If you want to keep spyware down, use an older version of Windows (if possible). I use Windows 98se and 2000 at home with little trouble. I run Spybot Search & Destroy about once a month on both of those machines to keep spyware out. On the other hand, I have a Windows XP machine that is more hassle than it is worth. I only use XP if I need to run programs that require this OS (which is rare actually).
One of the problems of a dual-core processor is that it produces a substantial amount of heat. Putting a third core on the die only makes problems of this sort a lot worse. You need a very good cooling system to keep that kind of power chilled out. Next, you need software that can take advantage of that many cores to notice any noteable performance increases.
I know replies have probably already covered this, but here it is one more time. The Xbox 360 uses 3 PowerPC cores (kind of funny for Microsoft to use PowerPC CPUs isn't it?). The new Xbox has major problems with heat, which can also be attributed to the power supply adding to the mess. A previous story said that at least one person was hanging his power supply by a string to help out, which is ridiculous.
We have hit a brick wall so to speak at which processors have been limited. There needs to be major changes in the way that the dies are manufactured before we can attain much higher speeds while keeping stability. One option is to stop using silicon to produce the circuitry, however thus far there are no economical solutions.
If you really need the extra processor power, network a couple of computers together and configure them to share their resources. This takes up more space, but is the only realistic answer that I can think of right now.
The Hot Coffee mod was a big mess, and it came not too long after the FCC began to try to flex its muscles once again. The FCC got a bad rap for the Janet Jackson mishap at the Super Bowl, so now there is political pressure to make it look as if everything is getting cleaned up once again so that 'our children are safer'. Naturally, politicians are jumping on board to make their images look more conservative. In America, one little thing can happen in the news, and it will have a drastic effect on other seemingly un-related events.
Remember the Columbine shooting massacre in Littletown, Colorado? After that happened, there was a big 'witch hunt' happening at schools around the country. I was in middle school when the event happened. I to wore a black trench coat often while hanging out with my other friends who were dressed similarly. Shortly after, I sold the coat because I was getting social pressure from what the coat was considered to represent at the time. I was not going to go and shoot anyone at my school, niether were any of my friends. Nevertheless, people were terrified by anything that resembled the so called 'Trench Coat Mafia' (which those kids did not even call themselves anyway).
Some schools invested in metal detectors and more security personell. My high school instated a policy that we were to wear special name tags on lanyards as to be easier to identify. They told us that these badges protected us, because if someone who was not supposed to be there entered the school they would not be wearing one. The reality however was that they only enforced the wearing of these items half the time, it just became an excuse to randomly send kids to the office if they forgot their name tags.
What's more, you have to understand how the Columbine incident happened. Niether of the suspects were wearing their trench coats, they simply walked in to the school visibly armed with a small arsenal of weapons. Metal detectors, name tags, clothing policies and other such measures would have done nothing to prevent what happened there. So why did all of these schools implement these ideas that made little or no sense at all? The schools got media attention every time they did something like this, it was a public relations paradox. They re-assured the parents that their children were being protected from unseen threats.
The difference between this and the Hot Coffee mod incident is how people were blindly affected by these occurences. Fear was the motivater for Columbines aftermath. Outrage and disgust is the motivator for bashing video games.
I could go on forever on this subject, but I think I would just be preaching to the choir as they say. As an American, I am sometimes saddened by overreactions like this. We are not all morons though, fortunately there are organizations like the ACLU that fight against this type of asinine idealology.
Now almost everyone knows this flaw, the FBI knows that everyone else knows, thus they will fix the bug. Way to go guys, I was thwarting them for years until just now!
Anyway, I wonder if they really will change/augment the current equipment now that this information is public knowlegde. Then again, one would have to suspect or know that they are being wiretapped to implement countermeasures anyway. Is any VOIP being successfully tapped, and what methods are being used? What forms of communication are the most difficult to eavesdrop upon?
Just some interesting questions for you to ponder on.
