I took your advice and googled "William Henry Gates III". I learned that he hasn't played a substantial role in software development at Microsoft since 1989. While he performs many tasks as a high-level manager, he doesn't worry himself with the technical details of Microsoft's operating systems.
Now I would like you to google "windows vista kernel patch protection". You will find that Microsoft has made an attempt to prevent rootkits from infecting Windows Vista systems. This has two major implications:
Microsoft is finally taking security a little more seriously
Microsoft is shifting its focus on security from the applications that support the OS to the kernel level
In addition to Kernel Patch Protection, Microsoft is experimenting with running untrusted apps in a virtual environment in their Singularity project.
These steps definitely would not have happened if Windows XP was not getting trounced by rootkits and malware. So actually, the process of making systems that are harder to tamper with has already begun. While I'm sure that there will be major problems, bugs, and exploits in these systems, those issues will slowly be fixed. The real question is how will the creators of malware respond and will Microsoft's efforts be enough to ward off most malware?
Even worse than the spam itself are the advances in malware that are being made by the companies that create these botnets. They have gone from using simple exploits and scripts to creating rootkits that are nearly impossible to detect and just as difficult to remove. In some ways, this could be a good thing because it is going to force OS programmers to create systems that are much harder to tamper with and I think that they will be fairly successful within a decade, but it's going to be a rough ride in the meantime.
However, it did contain the pubes of every person on the IE team. The Firefox team plans on retaliating by baking a cake using the dismembered appendages of family members of the IE team. You can thank South Park for that grisly idea.:)
Although with the way companies are greedily gobbling up "intellectual property" (hah!), I don't feel too much pity for ATI.
Many companies gobble up intellectual property for the sole purpose of using it as a defense against companies that would rather litigate than innovate. Intellectual property is in many ways like nuclear weapons - few people want to use them but everyone wants to have them to deter attacks from other countries. If ATI had been using their IP to attack other companies, I would agree with you and say that SGI is giving ATI what they deserve, but that is not the case. This is just SGI coming back from the grave to be a bunch of zombie grabasses.
Wow. It sounds like these executives are really being assaulted by this advertising campaign. And I thought popup windows were annoying. Thank God I'm not the executive of a billion dollar corporation!
I really don't see copyright infringement becoming a huge issue with this acquisition. As another poster pointed out, Google Video removes copyrighted material from their site and as long as they enforce the same policy on YouTube, they shouldn't have too many copyright problems. However, I'm sure there will be a few grab-asses that will threaten to sue Google in an attempt to get a settlement, and if Google was smart, they'd allow the case to go to court and make an example out of them.
I was going to suggest blocking all traffic coming from the IP range of addresses from China, but they could easily circumvent that by using a proxy outside of China. Maybe the U.S. Department of Commerce could create a welcome message that promotes democrary and condemns the inhumane treatment of the Chinese government and have that message appear before prompting for the username. That traffic would probably get blocked by the Great Firewall of China. When your weapons fail to work, turn your enemy's weapons against them.
I think we should be less concerned about the use of government computers in botnets and more concerned about securing personal information. If the government created and enforced security guidelines for all of their equipment, botnets would not exist AND our information would be secure. I never understood why the government gave the NSA tons of money to develop SELinux and then not deploy that software to other government agencies. I know that government employees currently need Windows-only software, but it appears that they haven't made any attempt to find solutions for locked-down SELinux boxes. They could also use AppArmor, virtual machines or chroot jails for software that can not be trusted, read-only file systems, etc. Instead they choose to give most users Windows machines that don't appear to be locked tightly. The ignorance and apathy of our government towards computer security never ceases to amaze me, especially when the Department of Homeland Security is spending billions of dollars and they don't seem to be making much progress.
