil rights, but not -that- far ahead. And we're sliding backwards at the moment.
Habeas Corpus? Remember when we had that?
At what point do we start judging the tree by the fruit that it bears?
The same time we start judging Christianity when a pro lifer fundamentalist Christian bombs an abortion clinic? Or maybe we should judge Christianity on the general message of tolerance and acceptance of others as taught by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell? Or child abusing catholic priests?
GSM phones that use a SIM card. The phone number, and phone book reside on the SIM, and your contract is attached to the numbers on it. You can then take the SIM and use it in any handset you like.
This is just a repackaging of this concept where the core phone bit is included in the removable part, so you wouldn't need to duplicate all the radio electronics in each of your handsets.
Lots of people already have a PDA and a sleek handset that they move their SIM back and forth between.
A big advantage is that you only need one contract, rate plan, monthly payment, and can use whatever device you like.
We're speaking about D3D, which is supposedly impossible to port.
No we're talking about directX.
So? Other DirectX part were not changed much in Vista.
Nah. Just the foundation was just rewritten from the ground up. It interacts with drivers differently. (New driver model remember.) Features that used to be in the drivers and in applications are now in directx, and the kernel. But the developer facing api's are much the same, so I guess nothing's changed much.
It's only a matter of marketing - MS doesn't want DX10 on XP. There are no valid technical reasons for this.
And you can get Compiz on Redhat 3 too if your willing to patch it enough. No valid technical reason you can't.
At some point that line of argument becomes silly. We've crossed the mark. The amount of work to get directx10 (not JUST direct3d) into XP would pretty much amount to upgrading XP to Vista.
That said YES you could backport the new directx10 shader stuff to XP without much difficulty. And YES, Microsoft doesn't want to do that for marketing reasons.
So, at best, Microsoft have spent five years and a zillion dollars producing a new range of software (Vista and Office 2007) which no-one is going to buy, and which isn't going to drive any additional sales, but which people will get by default the next time they buy hardware?
Yup. Seems like it.
They could have done nothing and achieved the same result:
Sometimes you have to keep moving just to stay in one place.
And remember, they didn't set out for Vista to have a dismal launch. They wanted people to want to upgrade, but as the requirements escalated, features were removed, delays mounted, and the final result still had a lot of compatibility issues it didn't work out that way. Vista is a project that they lost control of, and it went sideways on them.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.
would XP in 2009 really cause the Windows market to erode towards alternative platforms to an extent that justifies the cost of Vista?
Interesting question. I don't think it would have eroded that far, but yeah it would have eroded further. But I don't think Vista should be viewed as an end result. Its more a stepping stone. People -needed- to be forced to get off the administrator account for example. That HAD to happen. And that's all by itself has caused a lot of pain.
The new shiny desktop? No, that's not a must-have feature. But it is important in terms of marketing and sales; people see XP next to OSX and they can see flat 2d vs shiny 3d and it matters to them even if its not important in the big scheme of things.
The end result: people will migrate to Vista gradually as they upgrade to new computers. The software will mature and adapt to Vista's new higher security, etc. And when the next OS comes around, it will probably be a much smoother transition for everyone.
And if they had done nothing at all, they'd just be that much further behind when it came time release the next OS. They'd still have the 'don't run as root' battle ahead of them, and so on. They'd be a laughing stock in terms of what the desktop looked like compared to the alternatives, etc.
Correct. A lot of the rest, well, not so much. And I appologize in advance for tearing into you over this, but I do 3D graphics programming for a living and it just pisses me off to no end how MS's marketing statements have somehow morphed into technical truths when they are clearly not true at all.
I agree MS could easily backport the DirectX10 direct3D API to XP.
But direct3d isnt't directX10. I agree a lot of people equate d3d with directx, and judging from the other responses on this thread, for a lot of people that's the only part of directx they care about.
And when people write 'directx10 emulators' all they are really doing is emulating the directx10 direct3d api. But that's NOT directX10.
