If the speculations in that blog come to pass, that's really the only conclusion I can make. I remember what a clean break NT and Win2k were from the DOS-based model. Precious little worked across platforms, older, cheaper hardware never had drivers produced, but the improvements in the NT platform made a clean break a good excuse for cleaning house. And it proved to be well worth it.
I went through much the same evolution with Kubuntu, I found it to be a capable enough desktop that I could get enough stuff to run on that I was satisfied despite the lack of compatibility with a few of my old Windows applications.
I think the biggest mistake with Vista was that it didn't just start over from scratch. Offering a hit-or-miss compatibility layer to a fresh-start with Windows 7 would have the potential to increase Microsoft's profits, and allow them to have their cake and eat it too. It would come closer to pleasing the users who are tired of the bloat and all the kludges and hacks Microsoft has done to cobble the NT/2k/XP platform together and eek another couple years of life out of it, and it would keep the legacy people somewhat happy by offering a migration path just as the Classic environment did for Mac or Wine does for Linux.
On a related tangent, I wonder if Microsoft going into the compatibility layer business rather than trying to enforce desktop OS dominance (and seemingly starting to fail) might actually be the greatest win for both them and consumers. I don't think I'm alone in that I'd seriously consider buying an official Microsoft compatibility layer for Kubuntu, and I'd probably pay as much for it as I've paid for a full version of Windows just to play games. I tend to put my money where my mouth is, and used to be a Cedega customer before Transgaming seemed to get apathetic about support and compatibility & Wine just plain outshined their derivative product. If they did it right (came up with products that allowed Microsoft-platform apps to run flawlessly on Linux, OS X/UNIX, and of course their own platform), they'd stand to earn the goodwill of all but the most hardcore freetards who won't be happy until all commercial software vanishes from the market. They could make the claim that developers only needed to develop for the Windows platform because then almost everyone could run it regardless of OS choices. Their OS would have to compete on merits, but that's a good thing for everyone, and it would free them to push the limits of innovation (or at least catch-up to Linux!) rather than being bound with the shackles of legacy bloat.
I don't care how charged of an issue rape is. It's absurd to treat half the world's population like potential criminals because a tiny percentage of them are sexual predators. People who are so terrified of life and human interaction because they might encounter someone in that teeny, tiny minority should probably never leave their homes, or stop hanging out in high-risk areas. Judge people based on BEHAVIOR, not on superficial traits. Enough of this victim of fear culture.
Finally, some further stats that anyone who wants to talk about rape or child molestation should look into, in order to take educated precautions rather than just cower in ignorant fear. I know the gist of them, but not the specific numbers, so I won't just make them up.:)
--The overwhelming majority of sexual assaults and rapes are perpetrated by acquaintances and friends of the victim. Strangers are certainly on the radar, but these sorts of crimes mostly involve dysfunctions in existing relationships, rather than strangers preying on archetypes involved in their disturbed psyches.
--The overwhelming majority of child molestation and abduction incidents are perpetrated by friends, acquaintances, or family members as well, for many of the same reasons.
--Most rapes go unreported. I'd hazard a guess that the least-reported types of rape are the most common ones too-- those that would cause embarrassment and legal problems within a family, which makes sexual assault by strangers appear to be a larger part of the problem than it actually is by proportion.
All in all, in a city of around 100,000, there seem to be incidents roughly every 5 or so years where shadowy strangers accost women who are walking alone at night or break into their homes and assault them. I think people get struck by lightning here more often. It's just silly to jump to conclusions based on someone's outward traits (i.e., gender, age, ethnicity) without taking into account personality, demeanor, and behavior. And a little good, old-fashioned vigilance is good too. Yeah, I'd keep a closer eye if some guy was trolling around in a library and approaching kids who I knew didn't accompany him into the building. I might even wander into the boy's restroom for a check if I saw a guy go in there and take longer than seemed reasonable, just to make sure he wasn't staking it out. But walking through a library without stopping to browse as if looking for someone? I'd probably assume he was looking for someone. Judging the behavior is a better method of profiling a potential ne'er-do-well than acting like a bigot out of fear.
If I felt someone was profiling me based on my gender alone, I wouldn't hesitate to call them on it. I would not be sympathetic to their unfounded fears, and would try to combat the ignorance component of their perceptions. I've done it before. And I AM very conscious of suspicious behavior, since I work around kids. I know how to stay out of questionable situations, and I pay attention to what's going on around me and occasionally intercept unfamiliar adults who I'm not sure should be here with a friendly, "Are you looking for someone?" just to judge their reactions and reasons for being here.
I've had repeated issues with buyers attempting to defraud me, and trust me, Paypal's so-called "Seller Protection Policy" is utterly nonexistent.
Two examples from my personal experience:
I ship buyer a laptop part. He tries it out, it doesn't fix the problem, so he files a complain with Paypal and gets my money back. I lose on shipping and wind up with a used part.
I ship a buyer a used Thinkpad which I ran the restore utility on, it shipped basically with Windows sysprep coming-up on boot. Buyer claims it "doesn't work as fast as it should", refuses to try to make it work, and makes up all manner of lies about the laptop: he checked EVERY not-as-described box available. Paypal ignores my side of the story, forces the return/refund, and charges me their full fees a second time because I contested the refund (I got that reversed, at least, I protested and they felt like being "generous"). The laptop (thankfully!) arrives back in perfect condition without sysprep even having completed, there's no way the buyer even booted completely into Windows.
Basically, they always side with the buyer, who might file a chargeback! If the seller isn't bullied into just giving-in and authorizing the return/refund, then charge them the full fees on the transaction on top of taking every penny of the original amount back too. Seriously, if someone sends you $1000 through Paypal, you wind up with, say, $972.00 after they take out their fees. If the buyer complains and the seller doesn't roll-over, Paypal will force the refund anyway, attempt to take back your $972.00, and then charge you another $28.00 fee, leaving you holding the bag for whatever you spent on shipping AND that fee. Yes, even though you only received $972.00 in the first place, they try to double-dip and put you on the hook for the full $1,000 of the original transaction, even if the buyer doesn't file a chargeback. The rep confirmed that this is, in fact, their policy.
