Yeah, but that would be a big pain in the ass if your data changed with any frequency. Getting a safety deposit box opened can be a time-consuming process. I can't imagine doing it weekly (or more often) just to swap out a set of backup tapes or CDs.
It depends how you define God. The Christian God is usually described as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. Humans certainly don't come close in those departments. (Although many aetheists would argue that a god as described above couldn't possibly exist in a world where so many bad things happen seemingly at random.)
Exactly. The terminology differs place to place. Here in New Mexico, I had to sign up for a "CRS number" (Combined Reporting System) to report gross receipts tax--even though I'm selling a service.
The perfect time to negotiate your hourly rate would have been while the "entire corporate LAN was down." But if you did end up doing the work pro bono, at least your old boss will know she can count on you in the future. Next time make sure to work out the terms ahead of time.
If you end up doing a lot of consulting work, you're going to have to get a business license and (depending on the state) get a tax ID number. Here's a pretty basic article about setting up a consulting business (although it's aimed at Web developers).
I've had three 60 GB Maxtors that slowly began squeaking and not spinning up. Maybe there was a bad batch, as a number of Macintosh users at MacInTouch complained of the same syptoms.
Since there aren't any good benchmarks for this sort of thing, all you're going to get are subjective comments. As someone who has used Mac OS 9, OS X, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 on a variety of machines, I'm pleased with X's performance.
One thing I did notice when I switched from Mac OS 9 to OS X--the Aqua GUI feels a bit slow. I don't know what causes this perception, but you'll hear users on Mac-centric discussion forums complaining about the lack of "snappiness." In OS 9's Finder (in list view), you could select a hundred files and immediately drag them into another folder. In OS X's Finder (in column view) you have to wait a second after selecting the files or you can't drag them. It's little things like that which matter.
On the other hand, OS X is much better for multitasking. I leave all the apps I commonly use running 24/7. OS 9's primitive memory management made this near impossible, and its pathetic system of assigning processor time to the frontmost application prevented me from even simple multitasking (like coding a Web page while downloading software while listening to an MP3).
I'm running OS X on a 733Mhz PowerMac G4 (digital audio) with 1024 MB RAM and a GeForce 3.
Same here, except it was Comcast Cable. You have to go digital to get anything but basic, but the line quality is so bad, many channels dissolve into large pixels every few minutes. What a great idea!
I remember thinking that scene was unrealistic, since at the time I'd just finished working as a desk clerk at a library. We were instructed never to give out circulation information to anyone, even the police. I don't know what the director would have done if they'd had a warrant, though. (This was '93-'95.)
Exactly. I thought the whole reason Luke was on back-woods Tatooine ("If there's a bright center to the Universe you're on the planet that it's farthest from,") was so Vader couldn't find him. I was sorely disappointed to see that Anakin had been born and raised on Tatooine too, and that he and Luke's mother return for frequent visits. Everyone in the Republic seems to know about the place. Can't George come up with any more planets?
There is no doubt that IE is the only browser that matters. If someone else wants to make a competitive browser, it needs to be IE compliant, not W3C compliant.
I believe Zeldman covered this in his article. A few years ago, Netscape was "the only browser that matters" and everyone coded to that. Now it's IE. What if it's something else in a few years?
Not to mention, IE 4 renders sites differently from IE 5. There's got to be a better way.
I built a site which is valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS2 and renders virtually the same in IE, Mozilla, and Opera. How can you argue it would be better for me to ignore the second two browsers?
[I]n conclusion, the web standards project and w3c have failed due to their manegerial impotance, and can be safely ignored.
Hmm. I'm not sure how you can conclude this from your arguments.
I've always considered Zeldman to be one of those self-proclaimed know-it-alls who has had little real industry experience in high volume, high technology web-sites. Most of his portfolio is brochure-ware that looks like it was done by a team of one.
An ad hominem attack.
For one, most sites don't have the budget to develop to standards.
I would think it'd be cheaper to develop a single version of a site that works across all browsers and which can be updated with changes to a single stylesheet.
Secondly, all of these "standards" are interpreted differently by the different browsers, so you can't insure consistent look and feel without kludges.
True. There are some minor problems with browsers interpretting padding differently, for example. No show-stoppers. My e-zine (coded in XHTML 1.0 and CSS2) looks the same in Mozilla, IE 5+, and Opera.
Third, most of the foundations for these sites were layed (sic) out before coding to a standard was even possible....
CSS1 was recommended in 1996. Assuming your site was built before then, it might be time for a revision.
Finally... even though it's called a standard, it rarely exhibits standard and consistent behavior across the various platforms.
I believe you're repeating your second argument. Whether you use CSS or not, your site's not going to look the same on a cell phone as it will on WebTV. It won't even look the same on an old PC set to 640 x 480 resolution with 256 colors as on a new Mac set to 1280 x 1024 with millions. Deal with it.
