Posts by David Wilkinson 233 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2007
How about parents who think their child might be being harmed by the video games they play ... actually do some actual parenting. Require your kids to get approval before they can play any new games ... if you catch them playing games you feel is harmful take away their game systems.
If a kids parents can't be bothered to take an active interest in their child's life ... then that kid has a lot bigger problems than violent video games.
I work at home and having online chat buddies keeps me from feeling isolated due to lack of co-workers.
Also social networking can lead to having your real life needs met. Roughly 60% of my relationships have started with me meeting someone online, getting to know them for a week and them finally meeting them for a first date.
The only time there is a problem is when people try to use Social Networking as a substitute for real life relationships.
Basically the system is step so that as soon as someone gets arrested they are scrambling to turn in as many fellow criminals as possible to reduce their sentence. Some of those they turn in are then going to turn around and do the same thing.
It seems like this guy spent a lot of time on the internet engaged in illegal activities and he also seemed status hungry which means that he was probably well placed in any group he was involved with. He probably had multiple identities even within the same group.
My guess is that they are using this guys to make a lot of cases, and we only know about a few.
I am also guessing that due to his close cooperation they are monitoring his activities far closer than usual for someone on probation. They are probably also holding a few charges in reserve to ensure his future cooperation.
Maybe its just me but I don't consider reading something written by the AP ... then rewriting the same information to be journalism.
I think we need more people trying to add useful information and less people simply regurgitating it.
Higher standards for attribution would be nice. Ideally I'd prefer the option to view my news stories to be splattered with foot notes.
Often some fact or statistic will be thrown out there, and everyone is using it but you can't figure out where it came from.
I know people who have started jobs as web developers amazed at the level of incompetence show by the previous developers ... only to be forced to produce equally low quality code.
Each new project they are told to get the site up and running as fast as possible and not to worry about testing, documentation, security .... once the project is completed they will be given a chance to go back and clean up and properly document the code.
No one is forgetting anything ... they are just breaking the subconscious association spider = electric shock.
After that the spider triggered discomfort which was enough to at least partially sustain the conditioning without the shocks.
This shows that taking a beta blocker will speed up desensitization. This could be very useful when someone is trying to overcome a traumatic event or a phobia.
I just miss the part where memory is affected?
There is nothing wrong with Microsoft making deals with OEMs to promote one version of their software over another. Microsoft is under not legal obligation to continue to sell and support XP.
Now it she could prove that MS uses coercive tactics to prevent OEMs from providing non-Microsoft alternatives ... that would be a valid case.
Fake murder video game = good clean fun.
Fake rape video game = evil
Not sure how to explain that one rationally.
I know if I discovered a friend was into games like that ... they'd quickly cease to become a friend.
Maybe its because rape an molestation happen far more often in real life than senseless murder?
You need a program installed that will stop and advise you when you attempt to visit a dangerous website.
You get "rickrolled" or simply mistype a url ... a screen pops up and asks if you really want to go to the site, with links to the reasons why its tagged as dangerous. You have to click "enter anyway" if you want to continue to the reportedly dangerous site.
I use Crawler Web Security Guard Toolbar for this (even though configuring it so its not annoying is very annoying).
The plus side is its free so I can put in on every PC I work on. It really cuts down on infections.
Everyone should be using some program like this.
You want IT people to support a new system ... hire a consultant to help set it up and train the IT staff ... lighten their loads for awhile so they have time to read the manuals and learn the new system.
In the long run you will have happier IT staff and more stable systems.
Glycerin derived from animal fat its found in cosmetics, foods, mouthwashes, chewing gum, toothpastes, soaps, ointments, medicines, lubricants, transmission and brake fluid, plastics ...
That is just one example, pretty much everything you own has some animal source materials in it. Yes there are often alternatives but many are not as good and all of them are a lot more expensive.
On XP device I/O uses the same address space as the 4GB of system memory. Toss in a 1GB graphics card and suddenly 1GB of system memory is unreachable ...
Still they don't seem to sell 1.5 GB memory modules and memory runs faster than in dual channel mode which requires pairs of memory.
So for XP 32 bit ... 2x2GB is still a better memory configuration than ... 2X1GB or 1GB +2 GB.
I am hoping the system will dual boot into another OS for actual work. XP is probably for them for in field recreational use.
Most comptuer users are barely computer literate. They learn the bare minimum to do what they need to get done. To them a good OS is whatever one that will simply work without them having to learn anything.
If Linux wants to get out of the sever room ... it needs to take seriously the complains of those who can't be bothered to read the manual.
The worm is using a pseudo random number generator creating an endless stream of domain names.
Once they figured out the algorithm being used ... they could have taken over the entire network at any time and have the infected systems run code to disinfect themselves.
Unfortunately hacking someone's computer to help remove an infection is still illegal.
I find it plausible that he might have just happened to be the only one who knew critical passwords then his supervisor was treating him like crap and he just decided to not help them with their system.
