Exactly. Any, and just about all, applications on a computer can pose a danger to you if you don't know what you're doing and think you do. Those annoying people who claim to know everything about computer and really don't are the real dangerous ones, to themselves and those who believe that they know everything. I know of more than one instance where C: was shared over an open network, because the person had discovered that that allowed them to get their files from another computer and never considered the fact that any computer could get those files. The worst news is that the same type of people who open their system's up to attack are the ones who'll put unnecessary personal information in files, guaranteeing that their identities can be stolen with ease. Generally the people worried about their security, the ones who don't store important data on their computers without some protection (like renaming the extension so a simple.doc check won't find it, or using notepad and saving the file as something strange that's mapped to notepad on your machine) are the same ones who won't open their computer up to attack, meaning that there are a lot of relatively difficult to crack machines with hidden data, and a lot of wide open machines with easily seen data, which is good news for the semi-secured and horrible news for those who don't know what they're doing.
Mod Parent Up. Much as modern entertainment is unlikely to be a cause behind modern violence but more likely a channel used by those who already have those tendencies. In other words, it's not that T.V. causes ADD, it's that ADD goes (semi-)well with T.V.
One interesting note is that I know that I, and my friend who was actually diagnosed with ADD, both don't watch T.V. because it's way too boring. Honestly I don't have the attention span for T.V., and I'm not ADD.
I wonder what percentage of ADD diagnosed children actually watch T.V. voluntarily nowadays, I would imagine that it's much smaller than the percentage of ADD diagnosed people who spend most of their time online as that is a much faster, more controllable form of entertainment. If one site gets boring just go to another.
In addition, with the modern extremely broad definition of ADD I wonder how we can make any generalizations about ADD diagnosed people. Remember that officially diagnosed friend of mine? We regurally play multi-hour sessions of Age of Empires, and he stays focused the entire time no problem. He also gets great grades, and doesn't take any medications at all. When someone who doesn't need any meds to do well in school and pay attention for hours can be diagnosed with ADD then I personally believe the diagnosis of ADD is far to wide. Right now it seems like if you get bored easily with things adults consider important, which are 9 times out of 10 extremely boring, then you're ADD.
Hmm...I guess it could be taken that way, I was using side as in Iraqi's being considered one side and American soldiers another as that seemed to be the original poster's view. My own personal view is not anti-arab at all but when dividing up casualties it's easiest to divide by native and non-native. I did say for better or for worse, which I hoped implied I didn't believe it but I guess that wasn't really caught.
I was simply stating that the common view is that arabs kill each other, which is a true enough fact within our modern media. I don't believe it at all, because that view ignores a large number of variables to get it's answer (like the fact that a lot of american's kill each other without any ideological views involved and that those arabs who do kill others are considered extremist by their counterparts, just as the KKK was considered extremist by many americans. Had the world's perspective of America been based primarily on the KKK, like our media is doing to iraq with extremists, then it's likely we would have been considered savage, or at least not civilized, by the rest of the world.)
Just thought I'd clear a few things up, it was not my intention to make it seem as though I believed the Arab or Middle-Eastern people were less 'civilized' than America and I, personally, don't believe that.
Last time I checked it wasn't disguised at all. I have the CD around here somewhere, not on hand, but it mentioned something about recruitment. A quick browse of the website shows 2 links, on the front page, to recruitment. I do believe, though I only tried the game briefly, that there were a few not disguised at all recruitment things in it.
Honestly if the fact that AA is trying to recruit can be considered disguised then I've got a well hidden bridge to sell you in Brookland, no one will know that it's there.
Did you just...diss Ender's Game!? HERETIC! Burn him at the stake! He turned me into a newt! Nobody expects the Spanish Inqusition! And, uh, some other stuff!
Cause you know, it's obvious that casualty count = violence from the other side. Body armor, squad tactics, heavy armor, and better weapons don't play any part at all, it's obvious that the side with the fewest casualties is the more violent one.
Yeah...that's not even close to logical. You may be right, US soldiers may be the ones being violent and the media may be playing it off as the iraqis being more violent. You can't derive that from a casualty count however, not even if you try really hard. Because what it comes down to is that there are 26 million iraqis and many, many fewer US soldiers. 71,000 dead is a lot, a whole lot, but it's also.002% of the population, and claiming that.002% of any population isn't a claim I for one would dispute.
