Absoulutely. And which of those is responsible when a crime is allegedly committed using the 'web site'?
If a site is set up to be fraudulent, should the contracted web developer be culpable? It's obvious to me that the developers of a generic and generally available php content management system shouldn't be responsible if it's used for criminal activity. But what if the developer creates an apparently generic CMS specifically for a criminal fraternity? Did they know its intended use? Does that matter? How apparently fit-for the criminal purpose should a site be before we decide that the developer should be partly responsible?
I think asking what a 'web site' actually is, is an important step towards addressing these sorts of questions.
So you're saying that you're able to make any Access database, of arbitrary complexity, with any user interface, also of arbitrary complexity, in under 5 business days? Pat yourself on the back, you're a genius.
I had this with another company who provided 'on-site engineer' level support. Although I'm more than comfortable building my own beige boxes I refuse to do the company's work if I've paid for support. They kept saying things like "try pushing the graphics card firmly in place". Everything they said, I just replied "but isn't that your job?", "yes, but aren't you the engineer - I'm not an engineer, I shouldn't do that". Eventually they sent someone who did just reseat the graphics card.
"I eventually found the papers on display in the cellar-"
"that's the display department"
"-I had to go down with a torch-" [flashlight]
"the lights had probably gone"
"-so had the stairs. I eventually found them on display in the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'".
If it's a hole with level ends on both sides, it is entirely impossible to jump it on car without a ramp or other device to add a vertical component to velocity. However, in the event of a bridge being raised for a boat, the angle can potentially allow a vehicle to "jump" the gap. Is it likely or feasible? Not particularly, but it is possible.
You're right, the article got this completely wrong whilst banging on with their (incorrect) physics.
Objects fall with an acceleration of 9.8m/s/s. The faster the car is moving fowards when it reaches the gap, the less time there will be to accelerate downwards, so accelerating when approaching a gap when it won't be possible to stop dead is entirely the right thing to do. It may not work, but it's the best shot you're going to get.
But the true answer to "show us the code" is "everything", and Microsoft could win some of those lawsuits, certainly enough to deter any part of Open Source or the whole movement.
But that's what MS are already doing - pointing vaguely at Linux in general. The point of the website is that Ballmer either has a case or doesn't. If he's that bothered about the IP he should make plain what the issues are. The website is effectively trying to call his bluff, but they also say "...there are developers around the world who would be more than happy to work with Microsoft to resolve this issue...", implying that they think developers will reimplement offending pieces of code. I guess you know a lot more about this than me - do you think that would be a likely/possible outcome?
Perhaps this actually highlights some of the ridiculousness about software patents: that it's very easy to infringe on a patent for something, somewhere without having any idea that you've done it, to an extent that isn't really apparent in any other industry. Maybe there's a case for a halfway house in patent law that allows limited patents for software but with the requirement to either defend patents or lose them, as with trade marks, and some sort of grace period to allow someone to make their work good. It could also be possible to have patents that are beneficial in general - for instance requiring software patents to have working source code and a short (say 8 years) period before they expire. That way companies could benefit from their innovations for a time and then they would be in the public domain - exactly what patents were meant to do in the first place.
Now, the fact that the judge admitted the offence in the end means presumably he did not, but there would likely be no clear way of telling in the case that he hadn't.
Actually, I'm not sure that's the case. Forensic examination of digital media (including hard drives) is not a new science. You don't have to prove beyond any doubt what happened when, but you do have to convince the judge that the evidence is valid and the jury that it's compelling. You can find old data on the hard drive, look at the timestamps on those files, and build up a picture of what's been on those hard drives over their lifetime. You can subpoena ISP records. You can look at the headers in newsgroup archives and see whether the image timestamps match up with postings on those newsgroups. Maybe his old PC is sitting in the basement with further evidence?
Sure, it's possible to fake all of those things, but it's possible to fake any evidence if you try hard enough. This case seems a bit more worrying because the person who placed the trojan also submitted the evidence, but really any trojan could be enough to place the evidence in doubt - if this is thrown out on those grounds then anyone who commits crime via computer can make sure it has a trojan and have all of the evidence thrown out. That won't happen - what will happen is that forensics will get better and better at working out what is genuine evidence in digital media and what is fake.