If that's "protection", I don't want it. I don't use eBay or Paypal anymore,this Power Seller is finished. I'm tired of the shenanigans, buyers apparently know that Paypal will always side with them and it's the best way to commit fraud, even if it's just buyer's remorse. No thanks, I'm done with that.
Under most circumstances, you can take and item back to the courier and tell them you're refusing delivery, they'll just send it back to the seller. The USPS probably won't do that, but FedEx and UPS seem to be willing to do so.
Because the OEM Vista tie's itself to the hardware and activate on any other peice of hardware IE new CPU or different motherboard if yours happens to go bad/die, Then you not only have to buy a new mobo but also a new OEM Vista.
Yeah, that's about the size of it, now that you remind me. If anything goes wrong with your OEM system, you're hosed. Such a nice trait for a consumer desktop OS. I remember that causing immense customer dissatisfaction when I worked for a major computer manufacturer as a field tech. I guess I'm a bit too used to the Linux way that I forget how wretched the Micro$oft way is. My migration over to Linux was caused by one too many XP reactivation call because I liked to tinker with the hardware. So I guess maybe Microsoft customers are not only paying the stupid tax, but they are also masochists who tolerate these sorts of customer abuses.
Another thought, how many of the folks who joined their respective nations' ISO organizations just for this vote voted AGAINST OOXML as opposed to FOR it? That would tell the tale to some degree. Based on everything I've read, the longer-term members were mostly against OOXML, while the new folks almost all voted for it.
It's not even so much that several vendors suddenly took interest in a hot topic that could affect them, even if Microsoft encouraged its partners to support them in their nations' committees, those partners WOULD have a valid self-interest in seeing Microsoft's wishes being done (OOXML approval could equate to lucrative government contracts). No, the problem was the seemingly widespread irregularities that seem to mostly have involved those opposed to OOXML, regardless of their standing in ISO, being silenced and disenfranchised. Changing "no" votes to "abstain" or just kicking those who didn't support OOXML out of the room and taking a vote to approve, while Microsoft may not have specifically engineered or encouraged those tactics, leaves the whole process tainted.
Where is there even a hint of evidence that IBM did any such thing? They're still a powerful player in the solutions marketplace, but if they were abusing the system, wouldn't there be individuals and corporations OTHER THAN MICROSOFT making similar allegations? Wouldn't there have been a substantial surge of companies that had previously ignored ISO proceedings who suddenly were interested enough to sign-up and then vote on only that one standard, as Microsoft partners did?
These allegations seem to be just as baseless as the ones Ballmer made about Linux infringing on Microsoft's code. In other words, it's more of Microsoft doing what it does best-- using FUD to bolster its position and attack its opponents.
If IBM or other companies did such a thing, they would be WRONG. Until Microsoft and 3rd parties actually put-up some compelling evidence that supports that allegation, I think the more reasonable assumption is just that they're engaging in more deceit in their attempts to subvert the process. They've already demonstrated that they're capable of far worse, and the better way to defend their standard push would've been to cough-up the evidence about IBM rather than countering the alleged subtle subversion with bold-faced corruption.
...and land in morally questionable waters, when you'll probably have to buy a bunch of computer parts to upgrade your system for Vista to run nicely, and qualify for a cheaper OEM full-version purchase if you order it along with the parts. Most retailers consider ANY part purchase to qualify for the OEM license purchase, such as a $1.00 IDE cable.
But even that option doesn't exactly change the fact that Microsoft Windows license fees are basically just a stupid/unwilling-to-learn tax that gets imposed upon almost all computer owners. I'm in that number too, my Kubuntu laptop has a Vista license sticker on the bottom...
I've pulled that and other crapplets & spyware off of enough of my users' machines, stupid little programs that they've installed tend to cause enough performance problems in their workstations that they become my problem. That makes me want to tighten at least those users' permissions so they can't keep wasting my time with junk like that.
Even that wouldn't make a difference. The government still out-spends, out-trains, and out-develops anything some patriots could possibly amass. Even the Iraqi army, which had the most state-of-the-art equipment available on the international arms market and battle-hardened veterans from years of war with Iran, was little more than a speedbump for the US military, even though they were fighting on their home turf.
At best, armed resistance to the US armed forces and government results in crap like Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Freemen of Montana situations; if the government is compassionate enough to pussyfoot around the morons who think they're True Patriots (tm) who are above the law, they won't just squash them like the bugs they are. Don't think for a second that the standoffs were because the government was on equal footing with domestic militants. The only reason they didn't squash them in those cases was because the government respected the American People and at least attempted to be professional and bring the individuals involved into custody despite bad decisions and incompetence.
Our ONLY hope is to nip our leaders' open disregard for the people and contempt for our civil liberties in the bud BEFORE the government becomes oppressive and decides to start disregarding the will and rights of the people it represents and serves. It's still not too late to send the message, by impeaching G.W. Bush, that his behavior is unacceptable.
I don't know, but it'll probably be well after they can get their wireless chipsets working under Windows properly in multi-AP corporate environments. It seems that Broadcom has great difficulty even getting them to initialize and authorize to the domain correctly on the platform they put all the effort into developing their drivers for.
Just a little advice: stay away from crap chipsets. If they're crap on Windows, they're more than likely going to be crappity crap on Linux.
A good point, I also thought the point of Windows and Mac OS X was that they're easy and intuitive. Yet there are shelves of books on each of them.
While I do have a technical background and found all the answers I needed either intuitively or on the forums, there are those folks who just want a book for the shelf. Books are a security blanket, the reasonably comprehensive reference that will be there for you to look at even if the computer stops booting. Many people aren't used to having accessible and official up-to-date online documentation to refer to and a forum to ask questions on if that fails. That new way of getting help is part of the k/ubuntu experience.
Did Microsoft happen to completely remove the Excel date bug specification from their so-called "standard"? If the answer is not "Yes", then the standard is still shoddy and should be discarded like the rubbish it is.
On your processor analogy, it's funny how Intel caused a bit of confusion with SpeedStep; even though they were advertised accurately, the way SpeedStep-enabled mobile processors idle at 800 or 1000MHz on CPUs which were rated at over 2GHz really bothered some of my customers. They'd look in the computer properties thing in Windows and see the low CPU speed, and flip-out.