Yes they might be a minority, an extremely small minority in Iraq, and they might account for every one of those dead. Pure numbers, large as they may be, mean nothing unless accompanied by total numbers.
Note that I'm not trying to make any political statement here, I figure my views are easily found with just a few of my other comments. I am merely trying to show how using a figure like 71,000 casualties on one side (a side that is, for better or worse, known for killing many of it's own members which leads me to question how many of those casualties are directly linked to US soldiers) and only 3,000 on the other proves nothing and shouldn't be used to support, or criticize, any viewpoint. It's a meaningless statistic because a lot of important facts are missing.
Heh...1920. The declaration that Women and Men are equal came a long time ago, the problem you seem to be pointing out is that no one has really listened to that declaration. I've found that the inequality so spoken of is pretty minimal in the Southwest at least. Of course there are still inequal situations, but just as many of them seem to go towards Women over Men (so as not to appear sexist, which is horribly hypocritical but whatever) as the other way around so it kinda balances out.
Groups of people, as a whole, will always consider themselves superior to another group, that's human nature. The question is how much that affects the world and the answer, at least where I live, is that it doesn't that much, and when it does it's almost always inequal in the woman's favor.
Heh...you're right actually, that's pretty close to the original quote I found. However/. limits sigs so much I had to reduce it a lot (the original I found was actually longer than yours). You inspired me to go back and work on it a bit, I think it's a little better now, the best part was that better, don't know why I ever swapped that over to good...
An interesting point, all power fades. Completely pointless in usage since the quote was not saying 'The US has, and will always have...' but rather pointing out that, as of now, the US has the best navy. The quote does nothing to disparage that and in reality only seems to emphasize the original poster's point as the quote is commonly believed to be referencing Ramesses the Great (wikipedia) who pretty much was the world power at his time. Of course that power faded but it doesn't mean that it never existed in the first place.
Just thought I'd add something to the discussion. I'm not a big fan of the 'US has the biggests [insert military type] in the world and could crush all the other [insert military type]' as the logistics are nigh impossibly to accurately compute (one after the other? All at once? etc.) but responding with a quote like that, one that in reality reinforces the original post but seems at first to disparage the original post just irked me a little.
"In a war against a major enemy, carriers will probably be useless..."
And where did that factoid come from? One would imagine that a ship with the capability to strike at extremely long distances is always useful, if you can hit your enemy before their weapons can reach you you have an advantage. As for carriers being vulnerable to subs that's only partially true. Certain types of submarines, especially advanced nuclear subs (and diesel ones, so long as they don't surface anywhere near the carrier group and have enough battery power to get in and out) could conceivably slip through the defenses around a carrier and then it's aircraft would be useless. Given that the last major (that I know of) engagement between large groups of submarines and carriers was WWII, and that was clearly decided in favor of the carrier groups (53 u-boats sunk to less than 10 of the CVE mini-carriers) I'd say a generalization like 'Subs counter carriers' is kinda...wrong. A carrier battle group at war would typically have at least 1 radar plane (Orion?) on CAP. If the sub surfaces nearby radar has a chance of picking it up. In addition the carrier's escorts have darn good sonar and wouldn't be too hesitant to use it.
So basically, 1 lone carrier vs sub is an easy win for the sub, unless the carrier sees it coming from a long way off and launches anti-sub efforts. 1 carrier battlegroup is at least a match for any similar number of warships, including subs, and very good at other tasks such as beach assault, long range support etc. A carrier battle group is currently the most versatile type of navy imaginable, as such it may not be the best way to counter all threats (a pair of destroyers working in tandem with some anti-sub helicopters would be cheaper and pretty effective against small numbers of subs). It's a Jack of All Trades, master of none type of thing, a Carrier group is good at anti-surface ship, anti-sub, and anti-land combat.
Sneaking up on a ship which is fully prepared for war is a lot harder than some things would lead you to believe. Just because you're underwater and pretty quiet doesn't mean your undetectable, and if you're too quiet you can be detected that way (one possibly problem with modern US subs is that they're actually quieter than the surrounding ocean and could *conceivably* be detected that way). No amount of noise-reduction is going to save you if even 1 enemy ship is using active-sonar, you're going to be detected unless it's a cloak-and-dagger fight which is something aircraft carriers rarely engage in, they're more 'Hey look, I'm right here, I don't need to hide because I'm that much better than you' style fighting, and in that arena (when radars are at full and sonars are active) subs lose all stealth benefits, and an unstealthed sub vs a carrier group is just asking for trouble.