Yeah it would have to be a real mess for just one person to have critical passwords but regrettably it would be far from unique. Also the system could have been a real mess. It probably was if he was in charge and they were letting him go for poor job performance.
I am really curious about this one. One or both of the parties were incredibly stupid.
1. Researcher discloses vulnerability privately
2. Company ignores them completely
3. Researcher announces vulnerability without details
4. Company denies problem.
5. Researcher posts a working exploit.
6. Virus writers add it to their bad of tricks.
7. Media reports virus outbreak.
8. Company starts working on a patch.
9. Not everyone patches ....
I'd like to see three players in the OS market with none of them having more than 60% market share. Imagine what that would be like.
You'd probably have real write once and run anywhere languages/frameworks, real standards, real choices.
I think everyone's products would improve based on healthy competition.
I don't like Macs because I like to build my own systems and I don't like reduced software/hardware options, but I am really rooting for them to get some double digit gains in market share.
The smartest kid probably thought about doing something like that, then decided against it on the grounds that people are going to 100% treat it as a serious crime rather than a silly prank.
Hopefully they will just stop investigating it now .. its a waste of money and resources and whoever wrote it is probably a kid who is scared enough that he won't be repeating that mistake anytime soon.
All that money is going into projects that will have to hire lots of workers, who will then pay taxes and inject their paycheck into the economy while doing something that might benefit this country.
Giving people the ability to earn money is always better than giving them money.
I also believe that an unbalanced distribution of wealth is bad for the economy. Workers need to be able to purchase the goods they are producing or the whole system falls apart.
My old cable company was oversold. Anyone who used more than X in upstream would get disconnected. X was a number defined as whatever they felt like at the time.
So I could upload files at 40 KBps and be ok, my friend on the same plan but in a different neighborhood would cap his FTP upstream at half that and get immediately disconnected for abuse.
They were horribly oversold and yet they were never stopped selling and they never stopped increasing the numbers in their marketing.
Its like having an all you can eat buffet that doesn't have enough food. You keep letting more pay for all they can eat... and then kicking out (without a refund) anyone who takes more than a nibble.
To establish a proper police state you first need to make sure that everyone is always guilty of something.
You have to also do the ... if you have nothing to hide why do you object to being spied upon/randomly searched thing ...
So far the UK seems to be making steady progress in both directions.
Renewable sources ... might supplement energy supplies but can never replace fossil fuels when they either simply run out ... or we decide its to environmentally dangerous to use them.
We need to pick a spot in a desert somewhere dig a big hole, line it with clay start dumping waste while accepting the fact that eventually the storage system will start to leak, eventually climate/geological change is going to release that radiation into the local water system.
Actually maybe we should just dump in in the rain forest instead. The environmental impact of the increased radiation levels would probably be far less than the impact cause my humans ... and it will scare the humans away.
No system is 100% reliable, and people usually only test their backup solution when its time to restore lost data. Having two backups means that three systems need to fail at once to cause a problem.
That's why I think its a great idea when external hard drives come bundled with online backup.
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As for reviews ... I hope that the negative impression fake reviews give will keep companies from using this tactic but I am skeptical.
Somewhere someone has figured out that x% of people reading the review will spot it as a fake and will lose faith in the company and y% will fall for it.
As long as Y>X they are gong to keep doing stuff like this.
Just because the science work is sloppy doesn't mean the hypothesis is false .. just that there is no truth that it is true.
It doesn't help that the people trying to address the problem have a tendency to ... fudge the data ... make hysterical claims and provably false statements.
Most scientists feel strongly its humanity is going to have a devastating impact on the climate, they just can't prove it.
It doesn't matter much ... all the stuff we need to do to reduce carbon emissions ... is stuff we are going to have to do eventually to be competitive a post fossil fuel economy.
Requirements change as the system is developed. A large part of that is unavoidable because some many problems are impossible to understand until you invest a lot of time into solving them.
People who want software development to proceed along a well defined path ... follow that path to failure.
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Also there needs to be a healthy feedback between the available technology and the design. Design choices influence technology choices. Technology choices then make some things easy to implement others very difficult. The design them is shifted to leverage the unique characteristics of the chosen technology.
Anyway breaking things down into small loosely coupled projects ... makes a lot of sense. Some will fail, some will exceed expectations. Even if as some say it will be subdivisions of the same companies .... those subdivisions will be competing against each other.
Also when you break things up into smaller parts ... well it suddenly becomes more obvious when certain features/capabilities cost far more than they are worth.
The Aspe's I know would stick the the letter of the law. They tend to take things very literally, and logically.
In the US you can't walk just walk into someone's house uninvited. Even if the door is wide open, its breaking and entering. You'd get arrested for that.
People in the UK must have very different idea's about private property.
Autorun works when placed at the root of any drive, it doesn't have to be removable. It will get triggered when you visit the root via Explorer.
