Natural gas or oil heating costs a lot less than electric heating though.
True enough, though they've gotten a lot closer.
Nonetheless, I remember having a computer room full of always-on PCs, a giant tube television, a huge power sucking amp, and so on -- my furnace never came on. Since switching to a lot of power efficient gear, a low power LCD screen, CF lighting throughout, and so on, suddenly the furnace seems to always be one, so my conservation has been offset to a degree in the winter.
Power usage percentages have long been known, and is a very simple search away. This article adds absolutely nothing of interest to the equation.
And the author's contention that gadgets don't deserve the blame for increasing power usage is dubious -- yes, lights, fridges and dryers consume a lot of power, and they have for years. Yet while they're getting better, we're offsetting their improvements by 200W sucking PVRs that are on 24 hours a day, PCs that are on throughout the day, massive power sucking plasma screens, etc.
As an aside, energy conservation articles always mention that reduced heat = less air conditioning. Yet to be fair it should be mentioned that power hogs do help in heating the home.
Anything that brings the usability of a console with the flexibility of a PC together is a good thing in my book.
But ultimately that would just turn PC gaming into second-rate consoles.
Personally I'd like to see the exact opposite -- PC gaming that is more appropriate for a PC. For instance windowed gaming: There are a tremendous number of games that can only play in fullscreen mode, yet I like the ability to hop between applications without a time sucking, crash-inducing schism, not to mention that I like to see all of my other windows.
>If you're going to use the man's own words against him, then make sure you look at all his words.
Are you seriously arguing that the two don't coincide because the possibly fictitious story has a different timeline than his proclamation that he was going to start a fictitious story?
Marked insightful only by users without any parenting experience... Nice going turning the issue from one of poor mechanical design to that of poor parenting skills.
I have a three year old and a one year old. My wife and I solve the problem of them dialing random numbers or misusing the phone by...not letting them play with them.
This isn't rocket science, and casting it as some sort of inevitable that kids will play with cell phones is the worst sort of lame me-no-blame cop out (and it's truly scary -- there are a lot of things that kids can misuse). Put the phone up.
I have a Nokia that has a 1-key 911, which I disabled, and a key lock. Yet there STILL is a way to call 911 with a sequence while the phone is locked. They do this, presumably (given that it would be easier to not implement that at all), in case someone is in a situation where they can't see their phone and can barely use it. You can imagine scenarios.
I say this with experience: this is what Microsoft has pretty much *always* been, by design
Indeed. It's interesting that it could be cast as a problem with Microsoft, as some of Microsoft's greatest disasters have been when they've tried to all move in the same direction...which basically means that they all move as slow as their slowest part.
If every tiny group at Microsoft were free to do what solved their niche best, it would be a fearsome machine. As it is, they're all hobbled by considering themselves their biggest competitor, forever designing around politics as much as they design around technology and the user.
Again, its not so hard to realize that most exploits don't work against restricted users.
Most current exploits don't work against restricted users simply because so many people run as admins that it's easier to just expect full rights.
There is absolutely no reason why an exploit needs full privileges, though. You don't need admin rights to add something to your own startup items, or to update the normal.dot, or to open and modify files that you have the right to modify, or to download and run.NET applications (side-by-side dlls! No need for registration, not that there was a need with classic dlls either) or to go out to a botnet command website for commands (do trojans actually listen on ports anymore? Now that almost everyone is behind NAT, it seems that it's the norm now for the trojan to actively go out itself, usually to an IRC site, but just as easily it could use nicely allowed by the corporate firewall HTTP).
The Slashdot summary is deceptive (probably deliberately).
It's probably closer to the mark than "receive unexpectedly". If someone in a corporation became infected, and they infect documents on a shared network location -- game over. Other users don't have to "receive" it via a classic-email virus, but rather they just have to go about their daily business. You touched on this yourself, and it is why this does basically mean "there be dragons" for all word files in corporations.
It can't be triggered automatically, and limited accounts (like every Vista system) will be largely unaffected.
Phew! Now that we know that the burgeoning community of Vista users will be "largely unaffected", we're safe! That comprises the set that downloaded and installed the RTM from MSDN, so at a minimum, around an installed base comparable to QNX.
