You're right, we should be congradulating Captain Obvious for bringing up glaring security concerns when the rest of his company has proven to not give a shit.
Microsoft Fanboi much? "The rest of his company"? What you mean because some Microsoft products had/have security issues then that means anyone who works there doesn't care about security? Even for the people who were directly responsible for those insecure products it doesn't mean they don't care. If that's the case then no-one whose ever worked on any program ever cares about security. So fuck everyone I guess.
And why is he Captain Obvious? If it's so obvious then everyone should be complaining about it. Even if it is obvious and people aren't complaining about it, then he should be congratulated for doing that, for actually bothering to speak out. Since this problem is so obvious and you're so security-conscious I bet you've contacted your bank and written numerous articles about the situation in an attempt to fix it? What's that? "No"? You haven't done a fucking thing? Well I guess maybe you should shut the fuck up then because we both know your bitching has nothing to do with the article and everything to do with where it came from.
I love how you have such a skewed little piss-ant view of the world that someone being objective can be labelled a "Microsoft Fanboi". When Microsoft fuck up, I'll say so. When a Microsoft employee writes an article that's true, valid, and very much relevant, I'll congratulate them.
And don't tell me about how it's a big company. It's a big black pot talking shit to the kettle.
Fuck Microsoft. If there's anything that banks need to be told, it's that they need to quit checking user-agent headers and redirecting us to stupid pages telling us to use Internet Explorer. I can't believe you got modded insightful for this. If that article had been made by the Firefox team your post would've no doubt been something along the lines of "yeah, stick it to the man! Fuck those big business banks and their insecure products. OPEN SOURCE 4EVA1!!!1!". But because it's a Microsoft employee who is writing something quite correctly about a major security issue affecting millions of people and billions of pounds/dollars/yen/whatever then "Fuck Microsoft", right? This guy works on a completely different application than Hotmail, but it's still Microsoft, so fuck him. It's all Microsoft, and you just know all those guys are just out to screw us honest people coz they're fucking big business and FUCK BIG BUSINESS USE FIREFOX YO ITS SO SECURE IE SUX FIREFOXX RULEZ!!!!!!!£"21!!, right? Isn't that how it works. This is slashdot and we love open source and we hate closed source and we hate Microsoft because fuck them!
Or maybe you're just an idiot.
"Hypocrisy" is about right, but it's not the article's author who's the hypocrite here.
Maybe you just need one correct definition of irony, because I don't see anything ironic here.
Oh wait, IE is known for having exploits, therefore an IE developer talking about security of any kind, even SSL/TLS which IE supports fully, correctly and handles sensibly, is ironic, right? That's ironic indeed. You and Alanis Morisette should team up and write a song about these things you find ironic. I'd listen, I really would.
Surely anyone who logs onto their bank site from a wireless connection in a coffee shop is just asking to get owned? - Not if the site is using the appropriate encryption mechanisms.
Not sure about the replayability of PS:T. It's a great game with a great story but the focus on the story means that once you've played it through a couple of times you need to wait a long while before you can go back and be pleasantly surprised again.
But I would say that Diablo Battle Chest would provide the most replayability and the most depth (if you like RPG types). And once the game gets old you can use the packaging as a raft to get home.
don't know about you, but if I was a hacker... Having "the first guy to break OS X/Linux security" with a massive security hole on a massive scale would seem rather appealing on my resume. Just think of the bragging rights alone which you could beat over the head of all the naysayers.
So why hasn't there been any persons up to the task? It depends on what kinds of hackers we're talking about. Generally speaking when people think poor security they remember security issues which were exploited in some way. If you're a malicious hacker out to exploit security holes then having "the first guy to break OS X/Linux security" on your resume is liable to get you arrested. To put this another way, the guys who make the real headlines security-wise are the guys who aren't in it for the bragging rights, at least not outside very specific circles, they're the guys who are in it for the money or the "power" which typically and most easily comes from breaking the most systems possible. No doubt all UNIX, Linux, BSD etc. systems have taken their share of exploit attempts at the server-level at least. After all, exploiting the right server can pay off a thousand-times better than exploiting home systems. The kicker is though that they're servers, which means they're operated in a completely different way to home systems and are typically administered by people who know what they're doing. This is where Linux et al. really do have a degree of security through obscurity: the home user market. Desktop Linux for the truly clueless end user is something for which Linux doesn't have a proven track record because it's a market which AFAIK never has been targeted specifically.
And that's where the real test of Linux security will soon come. We all know it can be made into a secure system by knowledgeable admins in server settings, what we need to know now is how it performs when the system admins are John "what's an admin" Smith and friends. In that market it becomes less about which OS can be more secure and more about which can be more secure without hampering the user to the point they do stupid things or disable important security measures or just plain quit and use another OS. It requires a very different balance between useability and security than the server market and it remains to be seen whether the most popular desktop Linux distros like Ubuntu have got it right. We know Microsoft has got it pretty badly wrong with Vista's UAC right now despite Vista appearing to be technically an all-round more secure OS than XP. Only time and desktop Linux success will tell whether Linux as a technically more secure OS than XP and Vista has the correct approach to secure a security-ignorant user's system appropriately.
