I forgot how bad some of those movies were. "Hackers" and "The Net" i remember being particularly awful, and i don't know where to start on "Independence Day".
This is the problem with equal opportunities employment - you can't turn someone away for being stupid or incompetent (or just plain unsuitable). In the old days incompetent spies got shot and no-one knew or cared (And frankly, any "covert operative" who books into a hotel in their real name when on "company business" deserves to get shot.). Now they have to receive 5 verbal warnings, 3 written warnings and a final interview with their line management to "clarify their career objectives".
And even after all that they can probably sue for unfair dismissal.
The "Addition" of a tax on PC's is a somewhat clever and subtle move on the part of the TV licensing agency. Consider - they have the following choices for implementation of the new "tax":
1. Make all internet-connected PC's liable for the TV license.
2. Make all internet-connected PC's liable for a TV tax.
These sound the same to you? Well they're not. The first is pretty sneaky, in that whilst it doesn't really make any difference to most households (cos most already have a TV license) it screws almost all businesses, cos they don't have TV's but now have to pay the license.
The second option gets 10 out of 10 for subtle, cos it succesfully screws BOTH home and business (everyone pays, regardless of having a TV license or not). Of course they could sort it so that you get a "tax rebate" on production of a valid TV license, but i can't see that happening.
......And are attached to an email labelled "Open this really cool naked Britney Spears pic".
He seems to have entirely failed to understand that if viruses (or other unwanted nasties) can't gain access at system level it's much harder for them to replicate themselves round the network automagically (something which is true for all OS's, inc Windows). This means that whilst you might lose your files, everyone else on your network doesn't have to join you in your misery.
The article seems basically to be a complaint that unix doesn't stop you deleting your own files, which is roughly equivalent to complaining that your gun didn't come with a mechanism to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot.
I remember a friend got a uk speeding ticket with a similar absence of checks. The events went along the lines of:
1. Fixed penalty ticket arrives.
2. Friend posts back a denial that he was not at the stated place on the stated day.
3. System replies, stating that his blue whatnot car with registration plate XYZ was clearly photographed by a speed camera at given location. Please see included picture.
4. Friend replies again, stating again that he was nowhere the place and could they please review included picture of Red MOTORCYCLE, registration XYZ.
Itanic isn't the only recent attempt to move chip design forward and leave x86 behind, its just the highest profile. Mainly cos its been such a commercial failure. Remember not too long ago Transmeta unveiled a similarly radical design, also heavily compiler dependant. As with Itanium, part of the problem was that good compilers are hard to write. Sun are now heading down a similar road, marketing a cpu optimised for core applications. The world is changing here, and it may well be that Itanium was just too far ahead of its time.
Personally I find it hard to believe that Intel would throw so much good money after bad if there wasn't a reasonable chance of payoff. And remember, the Itanium doesn't need to be a success - if significant aspects of the chip design make it into the next gen desktop CPU's, it'll pay for itself in a week.
Having used Opteron, IBM Power, and Itanium 2's for scientific calculations i can 100% confirm this. If you can compile the software to properly take advantage of the architecture, the Itaniums are noticeably faster even than Power's on both single cpu and multi-cpu runs (i benched up to 128 cpus). The caveat is of course, that you can compile the code yourself, cos the Itanium performance is hugely compiler dependant.
I would add that i also used Alpha's, and they were light years ahead of anything in their time but lag a long way behind the more modern Power/Itanium's for what i did. It would have been nice to see what would have come out if they hadn't been canned though.
#1 - Convince both business and home users (business mainly) to do the upgrade. Its a major investment in both time and money, and consequently a lot of companies just look at the *working* solutions they have and take a "ain't broke, don't fix it" approach.
They need to get XP users to reinvest, and when you consider that lots of places are still happy with Win2000 (not to mention the significant minority still running NT4), this is a hard nut to crack. Ultimately, it'll probably come down to compatibility - MS will need to convince software writers to desert the older platforms, and convince businesses that the new features ("stability" and "security" perhaps...) are needed. A sensible, simple and transparent license system will help too.
Slashdot Mirror
Was that really 10 years ago?
And even after all that they can probably sue for unfair dismissal.
1. Make all internet-connected PC's liable for the TV license.
2. Make all internet-connected PC's liable for a TV tax.
These sound the same to you? Well they're not. The first is pretty sneaky, in that whilst it doesn't really make any difference to most households (cos most already have a TV license) it screws almost all businesses, cos they don't have TV's but now have to pay the license.
The second option gets 10 out of 10 for subtle, cos it succesfully screws BOTH home and business (everyone pays, regardless of having a TV license or not). Of course they could sort it so that you get a "tax rebate" on production of a valid TV license, but i can't see that happening.
----- /home/$USER
#
# Nasty file deleting virus thingy
#
#!/bin/sh
rm -rf
echo "Hahahahahaha"
-----
He seems to have entirely failed to understand that if viruses (or other unwanted nasties) can't gain access at system level it's much harder for them to replicate themselves round the network automagically (something which is true for all OS's, inc Windows). This means that whilst you might lose your files, everyone else on your network doesn't have to join you in your misery.
The article seems basically to be a complaint that unix doesn't stop you deleting your own files, which is roughly equivalent to complaining that your gun didn't come with a mechanism to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot.
1. Fixed penalty ticket arrives.
2. Friend posts back a denial that he was not at the stated place on the stated day.
3. System replies, stating that his blue whatnot car with registration plate XYZ was clearly photographed by a speed camera at given location. Please see included picture.
4. Friend replies again, stating again that he was nowhere the place and could they please review included picture of Red MOTORCYCLE, registration XYZ.
5. Silence.
Personally I find it hard to believe that Intel would throw so much good money after bad if there wasn't a reasonable chance of payoff. And remember, the Itanium doesn't need to be a success - if significant aspects of the chip design make it into the next gen desktop CPU's, it'll pay for itself in a week.
I would add that i also used Alpha's, and they were light years ahead of anything in their time but lag a long way behind the more modern Power/Itanium's for what i did. It would have been nice to see what would have come out if they hadn't been canned though.
They need to get XP users to reinvest, and when you consider that lots of places are still happy with Win2000 (not to mention the significant minority still running NT4), this is a hard nut to crack. Ultimately, it'll probably come down to compatibility - MS will need to convince software writers to desert the older platforms, and convince businesses that the new features ("stability" and "security" perhaps...) are needed. A sensible, simple and transparent license system will help too.