as a invisible pink unicorn, i can tell you that I am indeed "putting up", we exist, so leave off. On a slightly less crazy note I don't consider this to be such a bad thing, ok, I know this might make some virus companies share go up, but macs are not invunerable, so why not have some kind of security? I'm running linux and have clamav installed, I know that I might never get a virus, but if I ever was to then it would be more serious if left.
I know people won't like this, but; a windows home computer where the user takes all the appropriate security checks will be more secure than a mac where no security checks are made and infections will be less serious... so why don't people do the sensible thing and develop an open-source virus scanner for mac funded exclusively from donations?
obviously just sticking in a crazily expensive video card won't make a system radically better, computers are a bit bound to go at the speed of the slowest part (I know that doesn't always hold true) but if you computer costs $1000 then spending $500 on a card wouldn't be sensible
(I'm assuming that your american) That is a really generous offer and I'd love to be able to take it up but i'm one of the minorities here who is english. That kinda means that any potential gain for the environment would be more than lost by having to ship it and I don't have any US dollars in an account that I can write a cheque for so it would be quite hard to pay for postage aswell, but thanks for the offer, maybe your local school might be interested?
I think that this has been a nice bit of fun... I'm wondering if maybe we could start to get interesting little bits like this in all of our judgements and maybe even legislation... we could make that the full time job of the chancellor of the dutcy of lancaster. Also it at least made people aware of a very important man who is all too often forgot, but did some mighty fine work.
The batteries are one of the worst parts of a laptop for the environment, of course all batteries are pretty bad if not disposed of properly - you really have to watch out for the cadium ones, just one can contaminate about 10,000 litres of water
"What are the odds that I (or any one of us) has to worry about being killed this year? I don't think the odds are high enough to worry about."
outside of 2001, fewer people have died in America from international terrorism
than have drowned in toilets. Hell, if you consider how many people die from eating peanuts each year then it really is them that you should be afraid of...
On a slightly different note, one of the main purpose of terrorism is to generate "advertising" in a lot of circumastances, and I do think that the 9/11 attacks were for this end, being afraid of terrorism, changing what you do in you life is letting the terrorist win; it gives them what they want.
I do normally take the view that if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear, and mostly I think that this is true... or more accurately it would be true if the legal system was 1) simple, 2) easy to access and apply, 3) there were few of them. If you had this then everyone would know what was legal and what was illegal, then if they broke the law then it would be a good thing to catch them and it wouldn't matter about this kind of thing... The problem in the US (and UK too, as well as most other countries I can think of) the law is very complicated, there are many of them which can be applied differently depending on how you are treated or what time it is (that is to say when it goes to the supreme court/ House of Lords) and there are so many of them it would be impossible to know all the laws... So if you were tapped then they could arrest you based on practically anything you said or did, and you might get convicted, even though you don't think you've done anything wrong... this is just too much power for any one group in society to have
As one quick example of how laws might apply to you even if you think that they wouldn't in R v Shivpori (House of Lords) the Ratio stated that you can be guilt of attempting something (illegal) even if what you were attempting was impossible
secret Subpoena are they? Still, I am amazed that this information was ever released, I don't know how the US legal system works but in England the Government an stop the release of any information (even under the Freedom of information act) which might affect "national security", it seems strange to me that the US adiminstration has actually let this stuff get out. I also wonder how many of the people were bona fide terrorists...
I am also now offering a similar service, where I will just use the mac, hell, I'd even pay for the shipping... It seems like giving them away to people would be a far better way of getting rid of old, but still usable, computers... onyl recycle when they no longer work
agreed. Companies could realistically have to store a log on you for about 6 years (assuming you might move about every 5) say that 5 years of active logging will create a file of about 1 Gig, and an ISP might have 20 million customers that would take up at least 19 petabytes... which will be very costly, not to mention all the extra staff for constantly keeping it updated and running
"always be able to kill you students" is brilliant advice... I know I'll be taking that one to heart when I'm lecturing... that'll show them for being late/taking phone calls/ talking over me.:)
Ballmer: "Mongolia, yeah, you... sign up to our way of doing things or I'll FUCKING KILL YOU, I've done it to countries before and I'll do it again...." *throws chair*
You must realise that the Chinese are hard-core capitalists (impressive ones at that). The government wants to make the most money, so when Bill says that he will give $900million in investment then they are very happy, the competition couldn't afford to do that (and they might not want to play ball politically anyway). Besides, if there was competion then it would probably push the price of the stuff down, which neither MS (for the direct money) or the Govt. (for the tax) wants.