The "sample chapter" presented features such nice conflicts as: web pages that are HTML 1.0 compliant waste bandwidth vs. web pages that are written for IE only turn away 25% of their viewers.
I'm confused. Please explain how these two statements conflict.
Did you read the other posts that contradicted what you quoted? The ones by people with single drives? The ones by people with PCs with the same problem?
This would be great if it weren't from Maxtor. I don't trust their drives as far as I can throw them. I've had three go bad so far (they start making a squeaking sound and fail to spin up). Mac users in particular have been having trouble with them.
Not true. Did you even read what you linked to? It refutes two of the statements by the poster above. I quote:
1. Sony did not "refuse to license Betamax."
In its January 25 issue, Time explained that "While at first Sony kept its Beta technology mostly to itself, JVC, the Japanese inventor of VHS, shared its secret with a raft of other firms." [13] This is blatantly untrue. While Sony was decidedly behind in the licensing of its technology, it tried from the very beginning to sign on other manufacturers to the Beta standard.
2. Betamax was not too expensive.
Consumers buying a new VCR saw only minor pricing differences between the two formats. Those looking for the latest technology could apparently find Betamax machines for much less than comparable VHS machines.
In the US, democracy is about voting for experts who then proceed to make important decisions on your behalf. This way you don't have to vote each time the governor's secretary wants to buy a stapler, a file cabinet, or a word processor.
Democracy is not about outlawing your competition and claiming you're doing it for security purposes. This is wrong whether you're Microsoft or Redhat.
Do we have a right to try to break into said file cabinet?
I don't know where you got that crazy idea. The right to know how something works (in other words, transparency in our government) does not imply the right to try to break into a locked cabinet or file.
My point is, even the "most secure" open-source software can be configured in an insecure way. Sure, we can make IIS against the law, but how do we know each state office is setting up Apache properly? To ensure security, the general public would have to audit these systems as implemented. Looking over the source code isn't enough. That's why the "our government would be more secure" argument strikes me as ridiculous.
State governments usually have built-in means to audit security and spending.
And they've done SO WELL, haven't they? Why, these spending audits stopped us from getting into trillions of dollars of debt. And they also stopped insane terrorists from crashing into the Wolrld Trade Center. Oh wait, they didn't.
I think you're confusing state and federal government. Of course there are problems with state governments as well, but we can help fix those problems by strengthening existing laws and voting out corrupt politicians. Vigilante solutions which assume the general public is knowledgeable about and interested in the minutiae of running a state are doomed to failure (I believe).
I took issue with your example because I don't think this law is really about holding the government accountable. State governments usually have built-in means to audit security and spending. The general public doesn't have the time or inclination to go over their animal control office's supplies to make sure their tax money was spent on supporting OpenOffice rather than MS Office. Just because I prefer one piece of software over another doesn't give me the right to dictate what tools an individual in a state office should use to do their work.
Put yourself in the place of a state worker who has been using the same piece of custom-built proprietary accounting software for ten years. Suddenly your boss tells you it's against the law to use it, just because Joe Blow down the street can't figure out how it works. And what if Joe Blow finds a security hole in your new open-source software. Is anyone going to listen to him? Will software updates that may effect hundreds or thousands of users suddenly occur at the whim of the general public?
Redhat is using "security" as an excuse to push this legislation. The bottom line is Redhat wants to sell more copies of its software. This bill would restrict people from choosing the best tool for the job. This is a very Microsoftesque tactic. Any bill which restricts freedom runs counter to the spirit of open source.
That's just my two cents, but hey, I'm a voting citizen too....
Lets say that your daughter's molested and a trial occurs, in which she testifies. For her protection, her testimony is sealed; if an electronic copy is made, it is cryptographically sealed. If this is done using proprietary software, we the citizens have no way of being assured that it is really secure. If the software used to do that is OSS / FS, then we can check and make sure.
So if the paper copy is kept in a file cabinet, do we have the right to know how the lock works on the file cabinet? Do we have a right to try to break into said file cabinet? Should we really lobby the government to outlaw the use of any file cabinet that's not home-brew with published blueprints?
What about all the software a government might need that doesn't have a good open-source alternative? Should we require a government to limp along using software which isn't appropriate to its needs? Should we drive out of business all the companies that make cheap, good, proprietary software for government use? Do we really need to publicly shame decenting voices within our own community, labelling them pro-Microsoft zealots with a hidden agenda? That'll make open-source real popular....
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Safety deposit box.
Yeah, but that would be a big pain in the ass if your data changed with any frequency. Getting a safety deposit box opened can be a time-consuming process. I can't imagine doing it weekly (or more often) just to swap out a set of backup tapes or CDs.
And many fireproof safes are designed to melt shut in a fire, suggesting that perhaps they wouldn't keep plastic contents from melting as well.
