Another thought which I got distracted from mentioning is that many would still either have no dream or feel that they couldn't do it even if they felt that they could survive while pursuing it. Many of those people will fall back to the secondary position of hedonism as an approach to finding happiness. Hedonism in the context of a society that provides for people's needs without question is a recipe for abuse and waste. "Eat, drink and be marry for tomorrow you may die." would be the rallying cry for many in such a society, even if it doesn't bring them happiness, simply because it is easier.
"You said yourself most people who work hard don't get shit for it. Why are we allowing a system to continue where 1% of the population gets to hold on to 90% of the resources? We keep telling our kids to work hard and they might win the billionaire lottery, even though we all know it is exceedingly unlikely."
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the system the way it is either, but the answer isn't to support those who do nothing, but to support those who want to contribute in non-conventional ways. Everything you said about those who don't have the opportunity to pursue things because they have to work to get by doesn't require that you give anyone something for nothing to correct it. I don't think at the moment our economy can support it, but in good times, I am all for the support of the arts and helping to make sure that people have the opportunity to pursue their dreams if they are willing to work for them.
Also, in response to your partial citation that people are happiest when they feel like they are accomplishing something, that is 110% correct in comparison to doing work that they do not feel is beneficial. However, what it fails to see is that what people want to do and what is necessary for the world to work rarely match up. How many people want to be garbage collectors or assembly line workers? How well would the world hold together if nobody had to do those jobs to get by tomorrow? Not everyone can have their dream job, some people are not good enough at doing what they really want to do to be able to do it as well as how ever many of that job can be supported. It is a harsh reality of life that not everyone gets to do what they want, and nothing other than an end of scarcity of resources will ever change that (which means either killing off a majority of the worlds population or managing to colonize other worlds or at least harvest their resources.) Even then, it would require a level of automation we do not currently, and likely will not possess for several centuries or more at a minimum.
It isn't at all fair that 1% get 90% of the resources, particularly when that 1% are propped up by government regulation, but the idea of giving everyone something for nothing is neither better, nor possible.
"As a species we can either accept this and build a wonderful world where everybody can live a decent life without working if they want"
This is perhaps the most idiotic thing I have read all day. If everyone can live a decent life without working, then why would anyone want to work? Economics never have been and never will be a guaranteed thing that what you put in is what you get out. For every 1 person who works hard and succeeds, another 99 work hard and just make minor progress. If you extend those useful workers to now also have to carry the burden of many others, those chances of success will become 1 in 100,000. Why the hell would anyone try to work hard at such longshot odds if they could simply have an almost identical quality of life doing jack shit?
Automation has increased efficiency, but innovation has also increased the number of products available and has increased the quality of life. Automation is about using resources more efficiently. Workers producing more product means higher profit and more production and thus more resources. More resources means the ability to produce more products and more jobs. Automation and gains in efficiency should never cost jobs, but rather increase the number of high paying jobs as efficiencies grow.
To explain it more simply, if automation allows 1 person to do the work of 100, then the savings of the 99 who aren't paid to make the same product can, atleast in part, go to that 1. That one can now afford to buy far more so there is now more demand for different products from that person. The 99 who no longer are needed can then be used to make other products. The only way that the system could break is if those who were working all had everything they wanted and had no need for anything else. Efficiency can only cause a loss of jobs when demand goes away. The only other possible problem is when resources become to scarce to support the population, but in that case, you are screwed whatever way you go and your best hope is to reward those who make most effective use of resources. (Which will be those who are most efficient.)
That assumes that there is no waste involved in walking. There is a lot of waste in walking. Notably you land with more force than necessary and usually your body absorbs that energy as shock. If the floor tiles absorb that instead, it actually makes it easier on you to walk on it while harnessing the waste energy. There is no free energy, but there are ways to recover waste energy and sometimes that is a mutually beneficial thing.
I would agree it is something to be watched and if OEMs start to universally stop giving the option the change, I will be with you that the trend needs to change. It really is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The only reason I don't see it as an issue is I can not believe that OEMs would universally decide not to give the option of changing the setting. Supposedly some have announced that they do plan to allow it to be turned off, but I have not seen anything firm on which ones those were. If it is a minority of OEMs or select systems, I still wouldn't be worried as long as it is clearly marked and doesn't trend towards complete or even majority lockout. I guess the best way to put it is I will watch with great interest, but feel that it is too early to be concerned or to view it as something that needs to be protested. If intentions are true, this will be arguably the greatest step forward in security in the technology sector in the history of the industry. If intentions are not true, it could be the most destructive. Only time will tell.
