That isn't true. If the kernel has any exploits that can be reached by a user-level application then it won't matter a damn if they're running the administrator account or not. There have been a number of reported claims that Apple are not keeping up with security patches on their kernel so this is not infeasible at all. Once the machine is compromised, it's game over.
And a virus doesn't even need ring-0 access to do significant damage. There are enough files on your Mac (starting with the whole of your home folder) that a user-level virus could trash to ruin your day. All it takes is an exploit in Safari, iChat or whatever and you could be wide open.
Even so, OS X does have the good sense as you say to use the administrator account. XP is a total disaster zone. I don't see this being any better in Vista. Microsoft have made a half-hearted attempt to improve security with each release and it never works. By this stage it would be impossible to fix. All they can hope is try and restrict user access and lay some trip wires. - every time an app expects more privileges, throw up a question to the user to ask if it can do it. This will be horribly annoying unless Microsoft ship a large default policy file to cover all the broken things that apps expect to be able to but can't in a more restrictive environment.
Why does the submitter think VOIP is it a racket? Being able to phone a US landline from Europe for 2 US cents a minute with Skype doesn't sound like a racket. It sounds like a positive bargain.
For like 12 years MS hasn't changed the Office UI singificantly because of "training" issues, and everyone here flamed them for rehashing the same product over-and-over.
I've often wondered why OpenOffice don't capitalise on this. You can customise OO menus and toolbars, rearranging the buttons and so on. Why not ship with two toolbar sets - an OpenOffice one and a Microsoft look-a-like. Upon first invocation offer the user the choice. People who like MS Office would pick the MS Office layout. This would considerably lower the learning curve although there are differences that would still require some retraining.
After all, it's exactly what Microsoft have done themselves. Excel and Word offered Lotus & Wordperfect users layouts and migration tips so why not give MS a taste of their own medicine?
Lots of devices AAA, AA, C, D style batteries. I even have an MP3 player that uses AAA batteries. While these batteries are unsuitable for many devices, it doesn't mean that all laptops, pocket PCs, iPods, mobile phones each need their own bloody battery format. It means when you toss the phone you have to toss the battery even if it would be fine for a comparable device.
It cannot be beyond the realms of science to design 5 or so "pocket" style batteries for small devices and perhaps 5 or so "laptop" style batteries for larger devices, ranging in power and dimensions and require all consumer devices to use them. The likes of Intel, Nokia, HP could even have a hand in their specification to ensure they were up to the job just as long as they were standardized.
I can't see any reason whatsoever for the multitude of chargers. It's virtually dictated by the brand rather than the device in that brand. Standardization also means there is no need for the multitude of chargers and docks that every device needs. If the batteries were the same then the chargers could or should be too, meaning less packaging and waste since you could buy the charger separately and use it with many devices.
The Groklaw article points out a few of them. The most damning is that Microsoft has chosen to ignore existing, reusable standards like XLink, SVG, Dublin Core, etc. for their own proprietary tags. These standards were expressly produced because they represent reusable patterns that many document formats need but which shouldn't be respecified by each of them. The upshot is that parsing OpenXML will be a massive pain in the butt because none of your existing scripts / tools / editors etc. that may have built-in knowledge of existing standards will not work with OpenXML.
Nicer from a human point of view means less bugs down the line. I just spent a week trying to get an.wsdl to parse through Axis AND.NET's wsdl.exe. Any format that is less opaque, less verbose and more understandable gets my vote.
Online grocery ordering and delivery is doing quite well in the UK still.
Here in Dublin I have used the Tesco service - usually when they beg me to with a free delivery voucher and my experience is decidely negative. I have used the thing 3 times now and for that I have had:
Substituted items without saying so, e.g. one deodorant for another. There isn't a "don't deliver it if its not exactly what I want" checkbox. They just pick an alternative and sometimes you don't notice.
Delivering an item without the special offer on it. e.g. the website says 50% extra free except you don't get it.
Missing things. Things you ordered which aren't there but they still charged you for.
Dented tins, scrawny bits of meat, produce near its sell-by date. In a supermarket I pick things from the back of the shelf because they are always fresher.