Folks who don't set a high standard of conduct (like/.ers, on the issue of piracy) can't be hypocrites in this case for laughing, because they're not setting a standard of conduct and then violating it. We're simply laughing at a company getting caught in the sort of traps it lays for others. Also, it simply wouldn't be funny if a company that didn't take such a hard line got caught. There's just no irony in that. But the sense of schadenfreude kicks in when someone condemns you, the consumer/potential-pirate, from their high-and-mighty position of owning intellectual property, and then gets exposed for being filthydirty pirates who willfully infringe on others sacred IP themselves.
It's like being reprimanded and lectured about how your tie is crooked by a man who forgot to wear pants.
Also funny: Jimmy Swaggart preaching about the hellfire that adulterers will be condemned to, and then being caught committing adultery. Or Ted Haggard preaching about the evils of homosexuality and drugs, and then being outed by a male escort he hired and did meth with. All these things are funny because they are examples of people who should've known better, they preached the law, and then they broke their own laws. The moral is, if you hold others to a higher standard, you'd better hold yourself to it too, or you look REALLY foolish.
I used to do a bit of military surplus business, I wonder why the federal government hasn't set an open standard for voting equipment as they do with most general-purpose mil-spec equipment from socks to trucks. Every would-be manufacturer can submit a prototype, the government figures out which works best, sets the specifications and minimum requirements, and then releases the design to manufacturing. Anyone and everyone who can make the product to the government's standards gets a shot at filling the available contracts for the product, and I'd imagine whoever submitted the winning design gets some sort of bonus. That way, the spec becomes public, the designer benefits, and the process becomes transparent. That's how it works with military trucks (several companies make them, they may not be identical but the parts are interchangeable between manufacturers, and the plans are available to manufacturers who have been cleared and approved). Trust is not involved, everything basically functions the same, and there's no incentive for manufacturers to keep secrets. Most importantly, it would be transparent, just like punching holes in a piece of paper.
...I would keep my AP open simply to provide a path of least resistance to the internet. I'd configure it behind a router that would block a healthy number of outgoing ports to prevent network abuse (making it difficult to run port scans, use SMTP, spew worms or other exploits, etc.). I might leave it open for P2P, but set reasonable QoS restrictions on traffic. I could let guests or passersby use that AP without much fear of their security competence. I might keep logs, but I'd prefer not to unless legal counsel indicated that I'd be subject to ISP recordkeeping requirements for providing an open AP (with the rationale being that if I don't monitor or log, the access would be anonymous and it would be up to someone else to put the pieces together if they were investigating wrongdoing). I'd have my wired network on the other side of that router (or maybe throw a second router into the mix). If I needed to access files on my wired network from a wireless client, I'd probably VPN to it through that open AP. That would make the public AP portion of my network useful for the primary reason someone might want to trespass, but would give me enough control to direct that trespassing in a direction that wouldn't put my private network's defenses in the sights of much of anyone. There wouldn't be all that much of a reward for attacking my private network at that point, if someone wants internet access, they could just take it, and I'd make sure it would take more effort to get past my private defenses than curiosity or the chance of possibly acquiring personal information would be impractical.
But, according to the geek, Microsoft is expected to tie all this together and make it work 100% of the time.
Not really. Microsoft is supposed to provide a medium that each piece of hardware can plug into with manufacturer-supplied drivers, except the core hardware architecture, which Microsoft is responsible for making its product work on. Beyond the core architecture, Microsoft is basically just responsible to keep its own products working. The problems occur when Microsoft can't even manage that-- NT SP6 and Win2k SP3 would be good examples of how Microsoft's upgrades broke its own products, and there was no hardware at fault. And those were just two of the major examples of this.
Who knows what went wrong with Vista SP1, maybe Microsoft did something at the last minute that broke those drivers. Maybe they didn't even know there was a problem, because the special cool kids who have access to the limited betas (MSDN/Technet/corporate customers) didn't happen to suffer them and there just wasn't enough time to correct the problem in a meaningful way when it was discovered when the pre-release fixes went public beta, so they just blacklisted some hardware instead. Maybe the hardware vendors were unresponsive or didn't have enough time when changes were made to overhaul their drivers. Whatever the case, there's failure involved.
This is what it seems to boil down to. A citizen has doubts and concerns about the output of a voting machine and wants to test it to see if it's fatally flawed or there suspected discrepancy can be explained. I can understand the company not wanting specific details on the construction of the machine and the software it runs to be made public, but the problem here is the same one we saw when Microsoft attempted to enjoin anyone who purchased Windows Vista or Office, via the EULA & DMCA, from running and publishing benchmarks without Microsoft's express permission. It doesn't infringe on ANYONE'S purported IP to independently verify it functions the way it's advertised or see how it stacks-up against its competitors. And as far as benchmarks and testers go, the whole point is that it's a 3rd party and the public can evaluate their methods and decide whether the benchmark comparison is valid. By attempting to influence the independent testing process, Microsoft just made it look like they can't be trusted and they can't compete. That perception is more damaging, IMHO, than an unfavorable benchmark here or there.
It takes pretty big balls to demand trust in the manner Sequoia seems to be attempting to do, and bullying its customers (the American people!) with the threat of lawsuits if they don't trust it implicitly. They have sent the message loud and clear that they may have something to hide and neither they, nor their products, should be trusted. Hopefully the state of NJ will decertify their equipment for their troubles. But it is pretty sad if there's a reasonable explanation for the behavior, or some testing could lead to the discovery of a flaw that could be corrected transparently and restore voters' confidence.
Seriously, I'm not seeing how, "Hey, Vista SP1 doesn't suck as hard as the initial release did!", actually should lead anyone to the conclusion that, "Vista is great!"
I see what they did there; they released an overly-hyped product that turned out to be utter crap at transferring files and a host of other things such as hardware compatibility which most users would just take for granted, then they over-hype the release of the service pack that allegedly brings the performance on some things up to minimally acceptable levels. What I'm still not hearing is any compelling reasons that Vista is a good OS.
My personal experience with Vista has been that it more-or-less works, but that it's nothing special, even if the ridiculous performance and compatibility drawbacks are corrected. I'm not seeing the value (it's not a cheap upgrade, and it demands high-end hardware that's compatible with it), much less any substantial improvements to the users experience. It's hard to describe an upgrade like this without invoking the Windows ME experience.