According to Wikipedia, PCM has the potential to squeeze a terabyte into one square inch. However, even a few gigs is enough to make a huge difference. PCM could be used to store the operating system and application files as well as for swap. Since PCM performs similarly to DRAM, it would be like having all of your applications loaded into memory at all times. And since this memory is non-volatile, going into and out of hibernation mode would be almost instantaneous and it would not use any power while in hibernation mode. It would also having the following benefits:
Lower power consumption since this has no moving parts and your computer would only need to spin the hard drive if the user is requesting a document file
Less noise since the hard drive could remain powered down if the user was not currently accessing documents
Less heat which would reduce the number of case fans required
Since it uses less power, laptops would get more life out of their batteries
I can see a day where this memory is used in place of DRAM and application files are permanently stored in memory even when the system is off.
If the point of this article is that U.S. citizens are not able to exercise the rights granted to them by the FIRST amendment, what makes you think that they are free to exercise the rights of the second amendment, or any other amendment for that matter. The U.S. is not at war with terror - the Bush administration is at war with the Constitution.
"The PS3, due in November, has gotten serious negative press in the past few months, and this refreshing good news may win back the hearts of gamers still undecided about purchasing the system."
Yeah, I'm really going to shell out $600 for a video game system created by a company that has had a lot of problems with their recent technology and then leave that power-hungry video game system run 24/7 so that I can contribute a few CPU cycles for a good cause. I can already do this from my current computer and that is what I'll opt to do. I like the fact that the option exists for PS3 owners and that it will raise awareness of the Folding@home software, but I doubt that this option is going to sell more PS3 systems.
I give the author credit for doing his research and coming up with the math, but I think he completely misses the point. He asks "Why the disproportionate emphasis on gas prices in our culture, then?" Maybe because:
Gas prices at one point had nearly quadrupled in my area in a four year period
The long-term oil supply is diminishing
Developing countries are using more oil
Americans have been buying larger vehicles that consume more fuel
Oil has uses other than powering our vehicles, such as heat and manufacturing
All of the items I listed are driving up the price of oil and the only situation that seems to be improving a little is that some Americans are buying vehicles that get better gas mileage.
I wonder how long and how far the neocons will get in their quest to completely destroy the constitution. The sad part is that they didn't even need to raise the "terror alert" to get this passed. The time may come when U.S. citizens envy the "freedom" of the people of China.
I heard a rumor that this computer is being sold to Sony as a prototype for the Playstation 4. It's supposed to be totally teh r0x0rz and only cost a gabrillion dollars. Another rumor says that the PS4 prototype may be portable which could explain why Sony is receiving large orders of batteries.
It's a good thing I have automatic updates turned off. However, automatic updates in Vista will be turned on by default. If I ever end up using Vista, that will be the first feature that I disable which is a shame since automatic updates are a good thing if you can trust the company that performs them.
Scientists at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth have built a More details and a video at robotic arm to perform this task, using an engine from a concrete mixer, and a gearbox from a Citroen along with several computers.
"Error overload. Linguo will die now!"
Go ahead and mod me offtopic - I just can't pass up using a good Simpsons quote.
I've just completed my brilliant plan to avoid having my fingerprints stolen. It took a lot of alcohol and a lot of paper towels to stop the bleeding, but now all of my fingertips have been severed. It sure beats wearing gloves all of the time and I can make up some elaborate story of how I lost my fingertips in combat to impress the ladies. It's foolproof!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a little light-headed.
So is it the electrical engineers or computer engineers who program the complex, multi-threaded artificial intelligence applications? I mentored a high school robotics program that participates in the FIRST Robotics competition and I can tell you that the hardware students didn't know or care how to program the robot. They focused on building the robot and the software students focused on programming the behavior of the robot. I'm not saying that there aren't people interested in the hardware and software aspects of robotics but robots have become complex enough where there are few people who know enough to build the robot and create the software to drive the autonomous behavior of the robot.
Since the article is mostly hype, I'll point out why I think there is so much hype around this release.
The replacement for the PowerMac is expected to be announced. Rumor has it that it will use Intel's Conroe chip and sport a redesigned case.
Intel's Merom chip is set to be released in August, so a new MacBook Pro may be released as well. For those who don't know, Merom is the code name for Intel's Core 2 Duo mobile 64-bit processor and it adds better support for virtualization.