It may seem pointless to want both higher performance (multi-casting UDP, essentially infinite IP address space) and low performance and ad-hoc systems, but please consider: the UK and USA seem to be going down the wrong path of surveillance and citizen control, the Internet may someday be viewed as something that the public just should not have because it is too free a source of information. I hope that I am wrong about this, but this unpleasant possible repressive future is a possibility. Although finding alternative methods of networking and sharing information is always a welcome step, ultimately the only thing that will stop the progression of Orwellian "security at all costs" government control is education and subsequent action by the general populace. Otherwise the second your ad-hoc network challenges the censored internet they'll be driving past your home with wi-fi scanners and knocking on your door shortly thereafter. More to the point, it shouldn't be necessary for such action. We'll never have truly free communication as long as the people believe it is their lot to try and work around their government's draconian measures instead of standing against them to stop it. I'm not quite advocating blowing up parliament just yet but it would be nice if people at least realised that they can do more with their voices then just complain to each other about the state of our country.
It's fallacious because you're saying it should be as easy to operate a Computer as it is a drill. I've never seen a more than trivial app where the menus, windows and tabs intuitively led you to what you were looking for and the more complex the app the more confusing and arbitrary the menus, windows and tab are going to be. It's easier to find an arcane feature by typing in "/" in a man page than to search through menus to fine where it's hidden or looking through a 15 pound book and the man page is there whenever I need it.
That's not what I said at all. I used a metaphor for the experience of "researching a tool while using it" to highlight the fact that the casual user wants no such experience and simply wants to use a tool to get a job done. I'm curious though, why would a more complex app use arbitrary menus? That sounds more like FUD that sounds nice if you don't think about it but give it a second's thought and it doesn't stand up to reason at all.
You're arguing in circles. You say you shouldn't need manuals and you shouldn't need to memorize but somehow all knowledge of how to use and configure an app should just magically appear in your head. If you're saying someone who has never used a computer before is going to be able to sit down and "intuitively" figure out how to use a menu very well know what all the words in a menu mean I call bullshit. If Windows is so intuitive why are there shelves and shelves of Windows books in every technical book store. You find the GUI in Word easy because you've been using it for a long time. For someone who never used the app it's a maze of twisty passages. It's "intuitive" to you because you've had years of training to learn that "intuition". Vi is "intuitive" to me for the same reason. Neither is more "intuitive" to someone who has never used a computer before (well I'll give some on vi but it's a bad example). And I've encountered many more GUIs that were outright obtuse than I have man pages that were obtuse.
Knowing the fundamentals of computer use and terminology isn't the same as having to memorise CLI command names and the names and uses for all of their switches. Again you're talking about Windows as if that has anything to do with this, it doesn't. It isn't about the GUI in Word because the GUI in Word is really no different from the GUI in any other app. That's the point. There is greater uniformity and more inherent labelling in a way that is easy to follow step-by-step if need be.
It has every relevance. You've grown up with Windows. That's why you find the Windows way easier. For administrative type stuff the CLI beats the GUI in both speed and flexibility while in some cases being somewhat more complex. Every try to automate a task on Windows? It's impossible without adding Cygwin.
I didn't grow up with Windows, I grew up with Commodore 64s and BBC Micros, then later Acorn Archimedes. Neither C64s nor BBC Micros were GUI-based, the Acorn's were. 15 years later and I couldn't tell you how to do a damn thing with either the C64 or the BBC Micro, but I bet 2 minutes with that Acorn I'd have no problems at all with it. Why is automation easier with CLI stuff? Maybe if you use a specific automation app which happens to use CLI, but then someone can do the same thing with a GUI app. If you mean it's harder to communicate between GUI apps than CLI ones there's truth in that on Linux, but that's simply because Linux lacks a decent standardised platform/protocol to communicate between apps. I've never used CORBA but from what I understand it's a mess. As for Windows well COM does an OK job of it. On a whole there's less GUI apps that support such methods than CLI ones, but that's an issue for developers not for end users which is what we're discussing here, and it's not a problem that couldn't be fixed in Linux if developers stopped fellating the command-line-Gods long enough to put their heads together to fix the situation.
So I guess knowledge just magically jumps into your head. Must be nice. I know whether it's a GUI tool or the command line I have to research how to configure and do things on my computers. I find a set of clear concise documented tools much easier to use than a maze of undocumented menus, windows and tabs.
It does jump into my head. Not using magic though, using the wonder of sight. Any menu and option/control is labelled so you can quite easily follow a logical path to find the option and what it does. A little more intuitive than a blinking command prompt, don't you think?
When's the last time you used your drill for to track your expenses or edit a picture or do your taxes or research refrigerators? You know what? I think a computer just might be a just little more complex than a drill. Kind of makes your comparison a little fallacious.
How does that make my argument fallacious? It just proves my point precisely. A more complex machine means even more confusing manuals, meaning all the more reason not be expected to memorise the means to correctly operate it without having to rely on those manuals.