No facility for using money off or clubcard vouchers
The worst part is you must check through every single item in front of the driver. You can just feel their impatience as you dispute an order or return items. Then you rely upon them to refund the difference.
So my experience is that the service is negative. It sure as hell doesn't come close to a regular shop. I've decided that the only reason for using it now is for them lug extremely heavy things like wine, beer, bleach etc. to my door. And then only when they come crawling for my business with a promotion.
Your system sounds pretty close to what I built. SATA II, 3800+ X2 & 2 Gig. My graphics cards works great with the system. It was an overclocked XFX version but it didn't cost too much. To be honest the main reason I bought it was because NVidia XP and Linux drivers are a known quantity for me and I trust them.
I built a computer recently. While I briefly considered buying a high performance card, at the end of the day I don't believe they are worth it. Cards and CPUs seem to be governed by a law of diminishing returns. What's cutting edge now won't even raise an eyebrow in a few years. So why fork out absurd amounts of currency for one? The same with the various "extreme" CPUs. Spending 2-3x the cash for something which delivers a 30% gain is just stupid.
In the end I picked up a pretty good NVidia 6800GS which is more than adequate for most games. It works well at full res and detail on most games. If for some reason I want to improve the performance even further, it also supports SLI (and my motherboard too), though I doubt I will bother with it.
So, because of the name everyone's talking about Nintendo's console.
Talking about it because it has a stupid name. When the chatter dies down, it will still be the same console but now one encumbered with a very silly name. It's weird that they'd even bother changing the name since Revolution was fairly normal. Wii just sounds quite effeminate really.
Also, if I have a fak NY ID many NY police would spot it in a second, if I hand them a fake Iowa drivers license it would slip right by.
It sounds from what you're saying that a national ID will be an immensely valuable document. If it is then the demand for a stolen ones and the quality of fakes is going to go up. It won't take long for very good fakes to appear. If money can be faked, even sophisticated notes like euros, then you can bet some lousy card with a picture and a hologram and a few patterns is not a massive challenge.
Any biometrics chip can be a fake. Since very few places are going to be equipped with any kind of biometrics system, it doesn't in any way improve your security. And if the chip don't work, the chances are that people would just accept it anyway from its appearance unless they have a secondary way to look up your details.
Are this device's sights set so low we should compare it with a 5 year old XBox? Besides, I doubt the DVD licencing amounts to more than cents on a device. It certainly it can't be high since DVD players can be had for 30 euros retail. Even if it were a few dollars, do you want to bet that any attachment won't cost a few dollars? As to why it's a good thing to play DVDs it's because it is sitting beside a television set and has everything and more it needs to do it.
I have my PS2 hooked up to a TV and I use it as a DVD player too. I even spent 6 months on a contract in a rented apartment with a portable TV and I appreciated its ability to play movies rather than haul a player along too. I'm sure kids would like a player too, or anyone who doesn't want the clutter of two devices under their television set.
Seems kind of stupid. Aside from being a way to fleece people for the attachment, there is no reason it shouldn't be able to play DVDs out of the box.
Re:Driving force for bloodless surgery
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Bloodless Surgery
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You don't really believe in the Bible...you just use it to argue with others about it's truthfulness.
You're damned right I don't believe in the bible. As for why and it's truthfulness... It's full of patent absurdities. Is it the word of god or not. Did he put a bunch of contradictions and nonsense in there to "test" us? Either you think it is inerrant in which case you believe everything it says or you don't think it's inerrant in which case, some / all of it can be ignored since you have no idea what is correct and what is not. Hence the reason that some churches have absolutely no problem with blood transfusions or transplants while others would see their children die. Or that some churches have a problem with homosexuality and others don't. Or that some churches extol a personal god while others barricade themselves in compounds with plenty of guns and ammunition. All of that comes with the territory when you believe a book written by ignorant tribespeople.
That would mean you're an atheist. If this is you then why don't you respect other people's views and beliefs and not spread your own falacious views by posting inaccurate statements about things you don't even understand? Nice try though.
So someone who doesn't believe the bible is an atheist? That would be news to pagans, Buddhists, Shintoists etc.