In general, Apple's design philosophy is that there is one way to do many things. OSX was actually a pretty large improvement from the past, but still starts to fall apart very rapidly when you give the consumer choice in hardware for example. Most of their advantages over the years were specifically due to how much control they exercised over the entire way their systems were built and used.
I didn't forget the 90s and MS's efforts to give manufacturers incentives to only sell Windows machines, but that isn't anti-consumer choice, it is anti-competitive by trying to block competition from OEMs. If you wanted to install something after getting your Windows machine, they never tried to stop you and their design philosophy has always been to try to give as much flexibility as possible in how their products are used. Yes, what they did in the 90s was monopolistic and wrong, but it wasn't anti-consumer in the same was or even a related way to what trying to prevent people from installing another OS would be.
"I don't mind MS pushing for secure boot to be available on new machines; I take issue with them requiring to be turned on by default and the implications that OEM machines will not be able to install another OS."
This is the core statement I take the most issue with in your response. You fail to estimate the power of the default. It is a hard lesson MS learned with Clippy. Something like 95 to 99% of users never change settings from the default. Is your grandmother going to understand how/why she should turn on secure boot? Is she even going to have a clue what it is? Is she going to understand what a root kit is or how it could compromise her privacy and lead to identity theft? The answer to all of these question is almost certainly no and is very much a resounding no in the vast majority of the population.
I've run Windows on my computers for over 20 years. In that time, I have had a grand total of 1 virus ever and that was on my system for a grand total of about 3 minutes. (They got me when the very first wave of popups that looked like dialogs came about and as soon as I saw the hotzone lines when I clicked, I pulled my network cable and removed the malware.) Windows isn't insecure because of being particularly better or worse than other OSes (at least not since the days of Win2K), Windows has been insecure because of the people using it. MS has an impossible job of trying to be the great IT admin in the sky for hundreds of millions of clueless computer users.
The option many manufacturers would take is to simply lock down a device and throw away the key, thus preventing a user from hurting themselves. Some, like Android, leave fairly easy to break back doors that knowledgeable users can find and exploit to get access, but it still is not in the interest of user freedom, but user security. MS thankfully continues to take the stand that users should own their hardware and be able to use it their way, but they can't ignore their responsibility to the more clueless of their customers. It really is their responsibility to ensure that OEMs turn the feature on by default and assume that those who want access to their system will either self-build or be sure to use an OEM that provides access to control what can securely boot. We shouldn't be condemning MS for it but thanking them for working to make a more secure computing industry while leaving things open for those of us who do know how to handle our own security.
As for the "implication" that OEM machines will not be able to install another OS. I think that is bullshit. Yes, some OEMs might not bother to implement the feature in their pre-boot environment if they are too cheap to bother, but there is no real reason for them not to and I don't seriously believe that the majority would not put the option in the pre-boot environment. And once again, even if some do not, that has nothing to do with MS and everything to do with the OEM unless you can show me some evidence that MS is asking the OEM to lock it down. If you can show me evidence of that, then yes, I would be 100% in agreement with you, but I see nothing to indicate that is the case here.
And if you can follow multiple people, how many people will be walking around with a mask, a rock in their shoe, a body suit and high heels? It could perhaps make it harder to do, but it isn't exactly practical to do that all the time and that assumes that the target knows what measures are being used and can adequately compensate for all of them. Also, once the system is built, it requires many $3 masks and rocks and body suits and heels, etc and adds considerable extra time costs to evade. It makes life more difficult and raises the possible results of failing.
You also assume that there couldn't be other possible benefits to the imaging and analysis capabilities that are developed. Military tech has a way of having real world benefits in the civilian world, and better, faster image processing will have many positive (and yes, some negative) benefits. Is it in and of itself a compelling technology to try to drive terrorists broke? No, but that doesn't make it a technology that isn't worth pursuing to advance the state of the art and give some military benefits along the way.
This has nothing to do with that at all. Windows 8 does not require secure UEFI. Hardware manufacturer permitting, someone could simply disable UEFI and Windows would not complain about it. MS' policy here has absolutely zero impact on pirated copies of windows.
