Of course, the user needs to know not to allow the program to elevate privileges. That's where the onerous tasks you mention come in. Make the user type, "I understand the risk. Let this program have full and complete access to my computer." for each program which wants higher privileges. Preface that with a very short explanation that unless the software is from a trusted (and most likely a reputable business) source, that it should not be given these elevated privileges. And here we have the point of failure. The user will get very quick at typing this phrase or someone will write an app that fills it in automatically for them, and it will be one of the first things they install on any computer they use. And they will still not read the warning. And I know from personal experience that a siren doesn't work either.
I have a pack of cigarettes in front of me right now. On the front, taking up almost half of the surface of the pack is a notice in large black text "Smoking kills". On the back, "Smoking can cause a slow and painful death" Neither deter me from smoking, although I did entertain switching to a brand that causes low birth weight.
In order of effectiveness...
Make it impossible to do.
Make it complicated to do, hopefully with the real risk of buggering up their OS install. Or at least the impression of a real risk.
Make it easy to do but requiring permission from user.
Do nothing.
The last two are tied in joint third place.
If you prevent a user from installing applications that get to do things like put themselves in start up or have the ability to hide themselves from the user or start on their own without user intervention then you've done half the battle right there. Or
If you do something to prevent the user from shooting both feet off, they will use their feet to shoot both hands off. Worst case scenario, friend/work mate/relative can fix it.
People have an amazing ability to learn what they need to. If User "x" decides they want to run some thinly disguised malware, they will put great effort into learning how to disable the security measures to run it. The danger is not immediate, so it is irrelevant.
No. That's the problem. ODF wont mean squat if it doesn't become the default format. Because no one will bother "Saving As..." to ODF before publishing documents. Well... apart from the offices that go ISO and are obliged to save everything as ODF.. And the companies that deal with the offices that go ISO, and only accept documents in ODF.. Don't underestimate he power of the bureaucratic nit pickers when it comes to following conventions. Especially if they get the power to reject the incorrect format and send a snotty letter.
Heck, I still receive Word documents as emails. I wont even mention the PowerPoint-as-postcard crap emails I get on a regular basis. Me too.. they usually open in Open Office.
They are running through a series of human readable scripts.
They just don't have the OS X script or the Linux script because it would cost them money to buy it.
The trained monkey, uh customer rep, is just going through a script and whatever its spouting in the screen is what he's gonna ask.
I have done work for call centers on and off since the late 80s and they are all using staff to just run through human readable scripts.
It keep their personnel hiring and training costs down to a minimum while ensuring some minimum SLAs. Isn't that true of pretty much all consumer grade support lines? Most are farmed out to be as cheap as possible, so not gonna hire real techies.
Although.. I had a problem with my ADSL connection last year and had a much easier time because I was using Linux. Instead of reinstalling the modem drivers, restarting the router, and all the usual CYA tech support routine, I got a line test pretty much straight away. An hour later my connection was working perfectly.
It just seems immensely more likely that he got infected by malware from surfing porn sites, than getting infected by porn from having malware. Possibly, but he wouldn't even have to do that much. Especially with an unprotected computer. Ever type hotmale instead of hotmail? type screen savers into Google? Surf for wallpaper sites? flash games etc. It is pretty easy to come across lots of malware just innocently surfing for mundane everyday stuff. Even easier if you have only a vague idea of what you are doing.
It's very easy for us to find such innocence hard to credit, but when you fix computers for clueless friends, it starts to make much more sense. No virus scanner, no firewall, no malware scans, nothing but a bare browser and an unpatched copy of Windows facing the internet.
But what's your point? If the specs aren't known, Linux isn't going to support it either. The point is.. Both OSs have the same problem. Both depend on the vendor to provide drivers and/or information to produce the drivers. So if it is Linux's fault that some hardware is not supported, then by the same line of reasoning, it must be Microsoft's fault when I can't get drivers for my hardware to use it on Windows. Unless we look at it realistically and recognize that it is in fact the vendor's choice that the driver does not exist for the OS in question.
If it doesn't work on Linux and it works on Windows, it's still a problem, nonetheless. Shifting the blame doesn't solve it. How about if it is a few years old and doesn't work with the newest version of Windows? And where does the blame lie?