In any case, "largely unaffected" is more deceptive than the Slashdot summary (which came right from Cnet) -- the risk of compromises nowadays are seldom that they'll reconfigure your drivers or repartition your drive, thus requiring admin rights (when was the last time a virus was actually maliciously destructive in such a manner?), but rather that they'll compromise data integrity/security. If Bob is a normal user, but he's in HR and thus has rights to HR information, then so does an exploit running as Bob the unprivileged numbers-monkey.
Oh, so to make an innovative program based on a new concept, the people producing that program must have also been the first people ever to think of that idea?
What's innovative about the Microsoft implementation, above and beyond what we'd seen like 2 years ago? The absurd marquee Microsoft put around the view?
Microsoft might very well deliver a nice implementation, but there is nothing innovative about it (unless there's some bit that we haven't heard about).
Sidetopic: Microsoft Research is grossly overrated. The amount of "they have all the best {X}!" and "their budget is huge!" talk is nowhere near justified in the actual deliverables of this division.
These would be good sales for a new company, but for an established behemoth with the clout of Microsoft, and given their goal of producing an "iPod killer", this is a pretty lame showing.
This result is a disaster when you consider that a lot of people interested in the Zune would have delayed their purchase until the release, so the first week should have seen the Zune on top of the sales charts as the initial demand was satisfied, then tapering off to a more realistic position. To start so low, on the other hand...what a complete disaster.
This demonstrates again that despite all of Microsoft dominance in some markets, and their huge war chest of cash, and their willingness to spend like drunken sailors in a red-light district to try to muscle in, they certainly aren't a guaranteed success. In fact they've generally had disaster after disaster trying to enter markets like this, and it's surprising that shareholders have yet to say "Jesus...just stick to OS' and productivity suites and quit throwing our money away".
Of course you can't convince some people. I was at a lunch the other day where a couple of MS "fanboyz" (the sort that thinks everything that Microsoft produces is gold) were going on and on about how awesome the Zune was going to be. Of course they referenced Microsoft's cash hoard, which just must ensure that they're going to keep going until they win!
You apparently believe that people in Kansas should buy insurance against icebergs. Somehow I think the odds of icebergs causing damage in Kansas to be somewhat shy of 1 in 13 million. Having said that, plenty of people engage in insurance where the cost would be very high, but the premium would be low. A good example would be corporate contests where there's a very large prize, but an extremely unlikely probability that someone will claim. Guess what: Taco Bell is calling up Lloyds regardless, because insurance still makes sense. Your writing smacks of arrogance No one else is reading this, and I reply only out of humor. I am, however, right, and you are wrong. One day you will realize this. Human motivation isn't linear across a monetary scale, and this demonstrates itself frequently. *sigh* your writing style has made this sentence unintelligible Whoosh!
Even a retarded monkey wouldn't confuse a risk-reward scenario with a risk alleviation scenario.
Bwahahahaha. I guess you haven't even achieved the level of retarded monkey (though "alleviation"? Now there's a key piece of terminology that pretty clearly delineates your knowledge).
Actually, my dear idiot, the same concept applies to both, although the monetary balance flips. A small expenditure for an incredibly unlikely great reward shares startling fundamentals with a relatively small expenditure for an unlikely great risk. In both cases you are a net loser, but one would have to be a startling idiot to say that home insurance is only for people who are bad at math.
Hey, chalk that one off - the sub retarded monkey has that one covered.
Actually, it's "you are not charged, if Microsoft, in their judgment, decide that it was a bug in their product."
With a real support plan, even the bottom of the basement MSDN program, you don't hand over a credit card. And presuming that the OP was just confused, and they didn't indicate their plan number right and did have to provide a CC on a general support line, again you are not charged (having given them your card or not).
And they are, from my experience, very liberal in what they define as a bug. Even where their documentation is iffy they'll waive the fee, because the fee isn't meant to be a profit centre, but rather is just intended to prevent people who don't want to both RTFMing.
Even having the highest contract possible with Microsoft, they charged us for each phone call.