Reference information? I thought you were the one who didn't feel that kind of thing should be necessary? It's not a matter of using the control. It's a matter of finding the control for what you're trying to change. It's the difference between digging through layer upon layer of menus, windows and tabs to find the checkbox or typing "man vi".
Reference information shouldn't be necessary. It can be useful though. As I stated quite clearly, the help file is there as a backup if you don't understand the label or the context-sensitive tooltip or any other text that may be associated with it in the GUI itself. You talk about finding controls and layers of menus as if it's a maze. Most decent apps will provide any option within three menus/dialogs. Menus and dialogs which are clearly labelled. Contrast this with "man vi". OK, now I'm looking at 428 pages of prose, listing approximately 60 switches, of which less than half have long options meaning I have to read the text associated with each of those to see if it does what I want. Yeah, that's better...
Don't you think it's a little unreasonable for people to have to memorize which of million or so menu/window/tab paths (do the math sometime) gets them to the thing they want to access with limited or no documentation rather than simple typing "man whatever" to find the switch they forgot.
a GUI tool often isn't the quick and easiest method of doing things. At least with Linux I have the option of either way 90% of the time. Oh, and the other 10% are mostly things you can't even do on Windows at all.
As I've already stated, the "million menu/window/tabs" is a complete fallacy for any remotely well-designed app. The fact that any menus/windows/tabs are all labelled along the way makes it a hell of a lot easier than using switches. What's that about "limited or no documentation"? As my previous post explained, a GUI is just as likely to have documentation as a CLI app, but more importantly it provides and displays relevant and appropriate information to the context of the option/command/whatever you wish to know about.
A GUI tool is only slower than a CLI app if you already know your way around the CLI app and remember all relevant switches. Otherwise you've got a lot of reading to do. Even if you do know your way around your CLI it's no guarantee since, as I mentioned previously, CLI apps are typically limited by their interfaces to focusing on a single operation or subtask meaning you'll often need several of them to perform a single practical task.
As for the Linux vs. Windows stuff, that has no relevance to what I or the GP's were discussing. This isn't about Linux vs. Windows, it's about GUIs being the more practical means of interface for the common computer user. In order for Linux to be a serious contender for mass appeal it
Sorry, but no. Just no. I bet you're glad this is all happening over the internet because there's no way you could've kept a straight face when you were writing that.
You are wrong, or at least wired differently from me and other command-line people.
It's not about memorizing arcane commands. It's about being able and willing to research the tools while using them. "How can I use the find command to list all files larger than a gigabyte? *browses the man page* Oh, that's how. *back to work*" If you still know how two weeks later; fine. If not, you simply read the man page again.
I bet he's wired differently. As am I. As are the vast majority of people on this planet. We see computers above all else as tools to do things, not something to be investigated in and of themselves. Sure, plenty of people such as myself might be interested in how they work might even program them, but the primary reason to use a computer is to complete a task of some kind, even if that task is just playing a game and having fun. We don't want to research the tools while using them, we just want to use them.
No regular person wants to read a manual either. How would you feel if your power drill disassembled itself each month and you had to read a manual of randomly arrowed diagrams and Korean instructions, would you still appreciate "researching tools while using them"? Because that's what man pages are to the common computer user: an absolute mess of technical terms and presumed prior knowledge that can only be half understood unless you're willing to take your computer use up from casual user to demi-expert. Most users aren't willing to do that, and there's absolutely no reason they should.
And seriously, how is a GUI better? Take the MS Word preferences which I battled yesterday. A tiny window filled with twelve tabbed screens which jump around at random, each containing more than a dozen settings and frequently sub-dialogues. And no useful reference documentation which explains what these bloody settings actually do.
MS Word gave you a tiny window? What do you mean it was too small to read the information it presented, or is that just a result of the GUI approach allowing the information to be compressed in a way that you as a command-line user aren't used to? If the Window is really too small in some way then that's an individual issue with that app's UI, not a problem inherent to GUIs themselves.
As for having multiple tabs, it's called categorisation. It's useful for preventing information overload that you commonly get with CLI apps when using "--help" or using man pages. It provides a far more accessible and much less overwhelming way to present the available options.
Sub-dialogs? Yes, some applications may over-use them, again not a problem for many many others though and not a direct result of a GUI. Good use of sub-dialogs is entirely appropriate in some situations though. For very rarely used options or "expert" options which can cause issues if misused it makes sense to not display these alongside the regularly used and innocuous options. Again this prevents information overload and helps new users from accidentally changing critical settings without realising their importance.
No useful reference information in MS Word? I haven't used it in a long time but still I find that very hard to believe. Even if by some chance MS Word doesn't provide that info almost any and every other half-decent GUI app does, and in far more intuitive ways than any CLI app I've seen. For one thing the nature of the options is implictly given by the type of control they use (ie. checkbox, editbox, choice dropdown, etc.), the controls are invariably labelled of course, they'll also typically have a context-sensitive help in the dialog itself (in Windows this would be accessible from the "?" button, in GNOME it's just a mouse-over). If that doesn't give you enough information there's always a help file which gives full documentation.