This world needs more female gamers. All of us guys need to stop goggling over them and give them more chances to prove their skills.
I saw a special on MTV entitled something like "True life: professional gamers" (I probably got the title wrong) recently. There was an American all female team that played Counter Strike against many other female teams from around the world. They made it to the finals, playing against a team from Brazil, and proceeded to kick tail left and right. Whether of not they would have won (which they did), they earned a lot of my respect for putting forth their effort. They trained for four years, had printouts of various maps and tactics to best acheive victory over their opponents. I think that female gamers are often over-criticized or under-estimated. Yes, if my nickname did not imply, let me state for the record that I am a male.
In the past I respected Hillary Clinton, but with her ongoing crusade against video games and ties with scum like Jack Thompson, she has become despicable. She is a disgrace to the Democratic party, I would never consider voting for her on any platform.
1. The client should be simple and straightforward, with emphasis on chat (not on advertising, stock tickers, extra features, etc.)
2. The client should be compatible on a numerous amount of operating systems, even capable of running on older "outdated" ones (i.e. Windows 95/98). With that being said, it should not take up too much processor overhead either. It should be able to run in the background without hurting the performance of important applications.
Unfortunately I do not have a suggestion for a specific client, because lately I am pathetic, have no friends and do not use any instant messaging software.
My good friend works for a local newspaper, doing graphical design aspects like page templates. He is 22 years old, and is the youngest person working there. The majority of newspaper readers are of an older generation, they drink their coffee in the morning and read their share before they go about their daily business. As a younger person, the image of today's newspaper is that it is something my parents do. I prefer to get my news from online sources because I find it much easier. I believe that there are many out there, like me, that also see the newspaper as a dying source of entertainment. Perhaps modern newspapers need to be re-tailored to suit a broader audience. The comics that were funny to children long ago are lost on the children of today. What if the newspapers dabled in reviewing things like video games, consumer electronics, and fashion trends? This is just a small idea of the possibilities available through this venue. Try to pull in younger readers now, and they will be more likely to subscribe to that newspaper when they move out and get a place of their own.
Either newspapers will adapt to attract new readers, or it will slowly die off like a dinosaur caught in a tar pit.
Now I can pay for only the channels I watch, and get rid of all those other annoying channels that I just flip through. I don't need ESPN, C-SPAN, Lifetime, Oxygen, TLC, Food Network, CMT, or any of that junk.
On the television in my bedroom, I already have a channel add/delete option on my remote. I delete the majority of the channels, and then I just flip through the ones I like until I find something I want to watch.
As far as indencent content on television goes, I am opposed to censorship. It should be up to the viewer to decide what he or she wants to watch, not some regulatory commission financed by my tax dollars. Also, parents that do not want their children to be exposed to such content should just use the parental controls. If you are extra paranoid, put your children in plastic bubbles and throw away your television sets. Remember that the television is not a babysitter, it is up to the parents to monitor their children's viewing habits if they want to be sure that the shows they are watching are beneficial to their learning. My niece loves to watch Dora the Explorer, and she learns many different things like Spanish, problem solving, and positive social values. I make sure that what she is watching reinforces her understanding of the world, I do not let her watch television without parental supervision.
By blocking all possible ports short of port 80 (for normal web site viewing) you are disrupting traffic from your network that might be not only legitimate, but also vital to the employees using said network. What about messaging clients that are used to contact people outside of the network? What about private company communications software software that connects to other company networks? Yes, you can bind things to work through port 80, but the average person does not know how to do such things. I am not saying people should be able to view their pornographic materials in the workplace, but by simply enforcing this rule through company policy makes things a lot easier. You see that one employee is viewing porn, you reprimand him for it. Now, as far as private citizens go, blocking such traffic to their home connections is unconstitutional. The State or Federal government should not be allowed to control the access to legal pornography (illegal pornography is a whole different conversation altogether).
What about contrasts in the wages of other professions? Are most jobs paying lower wages than that of their American counterparts? I am just curious as tech is not my current priority as a career. Thanks for your previous input, that does change my perception a little.
