Posts by Henry Wertz 438 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2008
Will Ballmer get jail time, or a fine? He said *to the courts* that he was not involved with this, when E-Mails showed he knew EXACTLY what was going on, in detail, and advised on how to proceed. Courts tend not to be amused when they catch someone lying... in my book this is perjury.
"The RFID chip on the card doesn't contain any personal information, only a unique identification number, and skimmers wouldn't have access to the data the number matches up with.
The system is intended to work like this. As a vehicle approaches the border post, the numbers of the cards inside it are read, and pictures and data on the holders are called up from a database."...
from a database, that they supposedly don't have access too according to the assurance literally two sentences previous. If I "have" to get one of these I'm certainly getting a foil-lined wallet.
The law doesn't have to be ammended. Make one room on the way into the prison a farraday cage. Watch for (RF) noise from phones as people *leave* the farraday cage -- the phone will reacquire the cellular signal as the user leaves the farraday cage, and blast out RF as it re-registers itself with the phone network. Detect this and take the phone.
If these jammers could be PROPERLY deployed (they can maybe -- some movie theaters etc. will apparently install them on the sly, since assholes INSIST they "have" to leave their phone on because they're on call, rather than realizing "on call=don't go to the theater"...or they just leave it on because they're a big asshole) then there'd be no problem. But something the size of a prison? Any jammer is going to leak, and the prison SHOULD pay fines if their neighbors start having problems. Prisons are large, it'll need MANY low-powered jammers to be effective, a single higher-powered one would certainly leak too much (less of a problem if this is an isolated prison, but many are right in town...) The cell companies spent $billions on spectrum, and have been *required* to build out either based on % population covered or % terrain covered. Obviously, the FCC has to be strict, or this spectrum will become polluted and useless. Realize for UMTA/WCDMA and CDMA systems, they are interference-limited rather than having hard capacity like GSM systems, these jammers could lower the capacity of neighboring sites for a large area, requiring the cell cos to spend more money on additional sites that they wouldn't have to if their spectrum wasn't polluted.
"The correct response is for guards to sue the CTIA next time a prison worker gets hurt and an illicit cell phone contributed to the prisoner's ability to do whatever bad they did."
A) That's stupid, noone's going to plan shivving some guard via cell phone.
B) If a guard got hurt, probably the first instinct if they can't get to an alarm button is.... to pull out the cell phone and call for help. I seriously bet the guards have cells on them.
"Are these companies running PCs with 640 KB of memory or something? And if the PCs need to be powered off, why not just hibernate at the end of the day ..."
Well, I worked at one call center, they had these old machines running like 98, 2000 on some, a few even 95. They put XP on all of them. some had like 64MB of RAM. Since they were just running a 3270 emulator app, it didn't matter too much but the bootup time was horrendous. (They were on when we came in, someone DID turn them on for us.. I found out how long they took after a power outage 8-) .)
They're probably running Vista on like 512MB systems or something. And could well not be slimming it down, I've seen a few "large deployment" XP or 2000 setups where they just load so many things into the system tray, it's just ridiculous. I've had 3 friends of mine use Vista (I think all have gone back to XP or diverted to Linux now...) independently recommended to me to have a MINIMUM of a Core2Duo, and 3GB of RAM. They got boxes with 2GB and found it sluggish until they dropped another gig in it.
I *have* seen an XP box take over 10 minutes to boot, no it wasn't spyware. It usually takes under a minute, it was pulling these group policy updates, software updates, etc. over a T1.. then applying them, which was also very slow. You shouldn't be that slow EVERY boot, but if they had some Active Directory setup that was very poor, it could slow down that much (it gets full load of EVERY machine loading at once, then nearly 0 load the rest of the time after all.)
IT? Just kidding this is certainly IT. I'd curse my systems if they were this slow.
It's too bad he doesn't just make the scientific case for global warming. Being all activist (supporting people who vandalized a power station?) and fudging the numbers to try to make his case really doesn't help his credibility, compared to just being scientific, and showing the warming trend the real numbers still indicate.
I guess I agree, the netbook market "could" feel the squeeze from blown up smartphones. (Note, iPhone isn't a smartphone, you cannot put your own apps on there without jailbreaking. Buying apps through an app store? I can do that on my regular phone, and it doesn't make me consider it a smartphone.) If you give a smartphone a big screen, keyboard, and it's one the user can run their own apps on, it's getting up towards having the specs of a netbook, and it can be sold instead as a smartphone I suppose as long as you can still make calls on it.
But I think the secrets of the netbooks is:
1) It *is* a full PC. It's not high-spec, but it's not as slow as you make it out, once you ignore Windows (which to me seems to be sluggish on almost anything). I've run Ubuntu on slow stuff, if you get down to like a P2 it starts to get pretty slow. P3? Fine. You *can* run mysql and etc. on there if you'd like, the same types of optimizations that make mysql able to handle tons of user on a server make it handle a few users fine on a really slow box. Video editing? Mostly disk-I/O limited if it's the typical cutting out scenes and changing the order type stuff (no comment on how good the disk I/O is on netbooks, but the CPU at any rate won't be your problem.)
2) Cheap. OK, so a full notebook is "just a few hundred dollars more". The netbook is a few hundred dollars to begin with, so this is like a 50-100% price increase. And then you probably end up with a machine with Vista, that is too underpowered to run it (until you spend *another* few hundred to upgrade the RAM and maybe a better video card... or you put Linux on, but are forced into paying the Microsoft tax.) I think, contrary to the claim that a weak economy will lower sales, that it'll in fact increase them, as people that want a notebook will take a long look at the netbooks to save some green.
