It sounds to me like natural selection. While the tools of humanity aren't necessarily provided by nature, they're one of the ways we've been able to adapt to the environment around us. If you replaced "human" with the name of an animal, "overfishing" with a term that means eating too much, wouldn't we more than likely arrive at the same conclusion? If a new species of fish had a massive population explosion and ate all the food on which the white dolphins fed, starving them to extinction, what would be different?
I'm all for conservation and trying to preserve all the different forms of life we have on this planet. However, when one of them does die, it's not unnatural. It's just what happens. It's sad if you want it to be sad, but everything dies at some point. If humanity kills off all our food sources, destroys ecosystems, etc., guess what? If we can't adapt, we'll go bye-bye too.
Ummm, sloppy focus isn't going to let you have the focus on more than one window at one time. You simply don't have to click to navigate the windows. So you're still stuck with the same problem. I do agree about wasting a little bit of space at the top if you have a wide screen, but... meh. Having it go all the way across the top is still less space than each application having its own menu bar.
Why does it infuriate you? It's not like you can use more than one of them at one time, and it saves screen real-estate because everything doesn't have to have its own.
If I'm not mistaken, though, Nintendo is still turning a pretty decent profit. So while they're not number one, they're still incredibly successful. Didn't Microsoft sell the original XBoxen at a loss? And Sony's selling the PS3 at a loss as well? They may make it up eventually in numbers, but it just seems like some really silly business tactics.
On top of that, are there any figures anywhere that shows how profitable each of the consoles have been to their respective companies?
I think it's because Apple gives us what the majority of us want. They give you a product that's easy to use and consistent. Microsoft has never been able to grasp this concept. It may not do absolutely everything under the sun, but I'm pretty certain the majority of people couldn't care less. You see the same problem with current mobile phones, and that's why people have been waiting to see if Apple would enter that market as well.
It looks like more than a few to me. Anyway, small or not, they have to start somewhere. I think it's a great idea and it makes a lot of sense. I have no problem with something like this as long as they continue to allow private telcos the ability to build their own networks if they desire.
Actually, I think innocent until proven guilty is only the way a judge or jury is supposed to consider your case. Because if the police arrest you, detain you, all of that stuff... that's pretty much guilty until proven innocent.:) You wouldn't arrest someone unless you thought they were guilty.
You're also assuming that somebody will know how to read the schematic in the future. They may not look anything like that in the future, or, the parts may be completely unavailable with which to build such a device. It's not a bad idea, but, I don't think it's any better than many of the others.
My wife and I managed to acquire a Wii on Sunday morning. We first tried at one of the local Wal-mart locations, where we arrived at about 5PM to check out the situation. There were already some people lining up, but we confirmed with an employee in electronics that nothing would happen until midnight. So, we decided to come back before midnight and see if we could get in line. Upon arriving at the store at 11PM, we noticed there wasn't a line anymore. When we asked the salespeople, they said they'd given out the little tickets to everyone and told them all to go home. So all the units were technically "sold", though no money changed hands, and I think the people had until noon to come in and purchase the consoles with their tickets. This did not make us happy, as the previous salespeople had not told us the truth.
Anyway, we decided to try Target next (though they were closed, and I already knew how many they'd be receiving) and there were only two people camping out at the door. We went home, waited until about 6AM, and went back. We got in line (5th in line) and waiting until shortly before the store opened, where the employees handed out the tickets with a 15 minute validity after opening to go and pick up our consoles. Altogether, Target was incredibly professional complete with signs, helpful salespeople, and an orderly process for getting the Wiis to the customers without any problems. My hat off to them (if I wore hats, anyway).
Okay, so after that little adventure, we were the proud owners of a Wii. I am not exaggerating when I say we've enjoyed this console more than any other. We picked up an extra Wiimote and nunchuck attachment, Rayman's Raving Rabbids and Twilight Princess. When we first powered it up and went through the setup, it was as easy as could be to get it updated and ready to rock. We played Wii Sports for a few hours, then Twilight Princess for a few, and finally Rayman for a few hours after that. The controllers worked almost perfectly, and the experience was not only fun but invigorating! Heck, we actually got some exercise from all the bouncing around with the wiimotes.
Just for the heck of it, I also bought and downloaded a copy of Donkey Kong for the virtual console. That worked as promised too, and I had a little bit of old school nostalgia that was easily worth $5.
So far, this is our favorite system ever, and we look forward to getting more games later. I'd say we're interested in the majority of the titles that will be available for the console, especially if they make use of the interactivity the Wiimote provides. Nintendo did an awesome job, and they're going to be receiving many more of my dollars in the future. Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, won't see a cent.
