In this case though, the local society (at least on this side of the river) was more than happy to shut down the adult bookstore... although there was no public outcry against the store with adult toys.
It seems that what might ease the need for partners (porn and blow up dolls) is hated, while things that a couple uses together are loved. (Or are less hated in any case)
The sad thing is so much of the community is unconcerned with the matter of personal liberty, and wants instead to impose a morality upon people that they can't really defend. Why is porn bad? Hey, God made us naked, let's sue Him! But if God wanted us naked and we rebelled... isn't wearing special "Sunday Best" an extra insult? Shouldn't we go to church naked?
Maybe the distinction is that we're supposed to be fruitful and multiply. Sex toys encourage acts that may lead to kids, while porn would tend not to. I can't wait to hear the serial rapist quoted in a national paper saying he was doing God's duty, making sure that sinners (women who didn't want kids) weren't able to mess up the divine plan.
> it is the duty of any government to oppose any influence that would destabilise the society they are governing;
Is it then the duty of the Chinese government to stop all within it who would take over new countries such as Korea? No matter who you invade, you're creating an internal problem by absorbing someone else.
Look at how human life is treated in 3rd world countries. Look how it's treated in China. Consider how easily a US company will lay off loyal workers.
Before we consider what is / isn't right to do with artificial life, let's consider what rights we think WE should have. It doesn't matter that you think your new tribble is entitled to, those who have say won't treat it any better than they treat anyone else.
I see special pets being made, rip-offs of said pets being made and the original company suing to have the copier shut down, all their clients pay damages and the putting down of all the "copyright infringing" pets.
Look at how crop gene patents have been abused, that tells you all you need to know about what will happen.
> Adultery WAS a crime. Nowadays it's mostly just cause for divorce. Under the same type of laws, homosexual activity used to be a crime.
Just a few years ago police raided a store that sold sex toys. The place was called Lucy's Love Shop and apparently there was some obscure law on the books prohibiting some of the items they sold.
More recently another such store was shut down with a local sheriff grandstanding at a protest against it saying that they didn't care whether the business had a legal right to be there or not, they weren't going to have it.
It's funny that a town full of people can get so worked up about a store that couldn't possibly hurt them, when no one forces them to shop there. Ironically the next town over (literally across the river) has had such a shop for years.
> I find it hilarious that many people are opposed to polygamy, even though almost every married 'couple' is actually also married to the state.
Well, you live with the quirks of the state both before and after the wedding. (excepting for the marriage tax, which is only after.) As for polygamy, as many people as I hear talking about the difficulties of living with one other person, why would you want to bring more in? One tempermental person is bad enough, with 3 politics start up inside your own home.
Given that certain states have specific penalties, I'd think it was a specific crime in at least some states, if not all.
Looking up breach of contract, damages are mentioned as only what is reasonable for the contract and type of breach. Thanks for the correction, I always thought breach of contract itself was a crime.
INI files are files with a.ini extension and the following form inside
[Section1] Key1=Value1 Key2=Value2
[Section2] Key3=Value3
[Database Info] Server=1.2.3.4 UserID=Joe Password=xyzzy;s or 's at the beginning of a line indicate a comment line.
To understand the registry, I expect you'veused explorer with it's tree view of files. The registry looks like that. It's a giant tree of directories called keys and "file" like items I just call data. Find a reference to one, use start run, type in regedit and hit enter and you're in. Hop down the tree and follow the instructions, adding, changing or deleting data and adding / removing keys (folders). There is NO undo. The registry is partly stored, and partly dynamic. The stored parts are split over several different files. Random tweaks are bad, but it's very powerful. (ie, MS made WAY too much depend on it.) It is world readable, although certain sections can be protected.
Ack, I forgot about the programmer's last resort on Windows... although you'd be mad to do anything with it. Pretty much every DOS and Windows version comes with DEBUG which lets you make programs in assembler. I'd rather go out and buy something personally.
Also, while MS bloat may be requiring faster computers, sadly, so is Linux. When I tried Mandrake ~ 2 years ago (or was going to) on old hardware, I couldn't run the default install program on the CD. The OS would technically run on the machine, but the installer needed twice as much RAM as the box had. SUSE doesn't like older machines either.
The argument is that since the parents don't want sex on the kid's minds, they try to avoid it's mention. I'm not saying it's effective or a good idea, but the predominant feeling on sex ed (in schools) is that less is more. All you need to do is hammer home ABSTINANCE ABSTINANCE ABSTINANCE. (But... as you point out it isn't exactly working)
> I'm actually getting rather tired of this particular knee-jerk.
Unfortunately it comes with the territory. Why is MS software the target of most viruses? It's the BIGGEST target. While a deep hatred of MS by many virus authors may have something to do with it, this is mostly affecting random consumers, not MS, and the virus-writers know they'll have no serious effect on Windows sales.
Religious intolerance doesn't help. Some people think athiests and agnositics start arguments for the purpose of mocking the religious. What the religious don't see is that it goes the other way. An athiest's snarkiness is a reaction to constant attempts to "reform" or "correct" them. I have been repeatedly stopped on the street by people who ask me if I've accepted Jesus in my heart, and if I tell them anything other than yes, who proceed to go out of their way to "guide" me, with nothing but faulty logical arguments.
An athiest ISN'T really a believer who says "I'm going to claim God isn't real because I think it sounds cool." and thus needs to be talked out of their foolishness in denying what they believe to be true for social reasons.
An athiest IS someone who says: the physical evidence I see doesn't explicitly support any one particular religion enough to believe that it is probably true. Without compelling evidence at hand, I'm not going to lie and say that I believe when I don't.
I expect most athiests are such on account of lack of sufficient evidence. Therefore, the proper way to fight an athiest, if you are right, is WITH evidence. Before you set out to do so remember the following:
There are MANY religions, several (many?) of which have hundreds or thousands of passed down eyewitness tales or artifacts that "prove" that their religion is true. As such, no claimed-as-divine passage from any holy book or any holy relic is going to change a skeptic's mind.
Speaking of holy books, with some athiests, the content of the bible is why they rejected Christianity. Many consider it clear mythology, essentially no different than the tales of Zeus. Many of the stories are every bit as incredible.
Saying: "But Jesus was real! There were Roman records of him!" may be compelling evidence that there live a man named Jesus who had a following, but nothing more follows. Merely proving a historical figure exists isn't the same as proving that everything said about them is true.
Realize that your religion, no matter how much faith YOU have in it, is not taken as proven by those who are not members of it. If any one religion was proven, we'd be down to 3 basic religions:
Pro: The religion as it exists now Con: Same basic beliefs as above, but following the other side Denialists: Hinduism, Islam, Shinto and everything else would be considered mere denominations in importance
Con may or may not exist depending on whether the religion in question has a fight going. (Likely categorized as good vs evil)
Also, watch for circular reasoning. If you use go to prove the bible, you can't use the bible to prove god and vice-versa. ie If god isn't real, than the fact that the bible is "god's word" is meaningless. If the bible isn't really the word of god, you can't use it to prove god's existance. You have to absolutely prove EITHER god OR the bible before you can take one as evidence of the other. (Even then, if you proved god, I'd want evidence that the bible WAS god's word, and not words someone else put in his mouth)
When it comes down to it, what it will take to crack most non-believers is a repeatable miracle. Given the presence of modern magicians and some of the incredible things they do, proving this could be hard. The best miracle would be for whichever god(s) exist to manifest (in forms obviously not human) and speak for themselves.
The only evidence I've yet been offered is the existence of this world. This could possibly be evidence for A god, but given how many religions have creation stories, it does nothng to tel
Given most consumers are in no hurry to pick a format until one wins (most wouldn't want to drop $100 on one if they'ed have to get the ohter anyway in 2-3 years) and given it may take 18 or more months for one side to give in, Paramount may think the next 18 months don't matter. Why not get paid for farting around.
2:
Maybe Paramount is deliberately picking the wrong format, and the money is just a sweetener in the pot. If Blu-Ray wins, and Paramount goes Blu-Ray now, they sell one copy each of all their movies to interested parties. If they go HD, then Blu-Ray they can sell the same movie twice to some viewers.
3.
Paramount isn't always known as the brightest company. They have a record of messing up with one of their best known properties. (Star Trek)
4.
