All joking aside, can any of us trust their patches
So just install a firewall you trust? Perhaps an old, pre-crazy version? Personally I use an old version of Kerio Firewall. Does the job, and the UI for managing exceptions is great.
"Two possibilities exist -- either we are alone in the universe or we are not. I am unsure which is more terrifying."
This is the sad thing about having evolved on a planet where everything eats everything else. I hold out hope that, somewhere out there, there is a planet where all the ecosystems get there energy from their sun, radiation, chemistry, whatever, but *not each other*. Imagine the type of consciousness(es) that would evolve on such a world. Imagine the science. Imagine the culture. I'd migrate there in a heartbeat.
I would guess it's closer to a head getting a body transplant, than to a body getting a head transplant.
Even closer; a brain transplant. Provided we can find a way to keep our brains in tip-top shape forever, all we need to do is clone our bodies and, when it's at a ripe age, pluck the brain out and put ours in. The 2010 film "Never Let Me Go" touches nicely on the subject.
The biggest improvements in population, lifespan, quality of life and human condition in general, the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, were both based on the ability to have fewer people do the work that used to take many.
Sure, while population was relatively low, that was a logical progression. It's like saying hey, pulling natural resources from the ground has been the basis of modern society, it can't be a bad thing! A growing population plus "fewer people doing the work" ultimately leads where? They can't all be middle class, and work in office buildings.
The rationale which took us from the I.R. to the 90's no longer applies.
Absolutely. I often had this problem. I want to capture the screen. What was the app called again? "screen" no.. "snap" no.. "capture" no... seriously, how the hell am I supposed to know it's "snipping tool"? Totally messed up. The simple solution is to allow *search keywords* to be assigned to shortcuts, so it DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE APP NAME IS.
MS clearly doesn't have a lot of imagination when it comes to user interface design. They need to fire everyone in the UI dept and start again. From Metro to Visual Studio, they currently suck like few other companies do at UI. Amazing.
That's a problem with the application name, not with search.
Ha. You would never have heard Jobs say such a thing, which is why Apple products are so popular. There is ALWAYS a way of making shit work, or as a product designer you're not worth your title.
-conflicts have more/better/safer options (replace all, replace if newer, etc)
The stupid thing is, DOS had better file copy options than Windows up to now.
Copy you copied a bunch of files in DOS and there was a conflict, you'd get "Abort, Retry, Ignore". Simple options. It wouldn't screw the entire copy operation due to one problem, as Windows has done for the past decade. Just... stunning.
Thank god for TeraCopy and such. After all this time, MS finally starts to get how file copying should work in Windows. Stunning. Simply stunning for a multi-billion dollar company.
I agree with all that, and I think Watchmen did a much better job with Doctor Manhattan, who really started to inhabit his own "little" world, as he gradually came to feel that nobody else could relate to him. I guess he also became emotionally distanced, preoccupied as he was with the larger universe. It was a great treatise on superhero-ism. IMO, so was Unbreakable and even Hancock.
In the Marvel universe, however, there's the Super Hero Club where they can all chew the fat and talk shop, so Superman isn't necessarily lonely, and there are female Heroes too. Not sure why they don't bonk more often. Would have thought being invincible means you're never not horny. Go figure.
coming to grips with the fact that power has made them horrible people
Power doesn't necessarily make you behave horribly. I think rather it's the *obsession* with power, the paranoia about losing it, etc. Superman grew up being invincible - he grew up with no fear of any person or thing *ever* taking away what he has.
Now, that's some *fertile ground* for really exploring what it is to be a human being, because he is nothing like anything a human could even comprehend. This is the basis of most of the best real Sci-Fi - examining what it is to be human by taking you out into the impossible and dumbfounding.
But unfortunately, I think that sort of thing is too risky for mainstream Hollywood these days, which is why Bladerunner 2 will be hollow as well.
TL;DR I don't agree lack of character development has anything to with what Superman is. It's just lack of imagination by writers.
Not just business users. What about all the charities, NGOs and government departments that lack funding - usually education and health unfortunately. I do a bit of development work for a major public hospital here. Up in the labs, they're all on XP, lots of CRTs still around, as is various MS Access databases they work on, not to mention Office 2003 spreadsheets (2007 if you're lucky).
My main role is turning these things into online database apps, and IE6 support is absolutely necessary.
