xerxes1405241546

Let's remember that Windows was built with ease-of-use in mind (the reason behind its outstanding popularity among regular users). It's hard to compare that approach, to that of Unix creators. Same applies to both branches of OSs today - Windows will always gain most market share (as there is always more newbies than pros), until they drop the customer-friendly architecture, or a Unix derivative will employ similar compatibility and ease-of-use features. I'm looking forward to the moment when I will be able to launch newest 3D games in Linux, without any performance hits...

Inspired by this thread, I decided to launch this one to see how you folks approach the issue of securing your private files at work or at places where computer-professionals can access the machine you use. Following is my response to ethergeek's post in the aforementioned topic: I agree with that completely. Such machine could always be taken away from you without prior notice, with the files you care about in it. Besides, if the machine isn't yours you can't really control and evaluate the security mechanisms employed in such system. The problem with such kind of mechanism is that if you will loose control over the operating system, you can't gain access to your encrypted files anymore. Besides anybody who gains access to your account, can access the encrypted files as well. Moreover, there are already known viruses that can access OS's kernel to stop A-V and firewall software. I don't think we have to wait long till such malicious programs take over kernel drivers to read your encrypted files, which are important by definition. ethergeek - could you tell us a bit more about you installation of TrueCrypt? Do you need a password, or a certificate to initiate the process? What happens if you need to reinstall the system (without any break-downs)? That seems to work well (especially that there are Linux distributions designed to fit on such keys, and with such you can encrypt the contents of the key as well), unless you are in an environment, where security is a concern and USB ports are disabled.

You mean games or system in general? No wonder the system lags, if on the same hardware Vista uses more resources than XP, with less left for running demanding software (especially games).

Yeah, everybody remembers what hell it used to be to launch WinXP on hardware following MS minimum requirenments... If not for the games I'd move to open-source altogether, and as current benchmarks show (tomshardware.com), there is no significant improvement in speed (game-wise) when moving onto Vista. In fact, as WeaponX mentioned, a lot of technical (and security!) issues has to be fixed before the system is worth the hassle of switching from XP. Myself, I'm waiting up and till the moment in which Vista is as "seamless" as XP is right now.

I think that we're taking a bit wrong approach. We all judge yahoo's move as a plain marketing trick. Pause for a moment and take a look at it from a different angle, the angle of google.com. For years the company has been enhancing its otherwise basic service (internet searching) with multiple other (useful) features - translations, maps, office software, and now the brilliant e-mail service. Up and till now the approach worked flawlessly, with company's value and number of users rising even higher, which seemed impossible after achieving the status of (one of) the best search engines ever. And yet they are about to introduce new features (automatic translation of search queries, default searching in book, movies and pictures databases + revamped interface), constantly adapting, being the topic of media news all the time.Now, let's get back to yahoo. It's one of the biggest e-mail providers, they have a news portal, and...? I don't know about you, but for me yahoo got a bit dusty over the years, and we all know that who doesn't move forward, stays behind. Now, with google growing in power, and yahoo not looking forward to loose its market share they've adopted a new strategy. The only strategy that enables them to fight with google - the exactly same strategy of development. Let's hope unlimited e-mail is just a prelude to unlimited file storage, and even then it's a first step on a longer road. Don't get me wrong, I don't favour yahoo, especially that I hate big, bloated, and slow software, but who knows what may happen if google kills his competition and none remains...

Is that possible that USB wireless hardware receives less power (hence weaker singnal), than a regular PCI device would use for keeping the link up? Much smaller, internal antenna, could be another reason for weak signal problems...

I'm looking forward to the translation and navigational enhancements, which combined with google translate perhaps could finally destroy the language barriers throughout the Net. I'm not so sure about the multi-media search, though. I look for pictures or movies quite seldom, and I fear that including those in my search results can complicate matters too much, slowing me down. I hope that there will be an option switch this off, although I do believe the in-book searches may compensate for all this. On the other hand, I have nothing against anything that google introduced so far, and all changes only added to the my positive image their services. They may surprise me again, coming up with some brilliant new interface to accommodate those new features. We will see.