You cannot have a contract where one side gets nothing.
Amazon did get something: goodwill, which is a valuable commodity in business.
Incidentally, this used to happen all the time at a store where I lived in London. 30 minutes before closing they would drastically cut the price of their bakery goods, vegetables and other food that would spoil, sometimes to token vaules like 5 pence. The problem was, their billing system processed 'buy one get one free' by subtracting the value of the second item from the total of the bill. A friend of mine once managed to select the right combination of goods so that he became in credit at the till (because all of the second 'free' items were credited back at their original price) and was sent to pick up more goods because they wouldn't give him cash out of the drawer. They didn't change the system after that - we would always look for a few reduced goods with BOGOF to knock some money off the total. One thing I'm sure of: all of those were valid transactions.
No, freedom itself is a myth. Freedom is something that was created so that the various slaves of the world would think they have control over their lives, despite the fact the few options available to them are controlled by persons other than themselves.
Interesting, but do you actually have any evidence for that? Anecdotes will do:-). I would say that the descendents of those who were slaves a few generations ago do enjoy much greater freedom. Freedom does come at a cost - the freedom to get things wrong, to fail and live with the consequences, but to claim that it's a myth is nonsense. You're right that we all have to struggle to survive, but is that stuggle one where all have chance and opportunity, or where one group can oppress, exploit and abuse another? Is it a struggle where genuine effort is likely to lead to reward, or one where the whim of a powerful person can arbitrarily render the hard work of the weaker useless? I don't think we've acheived the ideal by any means, and certainly the Western world has many 'freedoms' at the expense of the less developed nations, but that doesn't mean that the concept of freedom is a myth.
Re:Before anyone says anything about free speech
on
EU Bans Sock-Puppet Blogs
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Free speech is one of the few things in life that is absolute. Either you have free speech, or you do not. Any sort of restriction, no matter how small, moves you from the category of having free speech to that of not having free speech.
That very clever ideology, but it's profoundly wrong. All freedoms require restrictions in order to function. That sounds like a logical contradiction, but it's not.
Imagine this: you and I are sitting in a room. Every time you open your mouth to speak, I scream "SHUT UUUUUUUUPPP!" at the top of my voice. I am abusing my freedom of speech in order to curtail yours. Based on your ideology it is necessary to allow that situation because we can't limit 'freedom'. In fact, the way to ensure freedom is to apply fair rules, such that exercising my freedom cannot unfairly curtail yours. The rules needed will depend on the context: in a public debate that may mean turn-taking, in a restaurant it may mean sufficient spaces between tables and removing anyone that behaves like I did towards you in my imaginary situation.
Freedom without any limits or restrictions is a ridiculous myth. The difficulty is who gets to decide what rules are needed to provide freedom, who makes sure that the rules themselves don't become a kind of abuse, and who enforces those rules.
We run an Exchange system for about 19,000 people over eight backend Exchange 2003 servers. To restore a mailbox from one of those servers without affecting the production system (which requires coordination from three financially separate groups), we must:
* Put up a new domain controller in a three domain forest
* Make a backup of the DC
* Move it to a private network without a connection to the domain
* Put up a new Exchange back end server on the private network
* Restore the information store
* Export the mail to a PST file
* Restore the backup of the DC and put it in DS restore mode
* Return the DC to the network, allow replication to overwrite its db
* Demote and decommission the DC
Total time: estimated at 60 hours of work (20 hours, 3 people).
Which pretty much sums up why Exchange is totally unsuitable for use as a production mail server. I mean, come on - that's absolutely crazy. If it wasn't for the middle management obsession with shared calendars Exchange could be tossed out and something sane used.
Or how about "anti-abortion" and "pro-death penalty"? Why get carried away, we have much better labels for these groups than "pro-life"?
Because it's currently fashionable to try to imbed both an argument for one's cause and a slur on the opposition into the commonly used label for that cause. The pro-abortionists are "pro-choice", implicitly stating that anti-abortionists are anti-choice (although that may not be the case, they may just believe choice should take place at a different time and in a different manner); the anti-abortionists are "pro-life", implicitly stating that the pro-abortionists are anti-life (although they may just believe in a different definition of "life" than the anti-abortionists).