Ye Gods, though, go take a look at a 'history of UNIXes' chart.
Like this one?
It depends how you define God. The Christian God is usually described as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. Humans certainly don't come close in those departments. (Although many aetheists would argue that a god as described above couldn't possibly exist in a world where so many bad things happen seemingly at random.)
Exactly. The terminology differs place to place. Here in New Mexico, I had to sign up for a "CRS number" (Combined Reporting System) to report gross receipts tax--even though I'm selling a service.
The perfect time to negotiate your hourly rate would have been while the "entire corporate LAN was down." But if you did end up doing the work pro bono, at least your old boss will know she can count on you in the future. Next time make sure to work out the terms ahead of time.
If you end up doing a lot of consulting work, you're going to have to get a business license and (depending on the state) get a tax ID number. Here's a pretty basic article about setting up a consulting business (although it's aimed at Web developers).
I've had three 60 GB Maxtors that slowly began squeaking and not spinning up. Maybe there was a bad batch, as a number of Macintosh users at MacInTouch complained of the same syptoms.
Since there aren't any good benchmarks for this sort of thing, all you're going to get are subjective comments. As someone who has used Mac OS 9, OS X, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 on a variety of machines, I'm pleased with X's performance.
One thing I did notice when I switched from Mac OS 9 to OS X--the Aqua GUI feels a bit slow. I don't know what causes this perception, but you'll hear users on Mac-centric discussion forums complaining about the lack of "snappiness." In OS 9's Finder (in list view), you could select a hundred files and immediately drag them into another folder. In OS X's Finder (in column view) you have to wait a second after selecting the files or you can't drag them. It's little things like that which matter.
On the other hand, OS X is much better for multitasking. I leave all the apps I commonly use running 24/7. OS 9's primitive memory management made this near impossible, and its pathetic system of assigning processor time to the frontmost application prevented me from even simple multitasking (like coding a Web page while downloading software while listening to an MP3).
I'm running OS X on a 733Mhz PowerMac G4 (digital audio) with 1024 MB RAM and a GeForce 3.
Same here, except it was Comcast Cable. You have to go digital to get anything but basic, but the line quality is so bad, many channels dissolve into large pixels every few minutes. What a great idea!
You forgot:
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED.
Also, I think you have to throw in a few randomly-selected words in all-caps if you expect anyone to take you seriously.
I remember thinking that scene was unrealistic, since at the time I'd just finished working as a desk clerk at a library. We were instructed never to give out circulation information to anyone, even the police. I don't know what the director would have done if they'd had a warrant, though. (This was '93-'95.)
Exactly. I thought the whole reason Luke was on back-woods Tatooine ("If there's a bright center to the Universe you're on the planet that it's farthest from,") was so Vader couldn't find him. I was sorely disappointed to see that Anakin had been born and raised on Tatooine too, and that he and Luke's mother return for frequent visits. Everyone in the Republic seems to know about the place. Can't George come up with any more planets?
There is no doubt that IE is the only browser that matters. If someone else wants to make a competitive browser, it needs to be IE compliant, not W3C compliant.
I believe Zeldman covered this in his article. A few years ago, Netscape was "the only browser that matters" and everyone coded to that. Now it's IE. What if it's something else in a few years?
Not to mention, IE 4 renders sites differently from IE 5. There's got to be a better way.
I built a site which is valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS2 and renders virtually the same in IE, Mozilla, and Opera. How can you argue it would be better for me to ignore the second two browsers?
[I]n conclusion, the web standards project and w3c have failed due to their manegerial impotance, and can be safely ignored.
Hmm. I'm not sure how you can conclude this from your arguments.
I've always considered Zeldman to be one of those self-proclaimed know-it-alls who has had little real industry experience in high volume, high technology web-sites. Most of his portfolio is brochure-ware that looks like it was done by a team of one.
An ad hominem attack.
For one, most sites don't have the budget to develop to standards.
I would think it'd be cheaper to develop a single version of a site that works across all browsers and which can be updated with changes to a single stylesheet.
Secondly, all of these "standards" are interpreted differently by the different browsers, so you can't insure consistent look and feel without kludges.
True. There are some minor problems with browsers interpretting padding differently, for example. No show-stoppers. My e-zine (coded in XHTML 1.0 and CSS2) looks the same in Mozilla, IE 5+, and Opera.
Third, most of the foundations for these sites were layed (sic) out before coding to a standard was even possible....
CSS1 was recommended in 1996. Assuming your site was built before then, it might be time for a revision.
Finally... even though it's called a standard, it rarely exhibits standard and consistent behavior across the various platforms.
I believe you're repeating your second argument. Whether you use CSS or not, your site's not going to look the same on a cell phone as it will on WebTV. It won't even look the same on an old PC set to 640 x 480 resolution with 256 colors as on a new Mac set to 1280 x 1024 with millions. Deal with it.
