Terrifying Potential Reality C (The one I believe is actually in the minds of people responsible): No withheld data. Profits suffer slightly for oil companies. Major shareholders have to buy their children H2's instead of full-sized hummers. Major drama ensues at home--and all for naught because God comes to take the wealthy away before the oil runs out anyway.
How do you usually convince the mac to hibernate? Usually you have to pull the battery or let it drain all the way--is there some trick I don't know?
Also, you're right about it being different, but I have almost never seen a PC (out of dozens) that can stand more than 4-5 suspend/resumes or 2-3 hibernates, and I've never seen a mac (out of 5 or 6) that has a problem with it.
I am fairly careful about not opening the lid until the light is winking though--I think I saw someone have a problem with closing the mac and opening it right away, so maybe part of it is that usage habit.
Also--seriously--same performance? My mac is able to take keystrokes within SECONDS, like 2. The wifi is usually up and ready before I need it (5 seconds or so).
My XP machine doesn't even accept keystrokes for like 20-30 seconds after a resume from suspend, and then it's chunky.
Perhaps you've figured out some trick to make it always hibernate instead of suspend and that's why you find the performance similar? I almost never use the hibernate feature (Which is another interesting point--my PC will suspend for about 5 hours, my mac for about 20...)
It'll be interesting to see if 7 can repeatedly enter and exit hibernation without going wonky. I know a few people said they could get XP to do that, but it really only worked on a pristine system and even then would fail after hibernating more than once or twice.
I'd be even happier if their suspend worked reasonably well. My mac notebook resumes from suspend in just a few seconds (if that) and is always usable before I'm ready to use it--and when doing so it is 100% reliable when doing so no matter how many times you suspend/resume (in my 2-year history). It also has a pretty amazing hidden hibernate function that works so well you never know it's there--but some day when your mac is suspended, yank the battery for a few minutes and put it back in--it will magically restore from hibernation rather than suspend, but regardless it continues from exactly where you left off.
Honestly, I know this is getting way too far O/T, but I can't believe I've never seen a video of a side-by-side comparison of Windows and Mac doing the standard things--booting up, suspend, hibernate, restore, low stress battery runtime test, high use battery runtime test,...
Since the cheapest mac beats every PC experience I've ever had in every one of those categories by a significant amount, you'd think that would make for a no-brainer advertisement.
For his valiant efforts in preventing waste did the bean counter get promoted to VP level or directly to an officer of the company? Or did he quit (get pushed out) and get a higher paying job elsewhere. This kind of stupidity never goes unrewarded.
If it's asking you to de-authorize it and not remove it, that kind of makes sense.
I imagine something in the upgrade process can fubar Apple's DRM system and cause it to make iTunes think it's not authorized. If that old install information remains in their database, it might be annoying to remove it (or not, I'm just guessing).
We started out with some metered services, then many small ISPs started offering connectivity at unmetered rates (they often didn't provide the services). The service providers matched the unmetered rates and many of the ISPs vanished. If they go to metered or raise the price too high, people will find another way to connect.
This is one market where it's really tough to maintain an expensive monopoly. I say if Verizion wants to do that they should. I'll miss my FIOS, but I'll switch over to someone else, no problem.
If they convince Comcast and the others to join them, maybe I'll start an ISP.
I never said anything about one country being better. Man, what's up your ass? I'm about as un-nationalist as you're going to find.
All I was saying was that by encouraging hackers to do what they do best openly, you can A) find holes earlier and fix them, and B) encourage them to be more in the open (which will discourage them from becoming part of the problem).
It happens that I used the fact that there are countries (most of them? All the big ones for sure) training hackers offensively--to hack into the computers of other countries to drive home the point that finding these holes can also be a defense against people trying to do harm (Be it to a company, individual or business).
Perhaps I could have phrased it a little better--but then your reply was pretty much a disaster.
Very good point except you were probably thinking of N. Korea.
I get really annoyed that people try to discourage hackers from their own country that might be somewhat loyal. I'd recommend encouraging and paying them.