Not only do even the basement support plans include free support calls, you are never charged if it's a bug in their product. So either you're a very poor communicator, a liar, or what you were calling about wasn't a bug at all.
By your line of thought, the only reason you don't play the lottery is that you don't make enough money.
Whoosh!
You are not correct, yet you attack people that are. Pretty arrogant.
Whoosh!
Whether the best is $2 or 1 penny, whether the reward is $1 or $100 Billion, if you ignore the odds, you have not setup a viable risk/reward scenario.
Whoosh!
Who said anything about ignoring the odds? The point, my dear moron, is that even if the odds are 1 in 13 million, the risk/reward for many people is well justified spending $2 for a $10 million jackpot (despite the purely mathematical break even point being, duh duh, $26 million). It's a fundamental disassociation that some autistics and asperger suffers just cannot make themselves understand.
No, it's the people who are giving their money away when they can barely afford to buy food and shelter that worry me. It's a false dream, heavily advertised and targeted to the people who can least afford it.
Certainly don't disagree with this. Personally I find it reprehensible that governments not only sanction it, but they're the ones advertising and pushing it.
Having said that, at least in my area the "profits" go towards good causes (libraries, youth athletics, etc), at least marginally making up for the damage it causes.
This is quite possibly the least informed statement I have ever read here
Hyperbole much?
However, attacking those with "no concept of risk/reward" is more than a little bit of a projection.
Yes, it's a projection, genius.
Funny thing is that I don't play the lottery, but if you simply think of a $10 million dollar jackpot as 5,000,000x$2, you've, exactly as I mentioned, completely missed the whole point of risk/reward. The risk of $2 is negligible to many people's lifestyle (less than a good cup of coffee), for a potential, but remarkably unlikely, reward that is enormous.
And this statement comes only from those who have no concept of risk/reward. e.g. That it can be entirely rational to "risk" $2 if you're not strapped for cash when the unlikely but remotely possible reward is millions.
I'm not even a lottery player, but I do find it rather laughable when the condescending, patronizing sort gives a spiel about odds regarding the lottery, confidently boasting about their own intellectual superiority because they shun such a thing.
Teachers are people just like you and I, you know. They aren't the "them".
Ultimately, at its core, this is about people surreptitiously taking video of activities that were no intended for worldwide viewing. There's a reason why many industries have the concept of a "release" (and I'm going to take a wild guess that the students didn't get the teachers to sign a release...)
You are the first person I have seen claim they got the code.
Only 1000 people got the code. 1000 is a very small number, and it's unlikely that many of those 1000 happen to visit the same online hangouts that you do.
This whole thing is rather absurd (I'm speaking more to comments on the linked page rather to your specific comment - excuse me while I blather) - a bunch of people got their hopes up, against tremendous odds (it wasn't a small number of people who knew about this deal. I was at lunch and a lunchmate, who I thought was entirely unconnected with technology, commented that they had to get back to the office to get their "$100 xbox360"), and when they didn't "win" therefore the whole thing must be a giant scam, etc. Or...maybe, just maybe, 1000 other people beat them to it, among hundreds of thousands of people trying for the same thing.
[Checking lottery ticket]
OH MAN I DIDN'T WIN! THIS IS BULLSHIT! THE WHOLE THING IS A GIANT SCAM!
As much as I'm against the Big Brother society, I'm amused that someone is so scared of how he could be portrayed by an objective viewfinder.
Sounds more like you're entirely for a Little Tattletale Bother society, where every idiot with a camera can endlessly intrude on the privacy of others (the video in question is just begging for a lawsuit, so the parents of the girl in question should be readying their lawyers). Many of the same people who decry government, unmonitored except in to investigate crime cameras cheer in delight when a million nattering masses film every unfortunate moment of those around them.
Re:Phishers a parallel with P2P? Give me a break.
on
The Long Arm of Microsoft
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
To expand upon my prior response a bit:
How many teenagers are capable of setting up phishing scams?
