Windows is like a drug addiction. Sometimes it takes several tries to kick it.
Sometimes it takes not getting your first linux disk from some guru with no knowledge of what the average user wants
My first linux disk from such a person led to a scary looking command prompt with no info on the login, or how to get to a gui (it was some kind of liveboot disk). After spending a few hours to learn it was "root", "root", and that the command was startx, and that further i could RTFM with "man" (that was helpful to learn 3 hours later!), i threw the disk in the garbage.
if you want to get people to use alternatives (paint.net, firefox, linux, etc etc etc), you have to actually show the user how to USE it, and what the benefits of doing so are. It does noone a service if you install [linux | firefox | openoffice] and then neglect to make sure they can use it.
I've dealt with a number of users on macs running parallels, and while for the most part theyre your "typical" mac users, they seem to "get it". They need to run windows apps, and they understand the difference between mac and windows, and are not confused when running apps in the VM vs on the host.
Possibly it has to do with it being something that they need to know how to use to be productive--generally its not worth the end user's time to know how to be good at computers--if they get a virus once a year, they just call their IT guy and he fixes it. But ive seen time and time again where an end user NEEDS to use FTP regularly, and they will learn how to use filezilla sufficiently to get their job done, because theres no alternative--its something they need to know.
I have a feeling anyone who truly needs this will learn to use it properly, at least to the extent their job/productivity/consumer needs require.
I have some bad news for you--kids in school give up a lot of their constitutional rights. This has been upheld in the supreme court--go ahead and try to sue because the teacher disciplined you for cursing, see how quickly that gets shut down.
Additionally, Im not exactly sure if youre trying to present a chilling situation in which censorship was applied--dont you think that schools are one of the few places that that kind of censorship makes sense? Kids are there to learn, not browse the damn internet.
correct me if im wrong, but MHz IS super important when comparing similar processors. It would be correct to say that you cannot compare a 3ghz pentium 4 and a 3ghz core2 or xeon, but you can CERTAINLY compare a 3ghz phenom II to a 7ghz phenom II--unless im misinformed, the 7ghz will perform over twice as fast.
youre missing the point, its a rootkit that requires physical (ie, above root) access to the machine in question. You could also plant a hardware keylogger, a rootkit bios, or a malicious bootloader. Is it unreasonable for windows to assume the bios and hardware are not out to get them?
Generally, once you have admin on windows, you can get root trivially using a number of methods, such as replacing logon.scr with cmd.exe, or using the AT command, or this little gem,
Probably the same way HP printer drivers are 350mb.
I'm actually starting to suspect that the same people who write the adobe reader/updater code, also work in the HP drivers division. Both use FEAD/Nosso compression, both have obnoxious updaters, both are massively bloated.... /tinfoil hat
You honestly wouldnt have a problem with microsoft bundling their own PDF reader with their OS? More to the point, dont you think that people would start yelling about bloat and whatnot if they did?
I find it amusing that that monster cables' uber awesome triple gold plated nitrogen injected ethernet cables can be had at a lower price than best buy sells plain jane cat5e. $0.50 per foot isnt great, but its a hell of a lot better than what best buy charges.
The Public School system. It takes in EVERYBODY unlike a private school. Unlike my school (Private school) they don't expell students who fail a class or get caught with a beer. (shock and amaze, when you expell all the kids who fail classes your overall test scores go up!). They also accept vegetables and make their best effort to get them to an employable state at Burger King or stocking shelves. This saves the government a lot of money from having dependent adults who can't contribute to society.
DAMN STRAIGHT. We cant go scarring people by allowing failure to actually have CONSEQUENCES, can we? By removing all consequences for mistakes and misbehavior, we'll have a well educated and responsible country in NO time!
/sarcasm
Im pretty certain you could attribute at least a fair portion of the blame for the current economic situation on people not understanding what consequences are.
There is no such thing as "the Christian system" and moreover there is no widespread faction of Christianity that actually has this as a pivotal part of their theology.
Im fairly certain that "christian system" could be taken to mean "the christian system of beliefs". And it isn't exactly a radical, far off idea for Christians that everyone deserves punishment, and part of that is that they know they deserve it. You may not agree with it, but that's sort of one of the basic beliefs of Christians.
They can't all be right. Most people are going to hell.