Paramount can't LOSE major sales from doing this, only delay them. Even if everyone boycotted them until they swapped back to Blu-Ray, once they do, who else can you get Paramount movies on Blu-Ray from?
Final note:
HD vs Blu-Ray shows that the world of movies / music is *inherently* more messed up than physical goods. No matter how shoddy of a format Paramount brings to the table (even DivX) you're not allowed to get a better version of "The Search for Spock" from anyone else. It's not in the best interests of the media companies to share, so I don't see this changing anytime soon.
> However Sega has done such a bang up job at destroying practically every one of their franchises that I have very little hope for this game.
Shining Force: started as a standard dungeon crawl, spawned a bunch of awesome (at least to my friends and I) at the time tacticsy games. Shining Force 1, 2 and Sword of Hajya (GG), then the slap in the face. You can have 3 part 1, but not parts 2 or 3. Shining Force 1 has been re-released how many times now? Shining Force 2 has been rereleased at least 2-3 times. It's long past time for a complete Shining Force 3 in America. Why are all the Shining games action games now? Clue for Sega: there's a reason Shining Force made it to 3 and Shining Wisdom didn't make it to 2. Tactics games are still selling.
Sonic: Part of me thinks he was better not talking. While on one hand I have no idea with the CONCEPT of characters talking, watching them clumsily ape what some focus group thought was "cool" is painful. Mario games do this is a little, but not as obnoxiously and sometimes self conciously. I think in "Partners in Time" they utterly bash 1337. Sonic's a great action game, and I loved Sonic Adventure 1. Sure Big's fishing was boring, you didn't have to play it. (Unless you wanted to unlock the final battle.) Sonic Adventure 2 FORCED you into every gameplay style, whether you cared to deal with it or not. Clue for Sega: People buy SONIC games to play as SONIC. You got it right when you gave Shadow his own game instead of making a game with two play-styles, causing people to put it away before the half-way point. Make 2-3 games with different mechanics and let people choose instead of forcing them all down our throats. As for the RPG? This sounds crazy, but I'll reserve judgement till I see it. Mario RPG was awesome (and still beats the later Mario RPGs) Perhaps also try a choice of soundtracks, either a traditional Sonic music scheme (instrumental please) or something "gritty" or "brother-ish".
Phantasy Star: good, but why strictly action? We could use some more RPGs. Also, there's no reason to not include a pause in single-player mode. Like it or not, the bladder and the phone are real concerns for which a user should NOT be punished. Clue for everyone: PSO's use of a shoulder button for shift was brilliant, and should be imitated. An option like this on Zelda (allowing you to have more assigned items at once) would be quite welcome. Constant pausing and item swapping takes away from the experiance.
> Or why is it borderline-acceptable if a man whips out his piece to piss, but not to jerk off?
Relief of the bladder is needed (although I'd really rather not see it on TV) but jerking off was forbidden by the Church long ago. Once this was intergrated with religion, the belief that it was bad was firmly rooted. (At least as publically acknowledged.)
> Why sex? Why not, say, eating? Quite a lot of people have eating habits that are more disgusting than at least most porn.
Perhaps it's less about offense, and more trying to keep the minds of kids distracted, so they don't have kids before they're too young. (ie so 14 year old Suzie doesn't have a baby that Suzie's mom and dad have to foot the bill on because she's too young to work) This may have been part of the original reason behind the taboo, the actual reasons may be lost in time. (Many religious practices are odd if not marginally insane. If an early religion, well before our modern religions had a special rule about this, it may be lost in time.)
> with content pre-screened first not to gross out this particular teenager
Actually grossing out a bit might not be a bad idea.
In college we had to attend a series of "mini-courses" collectively called "FALS" for Fine Arts and Lectureship Series. You needed to attend at least X of these courses over your hopefully 4 year term in college. I tended to choose whatever was available after dinner. One event was a lecture on STDs, complete with pictures taken (no faces) of various things treated (or at least looked at) on our campus. I think everyone who saw it was "out of the mood" for a month and off their appetite for at least a week.
You won't stop all kids from doing it, but if you can at least convince them that if they must do it, keep the "if you do it with X, you're doing it with everyone X has ever done it with" in mind, in hopes that they'll confine it to their own circles and not share diseases from previous generations with their friends.
Of course, you'd think the ever-present threat of the worst STD, children would be enough...
The point isn't to scare them away from sex, but to make them choosier about with whom.
At least for the nudity, we should EASILY be able to come to a firm conclusion.
Interview a kid at a nudist colony.
Interview a normal kid.
Repeat several times.
Interview adults who grew up and are still in nudist colonies, who grew up outside and won't join and those who swapped.
Alcohol is a somewhat tougher egg to crack. Can you find kids who HAVEN'T drank? (only half joking) For reasons other than a household so strict that their upbringing's effect on their psyche will dwarf any effect not having started drinking yet might have?
> Not completely though. Microsoft Word is terminally brain dead. Framemaker was much, much easier to use, more powerful and understood emacs key bindings. Of course, Microsoft Word is just an application not the O/S.
I don't particularly care for Word either, but in my case that's because I have no need for it, except in viewing what other people send me. I'm not in any sort of a PRish or manager-ish job, so notepad is good enough for me, and e-mail for everyone else. Large amounts of data? Format in a text file and attach to e-mail. If you get into Word or Excel XP will be painful, if only from opening them with each file if you tend to close what you're finished with.
>> d: download TweakUI and play some more > "Hold on right there cowboy", installing 3rd party stuff is taboo.
3rd party depends on where you work. At my last job, anything went. At my current job, it's more structured (gasp, actually buying licenses for software!) but TweakUI is a gray area. One one hand it's not installed by default, on the other it IS an MS product, offered for free. Of course given that it's just a friendly front cover for registry and ini settings, you can look it up, see what's inresting then look up how to do that manually.
> I tried to find something I liked about Microsoft Windows XP Most people who like XP probably came to it from 2000 or 98. Compared to those OSs, XP is an improvment, if only for minor touches here and there in the pack-in utilities. Minor things like ctrl-g for goto line or list line number in notepad make a big difference. If notepad automatically told you what line you were on like most other editors half of that would be pointless but... you take extra functionality where you find it. Compared to earlier versions, every new Windows adds something. (I think anyway, after what I heard about ME I never tried it. Not sure what it added besides problems) The question is whether the new features are worth the bloat and new errors.
For people coming to XP from MaxOS, I'd expect it to be annoying, but do-able. Max has always been advertised as the easy computer, so power (of the OS) doesn't mean much here.
For people coming from *nix, the loss of the rich command line would be a problem. (Although there are and from at least 3 on always have been alternatives, if only disgusting ones involing a batch file that calls a gwbasic that writes a second batch file called by the 1st after gwbasic. At that point you were pretty much better off using basic as your shell.) Windows took a hit when it "became" the OS and quit packing in a language, but as soon as the web became popular it was largely moot.
> I've enjoyed this discussion. Ditto. It's nice to talk to someone with an opinion based on practicality over psuedo-religious beliefs.
> btw, My former advisor in college was James Kajiya, a most brilliant man who taught me many, many important things that continue to bias me to this very day.
> but binding a web browser as part of an O/S is stretching the limits, I used to feel that way about networking built into *nix when you had to use a 3rd party WinSock with Win3.1, but now I've come to appreciate anything and everything built in. IE might not need to be as tightly integrated as it is, but I don't mind it shipping with the OS. (And if notepad ever didn't ship, tossing me to edlin I'd be livid) The big thing is that whatever is included by default should be over-ridable. If anything, IE built-in makes this easier than ever. Use it to download the latest versions of all the apps you prefer, including another browser.
>> At work, XP can be slow with network access. > Which even Solaris has trouble with sometimes. The problem we see is that, you'd think after accessing a share once, further accesses would be much quicker. Within a 5-10 minute period they usually are. There's a few shares that produce problems though, that seem to do the whole connect-from-scratch with each access.
> WoW.... I'm not going to experiment with various varieties of desktop machines to get it right. It either works and is fun or it isn't).