More relevant to the marketplace, Mac users think OS X is "fun" even if it has problems. Linux users often go for the "fun" factor too. Microsoft tried to convince people that Vista is somehow fun, but it's not; it has problems and making it not have severe, crippling problems (with the release of SP1) just makes it less "not fun" than it used to be. Last I heard, though, the fun premium content for Vista Extreme users is still vaporware.
Odds would be good that the process had a parent that needed to be killed first. I've noticed this with Amarok & Firefox-- I use the FF plugin Foxytunes, which features a sleep timer, and use it primarily to halt streaming audio. I've noticed that Amarok will occasionally lose the stream or something glitches, such that the Amarok application becomes non-responsive. Under those conditions, the Amarok application seems to become a zombie child process under FF, and it can't be killed, and it also can't be re-launched. If FF is closed, though, all the Amarok zombies go away and peace, tranquility, and music are all restored.
The moral is that the parent process needs to die, since they tend to remain in denial and cling to their zombified children until they're forcibly pried from their cold, dead hands and properly put to rest.
Aside from that, there aren't processes that are off-limits to root, which is the gist of the item. If you think a system process is bugged-out, you can probably kill it as root (and quite possibly will cause your system to crash), whereas Windows denies the ability to kill system processes even to the administrator accounts, and sometimes tells the user that it might render the system unstable, so it will not comply with your request, Dave. Or sometimes Windows just can't kill a process and doesn't bother to return a response. Sometimes Windows has trouble killing userspace processes under its own system permissions and has to prompt the end user to "End Application" or just pull the plug even when the machine isn't in a hard freeze.
It wouldn't be about selling justice to the highest bidder, it would be about offering someone who was wrongly accused and maliciously prosecuted by the RIAA an incentive to take a gamble and see justice done. If all the RIAA has to do is flash some large bills and have their legal problems go away, then justice isn't served.
The proposal to raise money to encourage the plaintiff to not settle her case and let the courts decide the matter would create a nice hedge for the plaintiff just in case the RIAA makes her a better offer than what a jury might award. It's important for this case to proceed, because without taking the RIAA to task on its methods in a case that forces it to come clean on everything, it's basically a corporate sniper, shooting down one individual after another, bamboozling courts with technobabble, and in most cases the individuals don't really have the resources to take their cases to court even if they may have been wrongly accused. Ever notice how they've been picking on mostly lower-income people, students, the elderly, young families, children, single parents-- the very folks who are the least likely to have the resources to wage a court battle and are most likely to settle whether they're guilty or not?
Airing the RIAA's dirty laundry in regards to its methodology is the only way to help individuals who are being picked-off one by one. And getting together and pooling resources in order to defend the collective of internet users who may find themselves in the RIAA's crosshairs is really our best hope of having a fighting chance to defend ourselves against false, nebulous accusations that could cost any one of us thousands of dollars whether we shared anything or not. If their methods are really that sloppy and inaccurate, nobody should assume that just because you PERSONALLY didn't share, that you're immune. I don't lose sleep over my former roommate's filesharing over my network (my house, I paid the bills for everything, and shared it under the rent), but if the RIAA's methodology isn't airtight (and it obviously isn't), I want the world to know...just in case.
It is an interesting perspective when you consider that the police do look at the criminal record they believe belongs to the citizen they're about to interact with in a traffic stop or whatever, in making decisions about whether to keep their weapons holstered or call-in heavily armed backup (and all levels of precaution in-between). There was a case in Denver a couple of years ago when police thought they were busting into the apartment of an armed gang member; their target wasn't home, but they accidentally shot an older relative of his to death, who was sitting in bed with a can of soda. The main difference is that citizens can't really choose the officers they may encounter on a daily basis...but they may be able to compare notes with other citizens if a particular officer acts unprofessionally and bring complaints to the proper channels if the unprofessional conduct compromises public safety and having a healthy relationship between the citizenry and the police force.
Uh, not really. The Intel Macs run pretty much exactly as much software as Intel PCs. There is no more OS 9, or even older versions of OS X. And I've seen several Thinkpads on which people installed OS X; granted, that probably wasn't exactly a legal thing for them to do, but the point is that the Intel-compatible version of OS X does run on PC hardware too, and vicariously all the software that a Mac would run as well.
I tend to wonder why that even matters. There's not really much point in running an OS if you're always having to switch to a different one in order to actually do anything. There's not much point in paying a premium for hardware if it all runs the same software, unless there's a quantifiable quality advantage.
The second a game developer advertises being Linux compatible, it will be expected to support its game under Linux. Think about that for a second-- "Linux" means more than just a kernel to a software developer. It can mean dealing with an assortment of kernels, with an even larger assortment of distributions, all which look different in superficial ways, as well as a handful of package managers (it's easy enough to build a package for an assortment of distributions, but WHY?).
Enter the customer service call center rep. You know, the person who goes through the troubleshooting cards or answers the tech support questions. It's bad enough when they have to walk through the basics of troubleshooting on a Windows platform with a bunch of end users who don't really know what they're doing, but what about when you throw a bunch of gamer nerds who maybe just know enough about Linux to be dangerous? How is that rep going to even know where to start without a LOT more knowledge than a call center or tech support department is willing to pay the prevailing wage for? Please.
The de facto solution seems to be for software companies to develop for Windows while maintaining a modicum of compatibility with Wine (or the Cedega gaming frontend for it), but officially disclaim all support for anything besides Windows. Some game manufacturers seem to do just that, they'll work out the worst problems if their beta just won't work under Wine/Cedega, but leave the bulk of little fixes to the compatibility layer developers and the end users.
I think the best solution, which nobody really seems to be working on, would be to come up with some sort of standard (say, "Games for Linux"), which a distribution could be certified for. Perhaps a tool like Cedega that could establish a certain level of performance compatibility, whereby if it will install and passes the hardware/software tests, you'd know the software would also run natively. Even now, Cedega works pretty well in this capacity, but it does introduce performance limitations (not everything in Windows can be simulated identically or better), and a considerable amount of overhead. Anyway, such a tool/certification would at least give developers a target to aim for, and simplify support matters considerably.