It's also psychologically advantageous in contentions matters to state a positive lobby (pro-something) rathan than the negative. Unfortunately political lobbying seems to work best when the advantages of a course of action / point of view are shouted out and the opposing arguments ignored; reasonable debate the recognises the other side's valid points tends to bore the general public and everyone switches off.
Hmmmm... For most popular laptops, there's a webpage somewhere detailing how to get it working, including wireless. I just bought a Dell XPS M1210 and it worked with Ubuntu right out of the box. Only thing not working is the webcam, and I didn't really want that anyway.
Punch cards? We had to strip bark from the trees, make out own paper then punch it with our teeth before we could even begin to make the punch cards into a building.
I don't think the technology in this thing justifies the price tag. It sounds like the brunt of the work is done by four microphones and an algorithm to compare the data from the mics.
Have you ever done any work with mil-spec hardware? Everything that's going out on the field costs multiples, often many multiples, of the equivalent consumer/commercial products. Look at this laptop $4000 for a spec that you could pick up for under $800 on the high street. That's not even mil-spec, it's just a "ruggedized" consumer model. Every component in these robots will have very tight specifications and be certified for military use, down to the resistors on the circuit board. It's designed to work in the heat of a desert day and the cold of night, and to keep working when put through all kinds of abuse. All of its subsystems and the complete set-up will have gone through multiple testing and certification processes. Sure, the company will be making a tidy profit, but don't forget the R&D that's gone into this and the ongoing support they will have to give.
But it's still an agreement, because (again, IANAL, but) no private party has the right to make a one-sided declaration of what someone else can or cannot do. Either the law already says they can or cannot, and you're just asserting your legal rights, or you're going beyond what the law says (either more or less permissive), in which case the other party must agree (even implicitly) to your terms.
Hmmm... I see what you're saying, and maybe we're getting into debating the finer points of something that most of us (including me) don't understand. But, since it's fun...
If I buy a birthday present for someone, I enter into some sort of agreement with the shop, a contract of sale presumably. When I give the present away, the recipient enters into no agreement - they receive a gift from me of something that I legally own. If it turns out that I broke my agreement (e.g. the cheque didn't clear) then the gift could be taken away from the recipient and returned to the store, but it's me that would be in trouble.
I would see the GPL in the same way - if I burn a disk with some GPL software and give it to you, I have entered into agreements with the various authors that I may distribute that software under the GPL. You are not bound by any sort of agreements, you've received it as a copyrighted work just as if I had given you e.g. an audio CD, and you would be bound to treat it as you would any other copyrighted work under whatever local laws applied. There's no EULA, as far as you're concerned the GPL doesn't exist. If you burn a copy of that disk for your friend, you may be breaking copyright law depending on what the local laws are... EXCEPT that you could choose to accept the terms of the GPL license, which grant you additional privileges to distribute the original or modified software. Only at that point does the GPL have any relevance.
If it turns out that the disk I gave to you had GPL software that I modified but refused to publish the modified source code for, you would then have in your possession a copyrighted work that I had illegally distributed (depending on local law). You would have to return/destroy that work since I had no right to give it to you. It would be just as if I had given you a pirated DVD. You may have some liability, again depending on local law - I'm in the UK and I think here it depends on whether you could reasonably have expected it to be an illegal copy (e.g. if you buy dodgy-looking DVDs on a street corner you might be prosecuted, but high-quality copies from an apparently legitimate store that turn out to be pirate you probably wouldn't).
This last point is where some parties claim there is a 'viral' aspect, presumably based on the idea that employees/contractors might use some GPL code in a companies product which then gets distributed, and then the company is forced to release source for all of their code. This is disingenious, not because it's wrong but because it's true for every type of license. If I insert bits from some commercial C++ libraries into code that I'm writing for a company, they will be bound to comply with the copyright owner's distribution license just as they would with the GPL. If the copyright owner's distribution license terms are unacceptable for one reason or another, the company would have to recall the product and/or replace the offending code with versions that don't rely on a copyright work.
The legal remedy when a company distributes modified GPL software is not to force them to release source, but to prosecute them for illegal distribution of a copyright work. Ongoing efforts to persuade compaies to publish source are based on the assumption that they are choosing to enter into the GPL license. It's also worth remembering that the GPL is non-exclusive, i.e. in the above case there's nothing stopping the company approaching the owners of the copyright works and negotiating some other distribution rights in alternative to the GPL.