The analogy in the summary is flawed... It's more like suppose there are hundreds of people trying to break into your house every minute--Knocking at the door, twisting the knob, slamming against the door trying to gauge it's strength,...
Now one kids comes up and notices that you have an open basement window. None of the other attackers have noticed it yet.
The kid climbs in, doesn't touch anything, looks through your old family pictures maybe, climbs back out--
At this point he has a choice to make. Does he let you know that you screwed up, does he walk away, or does he try to sell the info to one of the guys hanging around on your front porch?
What could you do to encourage this kid to make the correct decision?
Out of all the people in the world, you are unlikely to stop them all by punishing them. You're only likely to influence the decisions of the few that are likely to want to help (and make them less likely). That's the only effect this crap has.
Why on earth would you say Java was slower than everything that came before it?
It's faster than everything but C, and even ties C in some cases.
I believe the Language Shootout includes specs for Fortran and Basic (which were before Java), I'm also pretty sure it was faster than Pascal, Ada (Can't swear to that one, don't think it's on the shootout, but I don't remember it being specifically quick), heck hundreds of languages.
I still don't know why Java gets crap about performance when it is the only language that seems to perform like C.
Honestly the only thing I can think of is that like Visual Basic, it made programming possible for a LOT more people--people who didn't really know how to program and only wanted to implement a solution to a problem. They made good ideas into decent programs with very bad performance.
I'm pretty sure that if Python ever becomes known as the language that is an "Easy" way to solve some problem, it'll have the same kind of issues.
I've also seen some pretty crappy Ruby on Rails websites...
> I really hate hearing about all these awesome innovations by Palm and Apple that I've been using for years,
The only innovations I'm aware of on the iPhone are multi-touch and the app store (and even that is only an innovation in so much as you have access to thousands of free, somewhat useful apps whereas on other phones you have to pay monthly for dozens of somewhat useful apps)
Nobody (who knows what's going on) ever claimed that tethering was an Apple innovation, it's just of interest to a lot of people.
What other "innovations" are people talking about?
> For that matter, why does anyone think it's normal for humans to eat cow secretions?
For that matter, why does anyone think it's normal for humans to eat anything?
We try something, we eat it and either we die or adapt to it.
Sometimes we eat bugs, sometimes it's cow milk or chicken eggs. Pretty much anything that can be eaten will be.
Many animals eat chicken eggs (Including mice, I'm sure), which isn't any more or less "Natural" than cow milk.
Nothing is "Natural" or "Not Natural" to eat. You can have an "Unnatural" diet like eating ALL meat or ALL vegetables (We are neither carnivores nor are we herbivores), so we would never restrict ourselves to one or another "In Nature", but it's not like it hurts anything.
I don't really care much one way or another--I'm not pro or anti milk (or whatever the hell the GP&P was pro or anti), but saying it's unnatural for mice to eat something is just one of the silliest arguments I've ever heard.
Life eats anything that doesn't make it dead. Period. That's natural.
I'm pretty sure the Milk is mostly out of convenience (Cheaper, easier to store and/or more accessible than most alternatives that would not make the mouse dead)--that's all.
Cable companies are going to switch over to a card format that can be placed in any device--this is called "tru2way". You should be able to plug your cable card into your TV or even, I suppose, your computer.
I'm guessing this is a precursor, once they can put a card in an arbitrary DVR, TV or computer they have no reason to broadcast unencrypted signals.
This will also involve displaying extra applications, tools, and other "enhanced TV programs".
Until they can actually deliver with this, however, I assume they will continue to broadcast some unencrypted signals.
>> TiVo was cool... but then TV got boring. > TV didn't get boring. TV always was boring.
Actually as long as you stay away from the major networks there are a few decent shows on.
Dexter, True Blood and Breaking Bad are all intense and pretty much movie quality TV.
I think the networks have just lost it--if you block those out of your viewing habits, there is some fairly good stuff out there.
Oh, and if you're into something lighter and a little more cheesy, Burn Notice is actually OK, and the first season of "Merlin" was great.
Of course, these days it's easier to just wait for NetFlicks to bring the season to your doorstep on DVD than deal with finding shows as they move all over the dial.