What I expect from a quality paper is the news, however it stand to reason that all papers will have a bias because they have to appeal to what the readers want to read. A quality broad-sheet paper should not say we (and probably you because you read this paper) think this about free trade, but some people think the opposite. When I pick up a copy of the telegraph - the paper I read - I don't want to know what the left might think of a policy, there are papers I can buy to find out if I want. There isn't a lot of room in papers and it is best to give one side of the arguement in detail, with quality analysis from someone who believes what he is saying rather than having useless bits tacked on the end just to try and give a "balance"
Re:my parents will have no trouble pronouncing it
on
Both Sides of Wii
·
· Score: 1
on a similar (slightly offtopic note) its really fun to see really old people trying to figure this stuff out... I was playing on my game boy pocket about 5 years back and my great grandma said to me "what are you doing, reckoning (which means adding, pretty much) up numbers?", to which I tried to explain that just because it was small didn't mean all it could do was add up numbers... to which I got the response "you should be able to reckon up those numbers in your head"... I guess it's just hard to tell some people, just like it's hard to make people who are a about 40-50 realise that "Playstation" is not a generic name for a console, it is just one of 3 main ones.
You are right, about the code name thing... what I'm not sure about is how good it is to build up a brand idea around a name, such as revolution (or Longhorn for that matter), and then change it to something stupid sounding that people will feel silly saying, Vista/Wii (which I'm sure they must know is pronounced the same as the word for piss), and that people don't really know or associate with the product... shooting ones self in the foot, methinks
The genuine product checks never really bothered me, it was very quick and was only used when I was getting something from MS, for my money this should just make it easier for genuine users (although the extent to which it will stop cracks is debatable). I have no problem with them wanting to sell software that they make, I also don't really care what price they want to charge for it, thats just the free market, if people don't like it there are about 600 others to choose from, some of which are free (in both ways) and some which are free in one but not so much in the other. Instead of complaining about how MS runs one of the more ethical sections of their business we should be telling people we know that there is an option which is better
I think you are completely right about installation on windows computers. I consider it to be so much easier on Windows. That is not to say that the Linux way isn't better in many (and perhaps more important) ways - security being the biggest. Windows does have a lot of aplications which seem to "just work" on it also. Still I actually can run more of my stuff on linux than on windows so that seems to be a swings and round-abouts situation too. I end up not really knowing if either is "better" here, although for people who have never used either I think Windows does seem to work easier...
One interesting thing you did say though was you..."spent endless hours trying unsuccessfully to get services for a wireless network running on the previous version of Fedora."
As I am now on Fedora core 5 I can't figure out how to get wireless on my centrino chipset... they really should just putin support for things which might technically be propriatory but don't impose conditions on home users (like MP3, NTFS, centrino) natively...
and one little bit which is actually on topic: they should make the standard that they use be more inclined to "just work", even if not everything is open source (although ideally free beer)
...what's it made of, gold? but more seriously, this could well be a worth while investment for MS, if you make people used to your software then they keep coming back... see it as a loss leader. Some people will say "I want to stay using windows because it has IE and thats what I like" (I know you'll think no one would say that but they really do). So maybe not such a bad investment.