As for not understanding the bible. I understand it all too well. Page after page of superstitious crap with the odd platitude to make it seem worthwhile. Naturally you are entitled to your beliefs, but if you are foolish enough to think you can come onto any forum where they are the topic of discussion and not have them challenged then more fool you. I might also point out your hypocrisy again since you're the one who for no apparant reason started ranting and raving at me acusing me of "moronic rambling". That doesn't seem very tolerant to me. Hypocrite.
Re:Driving force for bloodless surgery
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Bloodless Surgery
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Clean shaven makes one a hypocrite?
Yes. "Leviticus 19:27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.". Do you have a Hassidic style beard? BTW, that comes immediately after "19:26 Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times.". So JWs ignore the beard rule but have a thing about blood. Strangely enough Hassidic Jews have no problem with transfusions but object to transplants whereas JWs are the opposite.
If you're talking about the "Mosaic Laws" then I suggest you brush up on your Bible reading and see if you can conclude that it was abolished by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Otherwise I've never seen anything that suggests you can't shave
Oh right. I guess we should tear the bible in half then. Everything in the OT is bullshit. Say sayeth Jesus. That explains a lot, such as god turning from a vindictive, spiteful, all-powerful asshole of a god of the OT into a loving, party trick god of the NT.
I find it funny how idiotic some people on this site are sometimes. As for the blood being part of those same laws...this is true BUT it was mentioned again AFTER the "sacrifice" so it's upheld as something to follow even after the abolishing of these laws just as thou shalt not kill is also retained along with other things.
I find it funny how idiots fail to realise the total hypocrisy of picking and choosing what to believe from the bible. It's either all "God's word" (i.e. true) in which case you follow it to the letter. Even the bits that contradict each other (e.g. turning the other cheek and eye for an eye). Or you realise that it is cobbled together from various desert dwelling tribes and therefore should have no weight or bearing on how one lives their life.
What you don't do is put emphasis on one biblical absurdity and then fail to see the hypocrisy that you don't follow another.
People who deny themselves or their children a life saving treatment because of some bronze age tribe are fools.
Re:Driving force for bloodless surgery
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Bloodless Surgery
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· Score: 0, Troll
Yes it is. It is as close to a stone age, irrational belief as it is possible to be. But I'm betting you're one of those people who follows every single tenet of the bible right? You've never eaten prawns or shellfish? You have a beard? You've never had sex with a woman during her period? etc. etc. And of course you believe every single story in the bible? The Garden of Eden, Noah's Ark etc. etc.
Funnily enough all the JWs who come-a-godbothering around these parts are clean shaven. So they're hypocrites. They believe one part of the bible but choose to ignore another. So what's the big deal with a blood transfusion? If you can choose to ignore other parts (perhaps discarding them because they are absurd), then you should be able to with transfusions. Especially when it is likely to save your life. Or your kids life.
As for JWs being able to prophecy anything... This is the group which has predicted the end of the world how many times?
Re:Driving force for bloodless surgery
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Bloodless Surgery
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· Score: 1
While you may welcome the bloodless option, when it comes down to it you are putting your own life or your children's at risk for the largely ignorant proclaimations of primitive tribes people. Sometimes you will not have a bloodless option. Sometimes you may not be conscious to express an option. Put simply, if you choose to shun blood (donated by people to save lives) then that is your own damned fault.
Or walk into any computer store and copy down the Windows licence key helpfully stuck on the outside of any PC on display. An OEM version of XP might be required, but that's hardly an obstacle.
I doubt it will solve your problems. Red Hat & SUSE might share exactly the same layout, but it doesn't meann the libs or the dependencies of the RPMs even will be shared. Still, all of the different formats are a pain in the arse. I wonder if it would be possible to produce a meta package - one which contains dependency information for different dists in the same RPM.
For a very long time, crypto was supposedly "illegal" due to US export controls. It didn't stop the likes of Debian & Linux kernel (or rather overseas volunteers) from hosting crypto packages overseas so they were easily obtainable. I would argue that this situation is little different. For example Videolan.org bundles just about every codec (and decss) into a single downloadable. Apparently it's okay since videolan.org resides in France. What's to stop Ubuntu from linking to a site that also resides in France? Or linking to a site which happens to redirect to a site in France?