And I agree that it was cheap and underhanded to rely on the confusion/conflation between d3d and directx to state directx10 can't happen on XP, which is TRUE (at least not without a LOT of work, which result in XP essentially becomming Vista). And MS knew full well gamers would equate directx10 with the new shader features of dx10-d3d, even though d3d shaders are only a small high profile part of directx10 that can in fact be easily backported to XP.
That said, I was in error about basic multitasking. Thanks for correcting me on that.
The main issue in terms of multitasking is the desktop integration not the multitasking itself. I thought overlapping windows was enough to highlight the issue, but apparently not. Doing an OSX expose type of feature etc, for example, would still be out of reach for XP though, unless I'm still mistaken.
It's not just if the user wants, but if the user is prepared to pay (or, more to the point, if their employer sees a reason to pay).
1) Both linux and mac os can do this. So MS has to do it to keep up.
2) It doesn't cost extra. Go to best buy and look at the computers. They all have vista, they all can do this stuff. And they aren't more expensive then they used to be. If anything, they are cheaper. Sure it might not be worth it to UPGRADE TODAY, or to buy Vista and load it on your old PC. But you can bet your next computer, whenever you do decide to upgrade, and assuming you choose windows, will come with all this.
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a) That wouldnt work. The eyeball needs to be alive.
How recently?
b) If your in that much danger then your screwed anyway.
Not necessarily.
If someone just wants your keys you can give them to him.
If he requires your body parts as keys he'll take those.
If those body parts require you to still be alive, then you get to go with them.
The only scenario with a reasonably high probability of you being left unscathed is the one in which you can give them the keys.
I don't want to work for an employer whose idea of security is to rely on a criminals distaste for violence, dismemberment, or kidnapping -- because I can't see any of those reliably slowing one down one bit.
It looks like Obama is gonna win the democratic nomination, unless something very bizarre happens.
in 1998, Obama stated that he would Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons. that includes about half the shotguns, more than half of the pistols, and a fairly good chunk of the rifles in the U.S. There are also some quotes about putting in "thousands" of intelligence assets at the state & local level.
And if it came to an armed revolt, it would be like the US Army vs Iraq... no not Iraq... Iraq had tanks, rocket launchers, fighter planes, SAM installations, a proper disciplined armed forces each armed and trained with using automatic weapons, etc, etc, etc. And they couldn't hold off the US at all. What do you think some angry rabble with rifles and pistols is going to accomplish in a pitched battle?
Squat. Jack Squat.
If it ever comes to violent revolt, whether or not we're legally allowed to bear arms prior to the revolt is utterly irrelevant. We will immediately be reduced to guerrilla or terrorist tactics. We will be using home made explosives, and importing rockets, pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, grendades and ammo from black market arms dealers. We won't be much different than the Iraqi's current 'insurgents', and fighting for much the same reason... to take our own country back.
The only edge we'll have over the iraqis is that -hopefully- our own army will have a slightly harder time killing fellow americans. But if history has taught us anything that shouldn't be a much a deterrent as one would think it should be.
Wasn't one of the first Mac viruses spread by a mac printer?
There was a famous trojan that infected apple laser printers via postscript... but I don't think it 'spread' itself so it wasn't really a virus, nor would it qualify as a Mac virus because it didn't infect Macs, just some Apple Printers.
In any case I think it just lived on the printer. Although one of its effects was to change the password, something that could only be done a limited number of times for some demented reason, which meant eventually the printer would lock you out, and you couldn't reset the password without swapping in a bios or pram, or something along those lines.
Nonetheless, yes, laserprinters have been 'servers' in their own right for over 20 years, so this is hardly news. The same is true of NAS, Routers, managed switched, and so forth. And as for an 'IT security strategy" really, what can you do? Be aware its possible, and limit your attack surfaces to a level appropriate to the risk of them being compromised and the level of damage they could do if compromised.