Again, it's nit-picky; but we are talking about licenses and copyrights, which are nit-picky by nature. Anyway, your usage IS restricted. You don't have to "agree" to the GPL in order to install and use the software; but try clicking "Decline" or "Cancel" and see how your install goes.
Ok, you have a point - the click-through licence/agreement shouldn't bind people to the GPL. Maybe it should start with "if you wish to distribute this software or a modified version of it then...". However, it's perfectly possible to install without the click-through - download the source code and compile it on your system. Or find some other binary that doesn't have a click-through. It's almost always possible to legally install any GPL software without needing to accept the GPL license.
Unbuntu is based on Debian unstable. Not Debian stable. Right now Debian unstable is in a freeze pending release. But once that is done, expect Unstable to live up to it's name and hence take unbuntu (potentially) with it.
Not aiming for a flamewar here, but... um... no.
You're right that Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable, but it also has a develop, freeze, release cycle. When an Ubuntu release is - well, released - it is as stable as any other up-to-date desktop Linux distro. The way they acheive this is to hand-pick a subset of Debian packages which form the main Ubuntu distro and work on them to create a stable desktop OS. Conversely, Debian takes so long over a stable release at least partly because they support thousands of packages, including multiple packages that solve the same problem, in their main package archive. A major update to Debian unstable won't suddenly break Ubuntu, it might just make the next release cycle harder work.
The only slight caveat is that the latest Ubuntu, Edgy, is designed to be a bit more bleeding-edge (hence the name) and they recommend the previous version (Dapper) to those who want total production stability. This is an LTS (Long Term Support) version which is supported for 3 years for the desktop and 5 for the server release. Having said that, I run Edgy on my desktop and the only difficulty I've had is an occasional Firefox crash, from which it recovers rather gracefully in any case.
or in Windows click the "Safely Remove Hardware Icon and jump through two more hoops
Just in case anyone thinks I'm a Linux zealot based on my previous comments, here's a quick tip.
If you left click on the icon in the tray, then left click on the name of your device, it doesn't pop up the stupid dialog box, it just unmounts. Good eh? It's a rubbish piece of UI design, but is a useful shortcut.
For one thing, what's up with automatically copying something you mark with the mouse? Maybe I wanted to remove that text, not copy it?... Oh, and ctrl+c/v, which is supported in some applications don't share the clipboard with the mouse... This alone made me jump ship from linux desktop. Being driven mad when trying to mark a url and remove it from the bar and then paste my new url, just to print the url I just removed from the bar makes me an unhappy being... but this proves my point that while windows and osx are driven from a user-perspective, linux is driven by programmers who have no bloody idea how to make something user friendly.
Actually, that really just proves the point that what you're used to seems to be 'friendly'. I'm very used to select and paste, and I start swearing at the computer for the first few minuutes browsing on Windows before I remember that I can't just highlight some text then middle-click in another app to paste it, and have to waste time with an extra keypress.
BTW, to do what you mentioned, treat it just like Windows - ctrl-c copy the URL, highlight the bit you want to replace, then crtl-v paste. The select-and-paste thing is just a shortcut, if you don't like it, don't use it. Welcome to X11!
I'm not sure whether you're genuine or trolling, but I'll bite...
Yet you are part of the reason why Linux is behind Windows and Macintosh for desktop usage. You are ignoring the problems with Linux Desktop systems and just pointing problems with the Windows Systems. You are not proving anything and you are only giving false insight.
He wasn't just pointing out Windows' problems - he/she was pointing out things that he finds a problem in Windows that aren't a problem in Linux. I happen to agree with the parent - a lot of the 'friendly' features of Windows are, to the intermediate or expert user, simply irritating, limiting and frankly inane. I use Ubuntu on the desktop and it does ask me questions through the GUI but usually only when it's essential and once I've answered once it will remember and not ask again.