Also, why would a pirated copy of Windows need to hijack the boot process to appear valid? Having a signed executable might cause issues for pirates because they couldn't simply alter executable without losing the signing, but that could be verified by other parts of Windows as well and as previously mentioned, the UEFI is not required to remain on by MS, but simply to be available as an option (and on by default since 99% of users will have no idea what it does and don't change defaults.)
But MS isn't locking anyone out of installing other OS's that's just my point. They are only requiring that the feature be supported. They make no requirement of it not being able to be turned off and it wouldn't be their place to require that hardware be able to turn it off as that has no impact on the hardware's ability to run all the features of MS's product. And yes, I realize that Macs have had UEFI and not locked users out of installing other OS's but that was before they realized that there was money to be made in controlling how people consume media. In general, Apple is far less pro-consumer choice than MS is. Apple wants you to do things the Apple way or the highway. MS tries to meet consumers where ever and how ever they want and they either take flak for being unstable and insecure (because of supporting a wide range of hardware and trying to preserve compatibility.) or they get attacked for things like this (trying to fix the problems of insecurity that they get blasted for by the same people that are blasting them now.
That also assumes other bio-metrics such as height, build, gait, etc are not analyzed to determine if the person is the same. There are more to biometrics than simply recognizing a face.
How are we sure that the bulk of Microsoft's patent portfolio is pure garbage? They have quite an extensive research division and come up with some pretty novel concepts. That said, I think software patents in general are given for ideas that are far too simple, but I would hazard that MS is probably one of the few companies that have software patents I would actually qualify as being validly innovative and non-obvious. (Though I am sure they have a number of very obvious patents as well as you simply have to play the game to survive the way things are currently structured.)
If people have need of a tablet more than a reader, they tend to get the tablet and use it as a reader unless they can afford both. That said, I would agree that people who primarily need a reader prefer e-Ink displays such as the Kindle and certainly, if someone can afford both, the e-Ink based devices provide a much more pleasant experience for long form reading.
Your only real mistake was to forget that there is a substantial market of people who want a media consumption device and don't want (or can't afford) to get both devices. I say this as a person with 2 desktops, a server, 4 laptops (though only 2 I regularly use), a Mac Mini (for iPhone development), an Asus Transformer tablet, 2 Android smart phones, a currently unconnected Windows 6.5 smart phone, all 3 game consoles (two PS3s), an AppleTV, a TV with streaming media support, two Sony e-Readers (e-ink based from before the Kindle even existed) and a Pulse smartpen. I'll also be getting another e-Reader or two once the first color e-ink displays hit the market.
All of these devices fill a niche. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. They each have their uses. Many of them can go across multiple uses and most of them play nice together to make life easier if you know how to get them to play together. Amazon was brilliant in making the Kindle apps for computers and smartphones/tablets. The ability to have a book on your phone with you when you have a few minutes free at lunch, but being able to pull out an e-Ink reader at home for reading longer form or on trips was truly brilliant when combined with the power to bring a large library of books to market.
What history? Apple has history of loving this kind of thing. MS has always been a major proponent of letting you do what you want with your hardware. (360 being a notable exception, but that is the game console market where that has always been the case on all manufacturers.) If MS really wanted to be as nefarious as you suggest, then why are they not requiring that manufacturers limit to only their key and not allow it to be turned off? They could have put whatever requirements they want for their logo program and arguably, preventing disabling it would give a very small increase in security. They didn't feel it was worth limiting choice to specify that though and it really isn't their place to require that the manufacturer make it so it can be disabled as that doesn't impact how their product supports the end user.
Microsoft simply wants to be able to protect the average Joe Schmo user from malware and root kits that really make a secure boot process a necessity to ensure security on unadministered desktops. They want OEMs to offer the highest level of security available to protect end users and require that the features be available in order to be able to say they fully support Windows 8. I fail to see anything nefarious in MS's actions as they stand, but feel free to point me to anything that you think doesn't work to protect end users in what they are actually requiring, not what they aren't requiring.
No, what the previous poster is stating is that it only impacts manufacturers that do not offer an option to disable the setting. I do not see how this is a MS issue. Microsoft is trying to make the boot process more secure. The only way to do that is to have something like Secure UEFI validate that malware isn't hijacking the system before the OS loads. If your hardware manufacturer isn't giving you the option to disable the feature if you want, then you should take that up with them, not MS. There is absolutely nothing wrong with requiring that OEMs provide the hardware necessary to provide a secure system to end users, because honestly, the largest portion of users have no idea what a root kit is or why they need to be protected from it.