I was born in Michigan, and travelled to Canada a few times for brief roadtrips while I was a child. Keep in mind that Canada is not Antarctica, it is not a frozen wasteland the whole year round. You cannot just drive there and say, "okay, where is my citizenship?" though. You have to file with the Canadian Government first, wait a while, and also pay something like $3,000 USD I believe. One thing is for sure, the Canadians have an awesome healthcare system. Yes, it is also true that they don't have nearly as much crime either.
So why am I not yet living there myself? I am just too lazy to leave for now. Also, I wonder if enough Americans moved there, would we eventually mess the place up and make it an extention of our own country? Ohwell, to fully grasp the reality of this subject, I think you would need the experiance of being a resident both in the United States and in Canada. Even then, keep in mind that not all of the United States is alike, certainly different places in Canada must have some sort of social/economical distinctions from other places. Okay, I think this post is long enough now, I will stop here.
Perhpas this is a good thing in the sense that the lesser known artist has a chance to rise up and even out with the more popular artist. Most of the songs I download are not mainstream anyway, why? Because I can turn on the radio or the TV if I want to hear those artists. P2P gives me a chance to search out further for something that might really inspire me. Just because your not on MTv does not mean your music blows. The quality of mainstream music is starting to wear me down lately anyway.
Re:What will they do with all of that data?
on
Amazon Goes Wiki
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, I have worse things than computer parts being bought over the Internet. I sometimes do worry what implications that data has over me. Life is too short to be so paranoid though. If I have a bad feeling about buying something directly, I transfer the funds to a friend, and give him a small profit for handling my shipments.
The data is there just in case we forgot what it was that we wanted, it's not spyware. Why, what if you fell and hit your head on your new Xbox 360, and had sudden amnesia as to what games you were going to buy? Log on to good old Amazon, they know what you were planning to get!
What will they do with all of that data?
on
Amazon Goes Wiki
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Somewhere, somehow, there is a hurricane of advertising just waiting to annoy the Hell out of you. They will be marketing things like Star Wars collectables and case mods among other geeky things that you bought or searched for on Amazon. You will not be able to run, you will not be able to hide, Jamster will want to give you the latest Chewbacca ringtone.
I believe the free exchange of this information can only help. Yes, there might be some rubbish papers that are introduced, but it is up to the intelligent reader to find correlation in any such document with known facts. Just my two cents worth.
I remember when the original Wolfenstein 3D was banned in Germany because of it's WWII/Nazi/Violence content. In contrast, Japanese people were not really upset at all when Medal of Honor: Rising Sun came out a while back. America is fine with shooting down other people in games, but when sexual activity occurs (Hot Coffee mod for GTA: San Andreas) then the proverbial shit hits the fan. It is funny that we (as seperate countries) all have very different viewpoints on the morality of video games because of our social and historic differences. Overall, it is unfrotunate that not everyone can agree to give the consumer the choice for themselves.
Oh, and Jack Thompson is a douche bag... I had to fit that in somewhere.
I thought Kazaa only downloaded pr0n mpegs, all this time I have been missing out!?!?
But in all seriousness, I've been using Limewire to download my mp3s for a long time now without needing any other clients. There are a lot of fakes songs out there, but I generally find that the fakes are being hosted on OC type connections. So, I just select songs on cable or lower and generally do fine finding the songs I need. Now, you might argue that it takes you longer to download a song from someone's 56k modem, but it beats downloading that same song over and over again from high-speed connections, only to discover they were fakes.
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If you want to keep spyware down, use an older version of Windows (if possible). I use Windows 98se and 2000 at home with little trouble. I run Spybot Search & Destroy about once a month on both of those machines to keep spyware out. On the other hand, I have a Windows XP machine that is more hassle than it is worth. I only use XP if I need to run programs that require this OS (which is rare actually).