Linux has a problem with it UI for Desktop usage. There is a saying "anything is easy after you know how to do it" Guess what most people know how to use Windows so Windows is easy Linux desktop is different so the say it is hard, these people also think OS X Interface is hard too, but less so then Linux because Microsoft tends to copy much of what OS X does so they are more familiar with it. [snip]
The saying 'anything is easy after you know how to do it' is rubbish. Sure, it's a bit easier (by definition) but poorly designed UIs are still a pain. I know how to configure Windows machines to share files using SMB/CIFS but it's certainly not easier, and in fact Samba on Linux does a much better job out of the box. The key interface features on OSX are very different to Windows XP - e.g. how to configure networking, how to copy files from the desktop machine onto removable media, even how to eject a disk. In some instances Gnome or KDE copy Windows or OSX, at other times they use a different system because there's no good exaple to copy - or the designers thought of an even better way. For instance, I think the Save diaglog box in Gnome is far better than the Windows equivalent.
Here are some simple fixes.
Give good names to the features. Give programs names that anyone know what they are.
for example GIMP -> Graphics Editor or Photo Processor. Most people don't care if the program is GNU or not or if it is a native K application or Gnome application. So Just give the program a name that we know what it is. If they want to know what it actual program is so they can get new versions outside the distribution There is a Help -> About Appname to get the real name and the version.
Which leads to the next problem...
Common Menus. Menus need to be in a familiar order. File, Edit, View, Tools, Help. Are common command to change settings they can go to Tools -> Options to reconfigure the program for user settings. If the program has a GUI interface there should be a GUI front end to editing the configurations.
Well, OK, but that's not a Linux problem per se, that's an application problem. The confusion is that you're used to getting hundreds of applications with a Linux distro, which is a good thing, but expecting every single one to be perfect. If you fill your Windows box up with freeware or shareware of variable quality you will see all sorts of UI problems. Most decent Linux distros will make sure that the key applications that are part of their default install follow the UI guidelines (which I know Gnome publish, not sure about KDE). Even well established commercial applications have problems e.g. why is 'page setup' on the 'file' menu in Word? It should be on the 'format' menu. Maybe this is fixed in the latest release?
As far as naming packages goes, that's something that's down to the distro, and I'm sure each distro would be open to suggestions. Don't forget that 'Excel' doesn't mean anything, nor does 'Powerpoint'. 'Photoshop' is fairly obvious, 'Dreamweaver' not quite so.
Easy installation of programs. The tools out there for installing apps are great for server use. But fo
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Simple, you install a generic postscript printer driver (Apple Laserwriter will do) and print to file.
If a site is set up to be fraudulent, should the contracted web developer be culpable? It's obvious to me that the developers of a generic and generally available php content management system shouldn't be responsible if it's used for criminal activity. But what if the developer creates an apparently generic CMS specifically for a criminal fraternity? Did they know its intended use? Does that matter? How apparently fit-for the criminal purpose should a site be before we decide that the developer should be partly responsible?
I think asking what a 'web site' actually is, is an important step towards addressing these sorts of questions.
So you're saying that you're able to make any Access database, of arbitrary complexity, with any user interface, also of arbitrary complexity, in under 5 business days? Pat yourself on the back, you're a genius.
boom boom splash!
I had this with another company who provided 'on-site engineer' level support. Although I'm more than comfortable building my own beige boxes I refuse to do the company's work if I've paid for support. They kept saying things like "try pushing the graphics card firmly in place". Everything they said, I just replied "but isn't that your job?", "yes, but aren't you the engineer - I'm not an engineer, I shouldn't do that". Eventually they sent someone who did just reseat the graphics card.
Whooooosh... thwang... That was the sound of the goalposts moving. Thank you very much.
Do you mean:
"I eventually found the papers on display in the cellar-"
"that's the display department"
"-I had to go down with a torch-" [flashlight]
"the lights had probably gone"
"-so had the stairs. I eventually found them on display in the bottom drawer of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door saying 'beware of the leopard'".
Is that the one?
uhhh... when you say "mix" are we talking consecutive or concurrent?
You're right, the article got this completely wrong whilst banging on with their (incorrect) physics.
Objects fall with an acceleration of 9.8m/s/s. The faster the car is moving fowards when it reaches the gap, the less time there will be to accelerate downwards, so accelerating when approaching a gap when it won't be possible to stop dead is entirely the right thing to do. It may not work, but it's the best shot you're going to get.