What happens if you leave your server running all the time in the summer though? I think the concrete will heat up to a certain point and not dissipate much of the heat, so your cooling would become ineffective.
If you have a backup electric cooling system it's okay; or maybe I'm wrong about the way concrete dissipates heat.
So you'd really be fine with a classroom teaching the Christian creation myth along-side (and with the same weight) as the teachings of Buddha, Islam, Paganism, and Greek mythology...)?
I could actually go for something like that. It would be nice to have it shown that Christianity is nothing more than any of those others--teaching it along-side them instead of in the science class would be nice--getting it out of the science class where people are trying to show it as real, and put it where it belongs--literature and mythology.
Aside from all the "MMORPG" games that turn out to be nothing but graphic skins over the exact same stupid mafia game; the most annoying thing is the way people will take the free crApps that they are trying to give away and bump the price up to $0.99 and back down to free to get it to hit peoples "Newly free" filters.
There are decent apps that drop their price for a while, but seeing an app marked "Free" (which always means some weak broken version not worth downloading) as "On sale" is annoying.
I'm pretty sure it's just to get into apps like "PandoraBox" that have a "Newly discounted" category.
I live in Portland and this isn't a bad system. The only thing I saw about the summary that was at all annoying was the price. If it was $2(or so) for lunch like it is here, it'd be great.
Yes, you may have to walk "Up to" 1/2 block there and back--we do it all the time. Generally that equates to 2-3 car lengths which is not much more annoying than a parking meter, and it takes credit cards so you don't have to have change (I'm MUCH more likely to be carrying a credit card than $2 in change).
He also didn't mention the fact that that the time is good anywhere in the city, so if you have to make 5 stops over 2 hours, you can just put 3 hours on your parking sticker and park/drive/park the afternoon away....
If the 1/2 block thing really hurts that bad, you probably need the walk anyway.
When IBM tried to lock down their hardware and failed, Apple succeeded.
IBM tried to regain control with the PS/2 using the same tricks apple did--but it failed for exactly that reason, most people rejected a single vendor system.
If Apple were to try to replace Google's services, I'd probably ignore Apple's offerings (Ever notice that Apple tries to charge for every little thing? I have some icon in my toolbar that I can't get rid of that's linked to a pay apple service, why aren't they being sued for this--Microsoft sure would be!).
If I couldn't replace them, I'd look at Android. I really like my Mac but at this point Google is much more important to me.
(I was already called a Microsoft "Secret" marketing droid on/. once this year, going for Google now. After that I'll take on Mac for the trifecta)
When I was young I got addicted to a MUD (To the tune of a lot of money since the only one I knew of was dialup/pay, common access to the internet didn't exist then).
I never got into the MMORPGs because I learned my lesson back then. Funny how that game type has the same addictiveness in modem/text form as it does in full-fledged 3-d graphics form. The big difference is that the text form drew a small, specific group and the new ones draw from a much larger base, but same thing once you're into it.
Yeah, I was hoping when it said "Three indicted" that the three were actually working for one of these companies and they finally started indicting for incompetence.
A drill wouldn't do it. It would do a good job of destroying the data it hit, but with proper recovery tools they could still spin up the disks and get much of the data. If they REALLY wanted to they might even be able to get the data before and after the hole on the same track.
By deforming the disk so it won't spin, he's making it MUCH harder. I'm not sure a head has been invented to follow the contours of a bent disk, and I think deforming it may actually mis-align the surface enough that your head would also have to wobble in and out a little bit for one track.
This would make it many times more difficult to retrieve data because there is just no way to adapt existing tools to read any of it (except maybe the inner-most tracks if they haven't been deformed and the thing can read at a really low speed.
Slashdot Mirror
Terrifying Potential Reality C (The one I believe is actually in the minds of people responsible): No withheld data. Profits suffer slightly for oil companies. Major shareholders have to buy their children H2's instead of full-sized hummers. Major drama ensues at home--and all for naught because God comes to take the wealthy away before the oil runs out anyway.
Dear Microsoft:
Forget the fact that you overcharge
us, we can overlook that. You were
counting on your monopoly to
keep us as customers and that's not right.