So to sum it up, no, a carrier battle group is not useless. Subs are easily countered (unless you're trying to be stealthy as well) and missile blocking is what Aegis (common in CBG's) class destroyers were partially built for. Aircraft carriers are built for show, and are good against weaker enemies, but also against equals, it's against stronger enemies (few and far between at this moment) that they begin to look impossibly weak and fragile.
Hah! That's a good one, format and reinstall. If that was even remotely the case the number of Windows users would not be anywhere near as high, they'd all just get Macs or learn Linux. Repairing Windows is pretty easy unless you manage to get some major errors, I've installed the wrong drivers for 3 pieces of hardware, 2 were auto-repaired (with a little message saying 'Hardware not recognized' then the little 'Installing driver' and bingo it works) and the last one simply forced the computer to boot into graphics safemode (640x400, minimal colors).
I've only had to format/reinstall 2 windows boxes. The first was because it had accumulated quite a few registry errors (main user, me, had installed a lot of important software with the 'only for me' box checked, then deleted his account when passing it to another person) and the work to fix the problem, while relatively minor and doable at run-time, was beyond the new user so it was simply to simply start with a fresh install. The second was because the computer had gathered a lot of useless software, not spyware, but installed software that didn't come with an easy uninstaller (I'd call them trojans, but most of it is made by big name companies who simply don't expect you to want to uninstall their software).
I have yet to encounter a problem serious enough that my first response is 'format it', that's always the option sitting in the background that'll fix the problem quickly and simply, but which is still treated as a last result.
Honestly, if you believe Windows users are format-reinstalling all the time then you have a very distorted view of windows...or I do. Since I use windows as my primary OS (considering Linux right now actually, a few tabs open with info on the different distros) as does my entire family (5 computers, 3 laptops) and I've worked volunteer and part-time at a school district with at least 1 computer in every room, a couple of campuses, and many labs, I'd say my view of what's required to fix windows isn't the off one. I remember a great old computer, principal's PC, of course, which McAfee found and deleted over 1000 viruses (and I only wish I was exaggerating) and AdAware/Spybot/Microsoft Anti-spyware all picked up items, even when run one after the other. After about 3 hours work, only 10 minutes spent at the computer, it was done and the computer was back to where it was before, no viruses or anything picked up (of course there could have been 1 or 2 left over dodging us, but the battery of testing software we threw at that one, knowing it would be horrible, made that less likely). Suffice it to say, despite over 1000 viruses, the computer never required reformatting and worked great after a little fixing.
Oh man...that makes me wish I still had some mod points. Definitely mod parent up.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands. -Douglas Adams
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, as you seem to post a picture in favor of the 'it's a rootkit' argument and then a link to their faq that says it's not.
Regardless I'm a lot less inclined to trust the company over a rootkit detection kit to be frank. I would definitely not put it past them to install a rootkit then try to pass it off as 'just a registry folder and some keys'.
Boy am I glad I was too lazy to install the demo back when I downloaded it. I really hate these 'Don't mind us, we'll be over here gaining access to every part of your computer while you play the game you bought from us, purely for security' type things. Why should the company get to know anything about my computer without my permission? Even their statement that they generate a unique ID for my computer is far more than I think they should be able to do. Obviously that unique ID relies on some information about the computer. When did we start saying 'eh' to companies taking information about our computers without permission? Doesn't that fall under some right, the right to not have people searching your personal property whenever they want (not the amendment, I know that's government only). It's really absurd that this is even considered a reasonable practice, I wonder how they would react to me wandering in to their building and putting some 'not a rootkit, just a couple of folders in the registry' on their servers since it contains information about my personal property...seems like it would be only fair, you gather info about me/my property without my permission, I get to put trackers on that info, and your hardware by extension, so I can make sure you don't pass it around...
Group comes out and cites an absurd number (for those who know the reality of the subject) and claims it's the loss due to thing A. Been going on forever with all sorts of things, including music piracy. Lots of people will believe them and clamor to kill piracy, and not listen to people who actually understand the subject because 'they're probably pirates'. This is becoming all too common...