It sounds like you might be making a joke about this one but at my university (University of Warwick, uk) they had the worlds most lax attitude to security it was insane. There were several huge security leaks and no one seemed to question why they weren't using and changing secure passwords... someone script kiddie broke into the main server (taking all of our private info stored on it) using nothing more than a simple brute force crack... it gave in so easily because they'd used a word from a standard dictionary... I figure it would have taken no more than 60 seconds to get in. The moral of this and the UC Berkeley story is this; don't trust a university IT dept with any of your private information, store nothing on their computers, use a different password for the log on there and for everything else (if you insist on using the same one everywhere)
Re:Most game companies . . .
on
Abandoned Games
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· Score: 1
If they were sensible they would release these games and make newer better versions of them also. People will play on the old one and go "my god, this is the best game ever... if only it had better graphics and more levels then it's be even better", so the people then go and buy the new one... its like free advertising or sending out playable demos of the games like the sort you used to get on the front of computer mags.
... but this probably wouldn't work because it seems to be a hastle for the people who would use it, from your white paper:
"The defining characteristic of the client above (1) is that it does not allow placing of a large number of e-mail addresses in the to: cc: or bcc: sections (does not allow sending of the same message to more than e.g. 50 recipients) unless each one of the recipients has expressly given his authorization to the sender to be included in such a multiple e-mail distribution list/mass emailing from that sender."
I run a mailing list for a society that I am the chairman of, at the moment we are fairly small and as such it wouldn't matter if I sent the weekly newsletter to all members under your system (being less than 50 of them). Next year we will be expanding through a more intensive marketing campaign and better organisation. Let us suppose that we get 49 members, I can happily send this out to everyone on the list and we are all happy. One week later another member joins and we now have 50 so I would have to send out 50 e-mails individually asking people to go somewhere, download something and accept to have e-mails from me when I am sending them out to everyone(they wouldn't do this... hell, getting them to turn up to a meeting is hard enough)... it seems a hastle. I would rather take my chances with maybe occasionally getting an e-mail which I can delete because it is obviously spam than have some of my legitimate e-mails being blocked or what have you. (if the cut off point is 50 or below and 51 or above move the numbers up to account for it)
Slashdot Mirror
as a invisible pink unicorn, i can tell you that I am indeed "putting up", we exist, so leave off. On a slightly less crazy note I don't consider this to be such a bad thing, ok, I know this might make some virus companies share go up, but macs are not invunerable, so why not have some kind of security? I'm running linux and have clamav installed, I know that I might never get a virus, but if I ever was to then it would be more serious if left.
I know people won't like this, but; a windows home computer where the user takes all the appropriate security checks will be more secure than a mac where no security checks are made and infections will be less serious... so why don't people do the sensible thing and develop an open-source virus scanner for mac funded exclusively from donations?
obviously just sticking in a crazily expensive video card won't make a system radically better, computers are a bit bound to go at the speed of the slowest part (I know that doesn't always hold true) but if you computer costs $1000 then spending $500 on a card wouldn't be sensible
(I'm assuming that your american) That is a really generous offer and I'd love to be able to take it up but i'm one of the minorities here who is english. That kinda means that any potential gain for the environment would be more than lost by having to ship it and I don't have any US dollars in an account that I can write a cheque for so it would be quite hard to pay for postage aswell, but thanks for the offer, maybe your local school might be interested?
I think that this has been a nice bit of fun... I'm wondering if maybe we could start to get interesting little bits like this in all of our judgements and maybe even legislation... we could make that the full time job of the chancellor of the dutcy of lancaster. Also it at least made people aware of a very important man who is all too often forgot, but did some mighty fine work.
The batteries are one of the worst parts of a laptop for the environment, of course all batteries are pretty bad if not disposed of properly - you really have to watch out for the cadium ones, just one can contaminate about 10,000 litres of water
"What are the odds that I (or any one of us) has to worry about being killed this year? I don't think the odds are high enough to worry about."
outside of 2001, fewer people have died in America from international terrorism than have drowned in toilets. Hell, if you consider how many people die from eating peanuts each year then it really is them that you should be afraid of...