Those statements do not follow--the first one is undoubtedly true, but the rest make the assumption that the religions have nothing in common, or that a follower of one is necessarily condemned by the beliefs of another, or that all religions have a concept of hell. Problem is that they share many traits and obviously many religions do NOT have a hell, and further, denominations (as far as I know) don't generally think all others are going to hell--that's why they're denominations, not separate religions. Also, I'm not positive, but I rather believe that, were Mormons correct, Christians, Muslims, and Jews would be capable of salvation.
You might as well accept that you're going to roast, and enjoy your mortal life while you can.
Excellent advice. While we're at it, we should accept that the RIAA will always win, the political systems are screwed, and there's nothing we can do about it. I suggest we all quit our jobs, hop in bed, and wait to die--its going to happen anyways.
You strike me as the type of person who would become a doctor and then refuse to perform abortions because it was against your "morals". Try leaving decisions about right and wrong up to the supreme court and do your damn job.
And you strike me as the type of person whos decided that your beliefs (or that of your country) are so valid that no others are worthy of consideration. Has it occurred to you that not everyone believes the supreme court is the final judge on issues of morality?
More to the point, are you saying that if a doctor honestly believed abortion was murder, he should just shrug his shoulders, remember that the supreme court says its ok, and quell his sense of right and wrong? Its pretty scary where you could go with a thought process like that--didnt the supreme court once endorse seperate but equal? Would you have made the same remark to any who disagreed with it?
Im rather curious if you think that noone should be able to make money off of inventions either, should everything be "open source"?
I dont think society would progress very far if you had your way.
Part of his complaint seems to be that while it may be fine to pay boatloads for the device because of an OS, its a bit lame for the vendor to then use the situation to try to make ridiculous profits on the extras that DONT have those R&D costs.
I would feel its less of an issue when there arent licensing restrictions that prevent you from doing the hardware upgrade yourself, and it would be excellent if NAS | Firewall | router | etc vendors were willing to sell you support and a bootable flash card containing the OS, as well as having the option to buy the appliance. Then they could charge whatever fee helps them to turn a profit, and WE could worry about the hardware costs.
Except that its really not, because with more gold you really can buy better pieces of gear, and for a good while now that's been true--from BC where you could buy mats for high end craftables (the ones using nether vortexes, or sunmotes), and now in WotLK where you can probably purchase ~15-20k worth of high end gear (the kirin tor rings, the cloaks, various other pieces of craftables).
The fact that you can pay someone to get you a high end character, then pay someone to give you gold and use that gold to quickly get up to speed with gear, and then do it with 3 alts, may seem harmless enough--after all, you're just making it more fun for yourself, right?
Unfortunately, that completely misses what it does for other people. When you are able to easily fork over 2k for $epic_crafted_cloak, the price rises, and others have to deal with it, and we have to either break the rules and spend our own money to break even, or we have to spend days grinding the additional cash to compensate. Further, for raiders, if i have a dps class that I've worked my ass off on, and you roll in with your shiny new bought character with bought gear with the same stats, you've done no work, and can replace me, and cause me to miss out on content that I've worked for. The same is true in arenas--if anyone can snap their fingers, fork over $600, and have an arena-ready mage, that's GREAT! Except now my character is less valuable, and I have fewer potential partners to work with. That's not a problem if you had put in the same amount of effort (or skill) into it, but having paid for it is about the same as the analogy that GP made--instead of working for success in a game, you're paying for it. And that sucks for people who actually spend time trying to get good at the game so they can succeed within the game's rules.
A quick googling and a peek at an MSFT investor relations article brings this up:
January 22, 2009 â" Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $16.63 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2008, a 2% increase over the same period of the prior year.
A little quick calculation shows that $388 million is slightly less than 2.4% of that--which neatly wipes out that gain on the previous year.
Just because its not devastating to them doesnt mean its insignificant.
Im not clear on which of his points you were so eloquently refuting. Last time I checked, many desktop linux distros lacked at least some of those features, so whatever massive flaws vista had, Im not sure security was one of them.
Binaries are binaries, and stupid users running them from untrusted sources will screw up just about any OS so long as tools are able to do the sorts of things 'dd', 'rm', and 'sh' can.