But that's what MS are already doing - pointing vaguely at Linux in general. The point of the website is that Ballmer either has a case or doesn't. If he's that bothered about the IP he should make plain what the issues are. The website is effectively trying to call his bluff, but they also say "...there are developers around the world who would be more than happy to work with Microsoft to resolve this issue...", implying that they think developers will reimplement offending pieces of code. I guess you know a lot more about this than me - do you think that would be a likely/possible outcome?
Perhaps this actually highlights some of the ridiculousness about software patents: that it's very easy to infringe on a patent for something, somewhere without having any idea that you've done it, to an extent that isn't really apparent in any other industry. Maybe there's a case for a halfway house in patent law that allows limited patents for software but with the requirement to either defend patents or lose them, as with trade marks, and some sort of grace period to allow someone to make their work good. It could also be possible to have patents that are beneficial in general - for instance requiring software patents to have working source code and a short (say 8 years) period before they expire. That way companies could benefit from their innovations for a time and then they would be in the public domain - exactly what patents were meant to do in the first place.
Actually, I'm not sure that's the case. Forensic examination of digital media (including hard drives) is not a new science. You don't have to prove beyond any doubt what happened when, but you do have to convince the judge that the evidence is valid and the jury that it's compelling. You can find old data on the hard drive, look at the timestamps on those files, and build up a picture of what's been on those hard drives over their lifetime. You can subpoena ISP records. You can look at the headers in newsgroup archives and see whether the image timestamps match up with postings on those newsgroups. Maybe his old PC is sitting in the basement with further evidence?
Sure, it's possible to fake all of those things, but it's possible to fake any evidence if you try hard enough. This case seems a bit more worrying because the person who placed the trojan also submitted the evidence, but really any trojan could be enough to place the evidence in doubt - if this is thrown out on those grounds then anyone who commits crime via computer can make sure it has a trojan and have all of the evidence thrown out. That won't happen - what will happen is that forensics will get better and better at working out what is genuine evidence in digital media and what is fake.
Amazon did get something: goodwill, which is a valuable commodity in business.
Incidentally, this used to happen all the time at a store where I lived in London. 30 minutes before closing they would drastically cut the price of their bakery goods, vegetables and other food that would spoil, sometimes to token vaules like 5 pence. The problem was, their billing system processed 'buy one get one free' by subtracting the value of the second item from the total of the bill. A friend of mine once managed to select the right combination of goods so that he became in credit at the till (because all of the second 'free' items were credited back at their original price) and was sent to pick up more goods because they wouldn't give him cash out of the drawer. They didn't change the system after that - we would always look for a few reduced goods with BOGOF to knock some money off the total. One thing I'm sure of: all of those were valid transactions.
Interesting, but do you actually have any evidence for that? Anecdotes will do :-). I would say that the descendents of those who were slaves a few generations ago do enjoy much greater freedom. Freedom does come at a cost - the freedom to get things wrong, to fail and live with the consequences, but to claim that it's a myth is nonsense. You're right that we all have to struggle to survive, but is that stuggle one where all have chance and opportunity, or where one group can oppress, exploit and abuse another? Is it a struggle where genuine effort is likely to lead to reward, or one where the whim of a powerful person can arbitrarily render the hard work of the weaker useless? I don't think we've acheived the ideal by any means, and certainly the Western world has many 'freedoms' at the expense of the less developed nations, but that doesn't mean that the concept of freedom is a myth.
That very clever ideology, but it's profoundly wrong. All freedoms require restrictions in order to function. That sounds like a logical contradiction, but it's not.
Imagine this: you and I are sitting in a room. Every time you open your mouth to speak, I scream "SHUT UUUUUUUUPPP!" at the top of my voice. I am abusing my freedom of speech in order to curtail yours. Based on your ideology it is necessary to allow that situation because we can't limit 'freedom'. In fact, the way to ensure freedom is to apply fair rules, such that exercising my freedom cannot unfairly curtail yours. The rules needed will depend on the context: in a public debate that may mean turn-taking, in a restaurant it may mean sufficient spaces between tables and removing anyone that behaves like I did towards you in my imaginary situation.
Freedom without any limits or restrictions is a ridiculous myth. The difficulty is who gets to decide what rules are needed to provide freedom, who makes sure that the rules themselves don't become a kind of abuse, and who enforces those rules.