But even then, it's easier for developers to just discount the small percentage of Linux users who want more native Linux games, either proclaiming, "Let them drink Wine!" or just refuse to provide a product that can be forced to run correctly on Linux or Wine, because let's face it-- if you need that game badly enough, you'll just dual boot or buy a second Windows box for gaming. And that solves their problem.
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If the speculations in that blog come to pass, that's really the only conclusion I can make. I remember what a clean break NT and Win2k were from the DOS-based model. Precious little worked across platforms, older, cheaper hardware never had drivers produced, but the improvements in the NT platform made a clean break a good excuse for cleaning house. And it proved to be well worth it.
I went through much the same evolution with Kubuntu, I found it to be a capable enough desktop that I could get enough stuff to run on that I was satisfied despite the lack of compatibility with a few of my old Windows applications.
I think the biggest mistake with Vista was that it didn't just start over from scratch. Offering a hit-or-miss compatibility layer to a fresh-start with Windows 7 would have the potential to increase Microsoft's profits, and allow them to have their cake and eat it too. It would come closer to pleasing the users who are tired of the bloat and all the kludges and hacks Microsoft has done to cobble the NT/2k/XP platform together and eek another couple years of life out of it, and it would keep the legacy people somewhat happy by offering a migration path just as the Classic environment did for Mac or Wine does for Linux.
On a related tangent, I wonder if Microsoft going into the compatibility layer business rather than trying to enforce desktop OS dominance (and seemingly starting to fail) might actually be the greatest win for both them and consumers. I don't think I'm alone in that I'd seriously consider buying an official Microsoft compatibility layer for Kubuntu, and I'd probably pay as much for it as I've paid for a full version of Windows just to play games. I tend to put my money where my mouth is, and used to be a Cedega customer before Transgaming seemed to get apathetic about support and compatibility & Wine just plain outshined their derivative product. If they did it right (came up with products that allowed Microsoft-platform apps to run flawlessly on Linux, OS X/UNIX, and of course their own platform), they'd stand to earn the goodwill of all but the most hardcore freetards who won't be happy until all commercial software vanishes from the market. They could make the claim that developers only needed to develop for the Windows platform because then almost everyone could run it regardless of OS choices. Their OS would have to compete on merits, but that's a good thing for everyone, and it would free them to push the limits of innovation (or at least catch-up to Linux!) rather than being bound with the shackles of legacy bloat.
...according to the usual stats. Here's a table with live-birth statistics based on gender/race: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005083.html
I don't care how charged of an issue rape is. It's absurd to treat half the world's population like potential criminals because a tiny percentage of them are sexual predators. People who are so terrified of life and human interaction because they might encounter someone in that teeny, tiny minority should probably never leave their homes, or stop hanging out in high-risk areas. Judge people based on BEHAVIOR, not on superficial traits. Enough of this victim of fear culture.
Finally, some further stats that anyone who wants to talk about rape or child molestation should look into, in order to take educated precautions rather than just cower in ignorant fear. I know the gist of them, but not the specific numbers, so I won't just make them up. :)
--The overwhelming majority of sexual assaults and rapes are perpetrated by acquaintances and friends of the victim. Strangers are certainly on the radar, but these sorts of crimes mostly involve dysfunctions in existing relationships, rather than strangers preying on archetypes involved in their disturbed psyches.
--The overwhelming majority of child molestation and abduction incidents are perpetrated by friends, acquaintances, or family members as well, for many of the same reasons.
--Most rapes go unreported. I'd hazard a guess that the least-reported types of rape are the most common ones too-- those that would cause embarrassment and legal problems within a family, which makes sexual assault by strangers appear to be a larger part of the problem than it actually is by proportion.
All in all, in a city of around 100,000, there seem to be incidents roughly every 5 or so years where shadowy strangers accost women who are walking alone at night or break into their homes and assault them. I think people get struck by lightning here more often. It's just silly to jump to conclusions based on someone's outward traits (i.e., gender, age, ethnicity) without taking into account personality, demeanor, and behavior. And a little good, old-fashioned vigilance is good too. Yeah, I'd keep a closer eye if some guy was trolling around in a library and approaching kids who I knew didn't accompany him into the building. I might even wander into the boy's restroom for a check if I saw a guy go in there and take longer than seemed reasonable, just to make sure he wasn't staking it out. But walking through a library without stopping to browse as if looking for someone? I'd probably assume he was looking for someone. Judging the behavior is a better method of profiling a potential ne'er-do-well than acting like a bigot out of fear.
If I felt someone was profiling me based on my gender alone, I wouldn't hesitate to call them on it. I would not be sympathetic to their unfounded fears, and would try to combat the ignorance component of their perceptions. I've done it before. And I AM very conscious of suspicious behavior, since I work around kids. I know how to stay out of questionable situations, and I pay attention to what's going on around me and occasionally intercept unfamiliar adults who I'm not sure should be here with a friendly, "Are you looking for someone?" just to judge their reactions and reasons for being here.
I've had repeated issues with buyers attempting to defraud me, and trust me, Paypal's so-called "Seller Protection Policy" is utterly nonexistent.
Two examples from my personal experience:
Basically, they always side with the buyer, who might file a chargeback! If the seller isn't bullied into just giving-in and authorizing the return/refund, then charge them the full fees on the transaction on top of taking every penny of the original amount back too. Seriously, if someone sends you $1000 through Paypal, you wind up with, say, $972.00 after they take out their fees. If the buyer complains and the seller doesn't roll-over, Paypal will force the refund anyway, attempt to take back your $972.00, and then charge you another $28.00 fee, leaving you holding the bag for whatever you spent on shipping AND that fee. Yes, even though you only received $972.00 in the first place, they try to double-dip and put you on the hook for the full $1,000 of the original transaction, even if the buyer doesn't file a chargeback. The rep confirmed that this is, in fact, their policy.
If that's "protection", I don't want it. I don't use eBay or Paypal anymore,this Power Seller is finished. I'm tired of the shenanigans, buyers apparently know that Paypal will always side with them and it's the best way to commit fraud, even if it's just buyer's remorse. No thanks, I'm done with that.
Under most circumstances, you can take and item back to the courier and tell them you're refusing delivery, they'll just send it back to the seller. The USPS probably won't do that, but FedEx and UPS seem to be willing to do so.