It isn't like you must have secure boot enabled to use Windows 8 and it isn't like they are requiring that manufacturers don't allow it to be turned off. MS isn't doing anything wrong. If a hardware vendor is too cheap to include a switch in the system configuration to turn off Secure UEFI, then don't use that manufacturer. It's that simple. We will never get to the point where we can't do what we want with our hardware because some manufacturer will always realize there is a killing to be made supporting those who want hardware they control. The only risk would be if it was to become a legal requirement, but I don't see that happening any time soon and certainly this has nothing to do with trying to make that happen.
Yeah, this is so true. I am very much an enthusiast. I have a tablet, I love my tablet. If I had to choose between my desktop and my tablet, I would throw my tablet off the top of a sky scraper in a heart beat without even thinking about it. Enthusiasts build themselves partly because it is cheaper, but also because they are looking to get more power and tuning out of the system. Simply put, a purpose built computer will always excel far beyond a general use computer if the person designing it knows what they do. Tablets are nice to have, but there are many things they will never and can never excel at that a desktop does excel at, and for the cost, a desktop can do far more of what a tablet can do than the other way around, at least for what anyone beyond a casual user wants.
It is also worth noting that his graphing of the data is running about on par to confirm what I was estimating based on the curve. Notice how tightly fit the curve is across all of the writings. The only key difference would be the works that have duplicated sets (if he is in fact requiring them to be entered multiple times.)
FTA: "The Map Monkeys create random data in ASCII between a and z" so it is using only 26 characters for each set of 9.
Also, you're probability work is getting a little rusty. It is 26^9 not 9^26. There are 26 options per choice and 9 choices, not 9 options per choice with 26 choices. For the first choice you have 26 options, then for each of those choices you have 26 choices, etc, 9 times.
It can't be discrimination to require someone to be able to do a job. That would be like saying you couldn't have a literacy requirement for an editor. There are these things called qualifications. As long as the employer is trying to make things as accessible as possible, I don't see how it is discriminatory to require a minimum level of job performance and competency.
Further thoughts, upon calculation, there are only 5,429,503,678,976 possible 9 character combinations. This makes it seem like the process used is either not well documented or is not well written (or not running all the time) as this would seem like it should run several orders of magnitude faster than the project has thus run.
A little more detail from looking at it. It appears that it is simply choosing a random distribution of 9 characters and checking if that matches up to a 9 character subgroup and if so, then it finds it as a match. The stupidity of the project is that this then becomes an extremely simple distribution problem to solve and actually doing it "experimentally" is both unnecessary and a waste of resources.
Assuming that the program expects each occurrence of a 9 letter set to be created once for each occurrence, the largest number of occurrences would be the key determining factor in the estimated run-time for such a program (since statistically, the total number of possible combinations should roughly equal numbers of times, though all the unneeded groupings would be discarded).
That is actually supporting himself. The fact is that IQ tests give worse scores to the black community than the rest of the world. Some indicate they feel this shows that the test must be biased (under the assumption that culture doesn't impact intelligence, and therefore a uniform distribution should be seen.) The previous poster was using himself as evidence that if someone shakes off the cultural anti-intellectualism, then they score just fine. While a single individual doesn't make or break a statistical norm, I tend to agree with him since I have seen the same thing. It also makes sense that in the academic obsessed cultures like Asian ones, people do better because they work harder.
My first thought was wondering if the troll misposted or just figured it would make it even more troll like to write a troll post for one topic and post it to another. But yeah, I just finished reading that article and thought my Slashdot had screwed up somehow.
But how is it discrimination if it doesn't impact them getting the job? I thought we were talking about additional training that is being provided for them. I would agree that it would be unfair to discriminate based on accent, but I don't think it is unfair to require someone who needs to be clearly understood to learn to speak clearly. It isn't like learning an alternate speech pattern overwrites your current one. Many people are capable of speaking in multiple accents quite comfortably and efficiently. Listen to an interview with the actor that plays Gregory House sometime. He has a heavy British accent, but you would never guess it from his part. Why is this not a fair expectation for those who need to be able to communicate publicly, at least to an understandable level?