Ubuntu doesn't even need to mention codecs or anything else by name. They're merely linking to a 3rd party site and reading a manifesr. If someone happens to put codec packages in that manifest, how is Ubuntu infringing? They're not even linking to copyright / patented files. They're just loading a package list.
You think you can use a 17" Mac on a plane? Unless you're sitting in business or 1st, you wouldn't even get the thing to rest on the clip tray. Even then, the thing is so wide you'd be jamming your elbows into the person next to you. Same for a train - you'd hog the whole table for your "laptop". I know this from the difficulties using my smaller and lighter (but still large) T41. My device is right on the limits of acceptable mobile computing.
Anyone genuinely interested in mobile computing would get the 12" or 15" model. That's assuming a 12" Intel version existed.
The only reason I can see for buying a 17" laptop (as opposed to an iMac) is if you need desktop performance but occasionally need to move the device around between sites. This may be suitable for people who spend time with customers and so on. It would be a wretched device for computing between sites. It seems to me that you'd be better off buying an iMac for home and an iBook for planes / trains if that's what you're after. It's still cheaper. For now of course you'd have to use a PPC iBook, but I assume that Apple will get around to an Intel version in due course.
The question concerning these scripts, is why doesn't Ubuntu offer to install codecs during installation? Even if the codecs don't reside physically on the CD, that doesn't mean that Ubuntu can't add an extra source or two to its package list and offer to install anything it finds there as the last step of installation. That could include Sun's JDK, Nvidias display driver, codecs etc. etc.
Trying to get these things is a huge pain in the butt, and doubtless confirms to many people that Linux is "hard". When in fact Linux is merely as "hard" as the distribution is unhelpful. Ubuntu is meant to be a friendly distro so it doesn't have much of an excuse.
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Not true. Exploits that allow user-space programs to gain root privileges (and thus do whatever the hell they like) are extremely common.
And a virus doesn't even need ring-0 access to do significant damage. There are enough files on your Mac (starting with the whole of your home folder) that a user-level virus could trash to ruin your day. All it takes is an exploit in Safari, iChat or whatever and you could be wide open.
Even so, OS X does have the good sense as you say to use the administrator account. XP is a total disaster zone. I don't see this being any better in Vista. Microsoft have made a half-hearted attempt to improve security with each release and it never works. By this stage it would be impossible to fix. All they can hope is try and restrict user access and lay some trip wires. - every time an app expects more privileges, throw up a question to the user to ask if it can do it. This will be horribly annoying unless Microsoft ship a large default policy file to cover all the broken things that apps expect to be able to but can't in a more restrictive environment.
Why does the submitter think VOIP is it a racket? Being able to phone a US landline from Europe for 2 US cents a minute with Skype doesn't sound like a racket. It sounds like a positive bargain.
... Lucasfilm have just reissued Star Wars in another format YET AGAIN. George Lucas was seen to be crying all the way to the bank.
I've often wondered why OpenOffice don't capitalise on this. You can customise OO menus and toolbars, rearranging the buttons and so on. Why not ship with two toolbar sets - an OpenOffice one and a Microsoft look-a-like. Upon first invocation offer the user the choice. People who like MS Office would pick the MS Office layout. This would considerably lower the learning curve although there are differences that would still require some retraining.
After all, it's exactly what Microsoft have done themselves. Excel and Word offered Lotus & Wordperfect users layouts and migration tips so why not give MS a taste of their own medicine?
It cannot be beyond the realms of science to design 5 or so "pocket" style batteries for small devices and perhaps 5 or so "laptop" style batteries for larger devices, ranging in power and dimensions and require all consumer devices to use them. The likes of Intel, Nokia, HP could even have a hand in their specification to ensure they were up to the job just as long as they were standardized.
I can't see any reason whatsoever for the multitude of chargers. It's virtually dictated by the brand rather than the device in that brand. Standardization also means there is no need for the multitude of chargers and docks that every device needs. If the batteries were the same then the chargers could or should be too, meaning less packaging and waste since you could buy the charger separately and use it with many devices.