The "sample chapter" presented features such nice conflicts as: web pages that are HTML 1.0 compliant waste bandwidth vs. web pages that are written for IE only turn away 25% of their viewers.
I'm confused. Please explain how these two statements conflict.
Did you read the other posts that contradicted what you quoted? The ones by people with single drives? The ones by people with PCs with the same problem?
Silly Anonymous Coward.
This would be great if it weren't from Maxtor. I don't trust their drives as far as I can throw them. I've had three go bad so far (they start making a squeaking sound and fail to spin up). Mac users in particular have been having trouble with them.
Not true. Did you even read what you linked to? It refutes two of the statements by the poster above. I quote:
1. Sony did not "refuse to license Betamax."
In its January 25 issue, Time explained that "While at first Sony kept its Beta technology mostly to itself, JVC, the Japanese inventor of VHS, shared its secret with a raft of other firms." [13] This is blatantly untrue. While Sony was decidedly behind in the licensing of its technology, it tried from the very beginning to sign on other manufacturers to the Beta standard.
2. Betamax was not too expensive.
Consumers buying a new VCR saw only minor pricing differences between the two formats. Those looking for the latest technology could apparently find Betamax machines for much less than comparable VHS machines.
The MacOS X version is still in beta. There hasn't been an update since February. I would think this isn't a good sign.
Not to mention, you'll have to block whatever consultants they actually hire to do their cracking. Good luck with that.
So, Democracy is a "Vigilante solution?"
In the US, democracy is about voting for experts who then proceed to make important decisions on your behalf. This way you don't have to vote each time the governor's secretary wants to buy a stapler, a file cabinet, or a word processor.
Democracy is not about outlawing your competition and claiming you're doing it for security purposes. This is wrong whether you're Microsoft or Redhat.
Do we have a right to try to break into said file cabinet?
I don't know where you got that crazy idea. The right to know how something works (in other words, transparency in our government) does not imply the right to try to break into a locked cabinet or file.
My point is, even the "most secure" open-source software can be configured in an insecure way. Sure, we can make IIS against the law, but how do we know each state office is setting up Apache properly? To ensure security, the general public would have to audit these systems as implemented. Looking over the source code isn't enough. That's why the "our government would be more secure" argument strikes me as ridiculous.
State governments usually have built-in means to audit security and spending.
And they've done SO WELL, haven't they? Why, these spending audits stopped us from getting into trillions of dollars of debt. And they also stopped insane terrorists from crashing into the Wolrld Trade Center. Oh wait, they didn't.
I think you're confusing state and federal government. Of course there are problems with state governments as well, but we can help fix those problems by strengthening existing laws and voting out corrupt politicians. Vigilante solutions which assume the general public is knowledgeable about and interested in the minutiae of running a state are doomed to failure (I believe).
I took issue with your example because I don't think this law is really about holding the government accountable. State governments usually have built-in means to audit security and spending. The general public doesn't have the time or inclination to go over their animal control office's supplies to make sure their tax money was spent on supporting OpenOffice rather than MS Office. Just because I prefer one piece of software over another doesn't give me the right to dictate what tools an individual in a state office should use to do their work.
Put yourself in the place of a state worker who has been using the same piece of custom-built proprietary accounting software for ten years. Suddenly your boss tells you it's against the law to use it, just because Joe Blow down the street can't figure out how it works. And what if Joe Blow finds a security hole in your new open-source software. Is anyone going to listen to him? Will software updates that may effect hundreds or thousands of users suddenly occur at the whim of the general public?
Redhat is using "security" as an excuse to push this legislation. The bottom line is Redhat wants to sell more copies of its software. This bill would restrict people from choosing the best tool for the job. This is a very Microsoftesque tactic. Any bill which restricts freedom runs counter to the spirit of open source.
That's just my two cents, but hey, I'm a voting citizen too....
Lets say that your daughter's molested and a trial occurs, in which she testifies. For her protection, her testimony is sealed; if an electronic copy is made, it is cryptographically sealed. If this is done using proprietary software, we the citizens have no way of being assured that it is really secure. If the software used to do that is OSS / FS, then we can check and make sure.
So if the paper copy is kept in a file cabinet, do we have the right to know how the lock works on the file cabinet? Do we have a right to try to break into said file cabinet? Should we really lobby the government to outlaw the use of any file cabinet that's not home-brew with published blueprints?
What about all the software a government might need that doesn't have a good open-source alternative? Should we require a government to limp along using software which isn't appropriate to its needs? Should we drive out of business all the companies that make cheap, good, proprietary software for government use? Do we really need to publicly shame decenting voices within our own community, labelling them pro-Microsoft zealots with a hidden agenda? That'll make open-source real popular....