Although Saint Michael 001 and niru 001 do look much more professional than others, they are graphically elaborate and quite detailed. I agree that they are the best looking ones, but they may not go well with the simple and straightforward design of your webpage, which doesn't even employ any special fonts or animations (to great effect). I think that a logo should fit into a webpage seamlessly, rather that stand out too much, hence I chose livingston 002.

That little trick is extremely useful. Not only it speeds things up when you work with text files (which I do a lot), but it also enhances security, after you learn to open all unknown files with it. It's quite surprising to me how often people click on files with an extension unknown to them, or how often they use full blown office applications to write a simple note. Still, replacing Windows Notepad with Metapad (and I've tested a lot of such replacements) is one of the first things I do after installing a new system.

AFAIK any security system can be broken if one really needs to get your files. Your system in particular does not guarantee any security if a person knows where to look, or stumbles onto the data by accident. Your measures assume that the person trying to open the files does not know how to handle them, and as history of digital security has shown, any "security-through-obscurity" concept (employed by many companies unfortunately) is bound to fail sooner or later.Encrypting sensitive information with a good 10+ signs alpha-numerical password and storing them away on a tiny pendrive you're always carrying with yourself is never a bad idea, and is much more effective than it seems. With prices of flash memories being so low these days and linux micro-distributions available (Puppy-linux for example), you can have a fully-functional OS, with all your sensitive files, never leaving your pocket.

One of my biggest dreams, but biggest fears. Of course everybody expects a peaceful meeting and exchange of information, and that may be true if we initiate first contact remotely via some kind of long range medium (the common knowledge will evolve slowly). Our history shown however, how clashes of civilisations with different knowledge and strength levels occurred: blood and violence. Personally, I believe that life as we see it here on Earth is pretty unique (as evolution, by definition, is an accidental process), and we cannot expect something even remotely similar in other parts of the universe. Actually, with the size and complexity of our universe we cannot really expect anything, but I still think we should be ready for the worst. If things even similar to what we know from movies like Predator or Alien existed our current defences would be far from adequate. We shouldn't fall into paranoia, but I don't why people assume that any other civilisation would be eager to share their knowledge with a potential enemy, instead of just wiping it from the face of their own homeworld.

Brilliant idea, but we are still to see it well executed. Decade? That seems quite long a time period, in which many things can change. Although I'm quite concerned about economical issues that may stand in the way (who will produce the blood, and who will pay for it are among the important questions), I'm looking forward to anything that, even to a minimal extent, may reduce the number of deaths occurring just before the appropriate assistance is issued.

Problems with multiple clients may suggest something is wrong elsewhere. Are you sure you're not behind a firewall that blocks torrent traffic? Perhaps your own ISP is blocking it? Have you tried using different ports within all those programs? Are those ports opened on your machine?

As with any other, externally activated system, people will immediately learn the frequencies used to alter the state of the coating, with devices emitting the signal appearing on the black market soon afterwards. Of course, one can always argue that the signal emitters may have to be quite complicated, but that's rather impossible if the solution is to be implemented world-wide. Otherwise only the biggest shops will afford spending additional money on such a solution, and thus they will need CD/DVDs produced specifically for themselves, which will elevate the costs even higher. One can presume that -R(W) media will be (much) more expensive as well (companies would have to alter the manufacturing lines for relatively few customers).Offering a kind of security that can be provided by more advanced coding algorithms (one you know the frequency/password, the whole scheme is useless), and being quite expensive, this solution is bound to fail.

Excuse my curiosity, but how come you have a computer that's 20 years old and you've made 5k-worth upgrades on it (now it being a speed demon), and it's still your favourite old PC? Now don't get me wrong, but is there any single piece of hardware in that machine that is 20 years old (or even 10)? Even computer case standards changed over time and new upgrades would not fit with the old ones...As for your problems, they may come again if you'll not protect your system. Install a good firewall and use a secure browser (ZoneAlarm and Firefox may serve you well). A good antivirus software. Don't rely on any security software embedded into Vista.