Are you kidding? Teenagers are capable of quite a lot you know, and teenagers are absolutely capable of criminal actions, especially when it's nothing more than sending out some emails against a template site: This really isn't the pinnacle of criminal enterprises.
if you can provide some first party accounts of every case, I'll gladly consider myself a dumbass for using that comparison in the submission
Your comparison was cheap and utterly clichéd: You were hoping to slingshot off the negative vibes towards Microsoft, using the booster-pack of the RIAA hate, so you're surprised that there's not a chorus singing with you about how these people just must be innocent because the tactic is superficially like the RIAA (though in any way that matters they're entirely unlike it, such as the fact that Microsoft is most certainly spending more money on phone calls for each case than they're asking in "damages"), and Microsoft is involved.
I'm glad you personally watched all of these 129 cases go down and that you found all of them to be genuine phishers. How many teenagers are capable of setting up phishing scams?
In 98 of the cases it was a criminal case. In the remaining cases the culprits had no existing record and were teenagers, so they chose not to pursue criminal cases. Sorry, but it sounds like they let them off easy.
It's the 'settling out of court' that sounds suspicious to me. Why wouldn't Microsoft drive them into the ground like you suggest? Why not bankrupt them and jail them?
Every heard of something called a disincentive (is the word "decentive" really not real)? Drive them into the ground? Right. If they were driven into the ground they'd say screw you and force them to take them to court, or hand it over for criminal proceedings.
And you know what: Most of the RIAA targets did infringe copyrights with P2P apps. Few would argue that, but they believed that it was such a marginal act that it didn't merit the heavy-handed response. Most people feel very differently about phishers.
Slashdot Mirror
True enough, though they've gotten a lot closer.
Nonetheless, I remember having a computer room full of always-on PCs, a giant tube television, a huge power sucking amp, and so on -- my furnace never came on. Since switching to a lot of power efficient gear, a low power LCD screen, CF lighting throughout, and so on, suddenly the furnace seems to always be one, so my conservation has been offset to a degree in the winter.
Power usage percentages have long been known, and is a very simple search away. This article adds absolutely nothing of interest to the equation.
And the author's contention that gadgets don't deserve the blame for increasing power usage is dubious -- yes, lights, fridges and dryers consume a lot of power, and they have for years. Yet while they're getting better, we're offsetting their improvements by 200W sucking PVRs that are on 24 hours a day, PCs that are on throughout the day, massive power sucking plasma screens, etc.
As an aside, energy conservation articles always mention that reduced heat = less air conditioning. Yet to be fair it should be mentioned that power hogs do help in heating the home.
But ultimately that would just turn PC gaming into second-rate consoles.
Personally I'd like to see the exact opposite -- PC gaming that is more appropriate for a PC. For instance windowed gaming: There are a tremendous number of games that can only play in fullscreen mode, yet I like the ability to hop between applications without a time sucking, crash-inducing schism, not to mention that I like to see all of my other windows.
>If you're going to use the man's own words against him, then make sure you look at all his words.
Are you seriously arguing that the two don't coincide because the possibly fictitious story has a different timeline than his proclamation that he was going to start a fictitious story?
Um...do you know what fiction is?
I have a three year old and a one year old. My wife and I solve the problem of them dialing random numbers or misusing the phone by...not letting them play with them.
This isn't rocket science, and casting it as some sort of inevitable that kids will play with cell phones is the worst sort of lame me-no-blame cop out (and it's truly scary -- there are a lot of things that kids can misuse). Put the phone up.
I have a Nokia that has a 1-key 911, which I disabled, and a key lock. Yet there STILL is a way to call 911 with a sequence while the phone is locked. They do this, presumably (given that it would be easier to not implement that at all), in case someone is in a situation where they can't see their phone and can barely use it. You can imagine scenarios.
Most current exploits don't work against restricted users simply because so many people run as admins that it's easier to just expect full rights.
There is absolutely no reason why an exploit needs full privileges, though. You don't need admin rights to add something to your own startup items, or to update the normal.dot, or to open and modify files that you have the right to modify, or to download and run
It's probably closer to the mark than "receive unexpectedly". If someone in a corporation became infected, and they infect documents on a shared network location -- game over. Other users don't have to "receive" it via a classic-email virus, but rather they just have to go about their daily business. You touched on this yourself, and it is why this does basically mean "there be dragons" for all word files in corporations.