His comment may have come off as slightly fanboyish, but thats probably because this is slashdot, and anything that doesnt mock windows will come off that way.
there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation...
oh wait, we DO have more info, from CBS news--and its exactly that--
Court documents show it's all part of an alleged massive fraud scheme against AT&T and Verizon.
So again, isnt this exactly the sort of thing the FBI is SUPPOSED to be investigating? And if you dont think the "court documents" are a reliable source, then why the hell are people jumping to conclusions based on a report of them? All we know for sure is that the FBI raided a location, they had a warrant, and a news organization saw court documents indicating it was within their authority and rights to do so. Or should i just shut up and let people mindlessly rant about the government for the next hundred or so replies?
Yes. But Slashdot users have a propensity for Libertarian anarchism.
Slashdot seems to recently have a propensity for digg-like posting--find an article with an inflamatory article that supports your viewpoint, and jump on the bandwagon with no regard for the reality of the situation.
Seriously, has reasonable and intelligent discussion really disappeared from slashdot?
So yesterday this very story was on how the FBI was acting as the RIAA's paid hitmen. Today we get a story about how theyre collection agents for AT&T (but no comments about wiretapping? im disappointed).
I look forward to tomorrows article, Im sure it will be filled with useful, non-speculative bullshit.
Incidentally, isnt it sort of in the FBI's realm to investigate large-scale fraud?
In my state, age of consent (with some exceptions) is 16, which is pretty realistic because they would just do it anyway.
Are you suggesting that thats a good basis of law--what people will do anyways? Im pretty certain I could make some sort of a case for most crimes by following that line of logic.
Just want to point something out--you seem to be implying that a parent should take the stance that their teen is going to be promiscuous, and thats OK, because their bodies are telling them to be that way.
I hope im misunderstanding you, because attitudes like that can easily lead to obesity, debt, etc. What a person wants and whats good for a person are generally 2 different things, and teens may not realize that. Not a parent myself, but I dont think i would encourage a child to try to satiate every one of their desires whenever they feel like it.
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Windows is like a drug addiction. Sometimes it takes several tries to kick it.
Sometimes it takes not getting your first linux disk from some guru with no knowledge of what the average user wants
My first linux disk from such a person led to a scary looking command prompt with no info on the login, or how to get to a gui (it was some kind of liveboot disk). After spending a few hours to learn it was "root", "root", and that the command was startx, and that further i could RTFM with "man" (that was helpful to learn 3 hours later!), i threw the disk in the garbage.
if you want to get people to use alternatives (paint.net, firefox, linux, etc etc etc), you have to actually show the user how to USE it, and what the benefits of doing so are. It does noone a service if you install [linux | firefox | openoffice] and then neglect to make sure they can use it.
I've dealt with a number of users on macs running parallels, and while for the most part theyre your "typical" mac users, they seem to "get it". They need to run windows apps, and they understand the difference between mac and windows, and are not confused when running apps in the VM vs on the host. Possibly it has to do with it being something that they need to know how to use to be productive--generally its not worth the end user's time to know how to be good at computers--if they get a virus once a year, they just call their IT guy and he fixes it. But ive seen time and time again where an end user NEEDS to use FTP regularly, and they will learn how to use filezilla sufficiently to get their job done, because theres no alternative--its something they need to know. I have a feeling anyone who truly needs this will learn to use it properly, at least to the extent their job/productivity/consumer needs require.
Most schools filter web access.
I have some bad news for you--kids in school give up a lot of their constitutional rights. This has been upheld in the supreme court--go ahead and try to sue because the teacher disciplined you for cursing, see how quickly that gets shut down.
Additionally, Im not exactly sure if youre trying to present a chilling situation in which censorship was applied--dont you think that schools are one of the few places that that kind of censorship makes sense? Kids are there to learn, not browse the damn internet.
correct me if im wrong, but MHz IS super important when comparing similar processors. It would be correct to say that you cannot compare a 3ghz pentium 4 and a 3ghz core2 or xeon, but you can CERTAINLY compare a 3ghz phenom II to a 7ghz phenom II--unless im misinformed, the 7ghz will perform over twice as fast.
some quick googling indicates they have.
youre missing the point, its a rootkit that requires physical (ie, above root) access to the machine in question. You could also plant a hardware keylogger, a rootkit bios, or a malicious bootloader. Is it unreasonable for windows to assume the bios and hardware are not out to get them?
legally dumps all of your own ROMs.
has that been upheld as fair use in a court of law?
sc create rootsvc binpath= "cmd /k start" type= own type= interact && sc start rootsvc && sc delete rootsvc
Probably the same way HP printer drivers are 350mb.
