If you upload something to any computer outside of your control, you have to assume the worst. I wouldn't upload any documents to Google Docs that I wouldn't want general public to see. It is a nice tool to share your resume/schedule/etc though. In the same way, you shouldn't upload your photos to facebook/myspace/insert_social_network_here that you would mind if they "leaked" to the public.
But if I refuse to give the unskilled users a root password, the risk of that toolbar causing problems is much less. Unix is fundamentally more secure than NT. In order to get to root, you need to have the user enter their password. This is a well defined problem, and if a way shows up around it, it can be fixed.
Well, if I refuse to give the unskilled users an Administrator password, malware would not cause much problems to a Windows computer either. I guess that you would respond that it is impossible to use Windows as a non-admin user. Wrong, when I did desktop support for a large corporation almost none of our users had admin rights (mostly because our packages were tested and modified in order to allow that). The problem lies with third-party apps that assume that the user has admin rights, and write to system registry areas instead of %appdata% or other user-owned places.
Anyway, you can't really compare corporate and home environments. In a centrally managed environment, competent IT support can secure both types of OS'es. At home, the user needs to have root/admin access to their computer anyway.
I could have said that I haven't been using antivirus/antispyware/etc software on my computer that is running Windows for years; however, it wouldn't add much value to the discussion. I occasionally use online virus scanners, where I can upload cra^H^H^Hquestionable software and it would scan the binary for me, however this doesn't really support OP's argument. I think that if Linux had a high enough presence on computers of general public, malware makers would surely pay more attention to it.
Let's assume that Linux is installed on 80% of computers, and there are no worms or automatically replicating viruses for it (which is unlikely because all software more complex than "hello world" program has bugs). We would still have plenty of trojan-type malware that disguises itself as a toolbar / screensaver / PC optimizer / email attachment / etc... It doesn't matter how secure your OS is if the user is the weakest link, which is the case. I have rebuild and cleaned many Windows boxes from viruses, and in most cases, the machine became infected because the user willingly ran the trojan, and not because the machine was not patched.
I guess I should add that I support Linux computers (both servers and desktops) on a daily basis, and use RedHat as my home server's OS. I am just trying to be objective, and objectively, claiming that antivirus software is "required" on a Windows machine is not a good argument in support of Linux.
It depends on how you define "knowledge". I agree that manuals, scientific papers and college textbooks should be accessible to everyone. However, do you think that a novel that was created purely for entertainment purposes can be considered "knowledge" that everybody has a right to have?
Ask any college student if they consider resale value of textbooks. I know that you are mostly talking about fiction, but nevertheless college textbooks are a subset of all books.
You are comparing apples to oranges here. For a book, content is pretty much all that matters, and a very good book can be written using Notepad. However, designing something in an image manipulation program uses a lot of that program's features, so this program plays an important role in the end product.
Yeah, I'd say that current popularity of Firefox was heavily influenced by "computer enthusiasts", also known as geeks. A typical Joe Sixpack is not going to install new browser unless his local geek does it when he fixes Joe's computer. In this sense, Google failed to appeal to tech savvy folks by not releasing Linux version of Chrome and not making it customizable using add-ons. Having browsed the web with AdBlock and FlashBlock, I'm not sure I will ever use a browser that doesn't provide these features.
I don't see how this particular incident about Palin's email being cracked is worth to be remembered, especially since they didn't find anything incriminating there. Yes, a couple of emails that looked official were sent from this personal account, but comparing to white house emails being routed through RNC servers it's just too insignificant.
It wouldn't work very well, because we would have to increase the number of mod points by the order of magnitude as well to compensate for increased range.
The reason why/. moderation system is superior to all others that I have seen so far is because mod points are scarce, and people supposedly use them to mod only those comments that truly deserve it. If you give everyone 50 mod points, you will have something similar to digg, which ain't good at all.
I also would be wiling to bet if they called ATT and rationally talked to them, the bill would go away.