I still don't see why they couldn't have a massive portable frame with at least quad-core support, 8gb ddr2 and four disks... I've seen tiny blade servers with those specs, dial the speed (and heat) down a bit, slap on a hinged LCD and a power brick. I'm not overly concerned about weight or battery life, I really just want a portable powerhouse that I can take to client meetings and plug in for a demo. Which kind of defeats the whole laptop concept. The idea is to have something that can work independent of a mains electricity supply for a useful amount of time. There are some monster gaming laptops, but they get miserable battery life, and are really only designed for taking to LAN parties and the like. Laptops and higher power are not really possible with current battery tech. In a few years, who knows.
If you really want something with the specs you mention, build one. Simple method would be a tower case with an LCD built into the side. Then you can put every high powered component you want in there. More complex would be something like one of these, but with a PC instead of a console. http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/the-ps3-laptop-from-ben-heck-to-engadget-with-love/ Very expensive I would imagine, but it would certainly make an impact at a meeting.
He makes some good points, but he also says that he thinks Firefox 3 will overtake IE8 by the end of the year, which is interesting being that they only project it to hit 20% next month. It might not overtake it in all regions, but the percentage is already significantly higher than 20% in parts of Europe as far as I remember. So it isn't so far fetched. FF with more users than IE, perhaps not, but "others" making up more than 50% of the world wide browser market... Very possible. According to some statistics, they are within a few percentage points of reaching 50% combined right now.
Perhaps Bill is getting out while the getting is good..
It seems that Asus have been mucking about with the pricing and spec on the 900 in different countries. The higher price for Australian Eee users who want Linux defended as a charge for the extra capacity drive, but the same price for both models elsewhere, the lower battery power in the UK being justified by the two year warranty, who knows what is next.
Perhaps they do this with all their products, and the Eee is just so carefully watched that it gets much more attention. But it looks like they have a product they haven't quite figured out how to price.
Or open in the sense that they've never released the custom version of Linux they run all of their servers on? They use it, but do not distribute it, so are under no obligation to publish a single line. GPL code is only required to be published if it is distributed as a product or as part of a product. The day Google decide to sell or give away a single copy of the modified Linux to someone outside Google, they will be obliged to publish, but not before. And if they use non derivative code anywhere, they will still not be obliged to publish that.
I just wonder one thing that, why someone/ some countries can appeal to a standard once it is passed to be a standard? I thought once it is a standard then everyone must agree that it is a standard, no matter you agree with it/ vote for it. The appeal process was known about from day one. Kind of like a provisional grant, which becomes permanent after the time to appeal is up, which it was on the 31st of May
All countries are entitled to appeal. Three did. More may have done so without the desire to make it public.
The difference is that you have a choice of whether or not to give your money to a private institution. You don't like the policy, don't go to that particular amusement park. Then their policy can't touch you. I was referring to the practice of quoting policy as a discussion stopper in general. (which was why I didn't specify anything about the story in the article)
Theoretically you are correct. I assume you read and understand and obey every clause on the EULA of every item of software you have installed on your computer or on any computer you have access to before you purchase the item in question, read the company policy statement of every website and merchant that you trade with etc.
Back in the real world, hardly anybody ever reads such things, and only find out about the policy when it comes into force in a way that is usually going to have a negative effect, and even the legally unenforceable ones can take considerable effort on the part of the customer to get around.
What's the difference? This is not a government establishemtn, it's a PRIVATE business. Move on, troll... And where exactly do you get the idea that the "It's policy...nothing I can do about it" excuse is limited to government institutions?
That's pretty limited, but you could imagine parks texting you when a show or parade you signed up for was about to start, or having some mobile app that could somehow integrate into a ride or receive SMS messages with pictures of you on a ride. But then they couldn't rent you a pager that tells you when your place in the que is getting close.
No it's not. They have a policy at a private amusement. I f you don't like it, you can "recreate" elsewhere. Ahh.. policy.. The bureaucratic form of "I was only following orders"
The advertising industry certainly does have standards, but they are the standards that are imposed on them, not the standards they try to live up to.
Well, those sure sound more like governmental regulations than standards, as there is a penalty (or threat of action) for non-compliance other than loss of marketshare. A standard and a regulation are interchangeable in this case (perhaps it's a UK thing).
John, it's easily replaced, so create this easily replaced service. You'll be a *billionaire*. And it's easy, right? I mean easy for me as a user to switch to alternative services. Not easy for someone to produce the product that would encourage me to switch from Google.