And, you know, I don't see any of that as a bad thing at all. They do excellent work and really, really do not need pointless OS/Office upgrades every couple of years interfering with getting their work done. Can you imagine what would happen if public hospitals - who rely on streamlined, well-rehearsed processes on a tight time budget - had a Windows 8 upgrade forced upon them?
That's really what is wrong with Microsoft at the moment. When "new" is seen as more trouble than it's worth, some serious self-examination is needed of what one's goals and purpose are as a company. There should be NO QUESTION about Windows updates being as painless as possible for all users, with new features being optional extras for those who want it.
I'm sure a great deal of XP users would immediately change to the "Windows Classic" theme after a new install. Usually you just want it to *work* out of the box - install it and keep working, while you explore the new stuff when you have time. You don't want the new stuff to become a time sink. From changing keyboard shortcuts in Win7, to the no-compromise Ribbon Bar, to crippling all your Office macros, to removing the Start button... MS is *very* lucky there aren't any serious contenders to Office.
But we do see more Macs in the office these days, and that's partly MS's fault for creating a perception with new customers that there's always "something wrong" with new Windows versions. Apple, on the other hand, create the impression that there's always "something cool" about new OSX and IOS versions. You only need to compare the Apple WWDC 2013 keynote with a Windows 8 presentation.
I'm no Apple user, I'm MS and Android. Yet it's clear that Apple communicates to the audience *through* the demonstration of their technology and design. Microsoft, on the other hand, does the traditional thing of explaining *why* it's cool, *why* you need it, etc. Completely different approaches to products and technology.
Until the first big virus hits that exploits a security hole that won't be fixed.
That is just a business opportunity for antivirus/malware/firewall suites. I can see the ads now - why pay $100's, even $1000's, for a new system, when you can just upgrade to our XP DEFENDER security suite? And hey, why not?
I've had XP and Office 2003 on a laptop here for years, and honestly don't see why it needs updating. There once was a time when things people made that lasted were prized. I'd be proud to have a working XP SP3 system sitting around here in another 10 years' time. It's an example of something made well.
If we're lucky Apple will realise that patent reform is in their best interests as well as ours.
It's not luck. Like any public company, Apple needs to keep shareholders happy and patent reform won't increase market share, lower costs or do anything else companies need to concentrate on to survive. Why would a company do something that is not to their advantage, particularly in such a fast-moving, cut-throat industry?
Not sure what the fuss is about, I'm having a fine old time on Firefox 11. You don't have to upgrade. Addons that disable cookies, flash and scripts, until *you* decide they're necessary, keep you sufficiently safe.
Maybe if they improve the speed to rival Chrome I'll consider it. Till then, all these "upgrades" seem fairly pointless to me.
When you have 1 guy, he works at 100%, but when you add 1 guy, you get 93% of their combined force. [...] With 8 people, you get the results of 4 people !
The real benefit is that you can start treating your monitor like a CRT again, feeding it arbitrary resolutions.
The screen on my HP 8510p laptop has a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. Yet, because it is a really good screen, made by LG I think, I run all the time in 1280 x 800 (my preferred resolution) and don't notice any blurred edges. Not when browsing, not when developing, not when using text editors or Photoshop, no matter the font.
It's simply a great screen. There were other screens that looked terrible when I changed the resolution. Somehow, this one is smooth as silk.
But a Microsoft guy could do the same, dropping in a load of stock rich text edits and grid controls to product a very similar quickly.
Probably more quickly - Visual Studio IDE, built-in widgets and open source ones are pretty comprehensive. But then throwing in a rich text widget doesn't make a "word processor". Many web-based content management systems do exactly the same - they think including CKEditor is 99% of the work done.
> A creative enough person could kill another without a weapon, and a weapon could be made from many ordinary household objects.
This is a straw man argument, simply because you'd have to be pretty creative with your nailbat to mow down a school full of students and teachers before the police arrives or someone tackles you from behind. You can kill a couple of people with something home-made, but committing mass murder requires a gun or explosive.
In fact, around the time of the Sandy Hook school shooting (where I think over 20 children died), a guy in China attacked a bunch of school kids with a knife. Over 20 kids were wounded. Guess how many died? None.
So that pro-gun "you don't need a gun to kill someone" argument is both misleading and irresponsible. Every town, every city, has its share of mentally unbalanced individuals. There's quite a big difference between them having access to guns and access only to household items, don't you think?
How you got modded insightful is a mystery. They're making the construction and possession of a printed gun illegal, if you RTFA. Not plastic.
The context is that gun possession itself is highly restricted in Australia. So obviously procuring any kind of working gun, plastic or not, is going to be illegal.