Mac OS X Leopard has been in development for a long time and is only a few months from release, yet no one knows for sure what new features it will bring. Previous versions of the OS have focused on increasing efficiency, stability, and security. Now that these things have been taken care of, Apple can focus on adding functionality, particularly catering to people who have been sitting on the fence of becoming an Apple user. My prediction is that Leopard will add some kind of technology that allows users to use their Windows installation from Boot Camp simultaneously alongside OS X. My hope is that they implement a hypervisor, possibly Xen, to provide this functionality.
That is why this conference is so important and that is why Leopard may help Apple obtain "remarkable market share gain next year".
Invite a bunch of new comsci grads who are unfamiliar with the patent and ask them to solve the specific problem in hand: mapping relational data to objects and see what they come up with. I am certain that most of them will have some sort of an automated object mapper.
If you did this, I'm pretty sure you'd have one grad who creates an IM program, another who creates an online gambling site, and the rest run into a corner, crawl into the fetal position, and suck their thumbs.
I can understand the manager's frustration with this guy, but was calling 911 appropriate? I wouldn't consider prolonged wireless piggybacking an emergency.
Also, was there a sign in front of the coffee shop indicating that the wireless signal was only for paying customers? Is this implied?
If they really cared about wireless freeloaders, they could use a wireless key and change that key every day. That key could be distributed with all purchases and the problem is solved.
Slashdot Mirror
Now I would like you to google "windows vista kernel patch protection". You will find that Microsoft has made an attempt to prevent rootkits from infecting Windows Vista systems. This has two major implications:
- Microsoft is finally taking security a little more seriously
- Microsoft is shifting its focus on security from the applications that support the OS to the kernel level
In addition to Kernel Patch Protection, Microsoft is experimenting with running untrusted apps in a virtual environment in their Singularity project. These steps definitely would not have happened if Windows XP was not getting trounced by rootkits and malware. So actually, the process of making systems that are harder to tamper with has already begun. While I'm sure that there will be major problems, bugs, and exploits in these systems, those issues will slowly be fixed. The real question is how will the creators of malware respond and will Microsoft's efforts be enough to ward off most malware?Even worse than the spam itself are the advances in malware that are being made by the companies that create these botnets. They have gone from using simple exploits and scripts to creating rootkits that are nearly impossible to detect and just as difficult to remove. In some ways, this could be a good thing because it is going to force OS programmers to create systems that are much harder to tamper with and I think that they will be fairly successful within a decade, but it's going to be a rough ride in the meantime.
However, it did contain the pubes of every person on the IE team. The Firefox team plans on retaliating by baking a cake using the dismembered appendages of family members of the IE team. You can thank South Park for that grisly idea.
Many companies gobble up intellectual property for the sole purpose of using it as a defense against companies that would rather litigate than innovate. Intellectual property is in many ways like nuclear weapons - few people want to use them but everyone wants to have them to deter attacks from other countries. If ATI had been using their IP to attack other companies, I would agree with you and say that SGI is giving ATI what they deserve, but that is not the case. This is just SGI coming back from the grave to be a bunch of zombie grabasses.
Wow. It sounds like these executives are really being assaulted by this advertising campaign. And I thought popup windows were annoying. Thank God I'm not the executive of a billion dollar corporation!
I really don't see copyright infringement becoming a huge issue with this acquisition. As another poster pointed out, Google Video removes copyrighted material from their site and as long as they enforce the same policy on YouTube, they shouldn't have too many copyright problems. However, I'm sure there will be a few grab-asses that will threaten to sue Google in an attempt to get a settlement, and if Google was smart, they'd allow the case to go to court and make an example out of them.
I was going to suggest blocking all traffic coming from the IP range of addresses from China, but they could easily circumvent that by using a proxy outside of China. Maybe the U.S. Department of Commerce could create a welcome message that promotes democrary and condemns the inhumane treatment of the Chinese government and have that message appear before prompting for the username. That traffic would probably get blocked by the Great Firewall of China. When your weapons fail to work, turn your enemy's weapons against them.
