Posts by Morely Dotes 939 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2007
People who don't buy Symantec's products don't have to worry about counterfeits.
And every Symantec product I've ever tried has been a low-performing resource hog that was far inferior to free competing products - so not buying Symantec is just a good idea anyway.
If the _Top_Gear_ crew had a pair of cojones, they'd be getting their own G-Wiz and hotrodding it instead of trying to make out that they're safety-concious. I mean, be serious! They drive steel cages, while wearing fireproof long underwear, and being strapped into their impact-absorbing custom-build bucket seats. Where's the "manly man" appeal in that? It takes serious determination to get hurt in a car that's been redesigned and reengineered to protect the cowardly putz inside against even his own moronic actions (whilst simultaneously and deliberately poisoning every child on the planet, and possibly even making the planet ultimately uninhabitable).
The simple fact is that, pound for pound, any decent electric car will leave any similar petrol-fueled car behind in a cloud of burnt rubber on the drag strip, and the _Top_Gear_ crew knows it. It's simple physics; electric motors develop maximum torque at stall (zero RPM), while the clattering collection of unlikely lumps of metal called an "internal combustion engine" needs to be revved up to at least a thousand RPM to get any decent torque. The petrolheads can't compete with that, and they know it.
_Top_Gear_ is simply afraid.
(I am Charter Member #100 in the US National Electric Drag Racing Association - we eat Dodge Vipers for hors d'oeuvres. Or however you spell that.)
"2. The majority of problems on any PC occur between the keyboard and the chair. So, users are pretty quick to tell you the problem is the computer and not them to try and hide a lack of competence."
You know, it's funny, Burton. I've been working with computers since before IBM thought it would be a good idea to repackage a sewing machine controller to try to compete with IMSAI and the other S-100 systems. I've seen a lot of different operating systems, and used most of them, including CP/M, PC-DOS, MS-DOS, GEM, MAC OS (prior to OX X), every flavor of MS Windows since 3.0, and a number of different Linux distributions. Here in the office, I don't get to choose what runs on the servers, so they are Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 servers; we have a number of machine tools, and with only one exception, they all run some flavor of Linux. The only problems I ever have with them is (a) they don't get a DHCP address from the Windows servers, which seem to have major issues finding room in their IP pools (100 addresses each) for the dozen-or-so clients,or (b) the one machine we have that uses Windows crashes - usually in the middle of a logn, expensive machining run.
And I can't think of any other operating system which has changed the user interface with every major release. Sure, Linux has offered *new* GUIs - but the old ones are still available and still work just fine. Whereas my database admin, who just got her new Vista PC, has spent the last half hour trying to figure out how to make the desktop look and work somewhat like the XP desktop.
So, maybe the problem is between the keyboard and the chair.
And maybe the problem is that we have trained all our users to use one interface, and then sudddenly we've taken that away and substituted something comeptley different - which doesn't work better, doesn't work faste, isn't more efficient, and isn't less expensive - it's jsut different *for the sake of being different.*
That's not progress. That's stupidity. And it's not the users' fault.
Since it has been adequately demonstrated that publishing copyrighted works enables violation of copyright, I propose to file suit under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act against the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and anyone else I can think of for knowingly, willingly, and deliberately enabling circumvention of copyright.
After all, if the copyrighted works were never published, copyright could never be violated! This is logic so simple that even a politician can understand it.
I will, of course, demand damages of a mere $500 per violation - and of course, one "violation" is equal to one track on a CD, vinyl record, or cassette tape (no one would eve copy tracks from an 8-track cartidge, so they're exempt), one title on a DVD, one file on a computer, or one Web page or link on a Web page, whichever is greater.
I think this will come to roughly US$50,000,000 per Windows PC...
I may even settle out of court for one percent of the statutory damages. After all, I can afford to be generous.
Damages to be paid to the EFF, of course.
How in the name of Cthulu did this ditz read the road signs to find her way to this level crossing? Surely Satnav, even with voice recognition and speech synthesis, can't be advanced enough to permit illiterate morons to navigate hundreds or perhaps even thousands of yards without a keeper, can it?