3) Linux. Well, once they start putting like Ubuntu Remix (or regular Ubuntu if the screen's big enough), it'll help compared to putting line Linpus or whatever like some have been putting on. It's too bad people don't do the research, and then return the machines.. but they WILL get lots of sales from people who don't want to pay a Microsoft tax. I can get the same Inspiron Mini 9 without Windows as with, and save $40 (and get the Ubuntu I was going to put on in the first place.)
"Compiz is no match (Linux fanboys, shut up) as it does not use Pixel Shader"
But, it has the same effects, while needing less resources. It certainly IS a match. They've just figured out how to give these effects without requiring Pixel Shader use. You can say it is just "lame ass visual effects such as wobbly windows, the CUBE" (note, you're right, the wobbly windows and cube *are* lame) but these can be left off, and you're left with a desktop with basically *every* Aero effect while not requiring Pixel Shaders etc.
(In the interest of full disclosure, there *is* a thoroughly pointless raindrops-on-the-screen effect that does uses shaders. But since it's REALLY useless, it's of course off by default. It also ran on my 915 though, it must use some older shaders the chip supports.)
I ran this (rather poorly, but still) on a P2-450 with 256MB of RAM and a PCI Radeon (7000-series) video card. It did about 20FPS. With an AGP Radeon 7200, it was full frame rate, and CPU usage was pretty low. So you really need almost nothing to run compiz, which really makes me amazed at the usage of Aero.
"Apple does not disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues"
Is the core of it for me. I guess it's not releveant to the situation with Safari necessarily, but Apple has even threatened security researchers over presenting a security hole they found (a few years ago, and yes it's been patched -- probably). They were going to "wow" people by showing it with a stock apple with airport card. Apple threatened they *have* to use a different card. Since it worked on almost every card on the market, they did. THEN Apple riled up the fanbois to say "Oh look they aren't even using a stock card! It doesn't even affect a stock Apple setup!" (which it totally did.) I *assume* Apple fixed this bug when everyone else did, but since they didn't even acknowledge it to begin with...?
It won't suprise me at all if Apple:
1) If Webkit and Safari on Mac, they fixed some of the same security flaws that they did for Windows. But they won't be listed, because Apple wants the Mac to appear more secure. (Note, it *IS* way more secure, but Apple wants to spin this even further than reality I think.)
2) They start closing out and deleting threads where people are discussing the Safari 3.2 problems. Apple wants their software to appear bugfree, it's standard operating procedure for them to just delete threads discussing bugs rather than let people discuss it and find a workaround until it's fixed. For me as a free software user this is direct opposite of what should happen.
It's made using Macs more difficult for me than it should be, if I have a problem I can't just google for a solution, because Apple's already found the bug thread and deleted it! I actually had problems about 10 years ago operating a tape drive, it turned out because of a hardware flaw on some Mac SCSI controllers.. I found *one* post about it pointing to supposed info about the flaw, the actual info links had been removed by Apple already. (The MESH controller on many Powermacs could not handle syncronous scsi with scsi disconnect commands properly, whereas the older controller on 6100/7100/8100 and newer one on G3 and up could.) How can I diagnose a problem if Apple removes the info I need!?!?!
"Ah, but have they bothered to make it play flash video in full screen? "
Yes. Flash 9 seemed to really burn CPU cycles to fullscreen, as near as I can tell it was probably scaling within flash and just sending a video that's like 10x by 10x as big to the poor X server. It worked for me, but I can easily see it not working, it was noticeably inefficient even on a 3.0ghz box.
Flash 10? I think it might hook into like ffmpeg and SDL or something (since they're designed to decode video and get it on screen, why reinvent the wheel?). Fullscreen behavior is WAY different, I can tell it is probably sending the original-sized video to X and letting the card scale it, it looks better and plays smoother. It still burns more cycles than mplayer for instance, but it's far better than it was.
So, I don't have any 64-bit systems, and have heard of nspluginwrapper, but am nevertheless pleased that Adobe is putting out 64-bit flash. 64-bit Linux users already have it FAR better than those using 64-bit WIndows especially, but this'll make for the "icing on the cake" if they don't even need 32-bit compat installed eventually.
If the cell cos had a spine (which they don't) they could stop this dead in it's tracks. Catch one of these fake sites deployed, file complaints with the FCC and get them to fine the DOJ's ass. The cellular companies spent $billions on this spectrum, they can't have some rogue (which the DOJ is in doing this without a warrant) start placing unauthorized cell sites into their spectrum.
Well, 5.1% "other" so I guess that covers it. I mainly use Firefox 3, but have to admit having used elinks a couple times; the register is actually pretty text-browser friendly. I also have my phone pointed to www.google.com as a WAP proxy and read the register through that (which probably shows some google user-agent string that'll also show as "other".
I've got a CLP-510. Unlike the CLP-310, it's a bit of a boatanchor (check out online photos, it's like twice as big and probably 10x as big as the ML-1630W). But, I got it for like $250, color, duplex, works well for me. Don't know about the ML-1630W, but the CLP-510 uses a Xerox print engine. Ubuntu has a driver for it, when I used it about a year ago the color was a little off (I think that's fixed now). Samsung *also* has a binary-blob Linux driver for their printers, which hooked into cups nicely so it just shows as another choice of printer model (my recollection is the Ubuntu-supplied stuff was listed under "Samsung" and the company-supplied were under "SAMSUNG" 8-)
Since I'm on an Ubuntu box I looked, ML-1630 is listed. 1630W isn't, but it appears that's just the 1630 with wireless. JBR, I think you're in good shape!
"...but I'm very tired of having the state force me to lose countless days of revenue just to listen to some perp lie to me (I'm not pro-government per se, but I fail to see the police's motivation for picking a guy at random and prosecuting him for nothing)."
*Probably* the "perp" is just trying to BS their way out of a charge. But sure there's police motivations to do this, at least here in the US.