Precisely. With only decent eye-sight, and mediocre contrast resolution, I really don't care to buy a super-expensive piece of hardware, and more expensive videos, in order to get a better picture than the one I have which is already good enough that I can't really tell it has flaws. Honestly, to me at least, the whole super-high def war is kinda irrelivant. HD-DVD could win (honestly I'm rooting for them, simply for the HHD DWDD BVD jokes:P) and I'd still watch DVDs, same goes for Blue Ray.
Honestly I don't really see how this is any different from Sony using it's games to promote Blue Ray. Even if Microsoft actually payed them off I don't think that's any different from Sony forcing people to have a Blue Ray player to play their games...except it's a lot smarter, and more effective...and probably cheaper...
10,000 xp since it was CR 40. -20,000 xp since the DM didn't want you to kill it this early in the campaign, it was supposed to return for an epic battle around the time of 4.5, then a final confrontation when 5 came out. Now the DM's stuck trying to figure out a new arch-villain for the rest of the campain.
"I pay, I pay $50 give or take every month to connect to the internet. I pay, I pay $24.99 every month to keep my site up so other people can look at it with their paid internet connection. Someone has to pay, but I guess the money I pay every month doesn't count toward that goal does it."
Well that's certainly interesting for you. I've been looking at our weather down near the Mexican border and we've had it pretty cool. Our winter was about average, cooler than last year, and our summer has (so far) not even come close to the records. Last year was a hot year for us, I think we almost broke the no-rain record (or did break) and came close to setting a new high for a certain day but this year has been pretty cool.
From what I've seen the weather's fine, and if it is getting warmer I find it hard to believe it could possibly be our fault, I don't think we're anywhere near that advanced.
Dude, it's NASA. They have to test their computers for space-proofness, radiation-proofness, and drunk user-proofness. Obviously those tests take time, 50 years in this case...what? You didn't think those old Analog computers used around the end of WWII were just thrown out right?
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Exactly. Any, and just about all, applications on a computer can pose a danger to you if you don't know what you're doing and think you do. Those annoying people who claim to know everything about computer and really don't are the real dangerous ones, to themselves and those who believe that they know everything. I know of more than one instance where C: was shared over an open network, because the person had discovered that that allowed them to get their files from another computer and never considered the fact that any computer could get those files. The worst news is that the same type of people who open their system's up to attack are the ones who'll put unnecessary personal information in files, guaranteeing that their identities can be stolen with ease. Generally the people worried about their security, the ones who don't store important data on their computers without some protection (like renaming the extension so a simple .doc check won't find it, or using notepad and saving the file as something strange that's mapped to notepad on your machine) are the same ones who won't open their computer up to attack, meaning that there are a lot of relatively difficult to crack machines with hidden data, and a lot of wide open machines with easily seen data, which is good news for the semi-secured and horrible news for those who don't know what they're doing.
Mod Parent Up. Much as modern entertainment is unlikely to be a cause behind modern violence but more likely a channel used by those who already have those tendencies. In other words, it's not that T.V. causes ADD, it's that ADD goes (semi-)well with T.V.
One interesting note is that I know that I, and my friend who was actually diagnosed with ADD, both don't watch T.V. because it's way too boring. Honestly I don't have the attention span for T.V., and I'm not ADD.
I wonder what percentage of ADD diagnosed children actually watch T.V. voluntarily nowadays, I would imagine that it's much smaller than the percentage of ADD diagnosed people who spend most of their time online as that is a much faster, more controllable form of entertainment. If one site gets boring just go to another.
In addition, with the modern extremely broad definition of ADD I wonder how we can make any generalizations about ADD diagnosed people. Remember that officially diagnosed friend of mine? We regurally play multi-hour sessions of Age of Empires, and he stays focused the entire time no problem. He also gets great grades, and doesn't take any medications at all. When someone who doesn't need any meds to do well in school and pay attention for hours can be diagnosed with ADD then I personally believe the diagnosis of ADD is far to wide. Right now it seems like if you get bored easily with things adults consider important, which are 9 times out of 10 extremely boring, then you're ADD.
Hmm...I guess it could be taken that way, I was using side as in Iraqi's being considered one side and American soldiers another as that seemed to be the original poster's view. My own personal view is not anti-arab at all but when dividing up casualties it's easiest to divide by native and non-native. I did say for better or for worse, which I hoped implied I didn't believe it but I guess that wasn't really caught.