Yes, UI customisation is a big deal. My web browser is probably the application I use more than any other. With all that time spent using it, a browser's interface and capability to let me customise that interface are fundamental to the experience.
You can moan all you want about lack of standards support, and truth told I moan about it a lot too, but the reality is that web developers are vastly outnumbered by the number of people who just use the web. Standards don't mean a thing to them, they want a pleasant browsing experience, which as much as anything else means a good browser interface. The fact that IE7 sorely lacks that is made all the more glaring by Firefox's excellent UI customisability and also by the fact that IE7's UI is actually far less customisable than IE6's. 5 years work and Microsoft actually came out with a browser that provides a worse experience for the end user.
Short of security, UI is probably the next most important thing. You can make a browser that correctly renders every two-bit web standard in the world and people will still hate the damn thing if the interface sucks. When IE7 came out a lot of people speculated it would halt the growth of Firefox's user share. The fact that it hasn't in the slightest can largely be attributed to IE7's interface IMO.
Some things cannot be directly observed. A purported sixth sense is not one of them. The entire reason some people believe this ability even exists is based on anecdotal evidence such as people knowing when they're being watched or when something bad happens to someone they know a long way away. Such things can obviously be measured empirically. A sixth sense and similar ideas like ESP have been studied in great depth many times and never has substantial evidence been found to support their existence. I don't deny the possibility of humans having abilities based on phenomena we cannot yet measure or determine, but we should still be able to observe the presence of these abilities when they manifest. As yet no study I'm aware of has made such an observation.
Pick someone, anyone, out of a crowd, on the highway (not recommended if you are driving), etc., from who you are out of their field of view. Stare at them intensely for a few seconds. Direct a strong emotion towards them if you can -- hate, fear, rage, etc. I guarantee you that most of them will look back at you nervously. It may not work for everyone because some people are less aware of their '6th sense' than others. - I'll bet a million simoleans that this experiment will find that the number of people who are "aware of their 6th sense" happens to directly correspond to the number of people who would simply by chance turn around and wonder "WTF is that guy looking at?". Funny that. It may seem to the casual starer that more people turn and look at them, but it's simply a case of them subconsciously dismissing the people who don't turn but explicitly noticing the people who do. You might want to look into selection bias for more info on the topic.
I was reading a military close quarters combat manual and they made reference to a "sixth sense". It stated explicitly NOT to look directly at the enemy before you walk up to them and kill them silently one way or another. You are supposed to look at the ground by their feet and not think about them before you "off" them. - Of course you shouldn't be looking directly at them. You should be looking at the path between you and them. If you walk up to someone while staring directly ahead you're more likely to stand on something loudly or trip or generally fuck up your silent approach. As for thinking about them, well it's generally not a good idea to concentrate too much on someone you're about to kill. The more you think about them the more real and human they become.
It is amazing to me how many people do not believe that we have a sixth sense, the ability to know someone is looking at you even though they are not in your field of vision. I have yet to see science explain this... - I've yet to see anyone come up with a reliable and objective experiment that provided any evidence of a "sixth sense". Science can't explain something that hasn't been empirically observed.
Trying to get a handle on this kind of theft is like trying to get your hands around some liquid. There's just no way to contain the stuff, it's going to come leaking out between your fingers somehow.
This reminds me a bit of the statistic I heard where more and more people are, in the face of those microchip car keys, just breaking into homes and stealing the keys rather than breaking into the car. If they need me to activate my device before they can take it, they're just going to pull a gun or knife on me. - Yeah. Trying to stop crime is hard. Let's not try. I don't know whether the statistic about chipped car keys is true, but if it is then the obvious next step would be to increase home security - something which is a hell of a lot easier to do than increasing car security. Suddenly it really is a lot harder to steal a car.
Requiring it to be activated might mean that it becomes more likely they'll pull a weapon. On the plus side that means a mugger now has to be willing to up the stakes on their crime from simple robbery to threatening with a deadly weapon which of course is a much more serious offence. At the very least it means they won't be able to just attack first and then rob you since they'll need you conscious and coherent to activate it, which of course then increases the chances of you identifying them later.
I'm not saying that fingerprinting is necessarily the way to go, but there is merit to the idea of at least allowing high-tech devices like iPods to be lockable in some way.
The music industry aren't complete idiots. They know people don't want DRM'ed music, just like they knew people didn't want to pay inflated prices for records for 30+ years. That's not the point though. It's not about what we want, it's about what they want, and what they're willing to do to get it. Whether they violate racketeering laws, buy legislature, or lie straight to the faces of their customers every second of every day, it's not because they're stupid. It's because they're greedy crooks.