Motivations for police to pick a random guy:
1) Revenue generation. If crime stats are high, police get more money to fight crime. And police look successful for "catching the criminal." They also get direct revenue from fines. The police in Iowa City will wait until 2AM when bars let out, round people up as they walk out of the bars and take them in for public drunkenness... the Daily Iowan (student newspaper) sent people out to the bars absolutely sober and had them step out at 2. They were without exception charged with public drunkenness. "Most" of the people coming out at 2 are probably drunk as hell, so the police just don't even check. If they object that they haven't had a drop, they are additionally charged with resisting arrest. The police make sacks of money from all these people paying off these fines.
2) Fraud. Some places have unconstitutional laws allowing police to seize cars and houses from people for drug offences, before they've gone to trial. Police know this, some departments are corrupt and have been using this law to steal people's property.
3) "Wrong place at the wrong time". In high-crime areas, the police WILL just round people up and assume they are there to do get in a gang fight, buy a prostitute or buy drugs. You couldn't POSSIBLY be there to visit someone, or driving through, oh no. So they'll trump up some charges.
4) Mistakes. Police are people too, they make mistakes! They could get a description for a criminal, see someone that matches the description pretty closely near buy and get the wrong guy, to name one.
"In the US in particular I have noticed that a judge will deem evidence non-admissable despite it being something like a clear recording of someone admitting guilt, just on a technicality."
That's how it should be. If illegally obtained evidence were not thrown out, the police would have no reason to trouble themselves with even trying to follow procedure -- reading suspects their rights, getting search warrants, and so on. They could hold people illegally, beat confessions out of people and so on -- which has all been shown to get false confessions out of innocent people. Some police break the law anyway (in a few higher-crime areas I've been in the US, I was more concerned about police harrassment than getting mugged) but at least it's a strong deterrent for the police to know "the dirtbag" might get away if they don't maintain the person's rights.
Agreed with previous posters -- CSI and the like are probably making it pretty tough. People do realize most of that stuff is impossible (or at least not as easy as in the show) right? You can't just type an IP address in (especially an invalid one that starts with a 9xx number) and have it zoom straight to a street address, most of those tests cost a minor fortune, are slower, and less precise than they show. And so on.
As for trials -- well, adapt with the times. Obviously people cannot be doing wikipedia research and so on but people aren't into talking heads any more. Don't do the wishy-washey morality-play telling how your guy couldn't have done it because he's a great guy. (With prosecution pointing out how he's a dirt bag). Or trying to stress (for some types of crime) how bad it makes the victim or victim's relatives feel. It's not the 1950s, this stuff is irrelevant to the case, the modern internet user knows it, so keeping it in the case makes the case lengthy and boring. Present the facts, present instructions on how to handle the facts as needed. This will meet most people's attention spans.
"In a fitting testament to the challenge, Republicanforareason.com opens with an inspirational video of former US president Ronald Reagan. Reagan is a Republican whose personality and philosophy some on the right view as the way forward.
Reagan is known as "the great communicator" in certain, admiring circles. Reagan, though, was elected in 1980, in an analogue era before most people had even seen a PC and years before the existence of Windows, never mind the internet that the GOP seems to have overlooked"
Yup the next Republican will truly have to be a CyberRegan 2000 hahaha.
*delete comments* Oh I don't see hardly any negative comments about the new interface, it's not a big deal.
Oh, it doesn't work on anything but Internet Explorer. Tragic. What do you mean web interfaces are supposed to be platform neutral? It supports XP *and* Vista.
Honestly, the redesign is one thing. Breaking it for non-IE and non-Windows? Ridiculous. Microsoft is REALLY pushing their luck with the DOJ's antitrust watchdogs making what should be technology-neutral web interface IE-only (they're still under consent decree and are supposed to still have people SPECIFICALLY watching for stuff like this). I think they probably broke this on purpose, several people had this work right on Ubuntu by forcing the vendor string to claim "Windows" instead.
It's also ridiculous that Microsoft is not listening to their customers (paid or not).
Agreed! speedtest is pretty good, and some are rubbish. I was running one, (note: I live in the US), pick the tester in Chicago... 300kbps? Seems like the connection is faster than that... Run the test again using the one in Milwaukee... oh, 800kbps huh? And this was just testing a *mobile* card, not testing cable or anything that's *really* fast like cable (my card would max out at 144kbps upstream, and 2.1mbps down.. my actual peak is suspiciously close to 1.5mbps, I suspect the cell sites here in town are using a T1 apiece for data.). This is fully repeatable too, it wasn't some random card speed fluctuation. (I'm not claiming my speeds never change.. between 5-7PM or so, and when a (US) football or basketball game's in town, the cell sites load up and my speeds are all over... but later at night or midday they're quite consistent. )
"John Torrie, CEO of Steria UK, said the vote was not a strong call to action"
Yeah, it's only an 80% "yes" vote. How strong do they need?
I'm all for them going on strike. I wish people in the US would get a backbone about this (well, in Las Vegas they have -- the IT guys are part of the "service workers" union along with the hookers and pole dancers. For real.) These companies that outsource everything are just going to shoot themselves in the foot.. several in the US, they outsourced everything. Guess what? The company is then just some CEO and executives telling outsourced guys what to do -- eventually the outsourcer realises they can sell the same service direct, and the company that did the outsourcing is done for. A strike will just get them to either tone down the outsourcing, or just get rid of these companies a little faster (when they don't have enough workers to get any work done.) Which I'm all for.
"I thought that this sort of allergy hadn't been proven? How can they consider legal action of this sort when they can't even prove that they have a disability, much less prove that wi-fi causes them harm?"
In fact it's essentially been DISproven. In at least several tests, they'd set out a visible wireless access point, and they'd IMMEDIATELY start bitching and moaning about how they've got such a headache and such, and look real embarrased when the tester pointed out "That's not plugged in yet." Meanwhile they'd blast the test subject with (non-visible) access points, and all sorts of other RF and ask how they feel... "oh just fine."