For most of us, "Don't put your printer on the internet" is probably sufficient"IT security strategy"... although for higher security installations, something more detailed would be required.
Oh yeah, if want to be honest, you can sit in every game but then you are not experiencing the Wiimote at all
Yes and no. Mostly no.
The games I listed as being comfortable to sit down in lose really lose little by sitting. From gamers games like Metroid, Super Mario Galaxy, Need for Speed, or Zelda to casual games like Mario Party 8, Wii Playground, Big Brain Academy, or Wii Play there is no point or reason to stand up at all. The games do not require or benefit from increased range of motion, or the ability to mimic real activities.
In some games, like Wii Sports or Warioware Smooth moves where that is the point, then yeah not standing defeats the purpose... but those games are the minority...even amongst the casual games.
Uhh, that's like two times the RAM my current PC has (which also has a tad inferior processor and video card), and it runs just fine with any *nix flavor, even with all the desktop glossiness MS publicized and a tad more.
I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy? Oh noes, my Vista needs some more cheap ram.
Try running Vista on 512 MB and then we'll talk.
What would we say? That it was a bad idea and you should spend the $40 to upgrade your RAM?
I tried to, but I couldn't figure out what part of the pentagon the 6th would hit.
Surely there is a fountain or statue or at least some decorative flowers in the middle?
Just prior to final descent, we'll just hand out cocktail napkins and bic pens to the whole cabin and they'll write whatever name they want on it.
Why even that? I don't have to give you my name to walk accross town, take a bus, ride the ferry, or take a cab. Why exactly should you need to know if I'm on a plane? Why can't I just buy a ticket cash, and show up with my ticket? (for domestic flights)
When you get stopped for doing 135mph in a school zone, we'll expect when the officer asks you to identify yourself that'll you'll just be a sport and tell the truth about where to send the ticket.
I fail to see your point.
So you stopped, and then obligingly handed over your license and registration?
Why do you do all that, sport?
If you were a hard core criminal/terrorist who didn't want to be identified you wouldn't carry your own driverse license, wouldn't own the car you were driving or at the very least would have counterfeit/copied/stolen plates, and quite probably wouldn't stop when you saw the cop's lights come on either.
And that's my point. The people who would pull over and turn over their drivers license are not the problem. The system already works for them. Making a more secure ID isn't going to affect them.
So who is it going to affect? The hardened criminals? The ones who won't carry a legitimate ID in the first place? The ones with the connections, know how, and will to have a counterfeit made for them? No... its not going to affect them either. They'll still find ways around the system.
So then, whats the point? I'm not saying we should eliminate all forms of ID. What we have in place has a lot of uses and is working well. But I fail to see the point of a massive system upgrade that will just result in the government having more information about law abiding citizens while just furthering the game of cat and mouse with the hard criminals another step. end result?
organized criminals: status quo
regular citizens: increased monitoring and inconvenience
And to add insult to injury we get to foot the bill for it.
Hardly seems like a win.
Not everyone feels like getting off their ass and actually moving.
How many Wii games have you actually played?
Most of them do not require getting off your ass.
Zelda:TP, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Paper Mario, NFS:Carbon, Resident Evil 4, Rayman Raving Rabbids 1 & 2, Wii Play, Wii Sports, Metroid 3, WarioWare Smooth Moves, Mario Party 8, Dewey's Adventure, Lego Star Wars, Big Brain Academy, Wii Carnival, Wii Playground, Elebits.
I've played all of these and of those, the ONLY games that really benefit from or require getting off your ass and moving to play would be:
Wii Sports
some levels and modes of WarioWare Smooth Moves
a very small minority of the Rayman minigames
The rest can very comfortably be played sitting down.
If the printed information or chip output differ from the central copy, they know it has been tampered with
... actually no... they won't tell you that, they'll politely ask you to stand over their for a minute, and then when you are surrounded by men with guns you can try and convince them your you while they haul you off to be 'agressively interrogated'.