I think we should be less concerned about the use of government computers in botnets and more concerned about securing personal information. If the government created and enforced security guidelines for all of their equipment, botnets would not exist AND our information would be secure. I never understood why the government gave the NSA tons of money to develop SELinux and then not deploy that software to other government agencies. I know that government employees currently need Windows-only software, but it appears that they haven't made any attempt to find solutions for locked-down SELinux boxes. They could also use AppArmor, virtual machines or chroot jails for software that can not be trusted, read-only file systems, etc. Instead they choose to give most users Windows machines that don't appear to be locked tightly. The ignorance and apathy of our government towards computer security never ceases to amaze me, especially when the Department of Homeland Security is spending billions of dollars and they don't seem to be making much progress.
I can see a day where this memory is used in place of DRAM and application files are permanently stored in memory even when the system is off.
Oh boy!
If the point of this article is that U.S. citizens are not able to exercise the rights granted to them by the FIRST amendment, what makes you think that they are free to exercise the rights of the second amendment, or any other amendment for that matter. The U.S. is not at war with terror - the Bush administration is at war with the Constitution.
"The PS3, due in November, has gotten serious negative press in the past few months, and this refreshing good news may win back the hearts of gamers still undecided about purchasing the system."
Yeah, I'm really going to shell out $600 for a video game system created by a company that has had a lot of problems with their recent technology and then leave that power-hungry video game system run 24/7 so that I can contribute a few CPU cycles for a good cause. I can already do this from my current computer and that is what I'll opt to do. I like the fact that the option exists for PS3 owners and that it will raise awareness of the Folding@home software, but I doubt that this option is going to sell more PS3 systems.
All of the items I listed are driving up the price of oil and the only situation that seems to be improving a little is that some Americans are buying vehicles that get better gas mileage.
I wonder how long and how far the neocons will get in their quest to completely destroy the constitution. The sad part is that they didn't even need to raise the "terror alert" to get this passed. The time may come when U.S. citizens envy the "freedom" of the people of China.
I heard a rumor that this computer is being sold to Sony as a prototype for the Playstation 4. It's supposed to be totally teh r0x0rz and only cost a gabrillion dollars. Another rumor says that the PS4 prototype may be portable which could explain why Sony is receiving large orders of batteries.
It's a good thing I have automatic updates turned off. However, automatic updates in Vista will be turned on by default. If I ever end up using Vista, that will be the first feature that I disable which is a shame since automatic updates are a good thing if you can trust the company that performs them.
Of course the answer is 42. However, that's assuming that a "Limborghini" is a Lamborghini made of Limburger cheese.
"Error overload. Linguo will die now!"
Go ahead and mod me offtopic - I just can't pass up using a good Simpsons quote.
I've just completed my brilliant plan to avoid having my fingerprints stolen. It took a lot of alcohol and a lot of paper towels to stop the bleeding, but now all of my fingertips have been severed. It sure beats wearing gloves all of the time and I can make up some elaborate story of how I lost my fingertips in combat to impress the ladies. It's foolproof!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a little light-headed.
So is it the electrical engineers or computer engineers who program the complex, multi-threaded artificial intelligence applications? I mentored a high school robotics program that participates in the FIRST Robotics competition and I can tell you that the hardware students didn't know or care how to program the robot. They focused on building the robot and the software students focused on programming the behavior of the robot. I'm not saying that there aren't people interested in the hardware and software aspects of robotics but robots have become complex enough where there are few people who know enough to build the robot and create the software to drive the autonomous behavior of the robot.
That is why this conference is so important and that is why Leopard may help Apple obtain "remarkable market share gain next year".
If you did this, I'm pretty sure you'd have one grad who creates an IM program, another who creates an online gambling site, and the rest run into a corner, crawl into the fetal position, and suck their thumbs.
I can understand the manager's frustration with this guy, but was calling 911 appropriate? I wouldn't consider prolonged wireless piggybacking an emergency.
Also, was there a sign in front of the coffee shop indicating that the wireless signal was only for paying customers? Is this implied?
If they really cared about wireless freeloaders, they could use a wireless key and change that key every day. That key could be distributed with all purchases and the problem is solved.
Yes, Ted, that was the joke (Obligatory Family Guy reference)