Agreed, so I've taken the easy way out, consoles. FF11 was great on the PC, and usually ran well, but I like being able to use Yahoo, check e-mail etc while I'm playing. (FF11 requires constant full-screen, anything that pops up crashes it)
>> Although probably slower and less powerful than Perl, > The four letter p-word. Who needs Perl when you have `xemacs -batch'? I haven't used emacs much. I mentioned Perl because it's a generic popular language. While I prefer emacs to vi, at home I've always drifted to something as close to notepad as possible. When I edited from a text screen in school pico was my favorite editor. (The closest to edit from DOS). I haven't used Linux as much more than a standard user, so I don't have much experience on what's best for this or that. (Just a vague feeling that a lot of it is a matter of personal taste) My primary criteria for selecting apps tends to be what's the most like whatever I use in Windows. Not the best criteria, but a useful place to start. The Gimp is NOT a good substitute for Paint. (Not that it probably tries to be, but there needs to be a better known low end art program for those in a hurry)
>> I won't argue that Windows is better than *nix on technical merits, I really don't think it is, but it's not unusable either.
> This goes back to a post I made previously, perhaps. For me, it's like walking barefooted over broken glass.
I guess I don't have this feeling because I'm so used to it that there's no painful missing functionaliy. I may pick up the same view later, but probably not until I spend most of my time on something else for at least a month or so. With the current environment at work, that's not happening anytime soon. You can't miss what you haven't gotten used to.
> I spent extensive off-time doing Microsoft Windows appreciation exercises.
Ack, sounds like a painful training class by someone who isn't exactly a "power user". All I can suggest for enduring Windows is a: go through EVERYTHING under control panel, tweaking away b: tweak the start bar c: tweak tools - options in a regular explorer window d: download TweakUI and play some more e: check and see if any new useful short-cut keys have been added to the OS or preferred utilities f: make a folder under the start menu with everything you need quick access to and assign keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to deal with the menus g: download half a dozen *nix utilities that have been ported to Windows h: toss everything from the start menu that you'll never need
But you've probably did this within the 1st day of getting a Windows machine.
> I wish I could use Solaris & KDE but that is not an option. Perhaps that is the same feeling many people have towards Microsoft Windows. Compute
Something to think about. A few years back when running Windows, Gator pretty much installed itelf on my PC. (The end of me using IE...) Getting rid of it was a pain, but... per the EULA (there was one) that you had to HUNT through their site to find, use of their software (which I never deliberately or explicitly intalled or activated) constituted acceptance of the agreement.
If that's bad, can I walk around with a similar app installing it on PCs whereever I go? "Use of this program binds you to pay me $1,000 per month for the privledge of doing so."
>> You still have the old UI (95ish) which I think looks ok. > Is that the one with greyish stuff? I think they call it "classic" style? I would agree with that. Yup, classic mode is what I was talking about. There's two classic modes to activate, one for the too-large everything and blue-green color scheme, and another for the start menu / bar.
> The only purpose of an O/S is for managing resources - disks, network connections, process scheduling, etc.
Agreed, but apart from phoning home (which I can't say I care for) how does Windows break this? By packing in things like Paint, Notepad, Wordpad etc that on any Linux CD would have 10 - 20 similar apps on the CD that do the same thing? You can choose not to install these helper programs when you install Windows, but the fact that by default, certain functionality is on almost all Windows machines is a good thing in an office. (Although, being used to my menus and built-in shortcuts, "smart" menus that hide options bug me to no end, as do half the "friendly" features like IE hiding error messages from web servers.)
> The only purpose of a GUI is for facilitating user access to a computer. I do not care for "flashy" GUIs, they only tend to get in the way of getting a job done. I do not care for GUIs (or any computer program) that think they are smarter than the human behind the keyboard/mouse. They are not.
Well, the last line is debatable given some of the people I work for. The "don't login as root" rule of *nix is more of the same, protecting a user from themself. (Admittedly also protecting them from malicious code, but still holding you back, although there's often not much to keep you from logging into root anyway.)
> Two or one button mice are suboptimal. Xerox/PARC spent a lot of money doing research into human/computer interfaces and settled on a 3 button mouse. There was a good reason for that.
The default MS mouse is 2 buttons and a scroll - wheel which also functions as a 3rd button. We have several mice around work (on Windows) with more buttons added (and used). This is mostly a matter of keeping down how much the average user (who doesn't want to have to learn) has to keep track of. By having a default simple system with the ability to add on, MS has the best of both worlds,... for their target audience.
> I also think putting a completely useless BIG key like CAPS LOCK (does any idiotic software rely on that now-a-days?) to the left of the "a" key without giving the user a chance to fix it is stupid.
Fix? As in disable? I think there's a registry key for disabling keys. With the game FF11 you had to use it on the start key or accidently brushing it would crash the game. Not at all intuitive for average users, but do-able.
I have my own list of keyboard annoyances. I like the standard 101 and 104 key keyboards, so anything that messes up the home/end/ins/del/page up/down (rotating and mixing around on Dells, pushing down on my parent's PC) or moves the \ key (above enter please) ticks me off. When I use a laptop I carry a full-size usb to plug in. Little things can quickly become major pains.
>> I haven't used a Mac in a while. > The default interface isn't all that much different than Microsoft's except that it's prettier by default The old MacOS I dealt with (no idea what version) I'd have considered sub-Windows. I'm reserving judgement on OSX until I play with it, but I don't know when that will be. The biggest problem for those computers was the power. Shutting off was easy from a menu iirc, but turning it on required recognizing that a generic button with a triangle at the top of the keyboard was the ONLY way to turn it on. I have no idea why they didn't use the usual 1 inside a 0 symbol appliances use.
> The mouse cursor has a tendency to become invisible and it can take a long time (> 5 seconds) to figure out where it is and move it. At least Microsoft Windows XP doesn't have that problem.
> Actually, it's written into the contract you signed when you signed your driver's license.
But if it is part of the contract to drive, isn't it still breaking the law to exceed the speed limit under breach of contract? It's a step removed from having an actual law saying "Washington road, from point A to point B shall be crossed at no more than X MPH", but this is a matter of neccesity. If a new law had to be passed with each speed limit adjustment, or each new traffic law to mandate not running THAT light, imagine how much more messed up the road system would be.
> I suppose it depends on how you define "rarely".
After growing up w/ DOS 5 and Win 3.1, once every few weeks, given 3.1 was a several times a day problem. DOS by itself was rock solid. At work XP seems more stable. The only time it crashes is when corporate pushes down some random un-asked-for, untested patch or I make some error programming. (Protected memory my ***)
> It was certainly flakey about suspending and waking up. I never had problems with suspend and resume on XP.
> Ugly UI,
I agree that the new UI looks bad, but looks are largely a matter of personal aesthetics. You still have the old UI (95ish) which I think looks ok. The "silver" look some people use doesn't do enough to make the foreground stick out, but that's just one color scheme. Mac on the other hand with their one title bar showing at a time, always at the top seems functionally bad, perhaps OSX fixed that though. I haven't used a Mac in a while. There are way too many annoying UI tweaks you have to undo when you 1st get on XP. Turn off the underline hiding for alt keys. Turn off file hiding. Turn on showing full paths so you can see where you are.
> walking-barefooted-on-broken-glass feel, Not sure what you mean by this one. XP never seemed painful.
> and dead slow - that's my opinion of Microsoft Windows XP. I never had speed problems on XP. Speed issues are one of the reasons I'm going to dump SUSE.
>> The command line is getting steadily more powerful, although it probably could use a redesign. >? It looked pretty much unchanged to me from DOS 2.0, but I won't accept anything less powerful than zsh for a command line so even if I missed something, it still looks like a toy interface.
The command line for XP is still made to be backwards compatabile back to 2 or 1. (minus a few commands that have been removed involving changing drive mappings, now handled with an interactive util called DiskPart) The next time you're on an XP box, open a DOS box and type for/? and look at all the junk that pops up. Something called the "command extensions" was added in 2000 iirc. If this is turned on all the commands take a lot more arguments and are more useful. There's still some stupid problems. Find is like grep, but no regular expressions. FindStr can use expressions. If you want to count the number of lines an expression occurs on you have to pipe FindStr into Find/c (or into a text file, open in notepad, ctrl-end, ctrl-g for line count). I don't kow if there's any mid/copy/slice/substring equivalent other than the for command, which lets you manipulate strings, awkwardly. If you want more convenient power, there's the scripting host, but that's closed to packed in Perl than a Unix shell.