Or the chip got scrambled going through the xray machine.
Or is just out and out defective.
Or the chimp doing database maintenance screwed up.
Or someone has a tampered with the central database.
If they can solve the question of "is this REALLY you" with an iris scan and a fingerprint, roughly 99.9% of the stolen document industry will disappear leaving only the most ridiculous James Bond worthy scenarios to worry about.
Right. Because if the computer says your you, well then we're done.
Nevermind that peoples records get mixed up all the time in the real world databases we already have, not to mention the growing problem of identity theft.
And once the drug smuggling criminals know they need a passport with iris and fingerprint matching a central authority, then that's what they'll bring. They'll find a way of getting it done. Whether they are wearing somewhat unlikely james bond contacts and fingertips... or just had the foresight of applying for a passport using a stolen, borrowed, or purchased identity, or bribed/blackmailed some flunky somewhere to add them to the database.
So in reality, 99 times out 100 a database mismatch is going to be just that, a problem with the database and some innocent getting raked over the coals in a system that can't believe their precious computer could be wrong... ergo you must be a terrorist.
Meanwhile the drug dealers confidently stroll through.
And what are -you- going to do if I manage to get a passport with your name on it, but my iris scan and fingerprint, and not only that, but that is the iris and fingerprint resides in the central database too. Don't think it can't happen. It already has in other biometric systems. And then when you go in to renew your passport, they'll tell you your iris doesn't match what's in the system.
It says a lot about Scientology - and actors - that so many actors buy into Scientology.
No. It just tells you about Scientology. And people I guess. But nothing about actors.
These are the actors from the very same tiny group of the overall population who also feel they should tell you how you should be voting, how the war against terrorism should be run, and why their opinions matter more than anyone else's do, and deserve more airtime (and make-up) than any "ordinary" citizen. The people who drop out of college, and even high school - and are proud of that fact!
No. Actors tell us how we should be voting because we keep asking them. We ask them how to dress, how to talk, where to eat, how to vote... we pay them to entertain us. They aren't special, and they aren't born thinking they are. We train them. We put them on TV, we interview them. We follow the minutia of their lives.
They don't force themselves on us. WE chase them. Sure, at this point its become a bit symbiotic, they use the fact we can't get enough of them to further inflate their value and the activists among them spread their views, but the fundamental issue is US. If we the public could stop caring about them... if we treated them like any other professional like a bricklayer, electrictian, IT admin, PHB, or whatever, the constant media coverage would vanish. E!TV would go away. Tabloids would print something else. Etc.
So... bottom line. Actors are regular people who after spending years in the spotlight often develop some ego issues. But its we the public that first manufacture and then nurture their defective personalities. The industry surrounding them from the media circus, to the agents and publicists exists because -we- demand it.
Now, scientology KNOWS the public is obsessed with celebrity. So they court celebrities. They literally wine and dine them, and then take them back home to (mind) fuck. The CoS wants big prime-time A-list scientologists as evangilists, and they'll do or pay whatever it takes to seduce them. Plus, once solidly hooked, they have considerable funds and assets for the church to get its fingers into to fund its next celebrity acquisition, its legal battles, and so on.
So again, if we the public could stop obsessing over celebrities, CoS would lose interest in converting them. Or, more accurately, its interest would drop to the same level it has in converting the rest of us.
Of course you can. How do you think new locksmiths come into being? They pay to go to locksmith school or apprentice with an existing locksmith.
Where in either case they are introduced to the ethical considerations of the profession, and are expected to agree to them in order to receive training. That's part of being taught to be a locksmith.
In some jurisdictions with licensing you actually even need a separate license to -teach- locksmithing, recognition of the fact that some discretion is appropriate.
Not that I agree that information about locks should be withheld per se; in fact framed like that I don't agree. But that's not the point, the point is that this tension exists, and it underscores society's struggle with the issue.