And BTW - there a significant difference between a "boyf" and "bumf?" Or is this more of El Reg trying to use "Cutelish" again?
...as it is the navigation controls, the flight systems software, and all the hundreds of thousands of "little things" that make up the parts the do most of the work. After all, the outside of the design is readily available to anyone with a decent telescope and a camera.
The STS itself needs only a decent liquid-fueled launch vehicle (such as the Russian's heavy-lift boosters) to replace the ungainly external tank and SRBs, and it would become a viable and formidable contender in low-to-medium-orbital operations. Using the SRbs and the external tank, of course, it's just a disaster waiting to happen - again.
So the Chinese aren't silly to want full design details of the Shuttle. Hopefully, they're smart enough to discard the silly bits - the parts substituted when Congress cut the funding for the launch vehicle.
I don't think so. I think it should cost US$10,000 per license, and that should be added to the price of the computer if it's preinstalled by the OEM. The price includes daily visits by a licesned technician who will remove all the trojans and viruses that the MS security hole delivery system (aka "Vista") helpd you install during the previous 24 hours.
This is a 90-day license. At the end of 90 days, you have to renew the license (at hte same price) or Vista stops working.
Make it expensive enough, and morons will stop using computers. Except for the government morons, of course.
If this doesn't kill off the SuSE among knowledgeable sysadmins, I can't imagine what would.
Consider: You can buy a "coupon" from Microsoft (thus alerting them that you are planning to run Linux, thus allowing them to tell their tame lawyers against whom to file frivolous-but-expensive lawsuits when they finally get around to repudiating the contract with Novell), or you can download a free distro from someone else - or get free CDs or DVDs from, say, Ubuntu, with no strings attached.
Well, if you're an MCSE with no real skills except the ability to point and say "it's Microsoft's fault, and they wil lfix it for only $245," of course you'll go with the MS/SuSE option.
The rest of us will be using a different distro. One that's actually supported by the Open Source community.
"I also believe that bandwidth is a major issue in these countries where the telecommunications infrastructure is considerably less developed and not as far reaching as our own in Europe and North America."
Nigeria seems to have plenty of excess bandwidth, to judge from the sheer volume of "419" advance fee fraud scams coming from that nation.
"Demands for several million dollars per reporter strike us as opportunistically excessive, depending on how much is skimmed off the top."
It would not be inappropriate to demand the dissolution of the corporation and liquidation of assets. A few million dollars is a mere slap on the wrist.
We live in an age where "corporate citizens" have rights granted by a court clerk, rights which nearly always are given precedence by the court system over the rights guaranteed to natural human citizens by the US Constitution. It's long past time that the threat of capital punishment is made as real for the corporate offender as it is for the individual man or woman.
If an individual had perpetrated these invasions of privacy on the corproate records of HP, do you think HP would have stopped with a demand for mere money? I think not. I believe HP would have demanded prison terms for the natural person.
Frankly, if this doesn't put TJX out of business, there is no justice whatsoever in the world. In my professional opinion (I'm in I.T. on the day job, and I own and operate an Internet hosting firm the other 24 hours/day :-| ), this sort of complete and utter disregard for the security of customer information is criminal; TJX might just as well havge called up the Russian Mafia and *asked* them to come steal customer identities.
Of course, the employees who set up the network for TJX might not have been well-trained, nor even told what the network was to be used for. When you hire people at Minimum Wage, you're unlikely to get the best-qualified people available - and the installation wasn't something that could be outsourced to qualified-but-cheap offshore firms, was it?
While they may be able to stop Internet publication of the key (bloody unlikely, but not completely impossible), the cat's out of the bag. There is no law that permits a software copyright holder to prohibit the wearing of items of apparel:
http://www.zestuff.com/tshirts/generic/582
http://www.jinx.com/scripts/details.asp?productID=992
And I am sure there are others.