..to not buy Vista at all.
Because the OEM Vista tie's itself to the hardware and activate on any other peice of hardware IE new CPU or different motherboard if yours happens to go bad/die, Then you not only have to buy a new mobo but also a new OEM Vista.Yeah, that's about the size of it, now that you remind me. If anything goes wrong with your OEM system, you're hosed. Such a nice trait for a consumer desktop OS. I remember that causing immense customer dissatisfaction when I worked for a major computer manufacturer as a field tech. I guess I'm a bit too used to the Linux way that I forget how wretched the Micro$oft way is. My migration over to Linux was caused by one too many XP reactivation call because I liked to tinker with the hardware. So I guess maybe Microsoft customers are not only paying the stupid tax, but they are also masochists who tolerate these sorts of customer abuses.
Another thought, how many of the folks who joined their respective nations' ISO organizations just for this vote voted AGAINST OOXML as opposed to FOR it? That would tell the tale to some degree. Based on everything I've read, the longer-term members were mostly against OOXML, while the new folks almost all voted for it.
It's not even so much that several vendors suddenly took interest in a hot topic that could affect them, even if Microsoft encouraged its partners to support them in their nations' committees, those partners WOULD have a valid self-interest in seeing Microsoft's wishes being done (OOXML approval could equate to lucrative government contracts). No, the problem was the seemingly widespread irregularities that seem to mostly have involved those opposed to OOXML, regardless of their standing in ISO, being silenced and disenfranchised. Changing "no" votes to "abstain" or just kicking those who didn't support OOXML out of the room and taking a vote to approve, while Microsoft may not have specifically engineered or encouraged those tactics, leaves the whole process tainted.
Where is there even a hint of evidence that IBM did any such thing? They're still a powerful player in the solutions marketplace, but if they were abusing the system, wouldn't there be individuals and corporations OTHER THAN MICROSOFT making similar allegations? Wouldn't there have been a substantial surge of companies that had previously ignored ISO proceedings who suddenly were interested enough to sign-up and then vote on only that one standard, as Microsoft partners did?
These allegations seem to be just as baseless as the ones Ballmer made about Linux infringing on Microsoft's code. In other words, it's more of Microsoft doing what it does best-- using FUD to bolster its position and attack its opponents.
If IBM or other companies did such a thing, they would be WRONG. Until Microsoft and 3rd parties actually put-up some compelling evidence that supports that allegation, I think the more reasonable assumption is just that they're engaging in more deceit in their attempts to subvert the process. They've already demonstrated that they're capable of far worse, and the better way to defend their standard push would've been to cough-up the evidence about IBM rather than countering the alleged subtle subversion with bold-faced corruption.
...and land in morally questionable waters, when you'll probably have to buy a bunch of computer parts to upgrade your system for Vista to run nicely, and qualify for a cheaper OEM full-version purchase if you order it along with the parts. Most retailers consider ANY part purchase to qualify for the OEM license purchase, such as a $1.00 IDE cable.
But even that option doesn't exactly change the fact that Microsoft Windows license fees are basically just a stupid/unwilling-to-learn tax that gets imposed upon almost all computer owners. I'm in that number too, my Kubuntu laptop has a Vista license sticker on the bottom...
I've pulled that and other crapplets & spyware off of enough of my users' machines, stupid little programs that they've installed tend to cause enough performance problems in their workstations that they become my problem. That makes me want to tighten at least those users' permissions so they can't keep wasting my time with junk like that.
Even that wouldn't make a difference. The government still out-spends, out-trains, and out-develops anything some patriots could possibly amass. Even the Iraqi army, which had the most state-of-the-art equipment available on the international arms market and battle-hardened veterans from years of war with Iran, was little more than a speedbump for the US military, even though they were fighting on their home turf.
At best, armed resistance to the US armed forces and government results in crap like Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Freemen of Montana situations; if the government is compassionate enough to pussyfoot around the morons who think they're True Patriots (tm) who are above the law, they won't just squash them like the bugs they are. Don't think for a second that the standoffs were because the government was on equal footing with domestic militants. The only reason they didn't squash them in those cases was because the government respected the American People and at least attempted to be professional and bring the individuals involved into custody despite bad decisions and incompetence.
Our ONLY hope is to nip our leaders' open disregard for the people and contempt for our civil liberties in the bud BEFORE the government becomes oppressive and decides to start disregarding the will and rights of the people it represents and serves. It's still not too late to send the message, by impeaching G.W. Bush, that his behavior is unacceptable.
I don't know, but it'll probably be well after they can get their wireless chipsets working under Windows properly in multi-AP corporate environments. It seems that Broadcom has great difficulty even getting them to initialize and authorize to the domain correctly on the platform they put all the effort into developing their drivers for.
Just a little advice: stay away from crap chipsets. If they're crap on Windows, they're more than likely going to be crappity crap on Linux.
A good point, I also thought the point of Windows and Mac OS X was that they're easy and intuitive. Yet there are shelves of books on each of them.
While I do have a technical background and found all the answers I needed either intuitively or on the forums, there are those folks who just want a book for the shelf. Books are a security blanket, the reasonably comprehensive reference that will be there for you to look at even if the computer stops booting. Many people aren't used to having accessible and official up-to-date online documentation to refer to and a forum to ask questions on if that fails. That new way of getting help is part of the k/ubuntu experience.
Did Microsoft happen to completely remove the Excel date bug specification from their so-called "standard"? If the answer is not "Yes", then the standard is still shoddy and should be discarded like the rubbish it is.
I'd give you a mod-up if I had one!
On your processor analogy, it's funny how Intel caused a bit of confusion with SpeedStep; even though they were advertised accurately, the way SpeedStep-enabled mobile processors idle at 800 or 1000MHz on CPUs which were rated at over 2GHz really bothered some of my customers. They'd look in the computer properties thing in Windows and see the low CPU speed, and flip-out.
Folks who don't set a high standard of conduct (like /.ers, on the issue of piracy) can't be hypocrites in this case for laughing, because they're not setting a standard of conduct and then violating it. We're simply laughing at a company getting caught in the sort of traps it lays for others. Also, it simply wouldn't be funny if a company that didn't take such a hard line got caught. There's just no irony in that. But the sense of schadenfreude kicks in when someone condemns you, the consumer/potential-pirate, from their high-and-mighty position of owning intellectual property, and then gets exposed for being filthydirty pirates who willfully infringe on others sacred IP themselves.