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Another thought which I got distracted from mentioning is that many would still either have no dream or feel that they couldn't do it even if they felt that they could survive while pursuing it. Many of those people will fall back to the secondary position of hedonism as an approach to finding happiness. Hedonism in the context of a society that provides for people's needs without question is a recipe for abuse and waste. "Eat, drink and be marry for tomorrow you may die." would be the rallying cry for many in such a society, even if it doesn't bring them happiness, simply because it is easier.
"You said yourself most people who work hard don't get shit for it. Why are we allowing a system to continue where 1% of the population gets to hold on to 90% of the resources? We keep telling our kids to work hard and they might win the billionaire lottery, even though we all know it is exceedingly unlikely."
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the system the way it is either, but the answer isn't to support those who do nothing, but to support those who want to contribute in non-conventional ways. Everything you said about those who don't have the opportunity to pursue things because they have to work to get by doesn't require that you give anyone something for nothing to correct it. I don't think at the moment our economy can support it, but in good times, I am all for the support of the arts and helping to make sure that people have the opportunity to pursue their dreams if they are willing to work for them.
Also, in response to your partial citation that people are happiest when they feel like they are accomplishing something, that is 110% correct in comparison to doing work that they do not feel is beneficial. However, what it fails to see is that what people want to do and what is necessary for the world to work rarely match up. How many people want to be garbage collectors or assembly line workers? How well would the world hold together if nobody had to do those jobs to get by tomorrow? Not everyone can have their dream job, some people are not good enough at doing what they really want to do to be able to do it as well as how ever many of that job can be supported. It is a harsh reality of life that not everyone gets to do what they want, and nothing other than an end of scarcity of resources will ever change that (which means either killing off a majority of the worlds population or managing to colonize other worlds or at least harvest their resources.) Even then, it would require a level of automation we do not currently, and likely will not possess for several centuries or more at a minimum.
It isn't at all fair that 1% get 90% of the resources, particularly when that 1% are propped up by government regulation, but the idea of giving everyone something for nothing is neither better, nor possible.
"As a species we can either accept this and build a wonderful world where everybody can live a decent life without working if they want"
This is perhaps the most idiotic thing I have read all day. If everyone can live a decent life without working, then why would anyone want to work? Economics never have been and never will be a guaranteed thing that what you put in is what you get out. For every 1 person who works hard and succeeds, another 99 work hard and just make minor progress. If you extend those useful workers to now also have to carry the burden of many others, those chances of success will become 1 in 100,000. Why the hell would anyone try to work hard at such longshot odds if they could simply have an almost identical quality of life doing jack shit?
Automation has increased efficiency, but innovation has also increased the number of products available and has increased the quality of life. Automation is about using resources more efficiently. Workers producing more product means higher profit and more production and thus more resources. More resources means the ability to produce more products and more jobs. Automation and gains in efficiency should never cost jobs, but rather increase the number of high paying jobs as efficiencies grow.
To explain it more simply, if automation allows 1 person to do the work of 100, then the savings of the 99 who aren't paid to make the same product can, atleast in part, go to that 1. That one can now afford to buy far more so there is now more demand for different products from that person. The 99 who no longer are needed can then be used to make other products. The only way that the system could break is if those who were working all had everything they wanted and had no need for anything else. Efficiency can only cause a loss of jobs when demand goes away. The only other possible problem is when resources become to scarce to support the population, but in that case, you are screwed whatever way you go and your best hope is to reward those who make most effective use of resources. (Which will be those who are most efficient.)
That assumes that there is no waste involved in walking. There is a lot of waste in walking. Notably you land with more force than necessary and usually your body absorbs that energy as shock. If the floor tiles absorb that instead, it actually makes it easier on you to walk on it while harnessing the waste energy. There is no free energy, but there are ways to recover waste energy and sometimes that is a mutually beneficial thing.
I would agree it is something to be watched and if OEMs start to universally stop giving the option the change, I will be with you that the trend needs to change. It really is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. The only reason I don't see it as an issue is I can not believe that OEMs would universally decide not to give the option of changing the setting. Supposedly some have announced that they do plan to allow it to be turned off, but I have not seen anything firm on which ones those were. If it is a minority of OEMs or select systems, I still wouldn't be worried as long as it is clearly marked and doesn't trend towards complete or even majority lockout. I guess the best way to put it is I will watch with great interest, but feel that it is too early to be concerned or to view it as something that needs to be protested. If intentions are true, this will be arguably the greatest step forward in security in the technology sector in the history of the industry. If intentions are not true, it could be the most destructive. Only time will tell.