Several of the shirts have already shipped. It's a Federal crime to tamper with the mails. Want to see if you're too big to be busted by the Feds, AACS LA? Come on! Intercept my mail and see what happens!
But wait! There's more! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD_encryption_key_controversy
"Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia said the software would deliver deeper integration"
Oops. Doesn't that mean that when (not "if) the major security holes in Forefront are discovered, they can be exploited to compromise an entire enterprise through a single point of entry?
Hasn't Microsoft learned *anything* about security in the past decade? Oh, never mind, silly question. After all, Marketing is far more important than actual product functions.
"Manufacturers will only be able to pre-install XP on systems until Jan. 31, 2008 when Microsoft will force them to switch no matter what internet denizens ask for."
Well, Internet denizens have nearly a year to convince OEMs to start selling PCs with alternative OSes, then, don't we?
Or people can simply stop buying new PCs if they don't really need them. I'm sure Dell, Gateway, HP, and IBM would really, really thank Microsoft for causing PC sales to plummet.
"Steve Roper" of Adelaide tells it in first-person.
And Kennesaw, Georgia, USA, proves that *requiring* handgun ownership reduces crime, and does not increase gun crime: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288
The same article points out that Morton Grove, Illinois, which passed a complete ban on guns, suffered an almost-immediate 15.7% increase in violent crime.
Cause and effect? I think so. You draw your own conclusions.
But, hey, the control freaks aren't the sort of person to let a little thing like the facts get in the way of their desire to cotnrol every aspect of someone else's life, now, are they?
Firstly, email is *never* the right answer to anything urgent. My day job involves IT support for about 100 computer users. I can absolutely guarantee that, even if the email is flagged "urgent," some people will not even check their email for a full week after I send it.
Secondly: "I'm pro 2nd amendment, but not for hand guns."
If even one student in the Engineering department had been carrying a loaded handgun, and been willing to use it in self-defense, the death toll today would be lower.
The problem with handguns is not that people have them; the problem is that only *SOME* people have them.
And when you outlaw handguns (or kitchen knives, or marijuana, or condoms, or abortions...), all you do is ensure that the law-abiding citizens won't have them. People who have no respect for the law will still be able to get them, and still be able to abuse the law-abiders.
"Now in itself, a faultline isn't much of a problem, agreed - but the challenge here is how to compensate for the 2.5cm that the Alaska and Siberia move towards each other every year."
Not a problem. By the time the three National governments can agree on funding, design, and contractors, the tunnel will only need to be a meter or so long. At that point, the nearest Eskimo can simply throw a snowshoe over the Bering Creek and call it a bridge.
"Sen. John Carona, the architect of the bill, argued that the legislation would help police to fight organised crime and terrorism in the state."
Students of history will notice that organized crime only became a serious problem for the USA when Prohibition was instituted. It was only a few years later that the Federal government noticed that it wasn't working, and alcohol was re-legalized.
And now we have organized crime that is trafficking in prohibited recreational drugs - and making huge profits from it.
Go figure.
"Microsoft, bless em, have come a long way in helping to make our jobs difficult in this way by dumbing down their error messages"
I have just spent 2 days troubleshooting a Windows Update issue which returned the error message, "installation did not complete." No error numbers, no indication of *why* the installation did not complete, nothing useful whatsoever. Since the update in question is the core of the Windows Update system (KB898461), nothing else could be done until the problem was fixed. Ultimately, it took roughly 12 hours of my time and 12 hours of the time of an assortment of Microsoft support people (ranging from script-readers to reasonably competent technicians) to determine that chckdsk /r would take care of it. Had the package returned "unable to write to disk block" or something more useful than "I don't work," I have no doubt that at least 20 man-hours could have been saved.
...of purchasing proprietary "black box" software licenses, instead of obtaining free open-source packages and customizing them as required.
Of course, the second approach would not provide much financial support to the Republican Party's huge corporate owner, Microsoft. It would, however, give ownership of the security to the US government. As things are right now, Microsoft owns whatever security exists - and Microsoft is completely in charge of whatever security *problems* exist.