I was simply stating that the common view is that arabs kill each other, which is a true enough fact within our modern media. I don't believe it at all, because that view ignores a large number of variables to get it's answer (like the fact that a lot of american's kill each other without any ideological views involved and that those arabs who do kill others are considered extremist by their counterparts, just as the KKK was considered extremist by many americans. Had the world's perspective of America been based primarily on the KKK, like our media is doing to iraq with extremists, then it's likely we would have been considered savage, or at least not civilized, by the rest of the world.)
Just thought I'd clear a few things up, it was not my intention to make it seem as though I believed the Arab or Middle-Eastern people were less 'civilized' than America and I, personally, don't believe that.
Doh...should be .2%, or .002 out of the population. My mistake, forgot to multiply by 100.
Last time I checked it wasn't disguised at all. I have the CD around here somewhere, not on hand, but it mentioned something about recruitment. A quick browse of the website shows 2 links, on the front page, to recruitment. I do believe, though I only tried the game briefly, that there were a few not disguised at all recruitment things in it.
Honestly if the fact that AA is trying to recruit can be considered disguised then I've got a well hidden bridge to sell you in Brookland, no one will know that it's there.
Did you just...diss Ender's Game!? HERETIC! Burn him at the stake! He turned me into a newt! Nobody expects the Spanish Inqusition! And, uh, some other stuff!
Cause you know, it's obvious that casualty count = violence from the other side. Body armor, squad tactics, heavy armor, and better weapons don't play any part at all, it's obvious that the side with the fewest casualties is the more violent one.
.002% of the population, and claiming that .002% of any population isn't a claim I for one would dispute.
Yeah...that's not even close to logical. You may be right, US soldiers may be the ones being violent and the media may be playing it off as the iraqis being more violent. You can't derive that from a casualty count however, not even if you try really hard. Because what it comes down to is that there are 26 million iraqis and many, many fewer US soldiers. 71,000 dead is a lot, a whole lot, but it's also
Yes they might be a minority, an extremely small minority in Iraq, and they might account for every one of those dead. Pure numbers, large as they may be, mean nothing unless accompanied by total numbers.
Note that I'm not trying to make any political statement here, I figure my views are easily found with just a few of my other comments. I am merely trying to show how using a figure like 71,000 casualties on one side (a side that is, for better or worse, known for killing many of it's own members which leads me to question how many of those casualties are directly linked to US soldiers) and only 3,000 on the other proves nothing and shouldn't be used to support, or criticize, any viewpoint. It's a meaningless statistic because a lot of important facts are missing.
You sir, win. That gave me a good laugh, and brought numerous cries of 'What? What's so funny' from everyone around me :P.
Heh...1920. The declaration that Women and Men are equal came a long time ago, the problem you seem to be pointing out is that no one has really listened to that declaration. I've found that the inequality so spoken of is pretty minimal in the Southwest at least. Of course there are still inequal situations, but just as many of them seem to go towards Women over Men (so as not to appear sexist, which is horribly hypocritical but whatever) as the other way around so it kinda balances out.
Groups of people, as a whole, will always consider themselves superior to another group, that's human nature. The question is how much that affects the world and the answer, at least where I live, is that it doesn't that much, and when it does it's almost always inequal in the woman's favor.
Schools, for one. They can search your backpack anytime they want in school. Can't think of any others offhand but I'm sure there are more.
Heh...you're right actually, that's pretty close to the original quote I found. However /. limits sigs so much I had to reduce it a lot (the original I found was actually longer than yours). You inspired me to go back and work on it a bit, I think it's a little better now, the best part was that better, don't know why I ever swapped that over to good...
An interesting point, all power fades. Completely pointless in usage since the quote was not saying 'The US has, and will always have...' but rather pointing out that, as of now, the US has the best navy. The quote does nothing to disparage that and in reality only seems to emphasize the original poster's point as the quote is commonly believed to be referencing Ramesses the Great (wikipedia) who pretty much was the world power at his time. Of course that power faded but it doesn't mean that it never existed in the first place.
Just thought I'd add something to the discussion. I'm not a big fan of the 'US has the biggests [insert military type] in the world and could crush all the other [insert military type]' as the logistics are nigh impossibly to accurately compute (one after the other? All at once? etc.) but responding with a quote like that, one that in reality reinforces the original post but seems at first to disparage the original post just irked me a little.