This could open the system to abuse. Who decides the threshold of charges being accumulated in order to have your bill waived? I could as well go to Canada and willingly accumulate a $10,000 bill, and then call AT&T and demand to have my bill dismissed once the precedent is set.
Yandex has a light version of their website (even more minimalistic than Google), just like Yahoo. The reason why Yandex is still more popular than Google in Russia is because it handles language-specific morphological variations of words better.
Quite interesting, I clicked it out of curiosity after reading your post to see if it could do any harm since I consider myself protected enough by using Firefox on Linux with some restrictive settings. *Sigh*... The only way to get rid of it was to issue "killall firefox" - so much for the pop-up blocker. I guess using NoScript is not that paranoid after all.
The article is not about H-1B visas, it's about extending work permit (OPT) for students who graduated from US universities from 1 year to 2.5 years. I am a foreign student myself pursuing a B.S., and then a M.S. degree, and I can tell you than there is no way in hell I could afford to work for less than fair market value. You might want to research how more expensive is out-of-state tuition in colleges, and whether federal student loans and various scholarships / student aids are available for non-citizens (they're not).
Do you really think that a person who could pay more than $100k for education in a state university (not even a top-notch one) would work for $15k/year? Generally they have a huge debt from taking a private student loan, and they could not afford to have a lower-paying job. I know it's fun to bash _legal_ immigrants ("they took our jobs"), but I don't think someone who went through the trouble of being in a US college for 4+ years and spending a shitload of money on it could be qualified as "unskilled" or "unmotivated". You'll make an interesting observation going to a typical Engineering or CS graduate school - the majority of grad students are not Americans.
Not always. I know someone who graduated from a community college and got a job as a desktop support tech in a large company. In 6 years through hard work he has risen to be a Senior Sysadmin leading the team. However, he recently started taking classes in an online college to "get a fancy piece of paper". Why? Because while he is well-known in the company, if he ever decides to change employers, he wouldn't even pass automated HR checks that require bachelor's degree. No matter how knowledgeable and experienced you are, you will most likely be rejected at the pre-screening step, and would not be admitted to the interview.
I find this situation highly ridiculous, but given the whole HR "process" it is not hard to believe.
You might also like Link Alert Firefox extension. It basically changes your mouse cursor to indicate the target of a link - particularly useful for "new window" links, https sites, PDFs, and javascript window.open()-style links.
The Court also found that SoftMan had not infringed on the EULA (even if it had been upheld) because SoftMan had never run the program.
This implies that you could only resell the software if you have never used it. However, what if I wanted to format my hard drive and sell my Windows XP (retail) CD with the appropriate product key? I am pretty sure it would be illegal, thus you cannot really sell "used" software.
If you have more than a month uptime on any system, you are not applying the patches correctly
There, fixed that for you.
It is a common myth that Linux systems don't require rebooting. I manage several RHEL4 and 5 machines, and Red Hat regularly releases updated kernels, which means that you pretty much have to reboot them.
Sure, you can have some ancient version of Unix/Linux that works as long as hardware doesn't fail, but you better not connect it to the Internet.
YMMV. After working for a couple of years in desktop support, I can say that Dell Optiplexes are much inferior to HPs (mostly leaking capacitors problem, but not limited to it).
For instance, you may have to stop thinking where you want to go, and instead start thinking of what you want to find.
If I didn't know where I wanted to go, I'd use Google. The address bar, a.k.a. the URL bar, is there to type (guess what?) addresses or URLs. If you don't know exactly what you want, there is a little Google bar right next to it.
One of the main things people that don't like the "Awesome" bar want is consistency. If I do actions A, B, C today and get the result Y, it would be nice to know that I will still get the same result in a week if I do the same actions. I don't want my computer to "adapt", "learn" and "think" on its own. It's a fscking machine that I own after all, and I want it to do behave consistently.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post reminded me of the barometer problem. I'm sure you were trying to make the same point.