And a similar tension and struggle is appropriate with respect to security research, where on the one hand we don't want to lock information up, but on the other we find it ethically repugnant to sell exploits to the highest bidder while calling oneself a 'professional'.
How does your argument differ from the profession of a lock smith? They know how to get in your house, and you can pay them to get you into your house.
Great analagy! Lets work with that.
Can you pay a locksmith to open someone elses house for you? Can you pay him to show you how so you can do it yourself?
Of course not.
But it goes further than that... locksmiths are both Licensed, and Bonded in most civilised countries to help prevent exactly these sorts of activities, as well as any other sort of unethical activities he'd be able commit.
Now if the locksmith discovered some fatal flaw of some widely distributed type of lock, I wouldn't say he's obligated to turn the information over to the lock manufacturer. And if he wants to sell them the information that's fine too.
But in the meantime, he still can't go around disclosing the information (for money or otherwise) or using it himself, outside of the ehtical constraints of his trade. (that is of only openining locks for the owners, at their specific request.)
Your locksmith analagy is apt. Perhaps security researchers should also be licensed and bonded before they are allowed to to work professionally and provide services to the public. (Hobbyists hackers would still be free to bang away at their own locks in their own homes.)
Could have made the DTD a unique ID, rather than an address.
An address is effectively a unique ID.
And the advantage of an address is that its a logical place to put the DTD if you don't happen to have your own copy. Its a unique id and a map to where to get it if you don't already have it.
What were they thinking?
They were thinking people wouldn't needlessly continually redownload the same page over and over and over again.
The root dns servers operate under the same assumption. Do you think they were crazy too? After all, you can force your dns queries to go through the route servers every time if you really want to. Your not supposed to, and doing so needlessly puts more load on them, but you could.
Yeah, that's actually pretty clever. But the issue, for me at least, is that I only don't want it to ring for people not in my address book -after hours-, (and I don't want to have to change ring tones manually every morning and evening.)
Its a simple feature. It boggles my mind it hasn't been implemented yet. If phones were an open platform it would have been. This is an itch someone would have scratched by now and written the code for... perhaps even me.
What percentage of regular warrants the FBI asks for get denied?
FISA rates should be about the same I'd think, don't you.
It -might- not be meaningful that so few have been rejected, but it -is- interesting, and it immediately suggests that additional investigation should be done.
I don't see your point.
Some guy at Microsoft agrees that the DirectX10 **API** could have been implemented on XP? Ok. No question. It wouldn't be DirectX10 though. It would be a 'version of the directx10 api implemented on XP'.
Sort of like WINE. It implements Windows API's right? Would you call it Windows XP? I know I certainly wouldn't.
For them to backport directX10 to XP they either'd have to update XP to become essentially Vista which is not really an option, or the XP version would be so completely its own version that the only thing they'd really have in common is that -- it would be directX9 with some directx10 api extensions vs honest to god directx10. See the difference? Its like WINE vs Windows XP.
WINE is not windows. It can run some windows software. It implements a lot of the same API functions in a predictable and equivalent manner.. but its still not XP in any meaningful sense. At best its compatible with XP.
And yes, MS could have released something that was -compatible- with (most of) directx10 for XP, and they chose not to for marketing and so forth. But that's a separate issue.
It forces me to take action- to look, or to shut the phone up from reminding me of a missed call or junk voicemail.
No. That's your crappy ass phone.
It *should* feature call management features to allow you to do stuff like:
I only want the missed call notifier to beep if:
a) its my wife or immediate family
b) the emergency number from the alarm company
c) its someone in my address book between 9 and 5
d) unless its -that guy- in which case don't ever beep. Hell don't even ring.
otherwise, if I miss the call, don't beep, ill see the notification when i check the phone.
Me, I want the missed call beeps during the day. But after 5pm, no. After midnight... HELL NO.
Similiarly I should be able to set ring rules in the same way.
Why don't we have features like this? I can say that my Primus VOIP service actually does... but why not my cellphone? My only theory is that the network desperately wants me to use my phone... although since I have unlimited incoming calls on my package, really, better screening would save them money. Not me.