If you're American, well all I can say is, glad I'm not living there. Enjoy your gunamageddon.
With a BAC of 0.05, an individual’s vision may already be affected in terms of sensitivity to brightness, the ability to determine colours, and depth and motion perception. The brain’s ability to perform simple motor functions is diminished. This means that a driver’s reaction time will be slower and responses will be less accurate. The result is degraded driving performance and a significant increase in collision risk. The increased collision risk of drivers with a BAC from 0.05 to 0.08 (also known as the "warn range") is well documented:
Drivers with a BAC above 0.05 but below the legal limit are 7.2 times more likely to be in a fatal collision
than drivers with a zero BAC. In 2005, 16.7% of drinking drivers killed in Ontario had a BAC less than 0.08.
(emphasis mine)
This is what people need to understand so/. isn't embarrassed by +5 insightful statements like, "but I'm impaired by the kids yelling in the back seat anyway, so what the fuck, I'll have a beer."
kids in the car yelling, passengers talking, sign spinners [...]
You're spouting a common and nonsensical argument: "I'm impaired anyway, so what's wrong with a bit of alcohol?"
The answer is - nothing. Nothing is wrong with being a little impaired by alcohol. This is because the 0.08 and even 0.05 limits do not mean that you are unimpaired. Just the opposite - you are already impaired at 0.05 to the point where you're 7 times more likely to die in a car accident: http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/impaired/fact-sheet.shtml
So your argument that you're maybe twice or three times more likely to die with the kids yelling in the back seat - well, that's better than 0.05 impairment. Not worse or even equivalent!
Do some research before making ridiculous statements, America. People are laughing at you.
Slashdot Mirror
All joking aside, can any of us trust their patches
So just install a firewall you trust? Perhaps an old, pre-crazy version? Personally I use an old version of Kerio Firewall. Does the job, and the UI for managing exceptions is great.
"Two possibilities exist -- either we are alone in the universe or we are not. I am unsure which is more terrifying."
This is the sad thing about having evolved on a planet where everything eats everything else. I hold out hope that, somewhere out there, there is a planet where all the ecosystems get there energy from their sun, radiation, chemistry, whatever, but *not each other*. Imagine the type of consciousness(es) that would evolve on such a world. Imagine the science. Imagine the culture. I'd migrate there in a heartbeat.
I would guess it's closer to a head getting a body transplant, than to a body getting a head transplant.
Even closer; a brain transplant. Provided we can find a way to keep our brains in tip-top shape forever, all we need to do is clone our bodies and, when it's at a ripe age, pluck the brain out and put ours in. The 2010 film "Never Let Me Go" touches nicely on the subject.
On the flip side of that, simply knowing that your information is available tends to induce better behavior on the Web.
If you're correct in that theory, we're in for a whole lotta good behaviour online and offline in the years to come. Let's hope so.
The biggest improvements in population, lifespan, quality of life and human condition in general, the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, were both based on the ability to have fewer people do the work that used to take many.
Sure, while population was relatively low, that was a logical progression. It's like saying hey, pulling natural resources from the ground has been the basis of modern society, it can't be a bad thing! A growing population plus "fewer people doing the work" ultimately leads where? They can't all be middle class, and work in office buildings.
The rationale which took us from the I.R. to the 90's no longer applies.
What the heck was that app called, again?
Absolutely. I often had this problem. I want to capture the screen. What was the app called again? "screen" no.. "snap" no.. "capture" no... seriously, how the hell am I supposed to know it's "snipping tool"? Totally messed up. The simple solution is to allow *search keywords* to be assigned to shortcuts, so it DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE APP NAME IS.
MS clearly doesn't have a lot of imagination when it comes to user interface design. They need to fire everyone in the UI dept and start again. From Metro to Visual Studio, they currently suck like few other companies do at UI. Amazing.
That's a problem with the application name, not with search.
Ha. You would never have heard Jobs say such a thing, which is why Apple products are so popular. There is ALWAYS a way of making shit work, or as a product designer you're not worth your title.
-conflicts have more/better/safer options (replace all, replace if newer, etc)
The stupid thing is, DOS had better file copy options than Windows up to now.
Copy you copied a bunch of files in DOS and there was a conflict, you'd get "Abort, Retry, Ignore". Simple options. It wouldn't screw the entire copy operation due to one problem, as Windows has done for the past decade. Just... stunning.