On a slightly different note, one of the main purpose of terrorism is to generate "advertising" in a lot of circumastances, and I do think that the 9/11 attacks were for this end, being afraid of terrorism, changing what you do in you life is letting the terrorist win; it gives them what they want.
not to be pedantic... but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Bill_of_Right s_of_1689
I do normally take the view that if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear, and mostly I think that this is true... or more accurately it would be true if the legal system was 1) simple, 2) easy to access and apply, 3) there were few of them. If you had this then everyone would know what was legal and what was illegal, then if they broke the law then it would be a good thing to catch them and it wouldn't matter about this kind of thing... The problem in the US (and UK too, as well as most other countries I can think of) the law is very complicated, there are many of them which can be applied differently depending on how you are treated or what time it is (that is to say when it goes to the supreme court/ House of Lords) and there are so many of them it would be impossible to know all the laws... So if you were tapped then they could arrest you based on practically anything you said or did, and you might get convicted, even though you don't think you've done anything wrong... this is just too much power for any one group in society to have
As one quick example of how laws might apply to you even if you think that they wouldn't in R v Shivpori (House of Lords) the Ratio stated that you can be guilt of attempting something (illegal) even if what you were attempting was impossible
secret Subpoena are they? Still, I am amazed that this information was ever released, I don't know how the US legal system works but in England the Government an stop the release of any information (even under the Freedom of information act) which might affect "national security", it seems strange to me that the US adiminstration has actually let this stuff get out. I also wonder how many of the people were bona fide terrorists...
I am also now offering a similar service, where I will just use the mac, hell, I'd even pay for the shipping... It seems like giving them away to people would be a far better way of getting rid of old, but still usable, computers... onyl recycle when they no longer work
it started happening about 4 years ago... have you been sleeping?
Say it ain't so, Joe
It ain't so
agreed. Companies could realistically have to store a log on you for about 6 years (assuming you might move about every 5) say that 5 years of active logging will create a file of about 1 Gig, and an ISP might have 20 million customers that would take up at least 19 petabytes... which will be very costly, not to mention all the extra staff for constantly keeping it updated and running
"always be able to kill you students" is brilliant advice... I know I'll be taking that one to heart when I'm lecturing... that'll show them for being late/taking phone calls/ talking over me. :)
from the meeting
Ballmer: "Mongolia, yeah, you... sign up to our way of doing things or I'll FUCKING KILL YOU, I've done it to countries before and I'll do it again...." *throws chair*
You must realise that the Chinese are hard-core capitalists (impressive ones at that). The government wants to make the most money, so when Bill says that he will give $900million in investment then they are very happy, the competition couldn't afford to do that (and they might not want to play ball politically anyway). Besides, if there was competion then it would probably push the price of the stuff down, which neither MS (for the direct money) or the Govt. (for the tax) wants.
What I expect from a quality paper is the news, however it stand to reason that all papers will have a bias because they have to appeal to what the readers want to read. A quality broad-sheet paper should not say we (and probably you because you read this paper) think this about free trade, but some people think the opposite. When I pick up a copy of the telegraph - the paper I read - I don't want to know what the left might think of a policy, there are papers I can buy to find out if I want. There isn't a lot of room in papers and it is best to give one side of the arguement in detail, with quality analysis from someone who believes what he is saying rather than having useless bits tacked on the end just to try and give a "balance"
on a similar (slightly offtopic note) its really fun to see really old people trying to figure this stuff out... I was playing on my game boy pocket about 5 years back and my great grandma said to me "what are you doing, reckoning (which means adding, pretty much) up numbers?", to which I tried to explain that just because it was small didn't mean all it could do was add up numbers... to which I got the response "you should be able to reckon up those numbers in your head"... I guess it's just hard to tell some people, just like it's hard to make people who are a about 40-50 realise that "Playstation" is not a generic name for a console, it is just one of 3 main ones.