Personally, I installed Ubuntu 6.x to see how it feels, and I'm pleasantly impressed. A couple of hours and everything I need is working fine (YMMV). I know that most of the users that I help would be good to go with Ubuntu. A great many people don't want or need all that an OS can provide. Hell, some of them probably don't need anything more than email and a browser, but that's another story. I think that Redmond needs to be getting worried soon. The real worry comes when major PC distributors start providing pre-installed Linux boxes. Until then it doesn't matter if Ubuntu matches or beats Windows in every way, Windows will still win by default. Once you can buy a computer with Ubuntu pre-installed then it's time for an advertising campaign similar to how Firefox went about it.
Ubuntu is about up to speed with Windows, which is a great first step. But right now Windows has convenience and user ignorance on it's side. Once those advantages are gone then we can really talk about Ubuntu taking on Windows for market share.
Does this mean we won't be getting these bi-weekly updates on how Professor Wingwang from Xyzzy University has sent data at ridiculously high speeds over specialised networks using specialised hardware and specialised protocols?
It's interesting the first time you hear that somebody has sent data at 346363GiB/s or whatever, but there's only so many times you can nod and think "how nice for them" until you start wondering why you're not hearing anything about what's being done to prevent the incapacitation of that "Internet 1" thing the rest of us chug along on.
DRM and Fair Use are mutually incompatible terms. I'm sure the MPAA understand that just fine. That's why Dan Glickman is happy to come out in support of Fair Use, knowing full well that it's been made impossible to implement it without breaking the law thanks to DMCA & DRM.
What they're counting on is that the audience don't understand that the two are mutually exclusive. That way to the ignorant listener the MPAA is fighting those evil pirates to protect us consumers from their evil ways. Cue applause and shouts of "God bless you Dan Glickman!" etc.
She could look at the battery in a commercial, and it would burst into flames. She would then say her catch phrase in her normal-brain-dead manner... What's Paris Hilton's catchphrase, "Sony's lithium-ion batteries are liable to burst into flames please be aware there is a recall"?
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Microsoft Fanboi much? "The rest of his company"? What you mean because some Microsoft products had/have security issues then that means anyone who works there doesn't care about security? Even for the people who were directly responsible for those insecure products it doesn't mean they don't care. If that's the case then no-one whose ever worked on any program ever cares about security. So fuck everyone I guess.
And why is he Captain Obvious? If it's so obvious then everyone should be complaining about it. Even if it is obvious and people aren't complaining about it, then he should be congratulated for doing that, for actually bothering to speak out. Since this problem is so obvious and you're so security-conscious I bet you've contacted your bank and written numerous articles about the situation in an attempt to fix it? What's that? "No"? You haven't done a fucking thing? Well I guess maybe you should shut the fuck up then because we both know your bitching has nothing to do with the article and everything to do with where it came from.
I love how you have such a skewed little piss-ant view of the world that someone being objective can be labelled a "Microsoft Fanboi". When Microsoft fuck up, I'll say so. When a Microsoft employee writes an article that's true, valid, and very much relevant, I'll congratulate them.
Microsoft does.
And don't tell me about how it's a big company. It's a big black pot talking shit to the kettle.
Fuck Microsoft.
If there's anything that banks need to be told, it's that they need to quit checking user-agent headers and redirecting us to stupid pages telling us to use Internet Explorer. I can't believe you got modded insightful for this. If that article had been made by the Firefox team your post would've no doubt been something along the lines of "yeah, stick it to the man! Fuck those big business banks and their insecure products. OPEN SOURCE 4EVA1!!!1!". But because it's a Microsoft employee who is writing something quite correctly about a major security issue affecting millions of people and billions of pounds/dollars/yen/whatever then "Fuck Microsoft", right? This guy works on a completely different application than Hotmail, but it's still Microsoft, so fuck him. It's all Microsoft, and you just know all those guys are just out to screw us honest people coz they're fucking big business and FUCK BIG BUSINESS USE FIREFOX YO ITS SO SECURE IE SUX FIREFOXX RULEZ!!!!!!!£"21!!, right? Isn't that how it works. This is slashdot and we love open source and we hate closed source and we hate Microsoft because fuck them!
Or maybe you're just an idiot.
"Hypocrisy" is about right, but it's not the article's author who's the hypocrite here.
Maybe you just need one correct definition of irony, because I don't see anything ironic here.
Oh wait, IE is known for having exploits, therefore an IE developer talking about security of any kind, even SSL/TLS which IE supports fully, correctly and handles sensibly, is ironic, right? That's ironic indeed. You and Alanis Morisette should team up and write a song about these things you find ironic. I'd listen, I really would.
They're just file extensions buddy, they can't hurt you.
Not sure about the replayability of PS:T. It's a great game with a great story but the focus on the story means that once you've played it through a couple of times you need to wait a long while before you can go back and be pleasantly surprised again.