Thank god for TeraCopy and such. After all this time, MS finally starts to get how file copying should work in Windows. Stunning. Simply stunning for a multi-billion dollar company.
I agree with all that, and I think Watchmen did a much better job with Doctor Manhattan, who really started to inhabit his own "little" world, as he gradually came to feel that nobody else could relate to him. I guess he also became emotionally distanced, preoccupied as he was with the larger universe. It was a great treatise on superhero-ism. IMO, so was Unbreakable and even Hancock.
In the Marvel universe, however, there's the Super Hero Club where they can all chew the fat and talk shop, so Superman isn't necessarily lonely, and there are female Heroes too. Not sure why they don't bonk more often. Would have thought being invincible means you're never not horny. Go figure.
coming to grips with the fact that power has made them horrible people
Power doesn't necessarily make you behave horribly. I think rather it's the *obsession* with power, the paranoia about losing it, etc. Superman grew up being invincible - he grew up with no fear of any person or thing *ever* taking away what he has.
Now, that's some *fertile ground* for really exploring what it is to be a human being, because he is nothing like anything a human could even comprehend. This is the basis of most of the best real Sci-Fi - examining what it is to be human by taking you out into the impossible and dumbfounding.
But unfortunately, I think that sort of thing is too risky for mainstream Hollywood these days, which is why Bladerunner 2 will be hollow as well.
TL;DR I don't agree lack of character development has anything to with what Superman is. It's just lack of imagination by writers.
Not just business users. What about all the charities, NGOs and government departments that lack funding - usually education and health unfortunately. I do a bit of development work for a major public hospital here. Up in the labs, they're all on XP, lots of CRTs still around, as is various MS Access databases they work on, not to mention Office 2003 spreadsheets (2007 if you're lucky).
My main role is turning these things into online database apps, and IE6 support is absolutely necessary.
And, you know, I don't see any of that as a bad thing at all. They do excellent work and really, really do not need pointless OS/Office upgrades every couple of years interfering with getting their work done. Can you imagine what would happen if public hospitals - who rely on streamlined, well-rehearsed processes on a tight time budget - had a Windows 8 upgrade forced upon them?
That's really what is wrong with Microsoft at the moment. When "new" is seen as more trouble than it's worth, some serious self-examination is needed of what one's goals and purpose are as a company. There should be NO QUESTION about Windows updates being as painless as possible for all users, with new features being optional extras for those who want it.
I'm sure a great deal of XP users would immediately change to the "Windows Classic" theme after a new install. Usually you just want it to *work* out of the box - install it and keep working, while you explore the new stuff when you have time. You don't want the new stuff to become a time sink. From changing keyboard shortcuts in Win7, to the no-compromise Ribbon Bar, to crippling all your Office macros, to removing the Start button... MS is *very* lucky there aren't any serious contenders to Office.
But we do see more Macs in the office these days, and that's partly MS's fault for creating a perception with new customers that there's always "something wrong" with new Windows versions. Apple, on the other hand, create the impression that there's always "something cool" about new OSX and IOS versions. You only need to compare the Apple WWDC 2013 keynote with a Windows 8 presentation.
I'm no Apple user, I'm MS and Android. Yet it's clear that Apple communicates to the audience *through* the demonstration of their technology and design. Microsoft, on the other hand, does the traditional thing of explaining *why* it's cool, *why* you need it, etc. Completely different approaches to products and technology.
Until the first big virus hits that exploits a security hole that won't be fixed.
That is just a business opportunity for antivirus/malware/firewall suites. I can see the ads now - why pay $100's, even $1000's, for a new system, when you can just upgrade to our XP DEFENDER security suite? And hey, why not?
I've had XP and Office 2003 on a laptop here for years, and honestly don't see why it needs updating. There once was a time when things people made that lasted were prized. I'd be proud to have a working XP SP3 system sitting around here in another 10 years' time. It's an example of something made well.
If we're lucky Apple will realise that patent reform is in their best interests as well as ours.
It's not luck. Like any public company, Apple needs to keep shareholders happy and patent reform won't increase market share, lower costs or do anything else companies need to concentrate on to survive. Why would a company do something that is not to their advantage, particularly in such a fast-moving, cut-throat industry?
Not sure what the fuss is about, I'm having a fine old time on Firefox 11. You don't have to upgrade. Addons that disable cookies, flash and scripts, until *you* decide they're necessary, keep you sufficiently safe.
Maybe if they improve the speed to rival Chrome I'll consider it. Till then, all these "upgrades" seem fairly pointless to me.