If you upload something to any computer outside of your control, you have to assume the worst. I wouldn't upload any documents to Google Docs that I wouldn't want general public to see. It is a nice tool to share your resume/schedule/etc though. In the same way, you shouldn't upload your photos to facebook/myspace/insert_social_network_here that you would mind if they "leaked" to the public.
Well, if I refuse to give the unskilled users an Administrator password, malware would not cause much problems to a Windows computer either. I guess that you would respond that it is impossible to use Windows as a non-admin user. Wrong, when I did desktop support for a large corporation almost none of our users had admin rights (mostly because our packages were tested and modified in order to allow that). The problem lies with third-party apps that assume that the user has admin rights, and write to system registry areas instead of %appdata% or other user-owned places.
Anyway, you can't really compare corporate and home environments. In a centrally managed environment, competent IT support can secure both types of OS'es. At home, the user needs to have root/admin access to their computer anyway.
I could have said that I haven't been using antivirus/antispyware/etc software on my computer that is running Windows for years; however, it wouldn't add much value to the discussion. I occasionally use online virus scanners, where I can upload cra^H^H^Hquestionable software and it would scan the binary for me, however this doesn't really support OP's argument. I think that if Linux had a high enough presence on computers of general public, malware makers would surely pay more attention to it.
Let's assume that Linux is installed on 80% of computers, and there are no worms or automatically replicating viruses for it (which is unlikely because all software more complex than "hello world" program has bugs). We would still have plenty of trojan-type malware that disguises itself as a toolbar / screensaver / PC optimizer / email attachment / etc... It doesn't matter how secure your OS is if the user is the weakest link, which is the case. I have rebuild and cleaned many Windows boxes from viruses, and in most cases, the machine became infected because the user willingly ran the trojan, and not because the machine was not patched.
I guess I should add that I support Linux computers (both servers and desktops) on a daily basis, and use RedHat as my home server's OS. I am just trying to be objective, and objectively, claiming that antivirus software is "required" on a Windows machine is not a good argument in support of Linux.
that XP (and other versions of Windows) REQUIRE the use of: <...>
Yes, you CAN do without it
(emphasis added)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
It depends on how you define "knowledge". I agree that manuals, scientific papers and college textbooks should be accessible to everyone. However, do you think that a novel that was created purely for entertainment purposes can be considered "knowledge" that everybody has a right to have?
Ask any college student if they consider resale value of textbooks. I know that you are mostly talking about fiction, but nevertheless college textbooks are a subset of all books.
You are comparing apples to oranges here. For a book, content is pretty much all that matters, and a very good book can be written using Notepad. However, designing something in an image manipulation program uses a lot of that program's features, so this program plays an important role in the end product.
I think I've seen it somewhere.
Yeah, I'd say that current popularity of Firefox was heavily influenced by "computer enthusiasts", also known as geeks. A typical Joe Sixpack is not going to install new browser unless his local geek does it when he fixes Joe's computer. In this sense, Google failed to appeal to tech savvy folks by not releasing Linux version of Chrome and not making it customizable using add-ons. Having browsed the web with AdBlock and FlashBlock, I'm not sure I will ever use a browser that doesn't provide these features.
Google products coming out of beta? I'll be playing Duke Nukem Forever long time before it happens.
I don't see how this particular incident about Palin's email being cracked is worth to be remembered, especially since they didn't find anything incriminating there. Yes, a couple of emails that looked official were sent from this personal account, but comparing to white house emails being routed through RNC servers it's just too insignificant.
It wouldn't work very well, because we would have to increase the number of mod points by the order of magnitude as well to compensate for increased range.
/. moderation system is superior to all others that I have seen so far is because mod points are scarce, and people supposedly use them to mod only those comments that truly deserve it. If you give everyone 50 mod points, you will have something similar to digg, which ain't good at all.
The reason why
Sounds like a nice way to encourage EA to continue producing broken games.
I also would be wiling to bet if they called ATT and rationally talked to them, the bill would go away.