So why hasn't there been any persons up to the task? It depends on what kinds of hackers we're talking about. Generally speaking when people think poor security they remember security issues which were exploited in some way. If you're a malicious hacker out to exploit security holes then having "the first guy to break OS X/Linux security" on your resume is liable to get you arrested. To put this another way, the guys who make the real headlines security-wise are the guys who aren't in it for the bragging rights, at least not outside very specific circles, they're the guys who are in it for the money or the "power" which typically and most easily comes from breaking the most systems possible. No doubt all UNIX, Linux, BSD etc. systems have taken their share of exploit attempts at the server-level at least. After all, exploiting the right server can pay off a thousand-times better than exploiting home systems. The kicker is though that they're servers, which means they're operated in a completely different way to home systems and are typically administered by people who know what they're doing. This is where Linux et al. really do have a degree of security through obscurity: the home user market. Desktop Linux for the truly clueless end user is something for which Linux doesn't have a proven track record because it's a market which AFAIK never has been targeted specifically.
And that's where the real test of Linux security will soon come. We all know it can be made into a secure system by knowledgeable admins in server settings, what we need to know now is how it performs when the system admins are John "what's an admin" Smith and friends. In that market it becomes less about which OS can be more secure and more about which can be more secure without hampering the user to the point they do stupid things or disable important security measures or just plain quit and use another OS. It requires a very different balance between useability and security than the server market and it remains to be seen whether the most popular desktop Linux distros like Ubuntu have got it right. We know Microsoft has got it pretty badly wrong with Vista's UAC right now despite Vista appearing to be technically an all-round more secure OS than XP. Only time and desktop Linux success will tell whether Linux as a technically more secure OS than XP and Vista has the correct approach to secure a security-ignorant user's system appropriately.
It's fallacious because you're saying it should be as easy to operate a Computer as it is a drill. I've never seen a more than trivial app where the menus, windows and tabs intuitively led you to what you were looking for and the more complex the app the more confusing and arbitrary the menus, windows and tab are going to be. It's easier to find an arcane feature by typing in "/" in a man page than to search through menus to fine where it's hidden or looking through a 15 pound book and the man page is there whenever I need it.
That's not what I said at all. I used a metaphor for the experience of "researching a tool while using it" to highlight the fact that the casual user wants no such experience and simply wants to use a tool to get a job done. I'm curious though, why would a more complex app use arbitrary menus? That sounds more like FUD that sounds nice if you don't think about it but give it a second's thought and it doesn't stand up to reason at all.
You're arguing in circles. You say you shouldn't need manuals and you shouldn't need to memorize but somehow all knowledge of how to use and configure an app should just magically appear in your head. If you're saying someone who has never used a computer before is going to be able to sit down and "intuitively" figure out how to use a menu very well know what all the words in a menu mean I call bullshit. If Windows is so intuitive why are there shelves and shelves of Windows books in every technical book store. You find the GUI in Word easy because you've been using it for a long time. For someone who never used the app it's a maze of twisty passages. It's "intuitive" to you because you've had years of training to learn that "intuition". Vi is "intuitive" to me for the same reason. Neither is more "intuitive" to someone who has never used a computer before (well I'll give some on vi but it's a bad example). And I've encountered many more GUIs that were outright obtuse than I have man pages that were obtuse.
Knowing the fundamentals of computer use and terminology isn't the same as having to memorise CLI command names and the names and uses for all of their switches. Again you're talking about Windows as if that has anything to do with this, it doesn't. It isn't about the GUI in Word because the GUI in Word is really no different from the GUI in any other app. That's the point. There is greater uniformity and more inherent labelling in a way that is easy to follow step-by-step if need be.
It has every relevance. You've grown up with Windows. That's why you find the Windows way easier. For administrative type stuff the CLI beats the GUI in both speed and flexibility while in some cases being somewhat more complex. Every try to automate a task on Windows? It's impossible without adding Cygwin.
I didn't grow up with Windows, I grew up with Commodore 64s and BBC Micros, then later Acorn Archimedes. Neither C64s nor BBC Micros were GUI-based, the Acorn's were. 15 years later and I couldn't tell you how to do a damn thing with either the C64 or the BBC Micro, but I bet 2 minutes with that Acorn I'd have no problems at all with it. Why is automation easier with CLI stuff? Maybe if you use a specific automation app which happens to use CLI, but then someone can do the same thing with a GUI app. If you mean it's harder to communicate between GUI apps than CLI ones there's truth in that on Linux, but that's simply because Linux lacks a decent standardised platform/protocol to communicate between apps. I've never used CORBA but from what I understand it's a mess. As for Windows well COM does an OK job of it. On a whole there's less GUI apps that support such methods than CLI ones, but that's an issue for developers not for end users which is what we're discussing here, and it's not a problem that couldn't be fixed in Linux if developers stopped fellating the command-line-Gods long enough to put their heads together to fix the situation.
Give me a break. There is far more easily
428 lines, not pages.
Stupid typo.
So I guess knowledge just magically jumps into your head. Must be nice. I know whether it's a GUI tool or the command line I have to research how to configure and do things on my computers. I find a set of clear concise documented tools much easier to use than a maze of undocumented menus, windows and tabs.
It does jump into my head. Not using magic though, using the wonder of sight. Any menu and option/control is labelled so you can quite easily follow a logical path to find the option and what it does. A little more intuitive than a blinking command prompt, don't you think?