Google's been dominant for so long that its cultural inertia value would carry it a long, long way even if someone else came up with a better search tomorrow -- not that I expect Microsoft to do that. Don't be so sure. The Internet is a very fickle market. Today's hot property is tomorrows old news. It used to be that almost everyone used chat rooms, now not so much. Then social networking sites sprung up, but even they are getting old now. Tomorrow... Who knows.
All it takes is for a new engine to offer something with a feature that Google doesn't yet have and if enough buzz is generated, then Google starts looking a bit ill.
I use Google quite a bit, but if something better came along, I can guarantee that I would be out of there with no hesitation. It might take more than a better search engine, but nothing is keeping me at Google but my choice to use their easily replaced services. It's just a search engine and a few other web based apps, so someone else can just as easily offer me the same services, and I'll go there instead.
An industry who's sole purpose is to trick people into buying things they don't need or want has standards? You're funny. It's true though. There is even an advertising standards authority here in the UK. An ad can not be deliberately misleading, so saying "Coke is a cure for baldness" is not allowed. Or implying that a computer with wireless capabilities is all you need to get on the net, as PC World found out to their cost, is also not acceptable. It is even possible to complain about a specific ad, and have it removed if it is misleading, offensive etc. And it has been done many times. The advertising industry certainly does have standards, but they are the standards that are imposed on them, not the standards they try to live up to.
It seems you do not understand how the Maya UI works. Try checking out the quick intro that pops up the first time Maya starts up. Wouldn't that make Maya's UI non intuitive then? Or does it get more intuitive when you get to know it?
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Wow.. thanks for the heads up.. my password is "********"
They just don't have the OS X script or the Linux script because it would cost them money to buy it.
The trained monkey, uh customer rep, is just going through a script and whatever its spouting in the screen is what he's gonna ask.
I have done work for call centers on and off since the late 80s and they are all using staff to just run through human readable scripts.
It keep their personnel hiring and training costs down to a minimum while ensuring some minimum SLAs. Isn't that true of pretty much all consumer grade support lines? Most are farmed out to be as cheap as possible, so not gonna hire real techies.
Although.. I had a problem with my ADSL connection last year and had a much easier time because I was using Linux. Instead of reinstalling the modem drivers, restarting the router, and all the usual CYA tech support routine, I got a line test pretty much straight away. An hour later my connection was working perfectly.
It's very easy for us to find such innocence hard to credit, but when you fix computers for clueless friends, it starts to make much more sense. No virus scanner, no firewall, no malware scans, nothing but a bare browser and an unpatched copy of Windows facing the internet.
But what's your point? If the specs aren't known, Linux isn't going to support it either. The point is.. Both OSs have the same problem. Both depend on the vendor to provide drivers and/or information to produce the drivers. So if it is Linux's fault that some hardware is not supported, then by the same line of reasoning, it must be Microsoft's fault when I can't get drivers for my hardware to use it on Windows. Unless we look at it realistically and recognize that it is in fact the vendor's choice that the driver does not exist for the OS in question.
If you really want something with the specs you mention, build one. Simple method would be a tower case with an LCD built into the side. Then you can put every high powered component you want in there. More complex would be something like one of these, but with a PC instead of a console. http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/the-ps3-laptop-from-ben-heck-to-engadget-with-love/ Very expensive I would imagine, but it would certainly make an impact at a meeting.
Perhaps Bill is getting out while the getting is good..
...And that's why Linux won't yet replace desktop Windows! True Story. Wow... so much effort. So little accuracy.It seems that Asus have been mucking about with the pricing and spec on the 900 in different countries. The higher price for Australian Eee users who want Linux defended as a charge for the extra capacity drive, but the same price for both models elsewhere, the lower battery power in the UK being justified by the two year warranty, who knows what is next.
Perhaps they do this with all their products, and the Eee is just so carefully watched that it gets much more attention. But it looks like they have a product they haven't quite figured out how to price.
All countries are entitled to appeal. Three did. More may have done so without the desire to make it public.
Theoretically you are correct. I assume you read and understand and obey every clause on the EULA of every item of software you have installed on your computer or on any computer you have access to before you purchase the item in question, read the company policy statement of every website and merchant that you trade with etc.
Back in the real world, hardly anybody ever reads such things, and only find out about the policy when it comes into force in a way that is usually going to have a negative effect, and even the legally unenforceable ones can take considerable effort on the part of the customer to get around.