Phew! Now that we know that the burgeoning community of Vista users will be "largely unaffected", we're safe! That comprises the set that downloaded and installed the RTM from MSDN, so at a minimum, around an installed base comparable to QNX.
In any case, "largely unaffected" is more deceptive than the Slashdot summary (which came right from Cnet) -- the risk of compromises nowadays are seldom that they'll reconfigure your drivers or repartition your drive, thus requiring admin rights (when was the last time a virus was actually maliciously destructive in such a manner?), but rather that they'll compromise data integrity/security. If Bob is a normal user, but he's in HR and thus has rights to HR information, then so does an exploit running as Bob the unprivileged numbers-monkey.
What's innovative about the Microsoft implementation, above and beyond what we'd seen like 2 years ago? The absurd marquee Microsoft put around the view?
Microsoft might very well deliver a nice implementation, but there is nothing innovative about it (unless there's some bit that we haven't heard about).
Sidetopic: Microsoft Research is grossly overrated. The amount of "they have all the best {X}!" and "their budget is huge!" talk is nowhere near justified in the actual deliverables of this division.
This result is a disaster when you consider that a lot of people interested in the Zune would have delayed their purchase until the release, so the first week should have seen the Zune on top of the sales charts as the initial demand was satisfied, then tapering off to a more realistic position. To start so low, on the other hand...what a complete disaster.
This demonstrates again that despite all of Microsoft dominance in some markets, and their huge war chest of cash, and their willingness to spend like drunken sailors in a red-light district to try to muscle in, they certainly aren't a guaranteed success. In fact they've generally had disaster after disaster trying to enter markets like this, and it's surprising that shareholders have yet to say "Jesus...just stick to OS' and productivity suites and quit throwing our money away".
Of course you can't convince some people. I was at a lunch the other day where a couple of MS "fanboyz" (the sort that thinks everything that Microsoft produces is gold) were going on and on about how awesome the Zune was going to be. Of course they referenced Microsoft's cash hoard, which just must ensure that they're going to keep going until they win!
You apparently believe that people in Kansas should buy insurance against icebergs.
Somehow I think the odds of icebergs causing damage in Kansas to be somewhat shy of 1 in 13 million. Having said that, plenty of people engage in insurance where the cost would be very high, but the premium would be low. A good example would be corporate contests where there's a very large prize, but an extremely unlikely probability that someone will claim. Guess what: Taco Bell is calling up Lloyds regardless, because insurance still makes sense.
Your writing smacks of arrogance
No one else is reading this, and I reply only out of humor. I am, however, right, and you are wrong. One day you will realize this. Human motivation isn't linear across a monetary scale, and this demonstrates itself frequently.
*sigh* your writing style has made this sentence unintelligible
Whoosh!
Bwahahahaha. I guess you haven't even achieved the level of retarded monkey (though "alleviation"? Now there's a key piece of terminology that pretty clearly delineates your knowledge).
Actually, my dear idiot, the same concept applies to both, although the monetary balance flips. A small expenditure for an incredibly unlikely great reward shares startling fundamentals with a relatively small expenditure for an unlikely great risk. In both cases you are a net loser, but one would have to be a startling idiot to say that home insurance is only for people who are bad at math.
Hey, chalk that one off - the sub retarded monkey has that one covered.
With a real support plan, even the bottom of the basement MSDN program, you don't hand over a credit card. And presuming that the OP was just confused, and they didn't indicate their plan number right and did have to provide a CC on a general support line, again you are not charged (having given them your card or not).
And they are, from my experience, very liberal in what they define as a bug. Even where their documentation is iffy they'll waive the fee, because the fee isn't meant to be a profit centre, but rather is just intended to prevent people who don't want to both RTFMing.
Not only do even the basement support plans include free support calls, you are never charged if it's a bug in their product. So either you're a very poor communicator, a liar, or what you were calling about wasn't a bug at all.
My spidey senses tell me that you've never actually used SQL Server at all.
Uh huh.
Completely over your head.
Oh, and let me guess - home insurance is a scam, right? I mean the premium xs the statistical period loss definitely makes it a losers game, right?