Which pretty much sums up why Exchange is totally unsuitable for use as a production mail server. I mean, come on - that's absolutely crazy. If it wasn't for the middle management obsession with shared calendars Exchange could be tossed out and something sane used.
Because it's currently fashionable to try to imbed both an argument for one's cause and a slur on the opposition into the commonly used label for that cause. The pro-abortionists are "pro-choice", implicitly stating that anti-abortionists are anti-choice (although that may not be the case, they may just believe choice should take place at a different time and in a different manner); the anti-abortionists are "pro-life", implicitly stating that the pro-abortionists are anti-life (although they may just believe in a different definition of "life" than the anti-abortionists).
It's also psychologically advantageous in contentions matters to state a positive lobby (pro-something) rathan than the negative. Unfortunately political lobbying seems to work best when the advantages of a course of action / point of view are shouted out and the opposing arguments ignored; reasonable debate the recognises the other side's valid points tends to bore the general public and everyone switches off.
Hmmmm... For most popular laptops, there's a webpage somewhere detailing how to get it working, including wireless. I just bought a Dell XPS M1210 and it worked with Ubuntu right out of the box. Only thing not working is the webcam, and I didn't really want that anyway.
Punch cards? We had to strip bark from the trees, make out own paper then punch it with our teeth before we could even begin to make the punch cards into a building.
Have you ever done any work with mil-spec hardware? Everything that's going out on the field costs multiples, often many multiples, of the equivalent consumer/commercial products. Look at this laptop $4000 for a spec that you could pick up for under $800 on the high street. That's not even mil-spec, it's just a "ruggedized" consumer model. Every component in these robots will have very tight specifications and be certified for military use, down to the resistors on the circuit board. It's designed to work in the heat of a desert day and the cold of night, and to keep working when put through all kinds of abuse. All of its subsystems and the complete set-up will have gone through multiple testing and certification processes. Sure, the company will be making a tidy profit, but don't forget the R&D that's gone into this and the ongoing support they will have to give.
Hmmm... I see what you're saying, and maybe we're getting into debating the finer points of something that most of us (including me) don't understand. But, since it's fun...
If I buy a birthday present for someone, I enter into some sort of agreement with the shop, a contract of sale presumably. When I give the present away, the recipient enters into no agreement - they receive a gift from me of something that I legally own. If it turns out that I broke my agreement (e.g. the cheque didn't clear) then the gift could be taken away from the recipient and returned to the store, but it's me that would be in trouble.
I would see the GPL in the same way - if I burn a disk with some GPL software and give it to you, I have entered into agreements with the various authors that I may distribute that software under the GPL. You are not bound by any sort of agreements, you've received it as a copyrighted work just as if I had given you e.g. an audio CD, and you would be bound to treat it as you would any other copyrighted work under whatever local laws applied. There's no EULA, as far as you're concerned the GPL doesn't exist. If you burn a copy of that disk for your friend, you may be breaking copyright law depending on what the local laws are... EXCEPT that you could choose to accept the terms of the GPL license, which grant you additional privileges to distribute the original or modified software. Only at that point does the GPL have any relevance.
If it turns out that the disk I gave to you had GPL software that I modified but refused to publish the modified source code for, you would then have in your possession a copyrighted work that I had illegally distributed (depending on local law). You would have to return/destroy that work since I had no right to give it to you. It would be just as if I had given you a pirated DVD. You may have some liability, again depending on local law - I'm in the UK and I think here it depends on whether you could reasonably have expected it to be an illegal copy (e.g. if you buy dodgy-looking DVDs on a street corner you might be prosecuted, but high-quality copies from an apparently legitimate store that turn out to be pirate you probably wouldn't).
This last point is where some parties claim there is a 'viral' aspect, presumably based on the idea that employees/contractors might use some GPL code in a companies product which then gets distributed, and then the company is forced to release source for all of their code. This is disingenious, not because it's wrong but because it's true for every type of license. If I insert bits from some commercial C++ libraries into code that I'm writing for a company, they will be bound to comply with the copyright owner's distribution license just as they would with the GPL. If the copyright owner's distribution license terms are unacceptable for one reason or another, the company would have to recall the product and/or replace the offending code with versions that don't rely on a copyright work.