Umm, if I'm not mistaken, the whole point of TCP is to provide guaranteed delivery (at least, as long as delivery is possible). If some packets are lost, no acknowledgment is sent from the destination to the source, and the source re-sends the packets.
I have the same problem with my phone from T-Mobile. The only way to fix it, at least of which I'm aware, is to send it off to somebody and have them re-flash the phone with the original firmware. That will remove all the little T-Mobileisms, any protections they have on the phone, etc., and make it possible for you to do what the phone was intended to do. The unlocking that others are talking about in their response to your post is to make it possible to use your phone on other providers' networks (with an appropriate SIM card for said networks). That won't fix the Java problem, though.
Unfortunately, being locked in is the price you pay for getting a cheap phone. I think it's stupid too, but that's why the phones are so cheap when you buy them from a provider (or free in some cases). They know they'll make money off you in other ways, so they don't mind subsidizing the cost of the phone.
This isn't really going to answer your question since I'm not going to recommend any particular texts on security for non-geeks. Why don't you work on teaching them what they CAN do? Honestly, family or not, if I own a computer and constantly have someone trying to tell me that I can't do the things I want to do, I wouldn't listen and would probably start to resent it. It's not their fault they want it to be easy and convenient to use, but I'd try a little positive reinforcement and approach it from the other angle.
On top of that, if there are things you can do within reason to make their computing experience safer, go ahead and do those things as well. If they're using Windows, I'd enable automatic updates and install anti-virus/anti-spyware software that also updates and scans automatically. While I don't like Microsoft, their OneCare product is pretty easy for novices to use since it includes everything in one spot.
It's a learning experience. Most of us didn't read security books and become safer because we knew things ahead of time, but we got burned a few times and learned best practices after the fact. Well, that's my $0.02.
Your website may work, but it may or may not look very nice. That's just not acceptable to the majority of web developers. But Microsoft has no reason to comply with standards any more than they absolutely have to, and every reason to keep their implementation broken and generally incompatible with everyone else.
It may not matter to you, but it does matter to those of us who 1) don't want to spend the extra money to run something as simple as a gaming console and 2) are trying to reduce energy consumption where we can. 380 watts is a lot of power for a console. If Sony sells millions of them, that's a lot of wasted power. Sure, you can look at it as a simple decision of whether or not you want to spend a few extra bucks on your power bill, but it all adds up. More demand on the grid means more infrastructure and more plants. Those plants need to run on something, so that's increased fuel usage (regardless of the fuel source). Since the majority of our energy still comes from non-renewable sources, well... you can see where this is going. It may not matter to you, but it does matter to a lot of other people (myself included).
As far as Sony's missteps go, I do think it's important to know these things as a consumer. I don't want to give money to a corporation that lies to its customers, and creates products that can be downright dangerous to them. All the while, they're happier and happier to take more and more of my money. As with my first statement, it may not matter to you, but it does matter to others.
I definitely agree that there are times when they need to share information. They seem to have been lacking a decent way to store the information for some time, much less share it. So this is a good thing on the surface. What worries me, though, is that it may make it easier and all the more likely for them to share information when they don't need to be sharing it. So, we'll just see how it all goes. If it's used responsibly, I think it's a very good thing.
As I understand it, that was by design, not by mistake. The CIA isn't supposed to handle domestic problems, and the FBI isn't usually supposed to be involved in international issues. I think they're supposed to work together where they overlap (say, if someone the CIA was tracking comes into the country, they're supposed to work with the FBI, but it's the FBI's territory at that point). This was all to keep a little separation between the departments so you don't have one massive one that controls everything. Unfortunately, those barriers seem to be weakening much the way our government's separation of powers is being eroded.
I'm not an expert on this, so if I'm mistaken about the original separation, I'll stand corrected. But I'd read in several places it was set up that way on purpose.
The difference is that with cars, you're buying a specific, physical piece of equipment. It belongs to you, it's your property. You didn't purchase a license to use it. However, instead of buying the car, let's say you lease the car. There are many more restrictions on what you can do with the car, because it doesn't technically belong to you. This is much the same as purchasing a license for software, rather than actually purchasing and owning your copy of the software. Microsoft and other companies don't want to sell you software, they want to lease or rent it to you, so they get your money and retain control.
In about:config, find browser.tabs.closeButtons, and set it to 3 (the default is 1). That gives you the old close button back, where you have multiple tabs but only one close button.
Does anyone know if it's possible to get rid of the little drop-down thingy that lists all the tabs? They put it right where the close button is supposed to be (well, moved a little to the side if you re-enable the old-style close button), but it's in the way and annoying. I haven't seen anything that looked obvious in about:config to remove it, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
I was going to say the same thing. I'm a contractor and just started working with the DoD in April, and I have a Common Access Card as well. I don't know if other bases are using them in the same manner, but we even use them for base access now (unless you're somebody who, for some reason, doesn't get one).