True, that's another good point. MS isn't limited to only software research.
In general, Apple's design philosophy is that there is one way to do many things. OSX was actually a pretty large improvement from the past, but still starts to fall apart very rapidly when you give the consumer choice in hardware for example. Most of their advantages over the years were specifically due to how much control they exercised over the entire way their systems were built and used.
I didn't forget the 90s and MS's efforts to give manufacturers incentives to only sell Windows machines, but that isn't anti-consumer choice, it is anti-competitive by trying to block competition from OEMs. If you wanted to install something after getting your Windows machine, they never tried to stop you and their design philosophy has always been to try to give as much flexibility as possible in how their products are used. Yes, what they did in the 90s was monopolistic and wrong, but it wasn't anti-consumer in the same was or even a related way to what trying to prevent people from installing another OS would be.
"I don't mind MS pushing for secure boot to be available on new machines; I take issue with them requiring to be turned on by default and the implications that OEM machines will not be able to install another OS."
This is the core statement I take the most issue with in your response. You fail to estimate the power of the default. It is a hard lesson MS learned with Clippy. Something like 95 to 99% of users never change settings from the default. Is your grandmother going to understand how/why she should turn on secure boot? Is she even going to have a clue what it is? Is she going to understand what a root kit is or how it could compromise her privacy and lead to identity theft? The answer to all of these question is almost certainly no and is very much a resounding no in the vast majority of the population.
I've run Windows on my computers for over 20 years. In that time, I have had a grand total of 1 virus ever and that was on my system for a grand total of about 3 minutes. (They got me when the very first wave of popups that looked like dialogs came about and as soon as I saw the hotzone lines when I clicked, I pulled my network cable and removed the malware.) Windows isn't insecure because of being particularly better or worse than other OSes (at least not since the days of Win2K), Windows has been insecure because of the people using it. MS has an impossible job of trying to be the great IT admin in the sky for hundreds of millions of clueless computer users.
The option many manufacturers would take is to simply lock down a device and throw away the key, thus preventing a user from hurting themselves. Some, like Android, leave fairly easy to break back doors that knowledgeable users can find and exploit to get access, but it still is not in the interest of user freedom, but user security. MS thankfully continues to take the stand that users should own their hardware and be able to use it their way, but they can't ignore their responsibility to the more clueless of their customers. It really is their responsibility to ensure that OEMs turn the feature on by default and assume that those who want access to their system will either self-build or be sure to use an OEM that provides access to control what can securely boot. We shouldn't be condemning MS for it but thanking them for working to make a more secure computing industry while leaving things open for those of us who do know how to handle our own security.
As for the "implication" that OEM machines will not be able to install another OS. I think that is bullshit. Yes, some OEMs might not bother to implement the feature in their pre-boot environment if they are too cheap to bother, but there is no real reason for them not to and I don't seriously believe that the majority would not put the option in the pre-boot environment. And once again, even if some do not, that has nothing to do with MS and everything to do with the OEM unless you can show me some evidence that MS is asking the OEM to lock it down. If you can show me evidence of that, then yes, I would be 100% in agreement with you, but I see nothing to indicate that is the case here.
And if you can follow multiple people, how many people will be walking around with a mask, a rock in their shoe, a body suit and high heels? It could perhaps make it harder to do, but it isn't exactly practical to do that all the time and that assumes that the target knows what measures are being used and can adequately compensate for all of them. Also, once the system is built, it requires many $3 masks and rocks and body suits and heels, etc and adds considerable extra time costs to evade. It makes life more difficult and raises the possible results of failing.
You also assume that there couldn't be other possible benefits to the imaging and analysis capabilities that are developed. Military tech has a way of having real world benefits in the civilian world, and better, faster image processing will have many positive (and yes, some negative) benefits. Is it in and of itself a compelling technology to try to drive terrorists broke? No, but that doesn't make it a technology that isn't worth pursuing to advance the state of the art and give some military benefits along the way.
This has nothing to do with that at all. Windows 8 does not require secure UEFI. Hardware manufacturer permitting, someone could simply disable UEFI and Windows would not complain about it. MS' policy here has absolutely zero impact on pirated copies of windows.