Your products, however, are shoddy and
outside the realm of
usability. We will switch to Google.
Love,
California
How do you usually convince the mac to hibernate? Usually you have to pull the battery or let it drain all the way--is there some trick I don't know?
Also, you're right about it being different, but I have almost never seen a PC (out of dozens) that can stand more than 4-5 suspend/resumes or 2-3 hibernates, and I've never seen a mac (out of 5 or 6) that has a problem with it.
I am fairly careful about not opening the lid until the light is winking though--I think I saw someone have a problem with closing the mac and opening it right away, so maybe part of it is that usage habit.
Also--seriously--same performance? My mac is able to take keystrokes within SECONDS, like 2. The wifi is usually up and ready before I need it (5 seconds or so).
My XP machine doesn't even accept keystrokes for like 20-30 seconds after a resume from suspend, and then it's chunky.
Perhaps you've figured out some trick to make it always hibernate instead of suspend and that's why you find the performance similar? I almost never use the hibernate feature (Which is another interesting point--my PC will suspend for about 5 hours, my mac for about 20...)
It'll be interesting to see if 7 can repeatedly enter and exit hibernation without going wonky. I know a few people said they could get XP to do that, but it really only worked on a pristine system and even then would fail after hibernating more than once or twice.
I'd be even happier if their suspend worked reasonably well. My mac notebook resumes from suspend in just a few seconds (if that) and is always usable before I'm ready to use it--and when doing so it is 100% reliable when doing so no matter how many times you suspend/resume (in my 2-year history). It also has a pretty amazing hidden hibernate function that works so well you never know it's there--but some day when your mac is suspended, yank the battery for a few minutes and put it back in--it will magically restore from hibernation rather than suspend, but regardless it continues from exactly where you left off.
Honestly, I know this is getting way too far O/T, but I can't believe I've never seen a video of a side-by-side comparison of Windows and Mac doing the standard things--booting up, suspend, hibernate, restore, low stress battery runtime test, high use battery runtime test, ...
Since the cheapest mac beats every PC experience I've ever had in every one of those categories by a significant amount, you'd think that would make for a no-brainer advertisement.
You left out what is usually the best part!
For his valiant efforts in preventing waste did the bean counter get promoted to VP level or directly to an officer of the company? Or did he quit (get pushed out) and get a higher paying job elsewhere. This kind of stupidity never goes unrewarded.
If it's asking you to de-authorize it and not remove it, that kind of makes sense.
I imagine something in the upgrade process can fubar Apple's DRM system and cause it to make iTunes think it's not authorized. If that old install information remains in their database, it might be annoying to remove it (or not, I'm just guessing).
I'd be SO DAMN HAPPY to see one sentenced to prison for 50 years for crimes against humanity--or even 6 months for income tax evasion.
We're gonna need more prisons.
We started out with some metered services, then many small ISPs started offering connectivity at unmetered rates (they often didn't provide the services). The service providers matched the unmetered rates and many of the ISPs vanished. If they go to metered or raise the price too high, people will find another way to connect.
This is one market where it's really tough to maintain an expensive monopoly. I say if Verizion wants to do that they should. I'll miss my FIOS, but I'll switch over to someone else, no problem.
If they convince Comcast and the others to join them, maybe I'll start an ISP.
Wow, did you miss the point.
I never said anything about one country being better. Man, what's up your ass? I'm about as un-nationalist as you're going to find.
All I was saying was that by encouraging hackers to do what they do best openly, you can A) find holes earlier and fix them, and B) encourage them to be more in the open (which will discourage them from becoming part of the problem).
It happens that I used the fact that there are countries (most of them? All the big ones for sure) training hackers offensively--to hack into the computers of other countries to drive home the point that finding these holes can also be a defense against people trying to do harm (Be it to a company, individual or business).
Perhaps I could have phrased it a little better--but then your reply was pretty much a disaster.
Very good point except you were probably thinking of N. Korea.
I get really annoyed that people try to discourage hackers from their own country that might be somewhat loyal. I'd recommend encouraging and paying them.