When's the last time you used your drill for to track your expenses or edit a picture or do your taxes or research refrigerators? You know what? I think a computer just might be a just little more complex than a drill. Kind of makes your comparison a little fallacious.
How does that make my argument fallacious? It just proves my point precisely. A more complex machine means even more confusing manuals, meaning all the more reason not be expected to memorise the means to correctly operate it without having to rely on those manuals.
Reference information? I thought you were the one who didn't feel that kind of thing should be necessary? It's not a matter of using the control. It's a matter of finding the control for what you're trying to change. It's the difference between digging through layer upon layer of menus, windows and tabs to find the checkbox or typing "man vi".
Reference information shouldn't be necessary. It can be useful though. As I stated quite clearly, the help file is there as a backup if you don't understand the label or the context-sensitive tooltip or any other text that may be associated with it in the GUI itself. You talk about finding controls and layers of menus as if it's a maze. Most decent apps will provide any option within three menus/dialogs. Menus and dialogs which are clearly labelled. Contrast this with "man vi". OK, now I'm looking at 428 pages of prose, listing approximately 60 switches, of which less than half have long options meaning I have to read the text associated with each of those to see if it does what I want. Yeah, that's better...
Don't you think it's a little unreasonable for people to have to memorize which of million or so menu/window/tab paths (do the math sometime) gets them to the thing they want to access with limited or no documentation rather than simple typing "man whatever" to find the switch they forgot.
a GUI tool often isn't the quick and easiest method of doing things. At least with Linux I have the option of either way 90% of the time. Oh, and the other 10% are mostly things you can't even do on Windows at all.
As I've already stated, the "million menu/window/tabs" is a complete fallacy for any remotely well-designed app. The fact that any menus/windows/tabs are all labelled along the way makes it a hell of a lot easier than using switches. What's that about "limited or no documentation"? As my previous post explained, a GUI is just as likely to have documentation as a CLI app, but more importantly it provides and displays relevant and appropriate information to the context of the option/command/whatever you wish to know about.
A GUI tool is only slower than a CLI app if you already know your way around the CLI app and remember all relevant switches. Otherwise you've got a lot of reading to do. Even if you do know your way around your CLI it's no guarantee since, as I mentioned previously, CLI apps are typically limited by their interfaces to focusing on a single operation or subtask meaning you'll often need several of them to perform a single practical task.
As for the Linux vs. Windows stuff, that has no relevance to what I or the GP's were discussing. This isn't about Linux vs. Windows, it's about GUIs being the more practical means of interface for the common computer user. In order for Linux to be a serious contender for mass appeal it
You are wrong, or at least wired differently from me and other command-line people.
It's not about memorizing arcane commands. It's about being able and willing to research the tools while using them. "How can I use the find command to list all files larger than a gigabyte? *browses the man page* Oh, that's how. *back to work*" If you still know how two weeks later; fine. If not, you simply read the man page again.
I bet he's wired differently. As am I. As are the vast majority of people on this planet. We see computers above all else as tools to do things, not something to be investigated in and of themselves. Sure, plenty of people such as myself might be interested in how they work might even program them, but the primary reason to use a computer is to complete a task of some kind, even if that task is just playing a game and having fun. We don't want to research the tools while using them, we just want to use them.
No regular person wants to read a manual either. How would you feel if your power drill disassembled itself each month and you had to read a manual of randomly arrowed diagrams and Korean instructions, would you still appreciate "researching tools while using them"? Because that's what man pages are to the common computer user: an absolute mess of technical terms and presumed prior knowledge that can only be half understood unless you're willing to take your computer use up from casual user to demi-expert. Most users aren't willing to do that, and there's absolutely no reason they should.
And seriously, how is a GUI better? Take the MS Word preferences which I battled yesterday. A tiny window filled with twelve tabbed screens which jump around at random, each containing more than a dozen settings and frequently sub-dialogues. And no useful reference documentation which explains what these bloody settings actually do.
MS Word gave you a tiny window? What do you mean it was too small to read the information it presented, or is that just a result of the GUI approach allowing the information to be compressed in a way that you as a command-line user aren't used to? If the Window is really too small in some way then that's an individual issue with that app's UI, not a problem inherent to GUIs themselves.
As for having multiple tabs, it's called categorisation. It's useful for preventing information overload that you commonly get with CLI apps when using "--help" or using man pages. It provides a far more accessible and much less overwhelming way to present the available options.
Sub-dialogs? Yes, some applications may over-use them, again not a problem for many many others though and not a direct result of a GUI. Good use of sub-dialogs is entirely appropriate in some situations though. For very rarely used options or "expert" options which can cause issues if misused it makes sense to not display these alongside the regularly used and innocuous options. Again this prevents information overload and helps new users from accidentally changing critical settings without realising their importance.
No useful reference information in MS Word? I haven't used it in a long time but still I find that very hard to believe. Even if by some chance MS Word doesn't provide that info almost any and every other half-decent GUI app does, and in far more intuitive ways than any CLI app I've seen. For one thing the nature of the options is implictly given by the type of control they use (ie. checkbox, editbox, choice dropdown, etc.), the controls are invariably labelled of course, they'll also typically have a context-sensitive help in the dialog itself (in Windows this would be accessible from the "?" button, in GNOME it's just a mouse-over). If that doesn't give you enough information there's always a help file which gives full documentation.