It's like being reprimanded and lectured about how your tie is crooked by a man who forgot to wear pants.
Also funny: Jimmy Swaggart preaching about the hellfire that adulterers will be condemned to, and then being caught committing adultery. Or Ted Haggard preaching about the evils of homosexuality and drugs, and then being outed by a male escort he hired and did meth with. All these things are funny because they are examples of people who should've known better, they preached the law, and then they broke their own laws. The moral is, if you hold others to a higher standard, you'd better hold yourself to it too, or you look REALLY foolish.
I used to do a bit of military surplus business, I wonder why the federal government hasn't set an open standard for voting equipment as they do with most general-purpose mil-spec equipment from socks to trucks. Every would-be manufacturer can submit a prototype, the government figures out which works best, sets the specifications and minimum requirements, and then releases the design to manufacturing. Anyone and everyone who can make the product to the government's standards gets a shot at filling the available contracts for the product, and I'd imagine whoever submitted the winning design gets some sort of bonus. That way, the spec becomes public, the designer benefits, and the process becomes transparent. That's how it works with military trucks (several companies make them, they may not be identical but the parts are interchangeable between manufacturers, and the plans are available to manufacturers who have been cleared and approved). Trust is not involved, everything basically functions the same, and there's no incentive for manufacturers to keep secrets. Most importantly, it would be transparent, just like punching holes in a piece of paper.
...I would keep my AP open simply to provide a path of least resistance to the internet. I'd configure it behind a router that would block a healthy number of outgoing ports to prevent network abuse (making it difficult to run port scans, use SMTP, spew worms or other exploits, etc.). I might leave it open for P2P, but set reasonable QoS restrictions on traffic. I could let guests or passersby use that AP without much fear of their security competence. I might keep logs, but I'd prefer not to unless legal counsel indicated that I'd be subject to ISP recordkeeping requirements for providing an open AP (with the rationale being that if I don't monitor or log, the access would be anonymous and it would be up to someone else to put the pieces together if they were investigating wrongdoing). I'd have my wired network on the other side of that router (or maybe throw a second router into the mix). If I needed to access files on my wired network from a wireless client, I'd probably VPN to it through that open AP. That would make the public AP portion of my network useful for the primary reason someone might want to trespass, but would give me enough control to direct that trespassing in a direction that wouldn't put my private network's defenses in the sights of much of anyone. There wouldn't be all that much of a reward for attacking my private network at that point, if someone wants internet access, they could just take it, and I'd make sure it would take more effort to get past my private defenses than curiosity or the chance of possibly acquiring personal information would be impractical.
Not really. Microsoft is supposed to provide a medium that each piece of hardware can plug into with manufacturer-supplied drivers, except the core hardware architecture, which Microsoft is responsible for making its product work on. Beyond the core architecture, Microsoft is basically just responsible to keep its own products working. The problems occur when Microsoft can't even manage that-- NT SP6 and Win2k SP3 would be good examples of how Microsoft's upgrades broke its own products, and there was no hardware at fault. And those were just two of the major examples of this.
Who knows what went wrong with Vista SP1, maybe Microsoft did something at the last minute that broke those drivers. Maybe they didn't even know there was a problem, because the special cool kids who have access to the limited betas (MSDN/Technet/corporate customers) didn't happen to suffer them and there just wasn't enough time to correct the problem in a meaningful way when it was discovered when the pre-release fixes went public beta, so they just blacklisted some hardware instead. Maybe the hardware vendors were unresponsive or didn't have enough time when changes were made to overhaul their drivers. Whatever the case, there's failure involved.
This is what it seems to boil down to. A citizen has doubts and concerns about the output of a voting machine and wants to test it to see if it's fatally flawed or there suspected discrepancy can be explained. I can understand the company not wanting specific details on the construction of the machine and the software it runs to be made public, but the problem here is the same one we saw when Microsoft attempted to enjoin anyone who purchased Windows Vista or Office, via the EULA & DMCA, from running and publishing benchmarks without Microsoft's express permission. It doesn't infringe on ANYONE'S purported IP to independently verify it functions the way it's advertised or see how it stacks-up against its competitors. And as far as benchmarks and testers go, the whole point is that it's a 3rd party and the public can evaluate their methods and decide whether the benchmark comparison is valid. By attempting to influence the independent testing process, Microsoft just made it look like they can't be trusted and they can't compete. That perception is more damaging, IMHO, than an unfavorable benchmark here or there.
It takes pretty big balls to demand trust in the manner Sequoia seems to be attempting to do, and bullying its customers (the American people!) with the threat of lawsuits if they don't trust it implicitly. They have sent the message loud and clear that they may have something to hide and neither they, nor their products, should be trusted. Hopefully the state of NJ will decertify their equipment for their troubles. But it is pretty sad if there's a reasonable explanation for the behavior, or some testing could lead to the discovery of a flaw that could be corrected transparently and restore voters' confidence.
"Success through lowering your expectations!"
Seriously, I'm not seeing how, "Hey, Vista SP1 doesn't suck as hard as the initial release did!", actually should lead anyone to the conclusion that, "Vista is great!"
I see what they did there; they released an overly-hyped product that turned out to be utter crap at transferring files and a host of other things such as hardware compatibility which most users would just take for granted, then they over-hype the release of the service pack that allegedly brings the performance on some things up to minimally acceptable levels. What I'm still not hearing is any compelling reasons that Vista is a good OS.
My personal experience with Vista has been that it more-or-less works, but that it's nothing special, even if the ridiculous performance and compatibility drawbacks are corrected. I'm not seeing the value (it's not a cheap upgrade, and it demands high-end hardware that's compatible with it), much less any substantial improvements to the users experience. It's hard to describe an upgrade like this without invoking the Windows ME experience.
More relevant to the marketplace, Mac users think OS X is "fun" even if it has problems. Linux users often go for the "fun" factor too. Microsoft tried to convince people that Vista is somehow fun, but it's not; it has problems and making it not have severe, crippling problems (with the release of SP1) just makes it less "not fun" than it used to be. Last I heard, though, the fun premium content for Vista Extreme users is still vaporware.