I know replies have probably already covered this, but here it is one more time. The Xbox 360 uses 3 PowerPC cores (kind of funny for Microsoft to use PowerPC CPUs isn't it?). The new Xbox has major problems with heat, which can also be attributed to the power supply adding to the mess. A previous story said that at least one person was hanging his power supply by a string to help out, which is ridiculous.
We have hit a brick wall so to speak at which processors have been limited. There needs to be major changes in the way that the dies are manufactured before we can attain much higher speeds while keeping stability. One option is to stop using silicon to produce the circuitry, however thus far there are no economical solutions.
If you really need the extra processor power, network a couple of computers together and configure them to share their resources. This takes up more space, but is the only realistic answer that I can think of right now.
Remember the Columbine shooting massacre in Littletown, Colorado? After that happened, there was a big 'witch hunt' happening at schools around the country. I was in middle school when the event happened. I to wore a black trench coat often while hanging out with my other friends who were dressed similarly. Shortly after, I sold the coat because I was getting social pressure from what the coat was considered to represent at the time. I was not going to go and shoot anyone at my school, niether were any of my friends. Nevertheless, people were terrified by anything that resembled the so called 'Trench Coat Mafia' (which those kids did not even call themselves anyway).
Some schools invested in metal detectors and more security personell. My high school instated a policy that we were to wear special name tags on lanyards as to be easier to identify. They told us that these badges protected us, because if someone who was not supposed to be there entered the school they would not be wearing one. The reality however was that they only enforced the wearing of these items half the time, it just became an excuse to randomly send kids to the office if they forgot their name tags.
What's more, you have to understand how the Columbine incident happened. Niether of the suspects were wearing their trench coats, they simply walked in to the school visibly armed with a small arsenal of weapons. Metal detectors, name tags, clothing policies and other such measures would have done nothing to prevent what happened there. So why did all of these schools implement these ideas that made little or no sense at all? The schools got media attention every time they did something like this, it was a public relations paradox. They re-assured the parents that their children were being protected from unseen threats.
The difference between this and the Hot Coffee mod incident is how people were blindly affected by these occurences. Fear was the motivater for Columbines aftermath. Outrage and disgust is the motivator for bashing video games.
I could go on forever on this subject, but I think I would just be preaching to the choir as they say. As an American, I am sometimes saddened by overreactions like this. We are not all morons though, fortunately there are organizations like the ACLU that fight against this type of asinine idealology.
Anyway, I wonder if they really will change/augment the current equipment now that this information is public knowlegde. Then again, one would have to suspect or know that they are being wiretapped to implement countermeasures anyway. Is any VOIP being successfully tapped, and what methods are being used? What forms of communication are the most difficult to eavesdrop upon? Just some interesting questions for you to ponder on.
I saw a special on MTV entitled something like "True life: professional gamers" (I probably got the title wrong) recently. There was an American all female team that played Counter Strike against many other female teams from around the world. They made it to the finals, playing against a team from Brazil, and proceeded to kick tail left and right. Whether of not they would have won (which they did), they earned a lot of my respect for putting forth their effort. They trained for four years, had printouts of various maps and tactics to best acheive victory over their opponents. I think that female gamers are often over-criticized or under-estimated. Yes, if my nickname did not imply, let me state for the record that I am a male.
In the past I respected Hillary Clinton, but with her ongoing crusade against video games and ties with scum like Jack Thompson, she has become despicable. She is a disgrace to the Democratic party, I would never consider voting for her on any platform.
2. The client should be compatible on a numerous amount of operating systems, even capable of running on older "outdated" ones (i.e. Windows 95/98). With that being said, it should not take up too much processor overhead either. It should be able to run in the background without hurting the performance of important applications.
Unfortunately I do not have a suggestion for a specific client, because lately I am pathetic, have no friends and do not use any instant messaging software.
Either newspapers will adapt to attract new readers, or it will slowly die off like a dinosaur caught in a tar pit.