I'm currently using SUSE. After my 1st install (on an old, slow computer) I liked the reliablity of it, but wanted something faster. Putting SUSE on my main PC (which has been working pretty much non-stop with XP) I wasn't at all impressed. It was failing constantly for no obvious reason. I re-installed and the system has been FAR more stable, although it has still crashed on occasion.
Win 98 crashed frequently for me. (Previous computer) Win 95 and NT 4 in college both crashed non-stop. Win 3.1 crashed fairly frequently for me. At work I used 1st 2000, then XP, both of which have been very stable.
Before I tried SUSE, I used (and loved) Red Hat. RH never gave me a minute of trouble. I tried Puppy Linux but wasn't impressed. (It wanted to scan my HD for some reason when starting from CD (taking several minutes), if installed it might be better)
I'm going to try D*mn Small Linux, Fedora and Ubuntu soon. For some reason with nothing running but Kopete, Kate and Firefox SUSE keeps getting bogged down on a 600 or 1800 AMD chip with 1GB of RAM. I'm a 3-4 lines of start bar windows user (admittedly mostly explorer windows and notepads, but still) and SUSE isn't giving me XP level performance.
XP seems to have gotten a lot right. While I think the new interface looks like it was designed by Duplo (lego for those who might eat normal lego bricks) once you make it look like 2000 / 95 and spend 30 minutes changing minor interface annoyances it works fairly well, and has for several computers I've used at work.
The command line is getting steadily more powerful, although it probably could use a redesign. Windows Scripting Host, hated as it is can be considered a replacement command line if you need more power.
> I know this is probably a contrarian point of view here on Slashdot, but I guess I don't see the practical difference between mandatory, ubiquitous state-issued ID (driver's licenses) and mandatory, ubiquitous federal ID (passports, birth certificates, social security cards, and... dun dun DUN... Real ID).
The big problem is that this, all by itself will be enough id to completely impersonate you. You're footing the cost for a system that will make it easier for others to scam you. People are also ticked that the same government that wants to spy on citizens more and more, who doesn't want citizens to know what it's doing wants to know everything about what they're doing.
While right now, a national database can be made based on a social security number, with each person tracked and other numbers (state driver's license, non dl-id cards issued on a state by state basis) having a single ID makes it easier than ever to commit invasive (and illegal) spying on American citizens. We're offically supposed to be free of unreasonable search and seizure. Until there is good reason to suspect you of a crime, the government shouldn't be searching through your activities.
Another problem is that this id, if built into a "trusted" system can be used to ruin lives of people. The national ID allows the creation of the national database, the "permanent record" every kid used to fear in school. What happens when for some malicious reason, someone with access to this puts something bad in the database about you? Will you be able to get it out? Will you be allowed to look at your own record to see if it's correct? Consider the problem, as more jobs go overseas and work is harder to find, of trying to find a job after some fake crime gets added to your record. The employer won't bother looking into court records, but will pass to look at one of the other 50 people begging for the job. Of course, if the court records are integrated with this database, and easily corrupted, you're really out of luck.
The national ID would be a good thing, in that a single ID would be prerrable to having 50 IDs. Imagine having everything tied to the one card, want to get groceries? Swipe the citizen card and the screen lists your credit card accounts and debit card. Select where you want the pull to come from and walk out. This could be used in place of loyalty cards. You would still pay at Books A Million for a loyalty membership, but why issue a new card when there's already a unique # assigned to you?
Of course, once everything depends on this id, the person who loses it is REALLY in trouble. The market for fake driver's licenses is already high. Imagine the market for card copying, swapping the data in your card to a 2nd with someone else's picture on it for use online. Will you be jailed if you're caught driving without it?
The fears around this ID are:
The # of ways this could be misused outnumber the ways where it would be of actual benefit (massive ID theft, smears)
Given the ID system will not prevent terrorist action, given the 9/11 peoples' papers were in order, and the people proposing it know this, there's clearly an ulterior motive. If those pushing the id refuse to disclose this motive, should they be trusted? Perhaps it is a bid to just make things simpler on corporations, and they're embarassed (or afraid) to admit it openly. Regardless, this is too much money to spend on something about which the purpose of is being lied about.
(Hmm, wasn't Clinton in trouble for lying about something that DIDN'T cost the taxpayers big? Heh, if we started impeaching or getting rid of everyone in government who deliberately lied, how long would it last?)
The DMV may as well move to handling ID, they certainly do a poor job of keeping the bad drivers off the road.
Like or hate the speed limit, it's the law. Do you see it widely followed?
How often do you see turn signals used vs how often ignored?
I witnessed an elderly lady who couldn't read the 2nd line of the eye chart get waved through. (North Augusta, SC)
Drunk drivers do so again and again.
Those who have had their license taken away, don't seem to be adequately prevented from driving again. I don't think cars are impounded enough. If they were, it would get too expensive to drive without a license.
There's too many people driving without insurance... which isn't adequately prevented either.
Of course, what's going to happen when you take someone's license and not their car? Wow, now I get to drive for free! No insurance to pay since I don't "officialy" drive! In too many areas, there's not sufficient public transportation.
My town (Augusta, GA for now) has a bus system that has cost people their jobs by consistently running late. The offerings are limited enough that people can't just take an earlier run. There's talk about cutting the system back further.
Heh, what would happen if a club didn't allow people to leave until they sobered up, to make sure you couldn't drive until you were capable. It's probably go out of business fairly quickly for hassling customers. If you had a spike strip system setup to keep people from leaving until they proved they were sober, they'ed park next door to walk to the bar. For some reason people think they're entitled to do anything they want with the roads, saftey of others be ****ed.
With how people think about what they're entitled to do road-wise, the DMV has an uphill battle. Keeping the roads safe would pretty much require a police state given seemingly 80-90% of people routinely break some law. (Speed limit, illegal (no turn signal) turns or lane changes, no seat belts)
Sadly, there is probably a very deliberate move to make us a police state because those up top look at us behaving like idiots and decided
a: we don't deserver better given we can't get our acts together
b: it's the only way things are going to get "better", since the current legal system is apparently not a big enough deterrent and is overworked in part from the attempts at using it to scam and extort
What has happened so far? Robots are already doing human jobs. The existance of outsourcing shows that those who control manufacturing (and who will be buying / making the coming robots / AIs) don't care about maintaining their employees, only their bottom line.
The system can't last, if only because once every single job is extinguished and no one (except the families of the major business owners) has money, since everyone is unemployed... what will companies do then? A company that's too successful, acquiring ALL assests and resources has nothing new to take in.
Once wealth (and land from foreclosed mortgages) is consolidated, you'll have countless unemployed people with no ways to feed their families, and central places where the necesseties of life are. It's a recipe for revolution. One of the numbers that came back from Iraq a while back (a few years now) was 70% unemployment shortly after Saddam was out of the picture. If people have NO chance of making ends meet under the system you brought in, what do you think they're going to do? Fight it to the death... The majority of people need to know where their next meal is coming from to have a stable system.
If corporate dominance ever reachs that point, it will have 3 choices:
1. Buy off the unemployed masses with regular tributes of food and free housing. This COULD become a utopia for all depending on size of the maintained population, recycling and generosity of the buy-off. The buy-off would have to be repeated given people can't be counted on to hold onto their money. (They bailed us out once, they'll do it again.) If we can create a system like the Matrix, this becomes MUCH easier. At that point, everyone plugs into the "happy machine" and all the corps have to supply is food (grown and possibly IV fed into us by robots) and electricity. (Probably far less than we consume today)
2. Eliminate the unemployed masses. (Deliberate disasters, war)
3. Roll back the clock, turning off the robots so life can go back to the way it was. (Potentially forced by the people, violently, with a revolution that comes with a new constitution, forbidding the use of robots / ai while anyone is looking for a job.)
Slashdot Mirror
In this case though, the local society (at least on this side of the river) was more than happy to shut down the adult bookstore... although there was no public outcry against the store with adult toys.