Also, creating an "official US government distribution" of a free open-source operating system and business software package would mean long-term employment of a few American citizens, as it would be unthinkable to outsource software programming of this sort of thing.
Say, isn't some of the code for Microsoft Office developed in East Asia? Makes one wonder...
Remember this? http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/tianamen_square_1989.jpg
Yahoo, by doing business with, and in, China is supporting a repressive regime which is even more evil than the GW Bush administration and worse than the South African goverment during the years of apartheid.
If Yahoo is unable to avoid complying with Chinese laws that compel the exposure of Chinese dissidents while Yahoo does business in China, then Yahoo should stop doing business in China, or be prepared to suffer the legitimate and well-deserved penalties for helping China suppress human rights.
China cannot afford to be economically isolated now, any more than South Africa could. Boycott China, and the Chinese government will either permit freedom of expression, or suffer a massive revolt of their own people - who will replace the current regime with another, hopefully less-repressive, one. This is inevitable.
Yahoo, if the cost of doing business in China is too high for you - get out of China. Yes, it really is that simple.
I've held the highest sort of clearance (TS SCI for those who understand - and don't give me any grief about other types being "higher," this isn't a penis-waving contest).
All you need is the ability to appear sane for about 30 minutes, no record of "anti-American" activities, and a decent credit rating. Period.
Now, as to the justice of letting a saboteur off with a light sentence, Robert Anson Heinlein commented on the "insanity defense" at some length in _Starship_Troopers_ (which was vastly superior to the movie which was very loosely based on the book). The bottom line is, if the perpetrator was only temporarily insane when he committed a heinous act, the kindest thing to do is to execute him quickly and as painlessly as possible, because he will suffer terrible guilt and remorse for the rest of his life. And if his insanity was not temporary, then it is necessary to execute him to prevent recidivism, or to keep him caged like an animal for the rest of his life - which is certainly not a merciful act.
McKinnon is a scapegoat; the purpose of prosecuting him is to distract from the failure to secure the systems he poked around in, without any malcious intent.
Sylvestre, on the other hand, is a malicious traitor whose actions could only have been intended to cause serious harm to the nation, and injury or death to hundreds, possibly thousands, of sailors.
I am not surprised that McKinnon is being used in this way; it's typical of the Bush administration's grasping at any straw whatsoever in its attempts to distract from its own corruption and incompetence. What surprises me is that Sylvestre hasn't been appointed to the White House staff ... yet.
Once upon a time, not too many years ago, if one lived in a major metropolitan area like Los Angeles, or London, one didn't need a private car. There were trolley systems, powered by electricity, which were clean, reliable, and more than fast enough. There were trains for longer trips - city to city - which could easily be, or in many cases were, also electrically-powered.
It's long past time to require a business license to operate a private motorcar within the city limits (deliveries, taxis, and such still may need them, after all), and to force the end of pointless consumerism.
General Motors is perfectly capable of making trolley cars, after all - if they *want* to. And if they can't sell John Q. Public a new SUV every year, perhaps they will want to.
Another green transportation method for longer trips has been proposed as well: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/whatsnew/18ac893302839010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html?s_prop18=whatsnew
When I am recommending a purchase, the first criterion is "what does my customer really need?'
The second criterion is, "what sort of experience have I had with the vendor's support lines?"
Only after both of those have been considered do I begin to look at which products will fulfill the needs uncovered in the first question; and those who have demonstrated that support is of no interest to them (e.g., my calls went to some non-English-speaking script reader in a foreign country, or worse, there's no quick route to support whatsoever) will be out of consideration immediately.
A very large electronics manufacturer who is infamous for infecting audio CDs with rootkits is, for example, completely off the list - forever.
Dell consumer products are off the list. Dell business products are considered, but *only* if my customer is willing to pay extra for "gold" support. It is, in my experience, worth the extra money.
And any place that pushes "extended warrantees" for consumer products is treated as an open sewer: Dangerous and horribly unpleasant, to be avoided at all costs.
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