You know, I've had many disagreements with lilo over the years with regard to my time as staff on Freenode, a PDPC board member, and with my work on WOPN/Freenode Radio a while back. While I disagreed with a lot of his views, I wouldn't ever have wished something this tragic upon him and his family. I wish his wife and his son all the best, and hope they're able to get through this tough time. Agree or disagree with the man, I don't think anyone could say his impact on the free software community was insignificant. I hope he's found peace, and can say that he'll be missed even by many of those who disagreed with him.
I think it can be tremendously useful. Since torrent downloads are treated more or less like any other download, it makes downloading things via BitTorrent as easy as clicking on a link, just as you would any other link. It's not necessarily the most advanced and featureful torrent client, but I don't think that's its purpose. I think it's meant to be quick and easy to use, and to integrate torrent downloads with the rest of the download manager.
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It sounds to me like natural selection. While the tools of humanity aren't necessarily provided by nature, they're one of the ways we've been able to adapt to the environment around us. If you replaced "human" with the name of an animal, "overfishing" with a term that means eating too much, wouldn't we more than likely arrive at the same conclusion? If a new species of fish had a massive population explosion and ate all the food on which the white dolphins fed, starving them to extinction, what would be different?
I'm all for conservation and trying to preserve all the different forms of life we have on this planet. However, when one of them does die, it's not unnatural. It's just what happens. It's sad if you want it to be sad, but everything dies at some point. If humanity kills off all our food sources, destroys ecosystems, etc., guess what? If we can't adapt, we'll go bye-bye too.
A perfect example of truthiness!
Ummm, sloppy focus isn't going to let you have the focus on more than one window at one time. You simply don't have to click to navigate the windows. So you're still stuck with the same problem. I do agree about wasting a little bit of space at the top if you have a wide screen, but ... meh. Having it go all the way across the top is still less space than each application having its own menu bar.
Why does it infuriate you? It's not like you can use more than one of them at one time, and it saves screen real-estate because everything doesn't have to have its own.
I'd think that was because the majority of them are integrated. Personally, I've never seen a laptop with a removable/replaceable video card.
Hey, if it works for you, go for it. I disagree that it's easier, though.
If I'm not mistaken, though, Nintendo is still turning a pretty decent profit. So while they're not number one, they're still incredibly successful. Didn't Microsoft sell the original XBoxen at a loss? And Sony's selling the PS3 at a loss as well? They may make it up eventually in numbers, but it just seems like some really silly business tactics.
On top of that, are there any figures anywhere that shows how profitable each of the consoles have been to their respective companies?
I think it's because Apple gives us what the majority of us want. They give you a product that's easy to use and consistent. Microsoft has never been able to grasp this concept. It may not do absolutely everything under the sun, but I'm pretty certain the majority of people couldn't care less. You see the same problem with current mobile phones, and that's why people have been waiting to see if Apple would enter that market as well.
It looks like more than a few to me. Anyway, small or not, they have to start somewhere. I think it's a great idea and it makes a lot of sense. I have no problem with something like this as long as they continue to allow private telcos the ability to build their own networks if they desire.
Actually, I think innocent until proven guilty is only the way a judge or jury is supposed to consider your case. Because if the police arrest you, detain you, all of that stuff ... that's pretty much guilty until proven innocent. :) You wouldn't arrest someone unless you thought they were guilty.
You're also assuming that somebody will know how to read the schematic in the future. They may not look anything like that in the future, or, the parts may be completely unavailable with which to build such a device. It's not a bad idea, but, I don't think it's any better than many of the others.
My wife and I managed to acquire a Wii on Sunday morning. We first tried at one of the local Wal-mart locations, where we arrived at about 5PM to check out the situation. There were already some people lining up, but we confirmed with an employee in electronics that nothing would happen until midnight. So, we decided to come back before midnight and see if we could get in line. Upon arriving at the store at 11PM, we noticed there wasn't a line anymore. When we asked the salespeople, they said they'd given out the little tickets to everyone and told them all to go home. So all the units were technically "sold", though no money changed hands, and I think the people had until noon to come in and purchase the consoles with their tickets. This did not make us happy, as the previous salespeople had not told us the truth.
Anyway, we decided to try Target next (though they were closed, and I already knew how many they'd be receiving) and there were only two people camping out at the door. We went home, waited until about 6AM, and went back. We got in line (5th in line) and waiting until shortly before the store opened, where the employees handed out the tickets with a 15 minute validity after opening to go and pick up our consoles. Altogether, Target was incredibly professional complete with signs, helpful salespeople, and an orderly process for getting the Wiis to the customers without any problems. My hat off to them (if I wore hats, anyway).