Note this is essentially a California-specific thing, limited to a few isolated areas, where there's these large concentrations of nutters worried about "cell phone radiation" and the like. The case has no legal standing and will be turned down but here in the states (especially California) people can and will sue over everything and anything; it's up to the court to throw out the case, not people's good sense not to file it.
"So should we get rid of TV transmitters, mobile phone towers, satellites, bluetooth, mains electricity, alternators, electric motors and all the other stuff that gives off RF?"
According to them, yes. Oh, they'd still like to *have* electricity, watch TV, and use the cell phone all the time. But transmitters to transmit signals, or power lines to carry that electricity? Oh unacceptable. The nuttier towns in California, people say with a straight face that they can't have "cell phone towers" in the towns due to "radiation"*, while SIMULTANEOUSLY complaining about the poor cell phone service. They NEVER figure out they're getting way more RF from holding a phone (transmitting at maximum power, 250mw or up) *up to the side of their head* than they would from a cell site down the road.
*They now come up with other excuses, because the FCC has flat-out stated that nutter claims about "radiation" cannot be used to deny a cell site. So they know try to claim that a cell site designed to look like a lamp post will be too ugly compared to the 50 other lamp posts in the area.
so is this legit, or is this yet another case where rambus entered a standards body where all players agree to disclose relevant patents and agree to rand (reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms, but rambus just decides to ignore this agreement. (They already tried this with DDR and lost.)
Yep.. the big concern I would have with D block is the public safety stuff. I mean, I could totally see public safety agencies leaning on the winner "You have to build out faster! Too many coverage holes! Public safety!" Realize that the continental US is roughly the size of Europe and you can see where a problem could arise building out that much coverage that fast. Noone has a nationwide network right now -- the merged Verizon Wireless and Alltel will have by far the largest network but it's still going to be swiss cheese on a national level, when you don't count roaming.
The part about public safety having priority -- no concern on that. CDMA and even analog had capability for "important" phones to get priority over regular ones, to the point of even kicking users off an overloaded network so the important call goes through at high quality. There could be an administrative burden over keeping track of these special phones though -- they couldn't be resold without being reprogrammed to not be flagged "important".
Skull and crossbones because... well I don't know I just felt like it.
The iphone is not a smartphone. On a smartphone, you are able to download and install your own apps. Going through a store doesn't count -- by that definition, every single phone Verizon sells is a smartphone, since apps can be got via the "GetItNow" app store.. clearly some random camera phone isn't a smartphone though. Jailbreaking? It's probably a smartphone then, but this voids the warranty and Apple tries to break it with every single update, so I'm not sure that it counts in terms of saying it's "taking over the smartphone market". It could BECOME a smartphone if Apple released a patch allowing people to put their own apps on, but they will not, Jobs is too much of a control junky.
Paris, because people claiming the iphone is a smartphone gives me a headache too. I couldn't find a steve jobs with horns.
I'm not sure, is there any actual definition?
1G->2G was pretty definite, 1G was analog and essentially had no data services (you could use a modem with some but it was reliant on not having too much "hiss" in the call.)
2G->3G is ALREADY fuzzy. Originally 3G was defined as >=128kbps. CDMA 1X reached this speed (144kbps) but didn't really enable much over conventional "2G" technologies, both due to still having high latency (250ms+ ping times) and, well, just not enough speed EDGE also met the 3G original definition and is usually considered 2.5G. Some said then that 3G meant 384kbps or more. Is UMTS alone (without HSDPA and HSUPA) 3G? Maybe. (UMTS alone is 384kbps, HSDPA boosts download speeds and HSUPA upload speeds, to multimegabit per second speeds.)
Now you've got 3.5G and 4G, I haven't heard any hard number on what 4G is even considered to be.. I'm thinking LTE will be considered 4G, but who knows? Maybe it won't excite people over what HSDPA/HSUPA and EVDO Rev A already do and it'll be demoted to some fraction again, 3.5G or something. I view WiMax similarly. If deployments are way faster than existing networks I guess I"d call it 4G, if they aren't (under actual customer load, not in the lab...) then it'll be demoted to some 3.5G label.
To be honest, I have a EVDO Rev 0 (slower than the current Rev A) aircard with Verizon, I can stream youtube and do whatever no problem with it.. I'm interested in a loosening of the 5GB cap, but no so much in some additional speed I can get, it's already fast enough. 4G doesn't excite me. LTE does a bit, strictly because here in the US both the big CDMA and GSM providers plan to roll out LTE, ending the situation now where GSM and CDMA networks don't have cross-roaming agreements since they are technically incompatible*.
I'm not sure WiMax fits in the "G" scheme of things though -- it's coming from the IT side rather than the telecom side. I'm not sure if anyone plans a WiMax cell phone, certainly you could make a VOIP phone for it but it seems much more data-centric. (LTE is apparently also essentially a data carrier with VOIP for voice calls though, so it's certainly a possibility.) Sprint's rolling out a bit of Wimax, but I think at present it's strictly data, and all cellphone traffic uses the CDMA1X+EVDO network.
*2 exceptions to this technical incompatibility: 1) A few companies like Alltel run CDMA and GSM in parallel, CDMA for their own users + CDMA roamers, GSM roamer-only... out in the western desert Alltel's often the only network available so they decided to make the most of it. 2) At least 1 channel of analog coverage had to be maintained by every cell company in the 850mhz band until Feb 2008, so CDMA users could use a CDMA+analog phones to get analog roaming (and technically still can for a handful of networks that just didn't spend haven't spent the manpower to go around and shut the analog off.)
"Wonder how they will eventually make some money!"