The analogy in the summary is flawed... It's more like suppose there are hundreds of people trying to break into your house every minute--Knocking at the door, twisting the knob, slamming against the door trying to gauge it's strength, ...
Now one kids comes up and notices that you have an open basement window. None of the other attackers have noticed it yet.
The kid climbs in, doesn't touch anything, looks through your old family pictures maybe, climbs back out--
At this point he has a choice to make. Does he let you know that you screwed up, does he walk away, or does he try to sell the info to one of the guys hanging around on your front porch?
What could you do to encourage this kid to make the correct decision?
Out of all the people in the world, you are unlikely to stop them all by punishing them. You're only likely to influence the decisions of the few that are likely to want to help (and make them less likely). That's the only effect this crap has.
Strange assumption...
Why on earth would you say Java was slower than everything that came before it?
It's faster than everything but C, and even ties C in some cases.
I believe the Language Shootout includes specs for Fortran and Basic (which were before Java), I'm also pretty sure it was faster than Pascal, Ada (Can't swear to that one, don't think it's on the shootout, but I don't remember it being specifically quick), heck hundreds of languages.
I still don't know why Java gets crap about performance when it is the only language that seems to perform like C.
Honestly the only thing I can think of is that like Visual Basic, it made programming possible for a LOT more people--people who didn't really know how to program and only wanted to implement a solution to a problem. They made good ideas into decent programs with very bad performance.
I'm pretty sure that if Python ever becomes known as the language that is an "Easy" way to solve some problem, it'll have the same kind of issues.
I've also seen some pretty crappy Ruby on Rails websites...
I'm starting a new habit of reading through Google stories, no matter how positive, and commenting on the first comment calling Google evil.
You win today.
> I really hate hearing about all these awesome innovations by Palm and Apple that I've been using for years,
The only innovations I'm aware of on the iPhone are multi-touch and the app store (and even that is only an innovation in so much as you have access to thousands of free, somewhat useful apps whereas on other phones you have to pay monthly for dozens of somewhat useful apps)
Nobody (who knows what's going on) ever claimed that tethering was an Apple innovation, it's just of interest to a lot of people.
What other "innovations" are people talking about?
> For that matter, why does anyone think it's normal for humans to eat cow secretions?
For that matter, why does anyone think it's normal for humans to eat anything?
We try something, we eat it and either we die or adapt to it.
Sometimes we eat bugs, sometimes it's cow milk or chicken eggs. Pretty much anything that can be eaten will be.
Many animals eat chicken eggs (Including mice, I'm sure), which isn't any more or less "Natural" than cow milk.
Nothing is "Natural" or "Not Natural" to eat. You can have an "Unnatural" diet like eating ALL meat or ALL vegetables (We are neither carnivores nor are we herbivores), so we would never restrict ourselves to one or another "In Nature", but it's not like it hurts anything.
I don't really care much one way or another--I'm not pro or anti milk (or whatever the hell the GP&P was pro or anti), but saying it's unnatural for mice to eat something is just one of the silliest arguments I've ever heard.
Life eats anything that doesn't make it dead. Period. That's natural.
I'm pretty sure the Milk is mostly out of convenience (Cheaper, easier to store and/or more accessible than most alternatives that would not make the mouse dead)--that's all.
I would have thought the same thing but apparently a lot of diabetics loose their limbs because they no longer feel pain in their feet.
I'll let you know more in a few years.
Cable companies are going to switch over to a card format that can be placed in any device--this is called "tru2way". You should be able to plug your cable card into your TV or even, I suppose, your computer.
I'm guessing this is a precursor, once they can put a card in an arbitrary DVR, TV or computer they have no reason to broadcast unencrypted signals.
This will also involve displaying extra applications, tools, and other "enhanced TV programs".
Until they can actually deliver with this, however, I assume they will continue to broadcast some unencrypted signals.
>> TiVo was cool... but then TV got boring.
> TV didn't get boring. TV always was boring.
Actually as long as you stay away from the major networks there are a few decent shows on.
Dexter, True Blood and Breaking Bad are all intense and pretty much movie quality TV.