Also, why would a pirated copy of Windows need to hijack the boot process to appear valid? Having a signed executable might cause issues for pirates because they couldn't simply alter executable without losing the signing, but that could be verified by other parts of Windows as well and as previously mentioned, the UEFI is not required to remain on by MS, but simply to be available as an option (and on by default since 99% of users will have no idea what it does and don't change defaults.)
But MS isn't locking anyone out of installing other OS's that's just my point. They are only requiring that the feature be supported. They make no requirement of it not being able to be turned off and it wouldn't be their place to require that hardware be able to turn it off as that has no impact on the hardware's ability to run all the features of MS's product. And yes, I realize that Macs have had UEFI and not locked users out of installing other OS's but that was before they realized that there was money to be made in controlling how people consume media. In general, Apple is far less pro-consumer choice than MS is. Apple wants you to do things the Apple way or the highway. MS tries to meet consumers where ever and how ever they want and they either take flak for being unstable and insecure (because of supporting a wide range of hardware and trying to preserve compatibility.) or they get attacked for things like this (trying to fix the problems of insecurity that they get blasted for by the same people that are blasting them now.
That also assumes other bio-metrics such as height, build, gait, etc are not analyzed to determine if the person is the same. There are more to biometrics than simply recognizing a face.
How are we sure that the bulk of Microsoft's patent portfolio is pure garbage? They have quite an extensive research division and come up with some pretty novel concepts. That said, I think software patents in general are given for ideas that are far too simple, but I would hazard that MS is probably one of the few companies that have software patents I would actually qualify as being validly innovative and non-obvious. (Though I am sure they have a number of very obvious patents as well as you simply have to play the game to survive the way things are currently structured.)
If people have need of a tablet more than a reader, they tend to get the tablet and use it as a reader unless they can afford both. That said, I would agree that people who primarily need a reader prefer e-Ink displays such as the Kindle and certainly, if someone can afford both, the e-Ink based devices provide a much more pleasant experience for long form reading.
Your only real mistake was to forget that there is a substantial market of people who want a media consumption device and don't want (or can't afford) to get both devices. I say this as a person with 2 desktops, a server, 4 laptops (though only 2 I regularly use), a Mac Mini (for iPhone development), an Asus Transformer tablet, 2 Android smart phones, a currently unconnected Windows 6.5 smart phone, all 3 game consoles (two PS3s), an AppleTV, a TV with streaming media support, two Sony e-Readers (e-ink based from before the Kindle even existed) and a Pulse smartpen. I'll also be getting another e-Reader or two once the first color e-ink displays hit the market.
All of these devices fill a niche. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. They each have their uses. Many of them can go across multiple uses and most of them play nice together to make life easier if you know how to get them to play together. Amazon was brilliant in making the Kindle apps for computers and smartphones/tablets. The ability to have a book on your phone with you when you have a few minutes free at lunch, but being able to pull out an e-Ink reader at home for reading longer form or on trips was truly brilliant when combined with the power to bring a large library of books to market.
What history? Apple has history of loving this kind of thing. MS has always been a major proponent of letting you do what you want with your hardware. (360 being a notable exception, but that is the game console market where that has always been the case on all manufacturers.) If MS really wanted to be as nefarious as you suggest, then why are they not requiring that manufacturers limit to only their key and not allow it to be turned off? They could have put whatever requirements they want for their logo program and arguably, preventing disabling it would give a very small increase in security. They didn't feel it was worth limiting choice to specify that though and it really isn't their place to require that the manufacturer make it so it can be disabled as that doesn't impact how their product supports the end user.
Microsoft simply wants to be able to protect the average Joe Schmo user from malware and root kits that really make a secure boot process a necessity to ensure security on unadministered desktops. They want OEMs to offer the highest level of security available to protect end users and require that the features be available in order to be able to say they fully support Windows 8. I fail to see anything nefarious in MS's actions as they stand, but feel free to point me to anything that you think doesn't work to protect end users in what they are actually requiring, not what they aren't requiring.
No, what the previous poster is stating is that it only impacts manufacturers that do not offer an option to disable the setting. I do not see how this is a MS issue. Microsoft is trying to make the boot process more secure. The only way to do that is to have something like Secure UEFI validate that malware isn't hijacking the system before the OS loads. If your hardware manufacturer isn't giving you the option to disable the feature if you want, then you should take that up with them, not MS. There is absolutely nothing wrong with requiring that OEMs provide the hardware necessary to provide a secure system to end users, because honestly, the largest portion of users have no idea what a root kit is or why they need to be protected from it.