The Groklaw article points out a few of them. The most damning is that Microsoft has chosen to ignore existing, reusable standards like XLink, SVG, Dublin Core, etc. for their own proprietary tags. These standards were expressly produced because they represent reusable patterns that many document formats need but which shouldn't be respecified by each of them. The upshot is that parsing OpenXML will be a massive pain in the butt because none of your existing scripts / tools / editors etc. that may have built-in knowledge of existing standards will not work with OpenXML.
Nicer from a human point of view means less bugs down the line. I just spent a week trying to get an .wsdl to parse through Axis AND .NET's wsdl.exe. Any format that is less opaque, less verbose and more understandable gets my vote.
Here in Dublin I have used the Tesco service - usually when they beg me to with a free delivery voucher and my experience is decidely negative. I have used the thing 3 times now and for that I have had:
The worst part is you must check through every single item in front of the driver. You can just feel their impatience as you dispute an order or return items. Then you rely upon them to refund the difference.
So my experience is that the service is negative. It sure as hell doesn't come close to a regular shop. I've decided that the only reason for using it now is for them lug extremely heavy things like wine, beer, bleach etc. to my door. And then only when they come crawling for my business with a promotion.
Your system sounds pretty close to what I built. SATA II, 3800+ X2 & 2 Gig. My graphics cards works great with the system. It was an overclocked XFX version but it didn't cost too much. To be honest the main reason I bought it was because NVidia XP and Linux drivers are a known quantity for me and I trust them.
In the end I picked up a pretty good NVidia 6800GS which is more than adequate for most games. It works well at full res and detail on most games. If for some reason I want to improve the performance even further, it also supports SLI (and my motherboard too), though I doubt I will bother with it.
Talking about it because it has a stupid name. When the chatter dies down, it will still be the same console but now one encumbered with a very silly name. It's weird that they'd even bother changing the name since Revolution was fairly normal. Wii just sounds quite effeminate really.
It sounds from what you're saying that a national ID will be an immensely valuable document. If it is then the demand for a stolen ones and the quality of fakes is going to go up. It won't take long for very good fakes to appear. If money can be faked, even sophisticated notes like euros, then you can bet some lousy card with a picture and a hologram and a few patterns is not a massive challenge.
Any biometrics chip can be a fake. Since very few places are going to be equipped with any kind of biometrics system, it doesn't in any way improve your security. And if the chip don't work, the chances are that people would just accept it anyway from its appearance unless they have a secondary way to look up your details.
I have my PS2 hooked up to a TV and I use it as a DVD player too. I even spent 6 months on a contract in a rented apartment with a portable TV and I appreciated its ability to play movies rather than haul a player along too. I'm sure kids would like a player too, or anyone who doesn't want the clutter of two devices under their television set.
Seems kind of stupid. Aside from being a way to fleece people for the attachment, there is no reason it shouldn't be able to play DVDs out of the box.
You're damned right I don't believe in the bible. As for why and it's truthfulness... It's full of patent absurdities. Is it the word of god or not. Did he put a bunch of contradictions and nonsense in there to "test" us? Either you think it is inerrant in which case you believe everything it says or you don't think it's inerrant in which case, some / all of it can be ignored since you have no idea what is correct and what is not. Hence the reason that some churches have absolutely no problem with blood transfusions or transplants while others would see their children die. Or that some churches have a problem with homosexuality and others don't. Or that some churches extol a personal god while others barricade themselves in compounds with plenty of guns and ammunition. All of that comes with the territory when you believe a book written by ignorant tribespeople.
That would mean you're an atheist. If this is you then why don't you respect other people's views and beliefs and not spread your own falacious views by posting inaccurate statements about things you don't even understand? Nice try though.
So someone who doesn't believe the bible is an atheist? That would be news to pagans, Buddhists, Shintoists etc.
As for not understanding the bible. I understand it all too well. Page after page of superstitious crap with the odd platitude to make it seem worthwhile. Naturally you are entitled to your beliefs, but if you are foolish enough to think you can come onto any forum where they are the topic of discussion and not have them challenged then more fool you. I might also point out your hypocrisy again since you're the one who for no apparant reason started ranting and raving at me acusing me of "moronic rambling". That doesn't seem very tolerant to me. Hypocrite.