It looks like firefox worries more about branding these days
Branding itself as Chrome, you mean?
When you have 1 guy, he works at 100%, but when you add 1 guy, you get 93% of their combined force. [...] With 8 people, you get the results of 4 people !
No wonder the pyramids took so long to build!
Is it just me, or is the interface the job of the architect, not the code monkey?
Except that any architect worth the title wouldn't think of developers as "code monkeys".
The real benefit is that you can start treating your monitor like a CRT again, feeding it arbitrary resolutions.
The screen on my HP 8510p laptop has a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. Yet, because it is a really good screen, made by LG I think, I run all the time in 1280 x 800 (my preferred resolution) and don't notice any blurred edges. Not when browsing, not when developing, not when using text editors or Photoshop, no matter the font.
It's simply a great screen. There were other screens that looked terrible when I changed the resolution. Somehow, this one is smooth as silk.
Give me quality over pixels any day.
But a Microsoft guy could do the same, dropping in a load of stock rich text edits and grid controls to product a very similar quickly.
Probably more quickly - Visual Studio IDE, built-in widgets and open source ones are pretty comprehensive. But then throwing in a rich text widget doesn't make a "word processor". Many web-based content management systems do exactly the same - they think including CKEditor is 99% of the work done.
> A creative enough person could kill another without a weapon, and a weapon could be made from many ordinary household objects.
This is a straw man argument, simply because you'd have to be pretty creative with your nailbat to mow down a school full of students and teachers before the police arrives or someone tackles you from behind. You can kill a couple of people with something home-made, but committing mass murder requires a gun or explosive.
In fact, around the time of the Sandy Hook school shooting (where I think over 20 children died), a guy in China attacked a bunch of school kids with a knife. Over 20 kids were wounded. Guess how many died? None.
So that pro-gun "you don't need a gun to kill someone" argument is both misleading and irresponsible. Every town, every city, has its share of mentally unbalanced individuals. There's quite a big difference between them having access to guns and access only to household items, don't you think?
> Make metal ilegal too...
How you got modded insightful is a mystery. They're making the construction and possession of a printed gun illegal, if you RTFA. Not plastic.
The context is that gun possession itself is highly restricted in Australia. So obviously procuring any kind of working gun, plastic or not, is going to be illegal.
If you're American, well all I can say is, glad I'm not living there. Enjoy your gunamageddon.
I'm the AC that wrote that. Drive over 0.08 all the time. I've never had a problem.
Not only are you a meaningless anecdote, you're an idiotic meaningless anecdote.
Driving dangerously should be the issue, period.
Let me know when you invent that test for potential for driving dangerously before getting into a car.
Oh wait, there already is one. It's called a breathalizer.
You are definitely impaired at .08
This. This is what most people don't understand. People think 0.08 means unimpaired. It doesn't. It is just a compromise.
http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/impaired/fact-sheet.shtml
With a BAC of 0.05, an individual’s vision may already be affected in terms of sensitivity to brightness, the ability to determine colours, and depth and motion perception. The brain’s ability to perform simple motor functions is diminished. This means that a driver’s reaction time will be slower and responses will be less accurate. The result is degraded driving performance and a significant increase in collision risk. The increased collision risk of drivers with a BAC from 0.05 to 0.08 (also known as the "warn range") is well documented:
Drivers with a BAC above 0.05 but below the legal limit are 7.2 times more likely to be in a fatal collision
than drivers with a zero BAC. In 2005, 16.7% of drinking drivers killed in Ontario had a BAC less than 0.08.
(emphasis mine)
This is what people need to understand so /. isn't embarrassed by +5 insightful statements like, "but I'm impaired by the kids yelling in the back seat anyway, so what the fuck, I'll have a beer."
kids in the car yelling, passengers talking, sign spinners [...]
You're spouting a common and nonsensical argument: "I'm impaired anyway, so what's wrong with a bit of alcohol?"
The answer is - nothing. Nothing is wrong with being a little impaired by alcohol. This is because the 0.08 and even 0.05 limits do not mean that you are unimpaired. Just the opposite - you are already impaired at 0.05 to the point where you're 7 times more likely to die in a car accident: http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/safety/impaired/fact-sheet.shtml
So your argument that you're maybe twice or three times more likely to die with the kids yelling in the back seat - well, that's better than 0.05 impairment. Not worse or even equivalent!
Do some research before making ridiculous statements, America. People are laughing at you.