I'm actually starting to suspect that the same people who write the adobe reader/updater code, also work in the HP drivers division. Both use FEAD/Nosso compression, both have obnoxious updaters, both are massively bloated....
/tinfoil hat
You honestly wouldnt have a problem with microsoft bundling their own PDF reader with their OS? More to the point, dont you think that people would start yelling about bloat and whatnot if they did?
I find it amusing that that monster cables' uber awesome triple gold plated nitrogen injected ethernet cables can be had at a lower price than best buy sells plain jane cat5e. $0.50 per foot isnt great, but its a hell of a lot better than what best buy charges.
The Public School system. It takes in EVERYBODY unlike a private school. Unlike my school (Private school) they don't expell students who fail a class or get caught with a beer. (shock and amaze, when you expell all the kids who fail classes your overall test scores go up!). They also accept vegetables and make their best effort to get them to an employable state at Burger King or stocking shelves. This saves the government a lot of money from having dependent adults who can't contribute to society.
DAMN STRAIGHT. We cant go scarring people by allowing failure to actually have CONSEQUENCES, can we? By removing all consequences for mistakes and misbehavior, we'll have a well educated and responsible country in NO time!
/sarcasm
Im pretty certain you could attribute at least a fair portion of the blame for the current economic situation on people not understanding what consequences are.
There is no such thing as "the Christian system" and moreover there is no widespread faction of Christianity that actually has this as a pivotal part of their theology.
Im fairly certain that "christian system" could be taken to mean "the christian system of beliefs". And it isn't exactly a radical, far off idea for Christians that everyone deserves punishment, and part of that is that they know they deserve it. You may not agree with it, but that's sort of one of the basic beliefs of Christians.
They can't all be right. Most people are going to hell.
Those statements do not follow--the first one is undoubtedly true, but the rest make the assumption that the religions have nothing in common, or that a follower of one is necessarily condemned by the beliefs of another, or that all religions have a concept of hell. Problem is that they share many traits and obviously many religions do NOT have a hell, and further, denominations (as far as I know) don't generally think all others are going to hell--that's why they're denominations, not separate religions. Also, I'm not positive, but I rather believe that, were Mormons correct, Christians, Muslims, and Jews would be capable of salvation.
You might as well accept that you're going to roast, and enjoy your mortal life while you can.
Excellent advice. While we're at it, we should accept that the RIAA will always win, the political systems are screwed, and there's nothing we can do about it. I suggest we all quit our jobs, hop in bed, and wait to die--its going to happen anyways.
I shall not be ignorant, yet I must not question the Lord's abilities (Matt 4:7, Deut 6:16, or 1 Cor 10:9 if you prefer that one)?
There is a substantial difference between "not being ignorant" and "testing the lord" (as written in that last passage, 1cor10:9).
How am I supposed to learn if I cannot try?
Id imagine by reading the book youre quoting from.
You strike me as the type of person who would become a doctor and then refuse to perform abortions because it was against your "morals". Try leaving decisions about right and wrong up to the supreme court and do your damn job.
And you strike me as the type of person whos decided that your beliefs (or that of your country) are so valid that no others are worthy of consideration. Has it occurred to you that not everyone believes the supreme court is the final judge on issues of morality?
More to the point, are you saying that if a doctor honestly believed abortion was murder, he should just shrug his shoulders, remember that the supreme court says its ok, and quell his sense of right and wrong? Its pretty scary where you could go with a thought process like that--didnt the supreme court once endorse seperate but equal? Would you have made the same remark to any who disagreed with it?
Im rather curious if you think that noone should be able to make money off of inventions either, should everything be "open source"? I dont think society would progress very far if you had your way.
Part of his complaint seems to be that while it may be fine to pay boatloads for the device because of an OS, its a bit lame for the vendor to then use the situation to try to make ridiculous profits on the extras that DONT have those R&D costs.