"In a war against a major enemy, carriers will probably be useless..."
And where did that factoid come from? One would imagine that a ship with the capability to strike at extremely long distances is always useful, if you can hit your enemy before their weapons can reach you you have an advantage. As for carriers being vulnerable to subs that's only partially true. Certain types of submarines, especially advanced nuclear subs (and diesel ones, so long as they don't surface anywhere near the carrier group and have enough battery power to get in and out) could conceivably slip through the defenses around a carrier and then it's aircraft would be useless. Given that the last major (that I know of) engagement between large groups of submarines and carriers was WWII, and that was clearly decided in favor of the carrier groups (53 u-boats sunk to less than 10 of the CVE mini-carriers) I'd say a generalization like 'Subs counter carriers' is kinda...wrong. A carrier battle group at war would typically have at least 1 radar plane (Orion?) on CAP. If the sub surfaces nearby radar has a chance of picking it up. In addition the carrier's escorts have darn good sonar and wouldn't be too hesitant to use it.
So basically, 1 lone carrier vs sub is an easy win for the sub, unless the carrier sees it coming from a long way off and launches anti-sub efforts. 1 carrier battlegroup is at least a match for any similar number of warships, including subs, and very good at other tasks such as beach assault, long range support etc. A carrier battle group is currently the most versatile type of navy imaginable, as such it may not be the best way to counter all threats (a pair of destroyers working in tandem with some anti-sub helicopters would be cheaper and pretty effective against small numbers of subs). It's a Jack of All Trades, master of none type of thing, a Carrier group is good at anti-surface ship, anti-sub, and anti-land combat.
Sneaking up on a ship which is fully prepared for war is a lot harder than some things would lead you to believe. Just because you're underwater and pretty quiet doesn't mean your undetectable, and if you're too quiet you can be detected that way (one possibly problem with modern US subs is that they're actually quieter than the surrounding ocean and could *conceivably* be detected that way). No amount of noise-reduction is going to save you if even 1 enemy ship is using active-sonar, you're going to be detected unless it's a cloak-and-dagger fight which is something aircraft carriers rarely engage in, they're more 'Hey look, I'm right here, I don't need to hide because I'm that much better than you' style fighting, and in that arena (when radars are at full and sonars are active) subs lose all stealth benefits, and an unstealthed sub vs a carrier group is just asking for trouble.
So to sum it up, no, a carrier battle group is not useless. Subs are easily countered (unless you're trying to be stealthy as well) and missile blocking is what Aegis (common in CBG's) class destroyers were partially built for. Aircraft carriers are built for show, and are good against weaker enemies, but also against equals, it's against stronger enemies (few and far between at this moment) that they begin to look impossibly weak and fragile.
It's sad how true that statement is. It's sadder still that someone moderating thought it was funny rather than true...
Hah! That's a good one, format and reinstall. If that was even remotely the case the number of Windows users would not be anywhere near as high, they'd all just get Macs or learn Linux. Repairing Windows is pretty easy unless you manage to get some major errors, I've installed the wrong drivers for 3 pieces of hardware, 2 were auto-repaired (with a little message saying 'Hardware not recognized' then the little 'Installing driver' and bingo it works) and the last one simply forced the computer to boot into graphics safemode (640x400, minimal colors).
I've only had to format/reinstall 2 windows boxes. The first was because it had accumulated quite a few registry errors (main user, me, had installed a lot of important software with the 'only for me' box checked, then deleted his account when passing it to another person) and the work to fix the problem, while relatively minor and doable at run-time, was beyond the new user so it was simply to simply start with a fresh install. The second was because the computer had gathered a lot of useless software, not spyware, but installed software that didn't come with an easy uninstaller (I'd call them trojans, but most of it is made by big name companies who simply don't expect you to want to uninstall their software).
I have yet to encounter a problem serious enough that my first response is 'format it', that's always the option sitting in the background that'll fix the problem quickly and simply, but which is still treated as a last result.