Instead what do we get? The ability to assign different ring tones (purchased at $3+/each) to different contacts. Hurrah. Just another indicator of how fucked up it is to have the device provided by the network.
Its always: "What can the phone do to make you consume more services?" Instead of "What does the consumer actually want?"
This didn't require a new operating system: it's been possible on NT-series kernels since forever.
I guess you didn't do much with it. A wide swathe of games including high profile titles like HalfLife are a royal pain to get working in a standard user account. Not to mention a certain unnamed accounting software package I've had the misfortune of working with, software that I use to program two-way Motorola radios (all it does is communicate over a serial port).
Still other software I've used, will only run properly on the account it is installed in, and of course you can only install it as an administrator. Which means you can get it working in a limited account if you elevate the account to an admin, and then turn it back down to a limited account afterwards which is a hassle, (and not really an option in Vista) if it doesn't just work with run as administrator -- which because its running as administrator installs to the administrator profile instead of the logged in user. etc etc etc
but I'm not the mass market.
No your not. Quite the opposite.
The local best buy has macs and PCs lined up, and yeah, people did gravitate to the Mac's first because of the ooo shiny. And then a bunch of PC OEMs started releasing all their screens as 'glossy' and suddenly those looked the shiniest... and so Mac's also launched the 'glossy' screens... this idiotic game of making it shiny may seem irrelevant to you... but it makes a much bigger difference to people than you might believe, or want to believe for that matter.
Now, I'm assuming this was because I was changing items that were cascading in from the "All Users" start menu, but it really annoyed the hell out of me.
Sounds about right.
Consider this: Vista will actually let you drag icons around from system folder to system folder that you don't have permission to modify (which is what the all users start menu really is), but it will prompt you each time for escalation, while Linux would just say 'Access Denied' if you tried that.
The right way to make a lot of changes to the start menu structure without a ton of UAC prompts would be to run a file explorer as administrator. (sound familiar -- akin to sudo running a file explorer in linux.)
As I said, the lock metaphor from OSX would be ideal... you open the lock, then make as many changes as you like.
That said, worrying about the start menu is less of an issue with Vista, because most people just use the search function of the vista start menu, the the first few letters of the program, rather than browse the menu structure directly. The same as thy do on OSX using spotlight.
Because it is a crime to be gay in most Islamic countries...punishable by torture and/or death
Its still a crime to have gay sex in parts of the U.S., and we won't openly allow them them in the military. We abolished slavery when? Segregation of Black's when? Allowed women to vote when?
And the US only executed 1/2 as many people as Iran last year.
Yeah, we're ahead of them in civil rights, but not -that- far ahead. And we're sliding backwards at the moment.
Habeas Corpus? Remember when we had that?
At what point do we start judging the tree by the fruit that it bears?
The same time we start judging Christianity when a pro lifer fundamentalist Christian bombs an abortion clinic?
Or maybe we should judge Christianity on the general message of tolerance and acceptance of others as taught by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell? Or child abusing catholic priests?
GSM phones that use a SIM card. The phone number, and phone book reside on the SIM, and your contract is attached to the numbers on it. You can then take the SIM and use it in any handset you like.
This is just a repackaging of this concept where the core phone bit is included in the removable part, so you wouldn't need to duplicate all the radio electronics in each of your handsets.
Lots of people already have a PDA and a sleek handset that they move their SIM back and forth between.
A big advantage is that you only need one contract, rate plan, monthly payment, and can use whatever device you like.
We're speaking about D3D, which is supposedly impossible to port.
No we're talking about directX.
So? Other DirectX part were not changed much in Vista.
Nah. Just the foundation was just rewritten from the ground up. It interacts with drivers differently. (New driver model remember.) Features that used to be in the drivers and in applications are now in directx, and the kernel. But the developer facing api's are much the same, so I guess nothing's changed much.