It seems that what might ease the need for partners (porn and blow up dolls) is hated, while things that a couple uses together are loved. (Or are less hated in any case)
The sad thing is so much of the community is unconcerned with the matter of personal liberty, and wants instead to impose a morality upon people that they can't really defend. Why is porn bad? Hey, God made us naked, let's sue Him! But if God wanted us naked and we rebelled... isn't wearing special "Sunday Best" an extra insult? Shouldn't we go to church naked?
Maybe the distinction is that we're supposed to be fruitful and multiply. Sex toys encourage acts that may lead to kids, while porn would tend not to. I can't wait to hear the serial rapist quoted in a national paper saying he was doing God's duty, making sure that sinners (women who didn't want kids) weren't able to mess up the divine plan.
> it is the duty of any government to oppose any influence that would destabilise the society they are governing;
Is it then the duty of the Chinese government to stop all within it who would take over new countries such as Korea? No matter who you invade, you're creating an internal problem by absorbing someone else.
My Dear Marie / Metal Angel Marie (anime)
Weird Science
A popular idea.
Look at how human life is treated in 3rd world countries. Look how it's treated in China. Consider how easily a US company will lay off loyal workers.
Before we consider what is / isn't right to do with artificial life, let's consider what rights we think WE should have. It doesn't matter that you think your new tribble is entitled to, those who have say won't treat it any better than they treat anyone else.
I see special pets being made, rip-offs of said pets being made and the original company suing to have the copier shut down, all their clients pay damages and the putting down of all the "copyright infringing" pets.
Look at how crop gene patents have been abused, that tells you all you need to know about what will happen.
> Adultery WAS a crime. Nowadays it's mostly just cause for divorce. Under the same type of laws, homosexual activity used to be a crime.
Just a few years ago police raided a store that sold sex toys. The place was called Lucy's Love Shop and apparently there was some obscure law on the books prohibiting some of the items they sold.
More recently another such store was shut down with a local sheriff grandstanding at a protest against it saying that they didn't care whether the business had a legal right to be there or not, they weren't going to have it.
It's funny that a town full of people can get so worked up about a store that couldn't possibly hurt them, when no one forces them to shop there. Ironically the next town over (literally across the river) has had such a shop for years.
> I find it hilarious that many people are opposed to polygamy, even though almost every married 'couple' is actually also married to the state.
Well, you live with the quirks of the state both before and after the wedding. (excepting for the marriage tax, which is only after.) As for polygamy, as many people as I hear talking about the difficulties of living with one other person, why would you want to bring more in? One tempermental person is bad enough, with 3 politics start up inside your own home.
I was also under the impression that adultery was legally speaking, a crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery
Given that certain states have specific penalties, I'd think it was a specific crime in at least some states, if not all.
Looking up breach of contract, damages are mentioned as only what is reasonable for the contract and type of breach. Thanks for the correction, I always thought breach of contract itself was a crime.
INI files are files with a .ini extension and the following form inside
;s or 's at the beginning of a line indicate a comment line.
l ogies/management/powershell/faq.mspx#EKB
[Section1]
Key1=Value1
Key2=Value2
[Section2]
Key3=Value3
[Database Info]
Server=1.2.3.4
UserID=Joe
Password=xyzzy
To understand the registry, I expect you'veused explorer with it's tree view of files. The registry looks like that. It's a giant tree of directories called keys and "file" like items I just call data. Find a reference to one, use start run, type in regedit and hit enter and you're in. Hop down the tree and follow the instructions, adding, changing or deleting data and adding / removing keys (folders). There is NO undo. The registry is partly stored, and partly dynamic. The stored parts are split over several different files. Random tweaks are bad, but it's very powerful. (ie, MS made WAY too much depend on it.) It is world readable, although certain sections can be protected.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986
Ack, I forgot about the programmer's last resort on Windows... although you'd be mad to do anything with it. Pretty much every DOS and Windows version comes with DEBUG which lets you make programs in assembler. I'd rather go out and buy something personally.
Speaking of shells, MS is working on a new one. It's long past due.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techno
Also, while MS bloat may be requiring faster computers, sadly, so is Linux. When I tried Mandrake ~ 2 years ago (or was going to) on old hardware, I couldn't run the default install program on the CD. The OS would technically run on the machine, but the installer needed twice as much RAM as the box had. SUSE doesn't like older machines either.
The argument is that since the parents don't want sex on the kid's minds, they try to avoid it's mention. I'm not saying it's effective or a good idea, but the predominant feeling on sex ed (in schools) is that less is more. All you need to do is hammer home ABSTINANCE ABSTINANCE ABSTINANCE. (But... as you point out it isn't exactly working)
> I'm actually getting rather tired of this particular knee-jerk.
Unfortunately it comes with the territory. Why is MS software the target of most viruses? It's the BIGGEST target. While a deep hatred of MS by many virus authors may have something to do with it, this is mostly affecting random consumers, not MS, and the virus-writers know they'll have no serious effect on Windows sales.
Religious intolerance doesn't help. Some people think athiests and agnositics start arguments for the purpose of mocking the religious. What the religious don't see is that it goes the other way. An athiest's snarkiness is a reaction to constant attempts to "reform" or "correct" them. I have been repeatedly stopped on the street by people who ask me if I've accepted Jesus in my heart, and if I tell them anything other than yes, who proceed to go out of their way to "guide" me, with nothing but faulty logical arguments.
An athiest ISN'T really a believer who says "I'm going to claim God isn't real because I think it sounds cool." and thus needs to be talked out of their foolishness in denying what they believe to be true for social reasons.
An athiest IS someone who says: the physical evidence I see doesn't explicitly support any one particular religion enough to believe that it is probably true. Without compelling evidence at hand, I'm not going to lie and say that I believe when I don't.
I expect most athiests are such on account of lack of sufficient evidence. Therefore, the proper way to fight an athiest, if you are right, is WITH evidence. Before you set out to do so remember the following:
There are MANY religions, several (many?) of which have hundreds or thousands of passed down eyewitness tales or artifacts that "prove" that their religion is true. As such, no claimed-as-divine passage from any holy book or any holy relic is going to change a skeptic's mind.
Speaking of holy books, with some athiests, the content of the bible is why they rejected Christianity. Many consider it clear mythology, essentially no different than the tales of Zeus. Many of the stories are every bit as incredible.
Saying: "But Jesus was real! There were Roman records of him!" may be compelling evidence that there live a man named Jesus who had a following, but nothing more follows. Merely proving a historical figure exists isn't the same as proving that everything said about them is true.
Realize that your religion, no matter how much faith YOU have in it, is not taken as proven by those who are not members of it. If any one religion was proven, we'd be down to 3 basic religions:
Pro: The religion as it exists now
Con: Same basic beliefs as above, but following the other side
Denialists: Hinduism, Islam, Shinto and everything else would be considered mere denominations in importance
Con may or may not exist depending on whether the religion in question has a fight going. (Likely categorized as good vs evil)
Also, watch for circular reasoning. If you use go to prove the bible, you can't use the bible to prove god and vice-versa. ie If god isn't real, than the fact that the bible is "god's word" is meaningless. If the bible isn't really the word of god, you can't use it to prove god's existance. You have to absolutely prove EITHER god OR the bible before you can take one as evidence of the other. (Even then, if you proved god, I'd want evidence that the bible WAS god's word, and not words someone else put in his mouth)
When it comes down to it, what it will take to crack most non-believers is a repeatable miracle. Given the presence of modern magicians and some of the incredible things they do, proving this could be hard. The best miracle would be for whichever god(s) exist to manifest (in forms obviously not human) and speak for themselves.
The only evidence I've yet been offered is the existence of this world. This could possibly be evidence for A god, but given how many religions have creation stories, it does nothng to tel
1:
Given most consumers are in no hurry to pick a format until one wins (most wouldn't want to drop $100 on one if they'ed have to get the ohter anyway in 2-3 years) and given it may take 18 or more months for one side to give in, Paramount may think the next 18 months don't matter. Why not get paid for farting around.
2:
Maybe Paramount is deliberately picking the wrong format, and the money is just a sweetener in the pot. If Blu-Ray wins, and Paramount goes Blu-Ray now, they sell one copy each of all their movies to interested parties. If they go HD, then Blu-Ray they can sell the same movie twice to some viewers.
3.