Unfortunately end users tend to freak out when you disable autoplay,
So you leave it enabled and end users can get infected by browsing a network share or inserting an infected removable storage device. You disabled it and they complain that their computer is broke because nothing automatically happens when they insert a disc.
Tweak XP does it for you. No registry editing. The problem is most of my clients couldn't handle having to right click and select autoplay ... on the optical drive.
When I used vista I found a similar program for vista .. but now I am sticking with XP until I give Windows 7 a shot.
It would be nice it the standard procedure would be for a new hire to be trained by a consultant when they will have responsibilities that fall outside their previous experience.
Like if their resume shows not PBX experience, have someone come in and train them for a few days.
A few days with a real expert is better than months with a stack of books and manuals.
Let home users pirate without fear, creating a workforce that is familiar with their products, crack down on any business who uses pirated software.
That's my theory on why expensive software has protection which is easily bypassed while relatively cheap games often have an excess of copy protection.
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As far as open source ... I am a big fan of open source running on windows. Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Picasa, 7-Zip, VLC/Media Player Classic .....
Once you hit a critical mass of "good enough" quality cross platform applications ... the OS you run them on ceases to matter.
Where do you draw the line? What about breastfeeding mothers, underage fashion models in sexy poses, how old is that girl in the Japanese cartoon, novels with underage characters ...
And its always setup so its zero penalty for censoring the wrong material, so it is guaranteed to become censor first then ask questions latter.
Once the infrastructure is in place it will be misused either accidentally or intentionally.
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My vote is less censorship and more law enforcement. Keep the sites running, infiltrate them, real crimes ... real cops ... real warrants ... real evidence .. real jail time.
I had gotten used to Western Digital's free advance replacement and was shocked by Seagate wanting to charge me $26+ for the same service. I do have to pay for return shipping with WD, but they'll sell me a discounted shipping label during the RMA process.
For a normal return Seagate wanted me to purchase a 3rd party foam RMA kit rather then ship it the way it was received (enclosed in 1" of bubble wrap on all sides) in a box of packing peanuts.
Wikipedia is pretty much my first stop when exploring a new topic. I understand that I can't automatically believe anything I read on Wikipedia, but the same is of any source of information.
The only thing that worries me is that some people don't get this, too many people seem to have drunk the Wikipedian coolaid.
Anyway most of what I am looking for on Wikipeidia is of the too dull to lie about category. The international standard for two letter country codes, linux shell commands, ...
Every country in the world exists where it does, as it does because the people who used to live there were displaced. The people who were displaced in turn where only there because they displaced someone else.
In this particular situation it seems to me that all the parties involved are choosing to be unreasonable. Ultimately the only available options are violence or compromise. No one seems willing to compromise.
IThe definition of a Mactard is someone feels the Mac is the perfect platform. Therefore anyone who chooses not to use a Mac must be acting out of ignorance and/or stupidity. Furthermore the perfect platform by definition runs all the best software so anything that does not run on it must be unworthy.
You know the people who argued the vast inferiority of intel x86 processors until suddenly Apple announced the switch, then Intels chips went from being 5 times slower to 5 times faster.
Apparently there are Mactards and Freetards but no Wintards. That's because us Windows users tend to view our platform of choice with a healthy skepticism. Most of us are dying to jump ship as soon as Linux or OSX can even come close to meeting our needs.
If they go after an easier target and win or even if they settle out of court with a licensing agreement ... they will be in a better position both legally and financially to argue the validity of the patent against someone who can afford to mount a real challenge.
These companies were sold for values that far exceed their current state of profit. Their only hope it to somehow completely change their business model and hope to maintain a high percentage of customers.
If I had a clue about what that business model could be ... I'd be hard at work on a website instead of typing this.
Its probably necessary to prosecute the company if only to get at their call center in Ohio. Also they won't ever be able to have in USA held assets, it might help with people seeking to have credit card charges reversed, it might help legitimate businesses avoid accidental dealings with the company or any future company with the same corporate leadership ....
Yeah its not really all that effective but at least the effort is being made.
Yes you get to chose to use their service or not ... but you need to make informed decisions.
Articles like this make people aware of issues and perhaps pressure the companies to make change.
Of course that only works if people see this as a real problem.
Personally I do. I just don't like companies collecting vast amount of information on me. But its not a big deal. So I will try yahoo search and if it works about the same us it instead of Google. If it doesn't meet my needs as well I'll probably switch back and just accept they are keeping too much information on me.
I already use note take software that stores everything locally and syncs with an online database. I can access it from my PC or my thumb drive online or offline and also via the web. Its free unless you exceed a monthly data upload allowance, then you can't upload more until the next month.
But my notes are almost entirely text so I never reach the limit.
I'd love to have similar functionality with files instead of notes. Not sure how much I'd pay for it though.
Thumb drives are pretty small and cheap. So really the service would only benefit me by automatically protecting my files from loss.
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