Idiot.
Indeed, right over your head.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Who said anything about ignoring the odds? The point, my dear moron, is that even if the odds are 1 in 13 million, the risk/reward for many people is well justified spending $2 for a $10 million jackpot (despite the purely mathematical break even point being, duh duh, $26 million). It's a fundamental disassociation that some autistics and asperger suffers just cannot make themselves understand.
Again, though. Whoosh!
Certainly don't disagree with this. Personally I find it reprehensible that governments not only sanction it, but they're the ones advertising and pushing it.
Having said that, at least in my area the "profits" go towards good causes (libraries, youth athletics, etc), at least marginally making up for the damage it causes.
Hyperbole much?
Yes, it's a projection, genius.
Funny thing is that I don't play the lottery, but if you simply think of a $10 million dollar jackpot as 5,000,000x$2, you've, exactly as I mentioned, completely missed the whole point of risk/reward. The risk of $2 is negligible to many people's lifestyle (less than a good cup of coffee), for a potential, but remarkably unlikely, reward that is enormous.
And this statement comes only from those who have no concept of risk/reward. e.g. That it can be entirely rational to "risk" $2 if you're not strapped for cash when the unlikely but remotely possible reward is millions.
I'm not even a lottery player, but I do find it rather laughable when the condescending, patronizing sort gives a spiel about odds regarding the lottery, confidently boasting about their own intellectual superiority because they shun such a thing.
Teachers are people just like you and I, you know. They aren't the "them".
Ultimately, at its core, this is about people surreptitiously taking video of activities that were no intended for worldwide viewing. There's a reason why many industries have the concept of a "release" (and I'm going to take a wild guess that the students didn't get the teachers to sign a release...)
Only 1000 people got the code. 1000 is a very small number, and it's unlikely that many of those 1000 happen to visit the same online hangouts that you do.
This whole thing is rather absurd (I'm speaking more to comments on the linked page rather to your specific comment - excuse me while I blather) - a bunch of people got their hopes up, against tremendous odds (it wasn't a small number of people who knew about this deal. I was at lunch and a lunchmate, who I thought was entirely unconnected with technology, commented that they had to get back to the office to get their "$100 xbox360"), and when they didn't "win" therefore the whole thing must be a giant scam, etc. Or...maybe, just maybe, 1000 other people beat them to it, among hundreds of thousands of people trying for the same thing.
[Checking lottery ticket]
OH MAN I DIDN'T WIN! THIS IS BULLSHIT! THE WHOLE THING IS A GIANT SCAM!
Sounds more like you're entirely for a Little Tattletale Bother society, where every idiot with a camera can endlessly intrude on the privacy of others (the video in question is just begging for a lawsuit, so the parents of the girl in question should be readying their lawyers). Many of the same people who decry government, unmonitored except in to investigate crime cameras cheer in delight when a million nattering masses film every unfortunate moment of those around them.
Are you kidding? Teenagers are capable of quite a lot you know, and teenagers are absolutely capable of criminal actions, especially when it's nothing more than sending out some emails against a template site: This really isn't the pinnacle of criminal enterprises.
Your comparison was cheap and utterly clichéd: You were hoping to slingshot off the negative vibes towards Microsoft, using the booster-pack of the RIAA hate, so you're surprised that there's not a chorus singing with you about how these people just must be innocent because the tactic is superficially like the RIAA (though in any way that matters they're entirely unlike it, such as the fact that Microsoft is most certainly spending more money on phone calls for each case than they're asking in "damages"), and Microsoft is involved.
Sorry if we don't play along.
In 98 of the cases it was a criminal case. In the remaining cases the culprits had no existing record and were teenagers, so they chose not to pursue criminal cases. Sorry, but it sounds like they let them off easy.
Every heard of something called a disincentive (is the word "decentive" really not real)? Drive them into the ground? Right. If they were driven into the ground they'd say screw you and force them to take them to court, or hand it over for criminal proceedings.
And you know what: Most of the RIAA targets did infringe copyrights with P2P apps. Few would argue that, but they believed that it was such a marginal act that it didn't merit the heavy-handed response. Most people feel very differently about phishers.