Paramount isn't always known as the brightest company. They have a record of messing up with one of their best known properties. (Star Trek)
4.
Paramount can't LOSE major sales from doing this, only delay them. Even if everyone boycotted them until they swapped back to Blu-Ray, once they do, who else can you get Paramount movies on Blu-Ray from?
Final note:
HD vs Blu-Ray shows that the world of movies / music is *inherently* more messed up than physical goods. No matter how shoddy of a format Paramount brings to the table (even DivX) you're not allowed to get a better version of "The Search for Spock" from anyone else. It's not in the best interests of the media companies to share, so I don't see this changing anytime soon.
> However Sega has done such a bang up job at destroying practically every one of their franchises that I have very little hope for this game.
Shining Force:
started as a standard dungeon crawl, spawned a bunch of awesome (at least to my friends and I) at the time tacticsy games. Shining Force 1, 2 and Sword of Hajya (GG), then the slap in the face. You can have 3 part 1, but not parts 2 or 3. Shining Force 1 has been re-released how many times now? Shining Force 2 has been rereleased at least 2-3 times. It's long past time for a complete Shining Force 3 in America. Why are all the Shining games action games now? Clue for Sega: there's a reason Shining Force made it to 3 and Shining Wisdom didn't make it to 2. Tactics games are still selling.
Sonic:
Part of me thinks he was better not talking. While on one hand I have no idea with the CONCEPT of characters talking, watching them clumsily ape what some focus group thought was "cool" is painful. Mario games do this is a little, but not as obnoxiously and sometimes self conciously. I think in "Partners in Time" they utterly bash 1337. Sonic's a great action game, and I loved Sonic Adventure 1. Sure Big's fishing was boring, you didn't have to play it. (Unless you wanted to unlock the final battle.) Sonic Adventure 2 FORCED you into every gameplay style, whether you cared to deal with it or not. Clue for Sega: People buy SONIC games to play as SONIC. You got it right when you gave Shadow his own game instead of making a game with two play-styles, causing people to put it away before the half-way point. Make 2-3 games with different mechanics and let people choose instead of forcing them all down our throats. As for the RPG? This sounds crazy, but I'll reserve judgement till I see it. Mario RPG was awesome (and still beats the later Mario RPGs) Perhaps also try a choice of soundtracks, either a traditional Sonic music scheme (instrumental please) or something "gritty" or "brother-ish".
Phantasy Star: good, but why strictly action? We could use some more RPGs. Also, there's no reason to not include a pause in single-player mode. Like it or not, the bladder and the phone are real concerns for which a user should NOT be punished. Clue for everyone: PSO's use of a shoulder button for shift was brilliant, and should be imitated. An option like this on Zelda (allowing you to have more assigned items at once) would be quite welcome. Constant pausing and item swapping takes away from the experiance.
> Or why is it borderline-acceptable if a man whips out his piece to piss, but not to jerk off?
Relief of the bladder is needed (although I'd really rather not see it on TV) but jerking off was forbidden by the Church long ago. Once this was intergrated with religion, the belief that it was bad was firmly rooted. (At least as publically acknowledged.)
> Why sex? Why not, say, eating? Quite a lot of people have eating habits that are more disgusting than at least most porn.
Perhaps it's less about offense, and more trying to keep the minds of kids distracted, so they don't have kids before they're too young. (ie so 14 year old Suzie doesn't have a baby that Suzie's mom and dad have to foot the bill on because she's too young to work) This may have been part of the original reason behind the taboo, the actual reasons may be lost in time. (Many religious practices are odd if not marginally insane. If an early religion, well before our modern religions had a special rule about this, it may be lost in time.)
> with content pre-screened first not to gross out this particular teenager
Actually grossing out a bit might not be a bad idea.
In college we had to attend a series of "mini-courses" collectively called "FALS" for Fine Arts and Lectureship Series. You needed to attend at least X of these courses over your hopefully 4 year term in college. I tended to choose whatever was available after dinner. One event was a lecture on STDs, complete with pictures taken (no faces) of various things treated (or at least looked at) on our campus. I think everyone who saw it was "out of the mood" for a month and off their appetite for at least a week.
You won't stop all kids from doing it, but if you can at least convince them that if they must do it, keep the "if you do it with X, you're doing it with everyone X has ever done it with" in mind, in hopes that they'll confine it to their own circles and not share diseases from previous generations with their friends.
Of course, you'd think the ever-present threat of the worst STD, children would be enough...
The point isn't to scare them away from sex, but to make them choosier about with whom.
At least for the nudity, we should EASILY be able to come to a firm conclusion.
Interview a kid at a nudist colony.
Interview a normal kid.
Repeat several times.
Interview adults who grew up and are still in nudist colonies, who grew up outside and won't join and those who swapped.
Alcohol is a somewhat tougher egg to crack. Can you find kids who HAVEN'T drank? (only half joking) For reasons other than a household so strict that their upbringing's effect on their psyche will dwarf any effect not having started drinking yet might have?
> Not completely though. Microsoft Word is terminally brain dead. Framemaker was much, much easier to use, more powerful and understood emacs key bindings. Of course, Microsoft Word is just an application not the O/S.
I don't particularly care for Word either, but in my case that's because I have no need for it, except in viewing what other people send me. I'm not in any sort of a PRish or manager-ish job, so notepad is good enough for me, and e-mail for everyone else. Large amounts of data? Format in a text file and attach to e-mail. If you get into Word or Excel XP will be painful, if only from opening them with each file if you tend to close what you're finished with.
>> d: download TweakUI and play some more
> "Hold on right there cowboy", installing 3rd party stuff is taboo.
3rd party depends on where you work. At my last job, anything went. At my current job, it's more structured (gasp, actually buying licenses for software!) but TweakUI is a gray area. One one hand it's not installed by default, on the other it IS an MS product, offered for free. Of course given that it's just a friendly front cover for registry and ini settings, you can look it up, see what's inresting then look up how to do that manually.
> I tried to find something I liked about Microsoft Windows XP
Most people who like XP probably came to it from 2000 or 98. Compared to those OSs, XP is an improvment, if only for minor touches here and there in the pack-in utilities. Minor things like ctrl-g for goto line or list line number in notepad make a big difference. If notepad automatically told you what line you were on like most other editors half of that would be pointless but... you take extra functionality where you find it. Compared to earlier versions, every new Windows adds something. (I think anyway, after what I heard about ME I never tried it. Not sure what it added besides problems) The question is whether the new features are worth the bloat and new errors.
For people coming to XP from MaxOS, I'd expect it to be annoying, but do-able. Max has always been advertised as the easy computer, so power (of the OS) doesn't mean much here.
For people coming from *nix, the loss of the rich command line would be a problem. (Although there are and from at least 3 on always have been alternatives, if only disgusting ones involing a batch file that calls a gwbasic that writes a second batch file called by the 1st after gwbasic. At that point you were pretty much better off using basic as your shell.) Windows took a hit when it "became" the OS and quit packing in a language, but as soon as the web became popular it was largely moot.
> I've enjoyed this discussion.
Ditto. It's nice to talk to someone with an opinion based on practicality over psuedo-religious beliefs.
> btw, My former advisor in college was James Kajiya, a most brilliant man who taught me many, many important things that continue to bias me to this very day.
If you mean
http://research.microsoft.com/users/kajiya/
he's certainly made a name for himself.
> but binding a web browser as part of an O/S is stretching the limits,
... I'm not going to experiment with various varieties of desktop machines to get it right. It either works and is fun or it isn't).
I used to feel that way about networking built into *nix when you had to use a 3rd party WinSock with Win3.1, but now I've come to appreciate anything and everything built in. IE might not need to be as tightly integrated as it is, but I don't mind it shipping with the OS. (And if notepad ever didn't ship, tossing me to edlin I'd be livid) The big thing is that whatever is included by default should be over-ridable. If anything, IE built-in makes this easier than ever. Use it to download the latest versions of all the apps you prefer, including another browser.
>> At work, XP can be slow with network access.
> Which even Solaris has trouble with sometimes.
The problem we see is that, you'd think after accessing a share once, further accesses would be much quicker. Within a 5-10 minute period they usually are. There's a few shares that produce problems though, that seem to do the whole connect-from-scratch with each access.