It isn't like you must have secure boot enabled to use Windows 8 and it isn't like they are requiring that manufacturers don't allow it to be turned off. MS isn't doing anything wrong. If a hardware vendor is too cheap to include a switch in the system configuration to turn off Secure UEFI, then don't use that manufacturer. It's that simple. We will never get to the point where we can't do what we want with our hardware because some manufacturer will always realize there is a killing to be made supporting those who want hardware they control. The only risk would be if it was to become a legal requirement, but I don't see that happening any time soon and certainly this has nothing to do with trying to make that happen.
Yeah, this is so true. I am very much an enthusiast. I have a tablet, I love my tablet. If I had to choose between my desktop and my tablet, I would throw my tablet off the top of a sky scraper in a heart beat without even thinking about it. Enthusiasts build themselves partly because it is cheaper, but also because they are looking to get more power and tuning out of the system. Simply put, a purpose built computer will always excel far beyond a general use computer if the person designing it knows what they do. Tablets are nice to have, but there are many things they will never and can never excel at that a desktop does excel at, and for the cost, a desktop can do far more of what a tablet can do than the other way around, at least for what anyone beyond a casual user wants.
It is also worth noting that his graphing of the data is running about on par to confirm what I was estimating based on the curve. Notice how tightly fit the curve is across all of the writings. The only key difference would be the works that have duplicated sets (if he is in fact requiring them to be entered multiple times.)
FTA: "The Map Monkeys create random data in ASCII between a and z" so it is using only 26 characters for each set of 9.
Also, you're probability work is getting a little rusty. It is 26^9 not 9^26. There are 26 options per choice and 9 choices, not 9 options per choice with 26 choices. For the first choice you have 26 options, then for each of those choices you have 26 choices, etc, 9 times.
It can't be discrimination to require someone to be able to do a job. That would be like saying you couldn't have a literacy requirement for an editor. There are these things called qualifications. As long as the employer is trying to make things as accessible as possible, I don't see how it is discriminatory to require a minimum level of job performance and competency.
Further thoughts, upon calculation, there are only 5,429,503,678,976 possible 9 character combinations. This makes it seem like the process used is either not well documented or is not well written (or not running all the time) as this would seem like it should run several orders of magnitude faster than the project has thus run.
A little more detail from looking at it. It appears that it is simply choosing a random distribution of 9 characters and checking if that matches up to a 9 character subgroup and if so, then it finds it as a match. The stupidity of the project is that this then becomes an extremely simple distribution problem to solve and actually doing it "experimentally" is both unnecessary and a waste of resources.
Assuming that the program expects each occurrence of a 9 letter set to be created once for each occurrence, the largest number of occurrences would be the key determining factor in the estimated run-time for such a program (since statistically, the total number of possible combinations should roughly equal numbers of times, though all the unneeded groupings would be discarded).
Yeah, I agree. This seems like an incredibly stupid idea with no real point to it other than to try to make a publicity grab.
That is actually supporting himself. The fact is that IQ tests give worse scores to the black community than the rest of the world. Some indicate they feel this shows that the test must be biased (under the assumption that culture doesn't impact intelligence, and therefore a uniform distribution should be seen.) The previous poster was using himself as evidence that if someone shakes off the cultural anti-intellectualism, then they score just fine. While a single individual doesn't make or break a statistical norm, I tend to agree with him since I have seen the same thing. It also makes sense that in the academic obsessed cultures like Asian ones, people do better because they work harder.
My first thought was wondering if the troll misposted or just figured it would make it even more troll like to write a troll post for one topic and post it to another. But yeah, I just finished reading that article and thought my Slashdot had screwed up somehow.
But how is it discrimination if it doesn't impact them getting the job? I thought we were talking about additional training that is being provided for them. I would agree that it would be unfair to discriminate based on accent, but I don't think it is unfair to require someone who needs to be clearly understood to learn to speak clearly. It isn't like learning an alternate speech pattern overwrites your current one. Many people are capable of speaking in multiple accents quite comfortably and efficiently. Listen to an interview with the actor that plays Gregory House sometime. He has a heavy British accent, but you would never guess it from his part. Why is this not a fair expectation for those who need to be able to communicate publicly, at least to an understandable level?