Big Brother's Pizza Delivery 82
Dusty Rhodes writes: "Lexis/Nexis, providers of massive database information services mostly to media, legal and law enforcement organizations, is hyping their new database service, BatchTrace, to track fugitives and deadbeats.
In addition to cataloging common info such as census records, driver's license records, etc., this database includes pizza delivery records, tech support call records and grocery store discount card records.
Who knew you'd need an alias to order a pizza? Pretty funny/sad stuff in the Land of the Free. What's next, a national pizza delivery ID, complete with thumbprint and DNA sample?
Thanks to Britt Sandusky for pointing us to this story."
Re:This is OK by me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Found an error? I'll fix it. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. All the things that try to connect to the internet. I run ZoneAlarm, and I have only seen
4. Generic Host Process
11. Media Player, checking for codec
I'm not saying you're lieing, but just that that's all I've run into.
As for your next paragraph--big companies move slowly, it sucks yes, but your hysterical "microsoft ignores bugs and wants people to get hacked" is off the wall.
You also talk about your theory that microsoft makes buggy software so that people will buy upgrades. What are the bugs people typically mention ? IIS, Outlook, IE, hotmail. ALL free, so your theory for those programs can't be right.
Your next paragraph also seems ridiculous, indicating some sort of spying conspiracy.
And your next paragraph is verifiably false--the corporate culture is supposed to be great at microsoft. I've known 2 interns who worked there over summers, both loved it. Motivation != quality.
the DRM stuff all seems ok
Your next paragraph about the government lost me...
Ok, your (your?) registry discussion is where I have the most problems. first you say if the registry becomes corrupted you have to re-format, re-install, etc. This is simply not true. One, Windows makes periodic backups of the registry automatically, from which to restore. You say the registry is a single very vulnerable point of failure? By being a single point, it's also easy to backup and restore. Re-formatting isn't necessary even if for some bizarre reason you had to do a re-install. Rescue install can handle that easily, if again, for some bizarre reason, the registry backups don't work. The registry prevents control by the user? Again, bull, for 99% of what most users would want to change, there is a control panel, or a settings box, or a management console, etc.
Incidentally, user registry settings are stored in a different hive file. Again, you lose me on the next part of your discussion. Under what scenario will a registry become partially corrupted and not recognize this? I've never heard of this happening, do you have any evidence that this happens? Again, you talk about re-formatting and I say bah. Next you talk about how Windows XP prevents you from backing up the registry...again simply not true. Take a look at a) the regedit export command, b) the "reg" command (console) c) I imagine it's taken care of in System Restore as well (I turned it off--never had a need for it).
The next section on backups is even MORE ridiculous. Did you even read that article?? The problem with disk duplication of windows is that the SID (MS Network IP address..a unique identifier in other words) cannot be identical. Nowhere does it say MS forbids backing up (which works fine--it ONLY doesn't work if you are replicating to multiple installs). This is pure proveable FUD.
Ok, the next part is yadda yadda yadda about Passport. I clicked no, it's never come up again, no loss of functionality, I don't see the problem.
Palladium fine, we don't know anything yet, but fine, speculate all you want..
As for the CLI, I don't know about this. I've found sound emulation to be AMAZING under XP--I've been able to run DOS games with sound (Quest for glory to be precise) that I literally haven't been able to run since DOS days.
The extra spaces thing you mention is very deliberate. You can paste as input into a program. If the command prompt arbitrarily decides to stop pasting what you have in the clipboard, you can be in for some problems here. I haven't run into any of the other problems you bemoan.
XP Scheduler inefficiencies? Again, no idea what you're talking about. Never run into it. Your language is unclear, but it seems the blame is to lay on the driver writers, not MS? So there are no buggy drivers for nix/bsd?
I've never run into that ALT+TAB bug either.
The last part again seems part out paranoid xfiles-ish to me, but hey, you can have your opinion--it's the factual errors in this article that bother me.