> WoW.
Agreed, so I've taken the easy way out, consoles. FF11 was great on the PC, and usually ran well, but I like being able to use Yahoo, check e-mail etc while I'm playing. (FF11 requires constant full-screen, anything that pops up crashes it)
>> Although probably slower and less powerful than Perl,
> The four letter p-word. Who needs Perl when you have `xemacs -batch'?
I haven't used emacs much. I mentioned Perl because it's a generic popular language. While I prefer emacs to vi, at home I've always drifted to something as close to notepad as possible. When I edited from a text screen in school pico was my favorite editor. (The closest to edit from DOS). I haven't used Linux as much more than a standard user, so I don't have much experience on what's best for this or that. (Just a vague feeling that a lot of it is a matter of personal taste) My primary criteria for selecting apps tends to be what's the most like whatever I use in Windows. Not the best criteria, but a useful place to start. The Gimp is NOT a good substitute for Paint. (Not that it probably tries to be, but there needs to be a better known low end art program for those in a hurry)
>> I won't argue that Windows is better than *nix on technical merits, I really don't think it is, but it's not unusable either.
> This goes back to a post I made previously, perhaps. For me, it's like walking barefooted over broken glass.
I guess I don't have this feeling because I'm so used to it that there's no painful missing functionaliy. I may pick up the same view later, but probably not until I spend most of my time on something else for at least a month or so. With the current environment at work, that's not happening anytime soon. You can't miss what you haven't gotten used to.
> I spent extensive off-time doing Microsoft Windows appreciation exercises.
Ack, sounds like a painful training class by someone who isn't exactly a "power user". All I can suggest for enduring Windows is
a: go through EVERYTHING under control panel, tweaking away
b: tweak the start bar
c: tweak tools - options in a regular explorer window
d: download TweakUI and play some more
e: check and see if any new useful short-cut keys have been added to the OS or preferred utilities
f: make a folder under the start menu with everything you need quick access to and assign keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to deal with the menus
g: download half a dozen *nix utilities that have been ported to Windows
h: toss everything from the start menu that you'll never need
But you've probably did this within the 1st day of getting a Windows machine.
> I wish I could use Solaris & KDE but that is not an option. Perhaps that is the same feeling many people have towards Microsoft Windows. Compute
Something to think about. A few years back when running Windows, Gator pretty much installed itelf on my PC. (The end of me using IE...) Getting rid of it was a pain, but... per the EULA (there was one) that you had to HUNT through their site to find, use of their software (which I never deliberately or explicitly intalled or activated) constituted acceptance of the agreement.
If that's bad, can I walk around with a similar app installing it on PCs whereever I go? "Use of this program binds you to pay me $1,000 per month for the privledge of doing so."
>> You still have the old UI (95ish) which I think looks ok.
> Is that the one with greyish stuff? I think they call it "classic" style? I would agree with that.
Yup, classic mode is what I was talking about. There's two classic modes to activate, one for the too-large everything and blue-green color scheme, and another for the start menu / bar.
> The only purpose of an O/S is for managing resources - disks, network connections, process scheduling, etc.
Agreed, but apart from phoning home (which I can't say I care for) how does Windows break this? By packing in things like Paint, Notepad, Wordpad etc that on any Linux CD would have 10 - 20 similar apps on the CD that do the same thing? You can choose not to install these helper programs when you install Windows, but the fact that by default, certain functionality is on almost all Windows machines is a good thing in an office. (Although, being used to my menus and built-in shortcuts, "smart" menus that hide options bug me to no end, as do half the "friendly" features like IE hiding error messages from web servers.)
> The only purpose of a GUI is for facilitating user access to a computer. I do not care for "flashy" GUIs, they only tend to get in the way of getting a job done. I do not care for GUIs (or any computer program) that think they are smarter than the human behind the keyboard/mouse. They are not.
Well, the last line is debatable given some of the people I work for. The "don't login as root" rule of *nix is more of the same, protecting a user from themself. (Admittedly also protecting them from malicious code, but still holding you back, although there's often not much to keep you from logging into root anyway.)
> Two or one button mice are suboptimal. Xerox/PARC spent a lot of money doing research into human/computer interfaces and settled on a 3 button mouse. There was a good reason for that.
The default MS mouse is 2 buttons and a scroll - wheel which also functions as a 3rd button. We have several mice around work (on Windows) with more buttons added (and used). This is mostly a matter of keeping down how much the average user (who doesn't want to have to learn) has to keep track of. By having a default simple system with the ability to add on, MS has the best of both worlds,... for their target audience.
> I also think putting a completely useless BIG key like CAPS LOCK (does any idiotic software rely on that now-a-days?) to the left of the "a" key without giving the user a chance to fix it is stupid.
Fix? As in disable? I think there's a registry key for disabling keys. With the game FF11 you had to use it on the start key or accidently brushing it would crash the game. Not at all intuitive for average users, but do-able.
I have my own list of keyboard annoyances. I like the standard 101 and 104 key keyboards, so anything that messes up the home/end/ins/del/page up/down (rotating and mixing around on Dells, pushing down on my parent's PC) or moves the \ key (above enter please) ticks me off. When I use a laptop I carry a full-size usb to plug in. Little things can quickly become major pains.
>> I haven't used a Mac in a while.
> The default interface isn't all that much different than Microsoft's except that it's prettier by default
The old MacOS I dealt with (no idea what version) I'd have considered sub-Windows. I'm reserving judgement on OSX until I play with it, but I don't know when that will be. The biggest problem for those computers was the power. Shutting off was easy from a menu iirc, but turning it on required recognizing that a generic button with a triangle at the top of the keyboard was the ONLY way to turn it on. I have no idea why they didn't use the usual 1 inside a 0 symbol appliances use.
> The mouse cursor has a tendency to become invisible and it can take a long time (> 5 seconds) to figure out where it is and move it. At least Microsoft Windows XP doesn't have that problem.
Some Window
> Actually, it's written into the contract you signed when you signed your driver's license.
But if it is part of the contract to drive, isn't it still breaking the law to exceed the speed limit under breach of contract? It's a step removed from having an actual law saying "Washington road, from point A to point B shall be crossed at no more than X MPH", but this is a matter of neccesity. If a new law had to be passed with each speed limit adjustment, or each new traffic law to mandate not running THAT light, imagine how much more messed up the road system would be.
> I suppose it depends on how you define "rarely".
/? and look at all the junk that pops up. Something called the "command extensions" was added in 2000 iirc. If this is turned on all the commands take a lot more arguments and are more useful. There's still some stupid problems. Find is like grep, but no regular expressions. FindStr can use expressions. If you want to count the number of lines an expression occurs on you have to pipe FindStr into Find /c (or into a text file, open in notepad, ctrl-end, ctrl-g for line count). I don't kow if there's any mid/copy/slice/substring equivalent other than the for command, which lets you manipulate strings, awkwardly. If you want more convenient power, there's the scripting host, but that's closed to packed in Perl than a Unix shell.
After growing up w/ DOS 5 and Win 3.1, once every few weeks, given 3.1 was a several times a day problem. DOS by itself was rock solid. At work XP seems more stable. The only time it crashes is when corporate pushes down some random un-asked-for, untested patch or I make some error programming. (Protected memory my ***)
> It was certainly flakey about suspending and waking up.
I never had problems with suspend and resume on XP.
> Ugly UI,
I agree that the new UI looks bad, but looks are largely a matter of personal aesthetics. You still have the old UI (95ish) which I think looks ok. The "silver" look some people use doesn't do enough to make the foreground stick out, but that's just one color scheme. Mac on the other hand with their one title bar showing at a time, always at the top seems functionally bad, perhaps OSX fixed that though. I haven't used a Mac in a while. There are way too many annoying UI tweaks you have to undo when you 1st get on XP. Turn off the underline hiding for alt keys. Turn off file hiding. Turn on showing full paths so you can see where you are.
> walking-barefooted-on-broken-glass feel,
Not sure what you mean by this one. XP never seemed painful.
> and dead slow - that's my opinion of Microsoft Windows XP.
I never had speed problems on XP. Speed issues are one of the reasons I'm going to dump SUSE.
>> The command line is getting steadily more powerful, although it probably could use a redesign.