More eyeballs! Seriously, though, that's a good question. Facebook survived the dot com bust (or popped up after it), but seems to have the same strategy overall -- "If we get lots of people using the site, we'll somehow make money."
If they're not making the cash they need off banner ads.. well.. I think they're boned. They'll have to make it all more efficient somehow or go out of business. (Not having videos and all, I don't think they have an option like youtube of putting short ads IN anything more than they already do.)
"Ironically, the biggest fans of FOSS are those who profess to be IT professionals."
No irony there. IT professionals can either (more or less)
1) Plug together proprietary software. It costs real money, and if something goes wrong, it's up to the company essentially to document the problem, with a possibility of some web support. Documentation can vary from great to horrible. Some companies are good with bugs, some are awful and essentially "fix" bugs by saying "don't do this" in the documentation.
2) Plug together FOSS software. It costs 0, unless they get a support contract. If something goes wrong, the support contract will be paying for people who probably helped write the software in question, and there's usually strong web support. Documentation can still vary from great to horrible. All those "hobbyists" etc mean the software is used on a variety of platforms, etc., and bugs are ironed out faster than most proprietary software.
Yeah IT guys will use FOSS and like it. It saves money, it's usually got better support (paid and free). And it's NOT putting them out of a job.
"Oh yeah, don't try that "the money is in the support" arguement (although it does help explain why Linux *needs* so much support). Why not simply pay the programmers for thier work, and leave the Amway marketing model alone!"
I don't think it explains why Linux "needs" so much support. Really.. And, like it or not, if you're trying to write up some custom app, it's MUCH faster to use some open source libs etc. than write EVERYTHING from scratch. Your paid programmers are going to use open source unless you forbid it, and if you do forbid it, it'll take them much longer to get their work done.
"Not on my desktop. It's not on the desktop of 99% of computing world, actually. And the rest are zealots and religious nuts who hate Microsoft so much they simply can't see how shitty and useless desktop Linux is."
There's free software on WAY WAY more than 1% of the computing world. Servers? Tons of Linux boxes. Macs are loaded up with free software. Even if they run Windows, a LOT of people have OpenOffice, or free CD burning software, 7zip, etc. I'm not going to get into Linux on the desktop, I think it's used a lot but I don't have hard numbers. I don't like to call people out but I'm going to say you are a Wintard. A nice Linux distro is faster, easier to use, more flexible, and all around better than Windows (XP, let alone Vista!), unless you REALLY spend all day running Windows-specific apps (I did a little IT at an insurance co, I would FOR SURE not suggest Linux for them, that'd be freetarded... they ran a different Windows (or a few DOS!) app for every insurance co they dealt with.)
And, people hate Microsoft because they are a convicted monopolist. For *years* they have pushed companies into shipping ONLY Windows machines*, tried to force businesses and schools into some $X/computer site license (flat rate, including Macs, so they could say they sold Windows licenses to machines that can't even run Windows...).. pulled plenty of dirty tricks to drive competitors out of business.
*Usual techinque was "You pay $X a machine for *all* computers shipped. Oh, you plan to ship a lot of blank or other OS machines? Well, we might have to renegotiate, that $X rate might have to go up a lot."
----
I think it's great that Shuttlesworth is spending cash on Ubuntu. Debian has always been pretty nice, and he's helping make it a better desktop and an easier to admin server. He's NOT throwing money away, Microsoft certainly spent some cash on Windows and Office. I think with the economic downturn, distros like Ubuntu will pick up in popularity as some people realize they can save licensing fees, and take advantage of Linux's efficience. They can put off upgrades a bit, and for clusters and large servers, get the same done with somewhat less server. (And, for machines that power save well, save power too.)
"I've got so bored of reading about netbooks which all seem to have the same specs. Where's the innovation now?"
There's basically no room for innovation for a machine that they produce to run Linux *or* Windows XP. Since Windows is x86-only, this alone severely limits the range of available designs. This limited range is FURTHER limited by the WinXP license..Microsoft only kept selling WinXP because they'd lose the netbook market entirely to Linux otherwise (Vista's TOO BLOATED)... they'll ONLY sell WinXP for use on machines <=10.2" screen (no touchscreens allowed), <=1GB RAM, <=80GB HD, and <=1.0ghz processor (but, they then made an exception to allow Via C7 and Atom up to 1.6ghz.) Thus the large number of machines with 1.6ghz Atom, 80GB HD, blah-de-blah. What Microsoft wants I think is for netbooks to creep up in spec until they can run the ever-bloated Vista.
Hopefully companies will stick it to them and keep selling Linux models. I would recommend they sell Ubuntu Remix on them rather than Linpus, gOS, etc. that some have been trying... but, as long as it's non-Microsoft I can install what I want personally. (I have taken a hard line and will not by ANY more products with bundled Microsoft software licenses... since I use 100% Linux* I *WILL NOT* have Microsoft count me in their sales statistics as "proof" that everyone uses Windows...)
The real innovation I'm looking forward to will be when a couple of the MIPS and ARM designs I've seen popping up are beefed up just a little (these have been running Linux exclusively). The ones I've seen are typically 500mhz CPU, 128MB of RAM, 1GB flash. The ones I've seen are well under $200 but that's pretty low spec. Just bumping it to 256MB RAM and 4GB flash would help a lot.. that'd give it breathing room to run a "normal" distro instead of probably a modified PDA distro. The CPU might not be a problem, especially if it's an ARM (ARM is crazy-efficient at video decoding.. and is reasonably quick in general.)