It's only a matter of marketing - MS doesn't want DX10 on XP. There are no valid technical reasons for this.
And you can get Compiz on Redhat 3 too if your willing to patch it enough. No valid technical reason you can't.
At some point that line of argument becomes silly. We've crossed the mark. The amount of work to get directx10 (not JUST direct3d) into XP would pretty much amount to upgrading XP to Vista.
That said YES you could backport the new directx10 shader stuff to XP without much difficulty. And YES, Microsoft doesn't want to do that for marketing reasons.
So, at best, Microsoft have spent five years and a zillion dollars producing a new range of software (Vista and Office 2007) which no-one is going to buy, and which isn't going to drive any additional sales, but which people will get by default the next time they buy hardware?
Yup. Seems like it.
They could have done nothing and achieved the same result:
Sometimes you have to keep moving just to stay in one place.
And remember, they didn't set out for Vista to have a dismal launch. They wanted people to want to upgrade, but as the requirements escalated, features were removed, delays mounted, and the final result still had a lot of compatibility issues it didn't work out that way. Vista is a project that they lost control of, and it went sideways on them.
That doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.
would XP in 2009 really cause the Windows market to erode towards alternative platforms to an extent that justifies the cost of Vista?
Interesting question. I don't think it would have eroded that far, but yeah it would have eroded further. But I don't think Vista should be viewed as an end result. Its more a stepping stone. People -needed- to be forced to get off the administrator account for example. That HAD to happen. And that's all by itself has caused a lot of pain.
The new shiny desktop? No, that's not a must-have feature. But it is important in terms of marketing and sales; people see XP next to OSX and they can see flat 2d vs shiny 3d and it matters to them even if its not important in the big scheme of things.
The end result: people will migrate to Vista gradually as they upgrade to new computers. The software will mature and adapt to Vista's new higher security, etc. And when the next OS comes around, it will probably be a much smoother transition for everyone.
And if they had done nothing at all, they'd just be that much further behind when it came time release the next OS. They'd still have the 'don't run as root' battle ahead of them, and so on. They'd be a laughing stock in terms of what the desktop looked like compared to the alternatives, etc.
Correct. A lot of the rest, well, not so much. And I appologize in advance for tearing into you over this, but I do 3D graphics programming for a living and it just pisses me off to no end how MS's marketing statements have somehow morphed into technical truths when they are clearly not true at all.
I agree MS could easily backport the DirectX10 direct3D API to XP.
But direct3d isnt't directX10. I agree a lot of people equate d3d with directx, and judging from the other responses on this thread, for a lot of people that's the only part of directx they care about.
And when people write 'directx10 emulators' all they are really doing is emulating the directx10 direct3d api. But that's NOT directX10.
And I agree that it was cheap and underhanded to rely on the confusion/conflation between d3d and directx to state directx10 can't happen on XP, which is TRUE (at least not without a LOT of work, which result in XP essentially becomming Vista). And MS knew full well gamers would equate directx10 with the new shader features of dx10-d3d, even though d3d shaders are only a small high profile part of directx10 that can in fact be easily backported to XP.
That said, I was in error about basic multitasking. Thanks for correcting me on that.
The main issue in terms of multitasking is the desktop integration not the multitasking itself. I thought overlapping windows was enough to highlight the issue, but apparently not. Doing an OSX expose type of feature etc, for example, would still be out of reach for XP though, unless I'm still mistaken.
It's not just if the user wants, but if the user is prepared to pay (or, more to the point, if their employer sees a reason to pay).
1) Both linux and mac os can do this. So MS has to do it to keep up.
2) It doesn't cost extra. Go to best buy and look at the computers. They all have vista, they all can do this stuff. And they aren't more expensive then they used to be. If anything, they are cheaper. Sure it might not be worth it to UPGRADE TODAY, or to buy Vista and load it on your old PC. But you can bet your next computer, whenever you do decide to upgrade, and assuming you choose windows, will come with all this.