Yes. "Leviticus 19:27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.". Do you have a Hassidic style beard? BTW, that comes immediately after "19:26 Ye shall not eat any thing with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantment, nor observe times.". So JWs ignore the beard rule but have a thing about blood. Strangely enough Hassidic Jews have no problem with transfusions but object to transplants whereas JWs are the opposite.
If you're talking about the "Mosaic Laws" then I suggest you brush up on your Bible reading and see if you can conclude that it was abolished by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Otherwise I've never seen anything that suggests you can't shave
Oh right. I guess we should tear the bible in half then. Everything in the OT is bullshit. Say sayeth Jesus. That explains a lot, such as god turning from a vindictive, spiteful, all-powerful asshole of a god of the OT into a loving, party trick god of the NT.
I find it funny how idiotic some people on this site are sometimes. As for the blood being part of those same laws...this is true BUT it was mentioned again AFTER the "sacrifice" so it's upheld as something to follow even after the abolishing of these laws just as thou shalt not kill is also retained along with other things.
I find it funny how idiots fail to realise the total hypocrisy of picking and choosing what to believe from the bible. It's either all "God's word" (i.e. true) in which case you follow it to the letter. Even the bits that contradict each other (e.g. turning the other cheek and eye for an eye). Or you realise that it is cobbled together from various desert dwelling tribes and therefore should have no weight or bearing on how one lives their life.
What you don't do is put emphasis on one biblical absurdity and then fail to see the hypocrisy that you don't follow another.
People who deny themselves or their children a life saving treatment because of some bronze age tribe are fools.
Funnily enough all the JWs who come-a-godbothering around these parts are clean shaven. So they're hypocrites. They believe one part of the bible but choose to ignore another. So what's the big deal with a blood transfusion? If you can choose to ignore other parts (perhaps discarding them because they are absurd), then you should be able to with transfusions. Especially when it is likely to save your life. Or your kids life.
As for JWs being able to prophecy anything... This is the group which has predicted the end of the world how many times?
While you may welcome the bloodless option, when it comes down to it you are putting your own life or your children's at risk for the largely ignorant proclaimations of primitive tribes people. Sometimes you will not have a bloodless option. Sometimes you may not be conscious to express an option. Put simply, if you choose to shun blood (donated by people to save lives) then that is your own damned fault.
Or walk into any computer store and copy down the Windows licence key helpfully stuck on the outside of any PC on display. An OEM version of XP might be required, but that's hardly an obstacle.
I doubt it will solve your problems. Red Hat & SUSE might share exactly the same layout, but it doesn't meann the libs or the dependencies of the RPMs even will be shared. Still, all of the different formats are a pain in the arse. I wonder if it would be possible to produce a meta package - one which contains dependency information for different dists in the same RPM.
And the all too familiar "Only works IE" must have done wonders to dampen enthusiasm for other operating systems.
Ubuntu doesn't even need to mention codecs or anything else by name. They're merely linking to a 3rd party site and reading a manifesr. If someone happens to put codec packages in that manifest, how is Ubuntu infringing? They're not even linking to copyright / patented files. They're just loading a package list.
Anyone genuinely interested in mobile computing would get the 12" or 15" model. That's assuming a 12" Intel version existed.
The only reason I can see for buying a 17" laptop (as opposed to an iMac) is if you need desktop performance but occasionally need to move the device around between sites. This may be suitable for people who spend time with customers and so on. It would be a wretched device for computing between sites. It seems to me that you'd be better off buying an iMac for home and an iBook for planes / trains if that's what you're after. It's still cheaper. For now of course you'd have to use a PPC iBook, but I assume that Apple will get around to an Intel version in due course.
Trying to get these things is a huge pain in the butt, and doubtless confirms to many people that Linux is "hard". When in fact Linux is merely as "hard" as the distribution is unhelpful. Ubuntu is meant to be a friendly distro so it doesn't have much of an excuse.