You are right, about the code name thing... what I'm not sure about is how good it is to build up a brand idea around a name, such as revolution (or Longhorn for that matter), and then change it to something stupid sounding that people will feel silly saying, Vista/Wii (which I'm sure they must know is pronounced the same as the word for piss), and that people don't really know or associate with the product... shooting ones self in the foot, methinks
The genuine product checks never really bothered me, it was very quick and was only used when I was getting something from MS, for my money this should just make it easier for genuine users (although the extent to which it will stop cracks is debatable). I have no problem with them wanting to sell software that they make, I also don't really care what price they want to charge for it, thats just the free market, if people don't like it there are about 600 others to choose from, some of which are free (in both ways) and some which are free in one but not so much in the other. Instead of complaining about how MS runs one of the more ethical sections of their business we should be telling people we know that there is an option which is better
I think you are completely right about installation on windows computers. I consider it to be so much easier on Windows. That is not to say that the Linux way isn't better in many (and perhaps more important) ways - security being the biggest. Windows does have a lot of aplications which seem to "just work" on it also. Still I actually can run more of my stuff on linux than on windows so that seems to be a swings and round-abouts situation too. I end up not really knowing if either is "better" here, although for people who have never used either I think Windows does seem to work easier...
One interesting thing you did say though was you..."spent endless hours trying unsuccessfully to get services for a wireless network running on the previous version of Fedora."
As I am now on Fedora core 5 I can't figure out how to get wireless on my centrino chipset... they really should just putin support for things which might technically be propriatory but don't impose conditions on home users (like MP3, NTFS, centrino) natively...
and one little bit which is actually on topic: they should make the standard that they use be more inclined to "just work", even if not everything is open source (although ideally free beer)
...what's it made of, gold? but more seriously, this could well be a worth while investment for MS, if you make people used to your software then they keep coming back... see it as a loss leader. Some people will say "I want to stay using windows because it has IE and thats what I like" (I know you'll think no one would say that but they really do). So maybe not such a bad investment.
It sounds like you might be making a joke about this one but at my university (University of Warwick, uk) they had the worlds most lax attitude to security it was insane. There were several huge security leaks and no one seemed to question why they weren't using and changing secure passwords... someone script kiddie broke into the main server (taking all of our private info stored on it) using nothing more than a simple brute force crack... it gave in so easily because they'd used a word from a standard dictionary... I figure it would have taken no more than 60 seconds to get in. The moral of this and the UC Berkeley story is this; don't trust a university IT dept with any of your private information, store nothing on their computers, use a different password for the log on there and for everything else (if you insist on using the same one everywhere)
If they were sensible they would release these games and make newer better versions of them also. People will play on the old one and go "my god, this is the best game ever... if only it had better graphics and more levels then it's be even better", so the people then go and buy the new one... its like free advertising or sending out playable demos of the games like the sort you used to get on the front of computer mags.
... but this probably wouldn't work because it seems to be a hastle for the people who would use it, from your white paper:
"The defining characteristic of the client above (1) is that it does not allow placing of a large number of e-mail addresses in the to: cc: or bcc: sections (does not allow sending of the same message to more than e.g. 50 recipients) unless each one of the recipients has expressly given his authorization to the sender to be included in such a multiple e-mail distribution list/mass emailing from that sender."
I run a mailing list for a society that I am the chairman of, at the moment we are fairly small and as such it wouldn't matter if I sent the weekly newsletter to all members under your system (being less than 50 of them). Next year we will be expanding through a more intensive marketing campaign and better organisation. Let us suppose that we get 49 members, I can happily send this out to everyone on the list and we are all happy. One week later another member joins and we now have 50 so I would have to send out 50 e-mails individually asking people to go somewhere, download something and accept to have e-mails from me when I am sending them out to everyone(they wouldn't do this... hell, getting them to turn up to a meeting is hard enough)... it seems a hastle. I would rather take my chances with maybe occasionally getting an e-mail which I can delete because it is obviously spam than have some of my legitimate e-mails being blocked or what have you. (if the cut off point is 50 or below and 51 or above move the numbers up to account for it)