>? It looked pretty much unchanged to me from DOS 2.0, but I won't accept anything less powerful than zsh for a command line so even if I missed something, it still looks like a toy interface.
The command line for XP is still made to be backwards compatabile back to 2 or 1. (minus a few commands that have been removed involving changing drive mappings, now handled with an interactive util called DiskPart) The next time you're on an XP box, open a DOS box and type for
To be fair, XP rarely crashed for me.
I'm currently using SUSE. After my 1st install (on an old, slow computer) I liked the reliablity of it, but wanted something faster. Putting SUSE on my main PC (which has been working pretty much non-stop with XP) I wasn't at all impressed. It was failing constantly for no obvious reason. I re-installed and the system has been FAR more stable, although it has still crashed on occasion.
Win 98 crashed frequently for me. (Previous computer) Win 95 and NT 4 in college both crashed non-stop. Win 3.1 crashed fairly frequently for me. At work I used 1st 2000, then XP, both of which have been very stable.
Before I tried SUSE, I used (and loved) Red Hat. RH never gave me a minute of trouble. I tried Puppy Linux but wasn't impressed. (It wanted to scan my HD for some reason when starting from CD (taking several minutes), if installed it might be better)
I'm going to try D*mn Small Linux, Fedora and Ubuntu soon. For some reason with nothing running but Kopete, Kate and Firefox SUSE keeps getting bogged down on a 600 or 1800 AMD chip with 1GB of RAM. I'm a 3-4 lines of start bar windows user (admittedly mostly explorer windows and notepads, but still) and SUSE isn't giving me XP level performance.
XP seems to have gotten a lot right. While I think the new interface looks like it was designed by Duplo (lego for those who might eat normal lego bricks) once you make it look like 2000 / 95 and spend 30 minutes changing minor interface annoyances it works fairly well, and has for several computers I've used at work.
The command line is getting steadily more powerful, although it probably could use a redesign. Windows Scripting Host, hated as it is can be considered a replacement command line if you need more power.
> I know this is probably a contrarian point of view here on Slashdot, but I guess I don't see the practical difference between mandatory, ubiquitous state-issued ID (driver's licenses) and mandatory, ubiquitous federal ID (passports, birth certificates, social security cards, and... dun dun DUN... Real ID).
The big problem is that this, all by itself will be enough id to completely impersonate you. You're footing the cost for a system that will make it easier for others to scam you. People are also ticked that the same government that wants to spy on citizens more and more, who doesn't want citizens to know what it's doing wants to know everything about what they're doing.
While right now, a national database can be made based on a social security number, with each person tracked and other numbers (state driver's license, non dl-id cards issued on a state by state basis) having a single ID makes it easier than ever to commit invasive (and illegal) spying on American citizens. We're offically supposed to be free of unreasonable search and seizure. Until there is good reason to suspect you of a crime, the government shouldn't be searching through your activities.
Another problem is that this id, if built into a "trusted" system can be used to ruin lives of people. The national ID allows the creation of the national database, the "permanent record" every kid used to fear in school. What happens when for some malicious reason, someone with access to this puts something bad in the database about you? Will you be able to get it out? Will you be allowed to look at your own record to see if it's correct? Consider the problem, as more jobs go overseas and work is harder to find, of trying to find a job after some fake crime gets added to your record. The employer won't bother looking into court records, but will pass to look at one of the other 50 people begging for the job. Of course, if the court records are integrated with this database, and easily corrupted, you're really out of luck.
The national ID would be a good thing, in that a single ID would be prerrable to having 50 IDs. Imagine having everything tied to the one card, want to get groceries? Swipe the citizen card and the screen lists your credit card accounts and debit card. Select where you want the pull to come from and walk out. This could be used in place of loyalty cards. You would still pay at Books A Million for a loyalty membership, but why issue a new card when there's already a unique # assigned to you?
Of course, once everything depends on this id, the person who loses it is REALLY in trouble. The market for fake driver's licenses is already high. Imagine the market for card copying, swapping the data in your card to a 2nd with someone else's picture on it for use online. Will you be jailed if you're caught driving without it?
The fears around this ID are:
The # of ways this could be misused outnumber the ways where it would be of actual benefit (massive ID theft, smears)
Given the ID system will not prevent terrorist action, given the 9/11 peoples' papers were in order, and the people proposing it know this, there's clearly an ulterior motive. If those pushing the id refuse to disclose this motive, should they be trusted? Perhaps it is a bid to just make things simpler on corporations, and they're embarassed (or afraid) to admit it openly. Regardless, this is too much money to spend on something about which the purpose of is being lied about.
(Hmm, wasn't Clinton in trouble for lying about something that DIDN'T cost the taxpayers big? Heh, if we started impeaching or getting rid of everyone in government who deliberately lied, how long would it last?)
The DMV may as well move to handling ID, they certainly do a poor job of keeping the bad drivers off the road.
Like or hate the speed limit, it's the law. Do you see it widely followed?
How often do you see turn signals used vs how often ignored?
I witnessed an elderly lady who couldn't read the 2nd line of the eye chart get waved through. (North Augusta, SC)
Drunk drivers do so again and again.
Those who have had their license taken away, don't seem to be adequately prevented from driving again. I don't think cars are impounded enough. If they were, it would get too expensive to drive without a license.
There's too many people driving without insurance... which isn't adequately prevented either.
Of course, what's going to happen when you take someone's license and not their car? Wow, now I get to drive for free! No insurance to pay since I don't "officialy" drive! In too many areas, there's not sufficient public transportation.
My town (Augusta, GA for now) has a bus system that has cost people their jobs by consistently running late. The offerings are limited enough that people can't just take an earlier run. There's talk about cutting the system back further.
Heh, what would happen if a club didn't allow people to leave until they sobered up, to make sure you couldn't drive until you were capable. It's probably go out of business fairly quickly for hassling customers. If you had a spike strip system setup to keep people from leaving until they proved they were sober, they'ed park next door to walk to the bar. For some reason people think they're entitled to do anything they want with the roads, saftey of others be ****ed.
With how people think about what they're entitled to do road-wise, the DMV has an uphill battle. Keeping the roads safe would pretty much require a police state given seemingly 80-90% of people routinely break some law. (Speed limit, illegal (no turn signal) turns or lane changes, no seat belts)
Sadly, there is probably a very deliberate move to make us a police state because those up top look at us behaving like idiots and decided
a: we don't deserver better given we can't get our acts together
b: it's the only way things are going to get "better", since the current legal system is apparently not a big enough deterrent and is overworked in part from the attempts at using it to scam and extort
What has happened so far? Robots are already doing human jobs. The existance of outsourcing shows that those who control manufacturing (and who will be buying / making the coming robots / AIs) don't care about maintaining their employees, only their bottom line.
The system can't last, if only because once every single job is extinguished and no one (except the families of the major business owners) has money, since everyone is unemployed... what will companies do then? A company that's too successful, acquiring ALL assests and resources has nothing new to take in.
Once wealth (and land from foreclosed mortgages) is consolidated, you'll have countless unemployed people with no ways to feed their families, and central places where the necesseties of life are. It's a recipe for revolution. One of the numbers that came back from Iraq a while back (a few years now) was 70% unemployment shortly after Saddam was out of the picture. If people have NO chance of making ends meet under the system you brought in, what do you think they're going to do? Fight it to the death... The majority of people need to know where their next meal is coming from to have a stable system.
If corporate dominance ever reachs that point, it will have 3 choices:
1. Buy off the unemployed masses with regular tributes of food and free housing. This COULD become a utopia for all depending on size of the maintained population, recycling and generosity of the buy-off. The buy-off would have to be repeated given people can't be counted on to hold onto their money. (They bailed us out once, they'll do it again.) If we can create a system like the Matrix, this becomes MUCH easier. At that point, everyone plugs into the "happy machine" and all the corps have to supply is food (grown and possibly IV fed into us by robots) and electricity. (Probably far less than we consume today)
2. Eliminate the unemployed masses. (Deliberate disasters, war)
3. Roll back the clock, turning off the robots so life can go back to the way it was. (Potentially forced by the people, violently, with a revolution that comes with a new constitution, forbidding the use of robots / ai while anyone is looking for a job.)