Odds would be good that the process had a parent that needed to be killed first. I've noticed this with Amarok & Firefox-- I use the FF plugin Foxytunes, which features a sleep timer, and use it primarily to halt streaming audio. I've noticed that Amarok will occasionally lose the stream or something glitches, such that the Amarok application becomes non-responsive. Under those conditions, the Amarok application seems to become a zombie child process under FF, and it can't be killed, and it also can't be re-launched. If FF is closed, though, all the Amarok zombies go away and peace, tranquility, and music are all restored.
The moral is that the parent process needs to die, since they tend to remain in denial and cling to their zombified children until they're forcibly pried from their cold, dead hands and properly put to rest.
Aside from that, there aren't processes that are off-limits to root, which is the gist of the item. If you think a system process is bugged-out, you can probably kill it as root (and quite possibly will cause your system to crash), whereas Windows denies the ability to kill system processes even to the administrator accounts, and sometimes tells the user that it might render the system unstable, so it will not comply with your request, Dave. Or sometimes Windows just can't kill a process and doesn't bother to return a response. Sometimes Windows has trouble killing userspace processes under its own system permissions and has to prompt the end user to "End Application" or just pull the plug even when the machine isn't in a hard freeze.
It wouldn't be about selling justice to the highest bidder, it would be about offering someone who was wrongly accused and maliciously prosecuted by the RIAA an incentive to take a gamble and see justice done. If all the RIAA has to do is flash some large bills and have their legal problems go away, then justice isn't served.
The proposal to raise money to encourage the plaintiff to not settle her case and let the courts decide the matter would create a nice hedge for the plaintiff just in case the RIAA makes her a better offer than what a jury might award. It's important for this case to proceed, because without taking the RIAA to task on its methods in a case that forces it to come clean on everything, it's basically a corporate sniper, shooting down one individual after another, bamboozling courts with technobabble, and in most cases the individuals don't really have the resources to take their cases to court even if they may have been wrongly accused. Ever notice how they've been picking on mostly lower-income people, students, the elderly, young families, children, single parents-- the very folks who are the least likely to have the resources to wage a court battle and are most likely to settle whether they're guilty or not?
Airing the RIAA's dirty laundry in regards to its methodology is the only way to help individuals who are being picked-off one by one. And getting together and pooling resources in order to defend the collective of internet users who may find themselves in the RIAA's crosshairs is really our best hope of having a fighting chance to defend ourselves against false, nebulous accusations that could cost any one of us thousands of dollars whether we shared anything or not. If their methods are really that sloppy and inaccurate, nobody should assume that just because you PERSONALLY didn't share, that you're immune. I don't lose sleep over my former roommate's filesharing over my network (my house, I paid the bills for everything, and shared it under the rent), but if the RIAA's methodology isn't airtight (and it obviously isn't), I want the world to know...just in case.
It is an interesting perspective when you consider that the police do look at the criminal record they believe belongs to the citizen they're about to interact with in a traffic stop or whatever, in making decisions about whether to keep their weapons holstered or call-in heavily armed backup (and all levels of precaution in-between). There was a case in Denver a couple of years ago when police thought they were busting into the apartment of an armed gang member; their target wasn't home, but they accidentally shot an older relative of his to death, who was sitting in bed with a can of soda. The main difference is that citizens can't really choose the officers they may encounter on a daily basis...but they may be able to compare notes with other citizens if a particular officer acts unprofessionally and bring complaints to the proper channels if the unprofessional conduct compromises public safety and having a healthy relationship between the citizenry and the police force.
Uh, not really. The Intel Macs run pretty much exactly as much software as Intel PCs. There is no more OS 9, or even older versions of OS X. And I've seen several Thinkpads on which people installed OS X; granted, that probably wasn't exactly a legal thing for them to do, but the point is that the Intel-compatible version of OS X does run on PC hardware too, and vicariously all the software that a Mac would run as well.
I tend to wonder why that even matters. There's not really much point in running an OS if you're always having to switch to a different one in order to actually do anything. There's not much point in paying a premium for hardware if it all runs the same software, unless there's a quantifiable quality advantage.
The second a game developer advertises being Linux compatible, it will be expected to support its game under Linux. Think about that for a second-- "Linux" means more than just a kernel to a software developer. It can mean dealing with an assortment of kernels, with an even larger assortment of distributions, all which look different in superficial ways, as well as a handful of package managers (it's easy enough to build a package for an assortment of distributions, but WHY?).
Enter the customer service call center rep. You know, the person who goes through the troubleshooting cards or answers the tech support questions. It's bad enough when they have to walk through the basics of troubleshooting on a Windows platform with a bunch of end users who don't really know what they're doing, but what about when you throw a bunch of gamer nerds who maybe just know enough about Linux to be dangerous? How is that rep going to even know where to start without a LOT more knowledge than a call center or tech support department is willing to pay the prevailing wage for? Please.
The de facto solution seems to be for software companies to develop for Windows while maintaining a modicum of compatibility with Wine (or the Cedega gaming frontend for it), but officially disclaim all support for anything besides Windows. Some game manufacturers seem to do just that, they'll work out the worst problems if their beta just won't work under Wine/Cedega, but leave the bulk of little fixes to the compatibility layer developers and the end users.
I think the best solution, which nobody really seems to be working on, would be to come up with some sort of standard (say, "Games for Linux"), which a distribution could be certified for. Perhaps a tool like Cedega that could establish a certain level of performance compatibility, whereby if it will install and passes the hardware/software tests, you'd know the software would also run natively. Even now, Cedega works pretty well in this capacity, but it does introduce performance limitations (not everything in Windows can be simulated identically or better), and a considerable amount of overhead. Anyway, such a tool/certification would at least give developers a target to aim for, and simplify support matters considerably.
But even then, it's easier for developers to just discount the small percentage of Linux users who want more native Linux games, either proclaiming, "Let them drink Wine!" or just refuse to provide a product that can be forced to run correctly on Linux or Wine, because let's face it-- if you need that game badly enough, you'll just dual boot or buy a second Windows box for gaming. And that solves their problem.