Honestly, if you believe Windows users are format-reinstalling all the time then you have a very distorted view of windows...or I do. Since I use windows as my primary OS (considering Linux right now actually, a few tabs open with info on the different distros) as does my entire family (5 computers, 3 laptops) and I've worked volunteer and part-time at a school district with at least 1 computer in every room, a couple of campuses, and many labs, I'd say my view of what's required to fix windows isn't the off one. I remember a great old computer, principal's PC, of course, which McAfee found and deleted over 1000 viruses (and I only wish I was exaggerating) and AdAware/Spybot/Microsoft Anti-spyware all picked up items, even when run one after the other. After about 3 hours work, only 10 minutes spent at the computer, it was done and the computer was back to where it was before, no viruses or anything picked up (of course there could have been 1 or 2 left over dodging us, but the battery of testing software we threw at that one, knowing it would be horrible, made that less likely). Suffice it to say, despite over 1000 viruses, the computer never required reformatting and worked great after a little fixing.
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Oh man...that makes me wish I still had some mod points. Definitely mod parent up.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
-Douglas Adams
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, as you seem to post a picture in favor of the 'it's a rootkit' argument and then a link to their faq that says it's not.
Regardless I'm a lot less inclined to trust the company over a rootkit detection kit to be frank. I would definitely not put it past them to install a rootkit then try to pass it off as 'just a registry folder and some keys'.
Boy am I glad I was too lazy to install the demo back when I downloaded it. I really hate these 'Don't mind us, we'll be over here gaining access to every part of your computer while you play the game you bought from us, purely for security' type things. Why should the company get to know anything about my computer without my permission? Even their statement that they generate a unique ID for my computer is far more than I think they should be able to do. Obviously that unique ID relies on some information about the computer. When did we start saying 'eh' to companies taking information about our computers without permission? Doesn't that fall under some right, the right to not have people searching your personal property whenever they want (not the amendment, I know that's government only). It's really absurd that this is even considered a reasonable practice, I wonder how they would react to me wandering in to their building and putting some 'not a rootkit, just a couple of folders in the registry' on their servers since it contains information about my personal property...seems like it would be only fair, you gather info about me/my property without my permission, I get to put trackers on that info, and your hardware by extension, so I can make sure you don't pass it around...
Group comes out and cites an absurd number (for those who know the reality of the subject) and claims it's the loss due to thing A. Been going on forever with all sorts of things, including music piracy. Lots of people will believe them and clamor to kill piracy, and not listen to people who actually understand the subject because 'they're probably pirates'. This is becoming all too common...
Precisely. With only decent eye-sight, and mediocre contrast resolution, I really don't care to buy a super-expensive piece of hardware, and more expensive videos, in order to get a better picture than the one I have which is already good enough that I can't really tell it has flaws. Honestly, to me at least, the whole super-high def war is kinda irrelivant. HD-DVD could win (honestly I'm rooting for them, simply for the HHD DWDD BVD jokes :P) and I'd still watch DVDs, same goes for Blue Ray.
Honestly I don't really see how this is any different from Sony using it's games to promote Blue Ray. Even if Microsoft actually payed them off I don't think that's any different from Sony forcing people to have a Blue Ray player to play their games...except it's a lot smarter, and more effective...and probably cheaper...
10,000 xp since it was CR 40.
-20,000 xp since the DM didn't want you to kill it this early in the campaign, it was supposed to return for an epic battle around the time of 4.5, then a final confrontation when 5 came out. Now the DM's stuck trying to figure out a new arch-villain for the rest of the campain.
"I pay, I pay $50 give or take every month to connect to the internet. I pay, I pay $24.99 every month to keep my site up so other people can look at it with their paid internet connection. Someone has to pay, but I guess the money I pay every month doesn't count toward that goal does it."
QFT
Well that's certainly interesting for you. I've been looking at our weather down near the Mexican border and we've had it pretty cool. Our winter was about average, cooler than last year, and our summer has (so far) not even come close to the records. Last year was a hot year for us, I think we almost broke the no-rain record (or did break) and came close to setting a new high for a certain day but this year has been pretty cool.
From what I've seen the weather's fine, and if it is getting warmer I find it hard to believe it could possibly be our fault, I don't think we're anywhere near that advanced.
Dude, it's NASA. They have to test their computers for space-proofness, radiation-proofness, and drunk user-proofness. Obviously those tests take time, 50 years in this case...what? You didn't think those old Analog computers used around the end of WWII were just thrown out right?
Man...the Apple one looks nice...if that's the result of not renewing a license I hope Microsoft 'forgets' to renew :P.