This could open the system to abuse. Who decides the threshold of charges being accumulated in order to have your bill waived? I could as well go to Canada and willingly accumulate a $10,000 bill, and then call AT&T and demand to have my bill dismissed once the precedent is set.
Yandex has a light version of their website (even more minimalistic than Google), just like Yahoo. The reason why Yandex is still more popular than Google in Russia is because it handles language-specific morphological variations of words better.
Quite interesting, I clicked it out of curiosity after reading your post to see if it could do any harm since I consider myself protected enough by using Firefox on Linux with some restrictive settings. *Sigh*... The only way to get rid of it was to issue "killall firefox" - so much for the pop-up blocker. I guess using NoScript is not that paranoid after all.
I prefer to buy a $200 textbook and sell it the next semester for about the same price
Unless a new edition with only cosmetic changes comes out, and your book is suddenly worth $5 instead of $200.
The article is not about H-1B visas, it's about extending work permit (OPT) for students who graduated from US universities from 1 year to 2.5 years. I am a foreign student myself pursuing a B.S., and then a M.S. degree, and I can tell you than there is no way in hell I could afford to work for less than fair market value. You might want to research how more expensive is out-of-state tuition in colleges, and whether federal student loans and various scholarships / student aids are available for non-citizens (they're not).
Do you really think that a person who could pay more than $100k for education in a state university (not even a top-notch one) would work for $15k/year? Generally they have a huge debt from taking a private student loan, and they could not afford to have a lower-paying job. I know it's fun to bash _legal_ immigrants ("they took our jobs"), but I don't think someone who went through the trouble of being in a US college for 4+ years and spending a shitload of money on it could be qualified as "unskilled" or "unmotivated". You'll make an interesting observation going to a typical Engineering or CS graduate school - the majority of grad students are not Americans.
Not always. I know someone who graduated from a community college and got a job as a desktop support tech in a large company. In 6 years through hard work he has risen to be a Senior Sysadmin leading the team. However, he recently started taking classes in an online college to "get a fancy piece of paper". Why? Because while he is well-known in the company, if he ever decides to change employers, he wouldn't even pass automated HR checks that require bachelor's degree. No matter how knowledgeable and experienced you are, you will most likely be rejected at the pre-screening step, and would not be admitted to the interview.
I find this situation highly ridiculous, but given the whole HR "process" it is not hard to believe.
You might also like Link Alert Firefox extension. It basically changes your mouse cursor to indicate the target of a link - particularly useful for "new window" links, https sites, PDFs, and javascript window.open()-style links.
The Court also found that SoftMan had not infringed on the EULA (even if it had been upheld) because SoftMan had never run the program.
This implies that you could only resell the software if you have never used it. However, what if I wanted to format my hard drive and sell my Windows XP (retail) CD with the appropriate product key? I am pretty sure it would be illegal, thus you cannot really sell "used" software.
If you have more than a month uptime on any system, you are not applying the patches correctly
There, fixed that for you.
It is a common myth that Linux systems don't require rebooting. I manage several RHEL4 and 5 machines, and Red Hat regularly releases updated kernels, which means that you pretty much have to reboot them.
Sure, you can have some ancient version of Unix/Linux that works as long as hardware doesn't fail, but you better not connect it to the Internet.
YMMV. After working for a couple of years in desktop support, I can say that Dell Optiplexes are much inferior to HPs (mostly leaking capacitors problem, but not limited to it).
For instance, you may have to stop thinking where you want to go, and instead start thinking of what you want to find.
If I didn't know where I wanted to go, I'd use Google. The address bar, a.k.a. the URL bar, is there to type (guess what?) addresses or URLs. If you don't know exactly what you want, there is a little Google bar right next to it.
One of the main things people that don't like the "Awesome" bar want is consistency. If I do actions A, B, C today and get the result Y, it would be nice to know that I will still get the same result in a week if I do the same actions. I don't want my computer to "adapt", "learn" and "think" on its own. It's a fscking machine that I own after all, and I want it to do behave consistently.