The legal remedy when a company distributes modified GPL software is not to force them to release source, but to prosecute them for illegal distribution of a copyright work. Ongoing efforts to persuade compaies to publish source are based on the assumption that they are choosing to enter into the GPL license. It's also worth remembering that the GPL is non-exclusive, i.e. in the above case there's nothing stopping the company approaching the owners of the copyright works and negotiating some other distribution rights in alternative to the GPL.
Ok, you have a point - the click-through licence/agreement shouldn't bind people to the GPL. Maybe it should start with "if you wish to distribute this software or a modified version of it then...". However, it's perfectly possible to install without the click-through - download the source code and compile it on your system. Or find some other binary that doesn't have a click-through. It's almost always possible to legally install any GPL software without needing to accept the GPL license.
You're right that Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable, but it also has a develop, freeze, release cycle. When an Ubuntu release is - well, released - it is as stable as any other up-to-date desktop Linux distro. The way they acheive this is to hand-pick a subset of Debian packages which form the main Ubuntu distro and work on them to create a stable desktop OS. Conversely, Debian takes so long over a stable release at least partly because they support thousands of packages, including multiple packages that solve the same problem, in their main package archive. A major update to Debian unstable won't suddenly break Ubuntu, it might just make the next release cycle harder work.
The only slight caveat is that the latest Ubuntu, Edgy, is designed to be a bit more bleeding-edge (hence the name) and they recommend the previous version (Dapper) to those who want total production stability. This is an LTS (Long Term Support) version which is supported for 3 years for the desktop and 5 for the server release. Having said that, I run Edgy on my desktop and the only difficulty I've had is an occasional Firefox crash, from which it recovers rather gracefully in any case.
If you left click on the icon in the tray, then left click on the name of your device, it doesn't pop up the stupid dialog box, it just unmounts. Good eh? It's a rubbish piece of UI design, but is a useful shortcut.
BTW, to do what you mentioned, treat it just like Windows - ctrl-c copy the URL, highlight the bit you want to replace, then crtl-v paste. The select-and-paste thing is just a shortcut, if you don't like it, don't use it. Welcome to X11!
He wasn't just pointing out Windows' problems - he/she was pointing out things that he finds a problem in Windows that aren't a problem in Linux. I happen to agree with the parent - a lot of the 'friendly' features of Windows are, to the intermediate or expert user, simply irritating, limiting and frankly inane. I use Ubuntu on the desktop and it does ask me questions through the GUI but usually only when it's essential and once I've answered once it will remember and not ask again.
Linux has a problem with it UI for Desktop usage. There is a saying "anything is easy after you know how to do it" Guess what most people know how to use Windows so Windows is easy Linux desktop is different so the say it is hard, these people also think OS X Interface is hard too, but less so then Linux because Microsoft tends to copy much of what OS X does so they are more familiar with it. [snip] The saying 'anything is easy after you know how to do it' is rubbish. Sure, it's a bit easier (by definition) but poorly designed UIs are still a pain. I know how to configure Windows machines to share files using SMB/CIFS but it's certainly not easier, and in fact Samba on Linux does a much better job out of the box. The key interface features on OSX are very different to Windows XP - e.g. how to configure networking, how to copy files from the desktop machine onto removable media, even how to eject a disk. In some instances Gnome or KDE copy Windows or OSX, at other times they use a different system because there's no good exaple to copy - or the designers thought of an even better way. For instance, I think the Save diaglog box in Gnome is far better than the Windows equivalent.
Well, OK, but that's not a Linux problem per se, that's an application problem. The confusion is that you're used to getting hundreds of applications with a Linux distro, which is a good thing, but expecting every single one to be perfect. If you fill your Windows box up with freeware or shareware of variable quality you will see all sorts of UI problems. Most decent Linux distros will make sure that the key applications that are part of their default install follow the UI guidelines (which I know Gnome publish, not sure about KDE). Even well established commercial applications have problems e.g. why is 'page setup' on the 'file' menu in Word? It should be on the 'format' menu. Maybe this is fixed in the latest release?
As far as naming packages goes, that's something that's down to the distro, and I'm sure each distro would be open to suggestions. Don't forget that 'Excel' doesn't mean anything, nor does 'Powerpoint'. 'Photoshop' is fairly obvious, 'Dreamweaver' not quite so.