*100% Linux.. 3 Ubuntu and 2 Gentoo machines at home. At work? We sell off surplus computers, I've got an unattended Ubuntu network install we've used to install onto a bit over 5000 machines, 7.10 initially, now 8.04.1 with flash + java added on... Switch in a wiped hard disk, look for blown caps. Plug in keyboard, ethernet, VGA, and power, write down CPU speed, disk size, and RAM amount on a slip, set it to PXE boot and walk away (or use a PXE boot floppy on machines that won't PXE boot). Walk away and work on something else.. the install doubles as a burn-in, the install is either done within 15 minutes or the machine blows a cap or otherwise craps out. Before that we sold machines with blank hard disks, the number of people that'd try to return a machine because "I put my Office 2000 in and nothing happened" was absurd.. they'd usually figure out the problem when I'd point out "Office 2000 isn't Windows. The computer is totally blank." I expect now anyone that's that far out of touch just thinks Ubuntu is some other version of Windows and happily uses it 8-). At any rate I haven't gotten any returns for at least 6 months, except for a few bad pieces of kit the burn-in didn't catch. 8-) Oh we've installed Windows machines as well to meet demand (as long as the machine has an XP license, the place we get them from has a seperate site license so the on-machine license is unused and fully valid...) As much as people "want" windows they won't pay for it when they know it costs money -- we charge $100 extra and have sold MAYBE 20 in the last year.
I *also* agree with Webster. I work on surplus computers from the university. Dells? Low failure rate, I got some GX260s with blown caps for a while but even counting them the failure rate's been well under 10%. Macs? It's around 75% failure rate -- that's being generous. The LCD Imacs are fairly reliable. B&W G3s are reliable, but too old for many to want. The G4s that are like a G3 case except grey are reliable. Oddly given the high heat, the few Cubes I saw were reliable. Laptops? Awful reliability. Desktops? I've gotten over a dozen "dual" processor G4s, without exception the second CPU was burned up. On some the first CPU also burned up rendering the whole system inoperative. Sound failures. Power supplies. Motherboard failures. We practically had a party when we got Ubuntu network installers working, on SO MANY models the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM will read a burned disk for maybe 5 minutes, then just start returning corrupted data (it doesn't properly indicate a CD read failure, so OSX seems to sometimes just install corrupted files, and Ubuntu will stop with various errors about corrupted packages). (After wiping the hard disk to meet security requirements, we cannot put OS X back on due to licensing problems.)
Some models just last and last. But it really seems to be a crapshoot, and there's simply no way to pretend Apple is some paragon of reliability. Well, I mean, there IS a way, but it involves Steve Job's reality distortion field.
From the article, "DMCA takedown policy is "silencing political speech" by removing non-infringing political videos."
Yes it is. But, Youtube is following the law. The DMCA doesn't allow Youtube any authority to ignore notices even if they are obviously bogus, it's up to the other person to file the counternotice. The DMCA is broken and needs to be significantly overhauled (to recognize rights) or repealed. It's poor showing of McCain to ask for an exemption specifically for polticians, he should get "a taste of his own medicine" just like everyone else and fix it. He did vote for it after all.
I plan to vote Libertarian personally.. I don't believe in the hard core "repeal all taxes" etc., but they would move things the other way at least. The Democrats and Republicans are both for a larger government and restrictions on people's freedoms. They split hairs over WHY they are for this, but the outcome is the same.
Tough shit for McCain. There should absolutely NOT be some exception to the law for politicians -- the DMCA is broken as written, and needs to be repealed. He should recognize this is the same crap everyone else using Youtube has to deal with and get it fixed, not just carve out an exception for himself.
The DMCA does NOT make any exemption for fair use, a copyright holder can request stuff is removed at any time for any reason under the DMCA, with no provision for fair use (the "provision" being that the poster can file a counterclaim and eventually get their stuff put back up.) In fact, some random guy can file a DMCA notice -- it's illegal to file a false notice but noone seems to be enforcing against DMCA claims by random third parties. McCain voted for it, he can frankly sit and spin as far as I am concerned.
""I think the question isn't 'is Storm dead', but more like when will we see it return and what new features or tactics will it have in store for us."
Yeah for me this is the open question as well. Even if the original users of the Storm worm don't intend to use it any more, I wonder if someone won't crack the command and control and use it themselves... I assume it's still a fairly large botnet after all.
Well, NVidia and ATI really don't have much competition* so I could see the DOJ looking into it. But, I think DOJ dropped it because they didn't have a case. ATI & Nvidia do have a natural duopoly right now simply because it's so expensive to get into the serious GPU-making business, If anything it seems like ATI and NVidia are in a massive price war, cranking out new modelss and dropping the old ones so fast to sub-$100 prices so fast.
*Competition: As far as I know, there's Intel's onboard, Via's onboard (which is more or less S3 Unichrome + extra MPEG-2 or H.264 decoding.. so not usable for 3D but nice for video playback). Matrox makes video cards for like medical, financial, and video wall use.. they basically specialize in multihead, the 4-head card with 3x splitters gets you a 12-head setup at 1280x1024 per head. What else is there for desktops right now? I haven't heard from XGI in a while (they were spun off of SiS's graphics division).
To cut the numbering thread in the bud, here's the version numbering...
Windows NT 3.1 and NT 3.5. I don't think these were used much. NT 4.0 came out roughly when 95 did. Windows 2000 is NT 5.0, XP is 5.1, Server 2003 and some XP variants is 5.2, Vista is 6.0. The Windows 1.0-3.11, 95, 98, and ME line is a seperate lineage.
According to Wikipedia, Windows 7 is 6.1.6801 (M3 beta release). Hopefully, I would think they'd consider Windows 7 once it's out as 7.0.xxxx. But, I know for sure the Solaris "uname" and marketing versions are totally screwy too.
It sounds to me like the main plan with Windows 7 is to hope machines have sped up enough by then for people to tolerate a Vista-sized OS. But, maybe Microsoft will surprise us, only time will tell. I'm running Ubuntu personally.