I think the networks have just lost it--if you block those out of your viewing habits, there is some fairly good stuff out there.
Oh, and if you're into something lighter and a little more cheesy, Burn Notice is actually OK, and the first season of "Merlin" was great.
Of course, these days it's easier to just wait for NetFlicks to bring the season to your doorstep on DVD than deal with finding shows as they move all over the dial.
What happens if you leave your server running all the time in the summer though? I think the concrete will heat up to a certain point and not dissipate much of the heat, so your cooling would become ineffective.
If you have a backup electric cooling system it's okay; or maybe I'm wrong about the way concrete dissipates heat.
So you'd really be fine with a classroom teaching the Christian creation myth along-side (and with the same weight) as the teachings of Buddha, Islam, Paganism, and Greek mythology...)?
I could actually go for something like that. It would be nice to have it shown that Christianity is nothing more than any of those others--teaching it along-side them instead of in the science class would be nice--getting it out of the science class where people are trying to show it as real, and put it where it belongs--literature and mythology.
Aside from all the "MMORPG" games that turn out to be nothing but graphic skins over the exact same stupid mafia game; the most annoying thing is the way people will take the free crApps that they are trying to give away and bump the price up to $0.99 and back down to free to get it to hit peoples "Newly free" filters.
There are decent apps that drop their price for a while, but seeing an app marked "Free" (which always means some weak broken version not worth downloading) as "On sale" is annoying.
I'm pretty sure it's just to get into apps like "PandoraBox" that have a "Newly discounted" category.
I live in Portland and this isn't a bad system. The only thing I saw about the summary that was at all annoying was the price. If it was $2(or so) for lunch like it is here, it'd be great.
Yes, you may have to walk "Up to" 1/2 block there and back--we do it all the time. Generally that equates to 2-3 car lengths which is not much more annoying than a parking meter, and it takes credit cards so you don't have to have change (I'm MUCH more likely to be carrying a credit card than $2 in change).
He also didn't mention the fact that that the time is good anywhere in the city, so if you have to make 5 stops over 2 hours, you can just put 3 hours on your parking sticker and park/drive/park the afternoon away....
If the 1/2 block thing really hurts that bad, you probably need the walk anyway.
Apple has ALWAYS followed the hardware path.
When IBM tried to lock down their hardware and failed, Apple succeeded.
IBM tried to regain control with the PS/2 using the same tricks apple did--but it failed for exactly that reason, most people rejected a single vendor system.
If Apple were to try to replace Google's services, I'd probably ignore Apple's offerings (Ever notice that Apple tries to charge for every little thing? I have some icon in my toolbar that I can't get rid of that's linked to a pay apple service, why aren't they being sued for this--Microsoft sure would be!).
If I couldn't replace them, I'd look at Android. I really like my Mac but at this point Google is much more important to me.
(I was already called a Microsoft "Secret" marketing droid on /. once this year, going for Google now. After that I'll take on Mac for the trifecta)
When I was young I got addicted to a MUD (To the tune of a lot of money since the only one I knew of was dialup/pay, common access to the internet didn't exist then).
I never got into the MMORPGs because I learned my lesson back then. Funny how that game type has the same addictiveness in modem/text form as it does in full-fledged 3-d graphics form. The big difference is that the text form drew a small, specific group and the new ones draw from a much larger base, but same thing once you're into it.
Yeah, I was hoping when it said "Three indicted" that the three were actually working for one of these companies and they finally started indicting for incompetence.
We've handled this whole security thing poorly.
A drill wouldn't do it. It would do a good job of destroying the data it hit, but with proper recovery tools they could still spin up the disks and get much of the data. If they REALLY wanted to they might even be able to get the data before and after the hole on the same track.
By deforming the disk so it won't spin, he's making it MUCH harder. I'm not sure a head has been invented to follow the contours of a bent disk, and I think deforming it may actually mis-align the surface enough that your head would also have to wobble in and out a little bit for one track.
This would make it many times more difficult to retrieve data because there is just no way to adapt existing tools to read any of it (except maybe the inner-most tracks if they haven't been deformed and the thing can read at a really low speed.