I'm for removal of the section, or at least removal of the post counter around here. I was quite surprised when, after passing by the "technically minded forums only!" warnings, I saw the gaming section. Although I admit that I've posted several times here, and some of the threads are on a high quality level, a lot of them are not. If fact, I'm a staff member on a site with 25000-members community, and I know how hard it is to moderate such section, which already is on the edge of usefulness for otherwise fine themed-forums. It is true that some of us participate in fine game-related discussions here, but there are other places (Xisto among them) we can do that on, and seeing how this section becomes an excuse for the said one-liners or other posts that nobody will read I definitely support Mark420's idea. I also would not mind deletion of my posts in this section, and would prefer the staff focusing on the threads more essential to the site's theme, instead of wasting time here.

An exceptional title indeed (both the original and expansion-wise). I'm not much into multiplayer but those games sported a fabulous hard S-F plot, hard to find in more story-rich genres like FPP, RPG or even adventure. However, as good RTS as those were, the single-player campaigns were fun while you were able to fight against other races, finding their particular strengths and weaknesses in relation to current terrain and mission goals. When you started to compete against your own breed however, it was becoming a bit tedious. Still, one of the best RTS I've played, regularly playing a game with a friend of mine from time to time. On a little side note, hardcore fans may find the following quite enjoyable on their coffee break: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/255273

While it is a fun, top-down flash game, the levels get boring quite fast (same size, same building blocks). It doesn't remind DOOM in any way, neither where graphics or sound are concerned. Still, I will keep my eye out for a real DOOM flash conversion.

eminus, I must admit that I'm always surprised with an approach like the one of yours. Let me explain my point of view: the humanity has barely started to explore its own solar system, not even our own galaxy. We have just put our foot on the Moon, and not even Mars yet. We don't even have the technical possibility to see (not to mention probing) all the planets circling only the stars nearest to our own homeworld. It's hard to say that we are sure of actually anything even about our immediate surroundings (space-wise). Now let me put the above into proper perspective: Our Sun is located on the outskirts of our Milkyway galaxy, in a region rather lightly populated with stars (minor Orion Arm). It is estimated that only our galaxy contains 200-400 billions stars. Our galaxy is one of the 30-50 others only in our Local Group. It is estimated that the observable universe contains billions of galaxies (between 1×1010 and 8×1010). But wait, there is more: Our Sun (not even The Earth itself) is only 4.57 billion years old, whereas the universe itself has 13.7 billion years (3x more). Now compare that to a lifespan of a regular human being and that of our intelligent civilisation. With all this in mind, what makes you believe that there is no (intelligent) life in the whole universe. I understand that emergence of such was a rather accidental on Earth, and is probably quite rare in the whole universe (especially the intelligent life), but with universe of that size and complexity it's hard to assume anything. But getting back to the topic, I agree with Jeigh. Still, we all forget about one important issue: technology is not enough, as economical means are equally important. With these unresolved, even with the faster-than-light drive, humanity won't be able to afford the trip. As long as humanity is divided by meaningless issues, we won't able to advance onto stars, hence I believe focusing on our own homeworld first is not only an important issue (aside of space exploration) but, in fact, it should be the priority.

Personally, I don't think is it is about belief but possibility.The thing is that, at the current state of human knowledge, we just don't know how the problem of missing mass is "solved" in the universe. Although the theory of dark matter is plausible, and in fact quite possible, we simply have too little proof for it's existence. And when we are talking about science, I think that you cannot really believe, or disbelieve something, you need to have a proof.

Still, when it comes to notebooks I prefer the built-in models, so I don't have to worry about additional cables or equipment to carry around with myself. Even with regular desktops a dongle, hanging around somewhere, is not the most professional sight either (although it can help you a lot, if you cannot get a decent wireless signal down around the metal case). With lack of built-in drivers in Vista, I think the idea loses everything basically, unless you plug the card into different machines all the time.faulty.lee, AFAIK WLAN is technically still a LAN, though I can only guess that blackandwhiteentertainment had that on his mind, especially that every machine sold these days has a built-in LAN port.