Yep, if it's like the ads in the US, people retardly say "I'm a PC" over and over for like 30 seconds. All it does is pisses off the viewer as far as I can tell -- I have ad skip on my mythtv though. Completely pointless. It seems the ad people are looking at Microsoft's problems as in "PC versus Mac", I guess. I mean, *I'M* running a PC, it just has no Microsoft crap anywhere near it. I think Microsoft's current Linux strategy is to pretend Ubuntu etc. don't exist. Oh and also to ignore that Vista is crap.
Ahh yes Microsoft "cross platform", so it'll run on Win2K (maybe), WinXP *and* Windwos Vista. *rolls eyes*
A "cross-paltform" product isn't cross-platform if it's tied to platform-specific products such as Visual-Studio and SQL Server, and especially if the remainder required to do ANYTHING on another platform is vaporware.
"In Canada we have the CRTC which licenses broadcast outfits but generally does not license makers of reception equipment. Why would you want to control what products can receive broadcasts?"
Britain has TV license fees, and had a radio license fee up through the 1970s. So really I think there'd be no point but I assume it's vestigial from when they did want to keep track.
"Selling to the highest bidder doesn't mean that the highest bidder is the one which would make the best use of the spectrum"
Hear hear! In the US, Verizon and AT&T have over 90mhz of spectrum in quite a few areas; they don't use anywhere near that (at least outside LA and New York, where they do use a lot I bet), and in some cases use hardly any at all. It seems they are buying up spectrum to either prevent others from using it to compete, period, or they hold onto it as some bargaining chip to sell off or trade later. So, regular economics has this spectrum completely fallow (perhaps with a "license saver" site running), while it could otherwise be in use.
Or, in the article's case, some spectrum that is in use, but when it becomes unaffordable for rescue use, will probably remain idle.
"but in the USA contracts specify an allowance of voice minutes and text messages, with deductions made for both outgoing and incoming communications"
Minor correction, they usually do. US Cellular for sure has free incoming texts and calls, and a few other smaller cell companies have free incoming for at least one or the other.
"Given that a GPS phone call uses about 14kbps"... (I assume you mean GSM) a CDMA call actually averages about 6kbps. The "old" CDMA codec was 13kbps fixed, and the newer ones are 8.5kbps full rate, with half, quarter, 1/8th and "null" rates available. (Quarter, 1/8th and null are for giving the call some background noise when the person's not talking). In the US, due to AT&T's crazy amounts of half rate codec usage, the GSM calls probably average about 6kbps on their GSM network as well (although they are using full rate only on 3G for now.) This of course doesn't invalidate the point, SMS rates here are through the roof!
It sounds like this sucks to me, I'm not at all for driving useful SMS services out of the market. I have kind of wondered what the business model WAS for some of these free SMS services though.. do twitter, 4info, etc., manage to answer your question AND squeeze and ad into 160 chars, or how do they get any revenue whatsoever?
" So this is as good as time as any to do an audit on whether your staff actually need the expensive office license you are paying for and see if a free version wouldn't be better."
Yep, using openoffice for those who are using office casually, these businesses could save tons of office licenses, and have it only for someone that's got like custom office add-ons or some macros or VBA that don't run properly on it (OpenOffice *does* have macro and VBA support, so just having some doesn't mean it won't work.)
Personally, I'd go further. I'd rip Windows out of the server environment as much as possible, which would also save significantly. For desktops where the person's probably using a word processor, web browser, and E-Mail, I'd use something like an Ubuntu desktop; I would probably rig up a windows-looking theme, if someone sees the new desktop and panics, roll the appearance back (ala the win2000 theme for Windows XP). If there's some windows-specific apps, I would try wine first, and if that's a problem consider a windows terminal server (which would cost, but save over having windows on every machine). I would take a bit of a "holistic" approach to this, though, if some are using loads of windows-specific apps they might as well run windows, and if someone really is going to piss and moan over it, I'd probably say "fine" and let them keep it too. Once people are used to the change, the support time for the new boxes will be so reduced, the remaining Windows boxes will just give you something to do in your spare time 8-).
This is what happened in to Portland, Oregon school district in 2002, and some neighboring ones in Washington and Oregon. They were asked to show receipts for all software on their computers and show all software is licensed within 60 days. Oh they don't have receipts or time to check thousands of computers? Go into volume licensing at $45 a machine, including Macs that may not have any Microsoft software at all. Solution? They burned rubber converting to K12LTSP as fast as possible, paid cash money for whatever microsoft software remained and told Microsoft to take a hike.
In the short term, LTSP is too radical for businesses that are not used to Windows Terminal Server or Citrix, they have desktops already. But, as machines age (i.e. fail, or hit some replacement age) I'd phase in some LTSP-type setups, it should save on maintenance and power use (and, in the LTSP rig I've played with, had higher performance.. openoffice, for instance, the first user to use the LTSP server might have to wait for it to load, but then since it's in RAM subsequent users wait under 2 seconds on a relatively slow server machine.) I played with it, it's NICE... the Ubuntu one's exactly like Ubuntu for instance (you turn on a few checkboxes in the config, and USB memory sticks, printers and scanners "just work", and can be shared or not at the whims of the admin.)
Yup Fábio Rabelo de Deus is right, CDE (Common Desktop Environment) for SGI, HP-UX, etc... it was butt ugly but definitely had a dock. (I don't know if SGI's own 4DWM window manager did). OS/2 had a dock. Nextstep had a dock (which, given that OSX is Nextstep-based, probably is the true inspiration for OSX's dock). I'm pretty sure Stardock in fact has a dock app too (based on some googling, it'd be no surprise, they originally developed for OS/2). I've not seen RISCOS (the US has tons of ARMs but never got to enjoy any Acorns..), but I'm not surprised some older systems also had a dock. Apple really won't be able to patent very widely for their specific dock, since there's almost nothing unique about it.