Yes, UI customisation is a big deal. My web browser is probably the application I use more than any other. With all that time spent using it, a browser's interface and capability to let me customise that interface are fundamental to the experience.
You can moan all you want about lack of standards support, and truth told I moan about it a lot too, but the reality is that web developers are vastly outnumbered by the number of people who just use the web. Standards don't mean a thing to them, they want a pleasant browsing experience, which as much as anything else means a good browser interface. The fact that IE7 sorely lacks that is made all the more glaring by Firefox's excellent UI customisability and also by the fact that IE7's UI is actually far less customisable than IE6's. 5 years work and Microsoft actually came out with a browser that provides a worse experience for the end user.
Short of security, UI is probably the next most important thing. You can make a browser that correctly renders every two-bit web standard in the world and people will still hate the damn thing if the interface sucks. When IE7 came out a lot of people speculated it would halt the growth of Firefox's user share. The fact that it hasn't in the slightest can largely be attributed to IE7's interface IMO.
Some things cannot be directly observed. A purported sixth sense is not one of them. The entire reason some people believe this ability even exists is based on anecdotal evidence such as people knowing when they're being watched or when something bad happens to someone they know a long way away. Such things can obviously be measured empirically. A sixth sense and similar ideas like ESP have been studied in great depth many times and never has substantial evidence been found to support their existence. I don't deny the possibility of humans having abilities based on phenomena we cannot yet measure or determine, but we should still be able to observe the presence of these abilities when they manifest. As yet no study I'm aware of has made such an observation.
Pick someone, anyone, out of a crowd, on the highway (not recommended if you are driving), etc., from who you are out of their field of view. Stare at them intensely for a few seconds. Direct a strong emotion towards them if you can -- hate, fear, rage, etc. I guarantee you that most of them will look back at you nervously. It may not work for everyone because some people are less aware of their '6th sense' than others. - I'll bet a million simoleans that this experiment will find that the number of people who are "aware of their 6th sense" happens to directly correspond to the number of people who would simply by chance turn around and wonder "WTF is that guy looking at?". Funny that. It may seem to the casual starer that more people turn and look at them, but it's simply a case of them subconsciously dismissing the people who don't turn but explicitly noticing the people who do. You might want to look into selection bias for more info on the topic.
This reminds me a bit of the statistic I heard where more and more people are, in the face of those microchip car keys, just breaking into homes and stealing the keys rather than breaking into the car. If they need me to activate my device before they can take it, they're just going to pull a gun or knife on me. - Yeah. Trying to stop crime is hard. Let's not try. I don't know whether the statistic about chipped car keys is true, but if it is then the obvious next step would be to increase home security - something which is a hell of a lot easier to do than increasing car security. Suddenly it really is a lot harder to steal a car.
Requiring it to be activated might mean that it becomes more likely they'll pull a weapon. On the plus side that means a mugger now has to be willing to up the stakes on their crime from simple robbery to threatening with a deadly weapon which of course is a much more serious offence. At the very least it means they won't be able to just attack first and then rob you since they'll need you conscious and coherent to activate it, which of course then increases the chances of you identifying them later.
I'm not saying that fingerprinting is necessarily the way to go, but there is merit to the idea of at least allowing high-tech devices like iPods to be lockable in some way.
The music industry aren't complete idiots. They know people don't want DRM'ed music, just like they knew people didn't want to pay inflated prices for records for 30+ years. That's not the point though. It's not about what we want, it's about what they want, and what they're willing to do to get it. Whether they violate racketeering laws, buy legislature, or lie straight to the faces of their customers every second of every day, it's not because they're stupid. It's because they're greedy crooks.
Ubuntu is about up to speed with Windows, which is a great first step. But right now Windows has convenience and user ignorance on it's side. Once those advantages are gone then we can really talk about Ubuntu taking on Windows for market share.
Does this mean we won't be getting these bi-weekly updates on how Professor Wingwang from Xyzzy University has sent data at ridiculously high speeds over specialised networks using specialised hardware and specialised protocols?
It's interesting the first time you hear that somebody has sent data at 346363GiB/s or whatever, but there's only so many times you can nod and think "how nice for them" until you start wondering why you're not hearing anything about what's being done to prevent the incapacitation of that "Internet 1" thing the rest of us chug along on.
What they're counting on is that the audience don't understand that the two are mutually exclusive. That way to the ignorant listener the MPAA is fighting those evil pirates to protect us consumers from their evil ways. Cue applause and shouts of "God bless you Dan Glickman!" etc.
She could look at the battery in a commercial, and it would burst into flames. She would then say her catch phrase in her normal-brain-dead manner... What's Paris Hilton's catchphrase, "Sony's lithium-ion batteries are liable to burst into flames please be aware there is a recall"?