On the television in my bedroom, I already have a channel add/delete option on my remote. I delete the majority of the channels, and then I just flip through the ones I like until I find something I want to watch.
As far as indencent content on television goes, I am opposed to censorship. It should be up to the viewer to decide what he or she wants to watch, not some regulatory commission financed by my tax dollars. Also, parents that do not want their children to be exposed to such content should just use the parental controls. If you are extra paranoid, put your children in plastic bubbles and throw away your television sets. Remember that the television is not a babysitter, it is up to the parents to monitor their children's viewing habits if they want to be sure that the shows they are watching are beneficial to their learning. My niece loves to watch Dora the Explorer, and she learns many different things like Spanish, problem solving, and positive social values. I make sure that what she is watching reinforces her understanding of the world, I do not let her watch television without parental supervision.
By blocking all possible ports short of port 80 (for normal web site viewing) you are disrupting traffic from your network that might be not only legitimate, but also vital to the employees using said network. What about messaging clients that are used to contact people outside of the network? What about private company communications software software that connects to other company networks? Yes, you can bind things to work through port 80, but the average person does not know how to do such things. I am not saying people should be able to view their pornographic materials in the workplace, but by simply enforcing this rule through company policy makes things a lot easier. You see that one employee is viewing porn, you reprimand him for it. Now, as far as private citizens go, blocking such traffic to their home connections is unconstitutional. The State or Federal government should not be allowed to control the access to legal pornography (illegal pornography is a whole different conversation altogether).
MadCatz could sell the string as an Xbox 360 accessory, it's brilliant!
What about contrasts in the wages of other professions? Are most jobs paying lower wages than that of their American counterparts? I am just curious as tech is not my current priority as a career. Thanks for your previous input, that does change my perception a little.
So why am I not yet living there myself? I am just too lazy to leave for now. Also, I wonder if enough Americans moved there, would we eventually mess the place up and make it an extention of our own country? Ohwell, to fully grasp the reality of this subject, I think you would need the experiance of being a resident both in the United States and in Canada. Even then, keep in mind that not all of the United States is alike, certainly different places in Canada must have some sort of social/economical distinctions from other places. Okay, I think this post is long enough now, I will stop here.
Perhpas this is a good thing in the sense that the lesser known artist has a chance to rise up and even out with the more popular artist. Most of the songs I download are not mainstream anyway, why? Because I can turn on the radio or the TV if I want to hear those artists. P2P gives me a chance to search out further for something that might really inspire me. Just because your not on MTv does not mean your music blows. The quality of mainstream music is starting to wear me down lately anyway.
Yeah, I have worse things than computer parts being bought over the Internet. I sometimes do worry what implications that data has over me. Life is too short to be so paranoid though. If I have a bad feeling about buying something directly, I transfer the funds to a friend, and give him a small profit for handling my shipments.
The data is there just in case we forgot what it was that we wanted, it's not spyware. Why, what if you fell and hit your head on your new Xbox 360, and had sudden amnesia as to what games you were going to buy? Log on to good old Amazon, they know what you were planning to get!
Somewhere, somehow, there is a hurricane of advertising just waiting to annoy the Hell out of you. They will be marketing things like Star Wars collectables and case mods among other geeky things that you bought or searched for on Amazon. You will not be able to run, you will not be able to hide, Jamster will want to give you the latest Chewbacca ringtone.
I believe the free exchange of this information can only help. Yes, there might be some rubbish papers that are introduced, but it is up to the intelligent reader to find correlation in any such document with known facts. Just my two cents worth.
Oh, and Jack Thompson is a douche bag... I had to fit that in somewhere.
But in all seriousness, I've been using Limewire to download my mp3s for a long time now without needing any other clients. There are a lot of fakes songs out there, but I generally find that the fakes are being hosted on OC type connections. So, I just select songs on cable or lower and generally do fine finding the songs I need. Now, you might argue that it takes you longer to download a song from someone's 56k modem, but it beats downloading that same song over and over again from high-speed connections, only to discover they were fakes.