"How long have there been portable music players? Over twenty years? I think we can blame the rise of accidents on numpty members of the public living in a litigation happy society, comfortable in the knowledge that their personal responsibility is all but removed and they can claim a shedload of money if a demon driver hits them.
I'd call it natural selection..."
I think you've hit it on the head! Where I live (Iowa City, IA, USA) I've seen a HUGE increase recently of people just not looking.
1) Where my parents live, there's several kids who just run out onto the street. There's one kid in particular who will just run right out in the street, on a regular basis, without looking.. even right in front of cars. The kid is young, so this isn't too surprising by itself... But he'll do it *while the dad's standing right there!* The dad... One time my mom was like "you know, you shouldn't have your kid running out in front of cars" and he was like "Oh, it's alright". She's like "Really, no it's not" and he just kind of dazedly stared off into space, no response whatsoever. He will not tell his kid that he should look before going out in the street! The same kid also will leave trikes and crap like *in* other people's driveways... 100s of feet of sidewalk, and he consistently will leave stuff in the few feet where someone has to stop their car on the street, get out, and move this stuff.. I've seen the dad walk right past it and he won't move it either. I haven't had him run in front of me yet, but I intend to give him a blast on the horn if he does, maybe he'll get scared out of running in front of cars before one runs him down.
2) I'm also seeing more bicyclists here.. well, OK. The serious bicyclists are not any "worse" than they've ever been (I see one do something stupid once in a while, but so do the cars.) Others are just riding bikes around in their residential neighborhood for fun.. they seem to ALSO think nothing of just riding on the sidewalk, and at random intervals hop the curb into the street -- again, without looking and so sometimes right in front of cars. They'll also ride so they're swerving around over like 2/3rds of the street (which is OK in general, they're just clowning around on a low-traffic residential street), but they won't have the sense to ride straight for a few seconds when cars are going by. These kids look to be early teenaged, old enough to know better.. they don't even have the sense to look surprised or alarmed when they hop a curb, look over and see a car stopped like 3 feet from running them down! They *do* nearly wipe out from shock if I toot my horn at them when I have to get on the brakes though. It's bad enough now, if I see anyone biking in these neighborhoods, I top out at about 10MPH (as opposed to the 25MPH speed limit..) I think, again, noone must have told them that it's stupid to run (well, bike) out in front of cars, so they just go ahead and do it. Also, although the US doesn't really have them, I think they might be chavs.
...That's a shame (think of this Seinfeld-style.)
Yes, these rules are rather broken in some of the US. People have also gotten the whole "sexual offender" label slapped on here for public urination in a few cases.. someone's too drunk and pissing on a bush or whatever, instead of getting public urination and public drunkeness (some fines and probably a night in the drunk tank..) they get this. Then they get caught up in the other laws set up for actual perverts, so they can't live in a lot of areas, etc.
Hopefully they'll be more reasonable on this, I mean, they've certainly had the scare put into them, I'm sure they're not going to send each other any more nudie pics.
"At least pick a figure that they might remotely have a chance of paying. I bet the poor guy who ran the ISP doesn't see a single cent."
In this case, this is not the point. The point is essentially to give someone misbehaving this badly a large financial penalty. They spammed, commited perjury (claiming they were not spamming), committed evidence tampering by destroying evidence relevant to their case. If they followed standard spammer procedure, they've probably had a lawyer file every single paper, no matter how irrelevant, to try to make the case too expensive for CIS to want to pursue; probably tried to argue spam is protected by freedom of speech; probably tried sleazy and obviously false arguments about how what they were doing technically wasn't spamming; and now, probably will be as we speak frantically moving all property to friends, maybe some new shell companies, etc. Not saying they ARE doing this, but practically every other spammer in the US that has been convicted (very few), this is what has happened with virtually all of them.
Someone could say Spamford Wallace was also a mom & pop -- he was literally one guy -- but clearly he doesn't fit the typical meaning of a "mom & pop". For that matter, the ISP is "mom & pop" too.. 5,000 subscribers in eastern iowa and western illinois (note: chicago's in eastern illinois, so this is all pretty rural).
------------------
OK, after I wrote that ---^ I googled CIS. "Spammer lands $11 billion fine - The INQUIRER" dated 2006/01/05 (don't know if that's Jan 5th or 1 May), the ietf has "[Asrg] [OT?] CIS Systems wins $1.08 billion in case against spammers Jun 1, 2005". Pretty ridiculous. BUT, in every case (this is the 10th...) the settlement calculates what was sent *to his 5000 subscriber ISP* at $10 a spam, so the amounts of spam are also pretty ridiculous. 23 million spams? Some spammers will try dictionary attacking the mail system to try to find people to spam.. abel@example.com, apple@example.com, alex@example.com, etc. ad nauseum... which could certainly add up. I certainly don't hope he'll get this much cash but he really should be compensated for having to put in extra hours and spend extra cash on mail servers just to filter out additional spam, compensated for legal time (the spamming happened in 2003.. the spammers have delayed things for 5 years?), and a cherry on top for damages.
"What if Blair is Bin Laden and the terrorist that blows him up is British secret police? Or Blair is Ceausescu and you are Romanian? Or it's Hussein not Blair? What then?"
Well, blowing someone up's always a crime, Ceausescu and Bin Laden should be taken in for trial. I suppose for Hussein it would be grave violation than anything, he's dead you know 8-)
"You realize that the flip side of this discussion is a crime in the UK. Under the very same nanny behaviour shown by this officer, we cannot discuss the flip side of this without falling foul of the same law or worse."
Yep, I'm glad I don't live in Britain. It's absurd that they can just pull down a page with no oversight or particular recourse. The US isn't *much* better, but at least a bit less 1984'esque.
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