I would feel its less of an issue when there arent licensing restrictions that prevent you from doing the hardware upgrade yourself, and it would be excellent if NAS | Firewall | router | etc vendors were willing to sell you support and a bootable flash card containing the OS, as well as having the option to buy the appliance. Then they could charge whatever fee helps them to turn a profit, and WE could worry about the hardware costs.
dont you mean syfy?
Except that its really not, because with more gold you really can buy better pieces of gear, and for a good while now that's been true--from BC where you could buy mats for high end craftables (the ones using nether vortexes, or sunmotes), and now in WotLK where you can probably purchase ~15-20k worth of high end gear (the kirin tor rings, the cloaks, various other pieces of craftables).
The fact that you can pay someone to get you a high end character, then pay someone to give you gold and use that gold to quickly get up to speed with gear, and then do it with 3 alts, may seem harmless enough--after all, you're just making it more fun for yourself, right?
Unfortunately, that completely misses what it does for other people. When you are able to easily fork over 2k for $epic_crafted_cloak, the price rises, and others have to deal with it, and we have to either break the rules and spend our own money to break even, or we have to spend days grinding the additional cash to compensate. Further, for raiders, if i have a dps class that I've worked my ass off on, and you roll in with your shiny new bought character with bought gear with the same stats, you've done no work, and can replace me, and cause me to miss out on content that I've worked for. The same is true in arenas--if anyone can snap their fingers, fork over $600, and have an arena-ready mage, that's GREAT! Except now my character is less valuable, and I have fewer potential partners to work with. That's not a problem if you had put in the same amount of effort (or skill) into it, but having paid for it is about the same as the analogy that GP made--instead of working for success in a game, you're paying for it. And that sucks for people who actually spend time trying to get good at the game so they can succeed within the game's rules.
January 22, 2009 â" Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $16.63 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2008, a 2% increase over the same period of the prior year.
A little quick calculation shows that $388 million is slightly less than 2.4% of that--which neatly wipes out that gain on the previous year.
Just because its not devastating to them doesnt mean its insignificant.
Im not clear on which of his points you were so eloquently refuting. Last time I checked, many desktop linux distros lacked at least some of those features, so whatever massive flaws vista had, Im not sure security was one of them.
Binaries are binaries, and stupid users running them from untrusted sources will screw up just about any OS so long as tools are able to do the sorts of things 'dd', 'rm', and 'sh' can.
His comment may have come off as slightly fanboyish, but thats probably because this is slashdot, and anything that doesnt mock windows will come off that way.
there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation...
oh wait, we DO have more info, from CBS news--and its exactly that--
Court documents show it's all part of an alleged massive fraud scheme against AT&T and Verizon.
So again, isnt this exactly the sort of thing the FBI is SUPPOSED to be investigating? And if you dont think the "court documents" are a reliable source, then why the hell are people jumping to conclusions based on a report of them? All we know for sure is that the FBI raided a location, they had a warrant, and a news organization saw court documents indicating it was within their authority and rights to do so. Or should i just shut up and let people mindlessly rant about the government for the next hundred or so replies?
Yes. But Slashdot users have a propensity for Libertarian anarchism.
Slashdot seems to recently have a propensity for digg-like posting--find an article with an inflamatory article that supports your viewpoint, and jump on the bandwagon with no regard for the reality of the situation.
Seriously, has reasonable and intelligent discussion really disappeared from slashdot?
So yesterday this very story was on how the FBI was acting as the RIAA's paid hitmen. Today we get a story about how theyre collection agents for AT&T (but no comments about wiretapping? im disappointed). I look forward to tomorrows article, Im sure it will be filled with useful, non-speculative bullshit. Incidentally, isnt it sort of in the FBI's realm to investigate large-scale fraud?
In my state, age of consent (with some exceptions) is 16, which is pretty realistic because they would just do it anyway.
Are you suggesting that thats a good basis of law--what people will do anyways? Im pretty certain I could make some sort of a case for most crimes by following that line of logic.
Just want to point something out--you seem to be implying that a parent should take the stance that their teen is going to be promiscuous, and thats OK, because their bodies are telling them to be that way. I hope im misunderstanding you, because attitudes like that can easily lead to obesity, debt, etc. What a person wants and whats good for a person are generally 2 different things, and teens may not realize that. Not a parent myself, but I dont think i would encourage a child to try to satiate every one of their desires whenever they feel like it.