Okay, so after that little adventure, we were the proud owners of a Wii. I am not exaggerating when I say we've enjoyed this console more than any other. We picked up an extra Wiimote and nunchuck attachment, Rayman's Raving Rabbids and Twilight Princess. When we first powered it up and went through the setup, it was as easy as could be to get it updated and ready to rock. We played Wii Sports for a few hours, then Twilight Princess for a few, and finally Rayman for a few hours after that. The controllers worked almost perfectly, and the experience was not only fun but invigorating! Heck, we actually got some exercise from all the bouncing around with the wiimotes.
Just for the heck of it, I also bought and downloaded a copy of Donkey Kong for the virtual console. That worked as promised too, and I had a little bit of old school nostalgia that was easily worth $5.
So far, this is our favorite system ever, and we look forward to getting more games later. I'd say we're interested in the majority of the titles that will be available for the console, especially if they make use of the interactivity the Wiimote provides. Nintendo did an awesome job, and they're going to be receiving many more of my dollars in the future. Sony and Microsoft, on the other hand, won't see a cent.
Umm, if I'm not mistaken, the whole point of TCP is to provide guaranteed delivery (at least, as long as delivery is possible). If some packets are lost, no acknowledgment is sent from the destination to the source, and the source re-sends the packets.
I have the same problem with my phone from T-Mobile. The only way to fix it, at least of which I'm aware, is to send it off to somebody and have them re-flash the phone with the original firmware. That will remove all the little T-Mobileisms, any protections they have on the phone, etc., and make it possible for you to do what the phone was intended to do. The unlocking that others are talking about in their response to your post is to make it possible to use your phone on other providers' networks (with an appropriate SIM card for said networks). That won't fix the Java problem, though.
Unfortunately, being locked in is the price you pay for getting a cheap phone. I think it's stupid too, but that's why the phones are so cheap when you buy them from a provider (or free in some cases). They know they'll make money off you in other ways, so they don't mind subsidizing the cost of the phone.
This isn't really going to answer your question since I'm not going to recommend any particular texts on security for non-geeks. Why don't you work on teaching them what they CAN do? Honestly, family or not, if I own a computer and constantly have someone trying to tell me that I can't do the things I want to do, I wouldn't listen and would probably start to resent it. It's not their fault they want it to be easy and convenient to use, but I'd try a little positive reinforcement and approach it from the other angle.
On top of that, if there are things you can do within reason to make their computing experience safer, go ahead and do those things as well. If they're using Windows, I'd enable automatic updates and install anti-virus/anti-spyware software that also updates and scans automatically. While I don't like Microsoft, their OneCare product is pretty easy for novices to use since it includes everything in one spot.
It's a learning experience. Most of us didn't read security books and become safer because we knew things ahead of time, but we got burned a few times and learned best practices after the fact. Well, that's my $0.02.
Your website may work, but it may or may not look very nice. That's just not acceptable to the majority of web developers. But Microsoft has no reason to comply with standards any more than they absolutely have to, and every reason to keep their implementation broken and generally incompatible with everyone else.
It may not matter to you, but it does matter to those of us who 1) don't want to spend the extra money to run something as simple as a gaming console and 2) are trying to reduce energy consumption where we can. 380 watts is a lot of power for a console. If Sony sells millions of them, that's a lot of wasted power. Sure, you can look at it as a simple decision of whether or not you want to spend a few extra bucks on your power bill, but it all adds up. More demand on the grid means more infrastructure and more plants. Those plants need to run on something, so that's increased fuel usage (regardless of the fuel source). Since the majority of our energy still comes from non-renewable sources, well ... you can see where this is going. It may not matter to you, but it does matter to a lot of other people (myself included).
As far as Sony's missteps go, I do think it's important to know these things as a consumer. I don't want to give money to a corporation that lies to its customers, and creates products that can be downright dangerous to them. All the while, they're happier and happier to take more and more of my money. As with my first statement, it may not matter to you, but it does matter to others.
I definitely agree that there are times when they need to share information. They seem to have been lacking a decent way to store the information for some time, much less share it. So this is a good thing on the surface. What worries me, though, is that it may make it easier and all the more likely for them to share information when they don't need to be sharing it. So, we'll just see how it all goes. If it's used responsibly, I think it's a very good thing.
As I understand it, that was by design, not by mistake. The CIA isn't supposed to handle domestic problems, and the FBI isn't usually supposed to be involved in international issues. I think they're supposed to work together where they overlap (say, if someone the CIA was tracking comes into the country, they're supposed to work with the FBI, but it's the FBI's territory at that point). This was all to keep a little separation between the departments so you don't have one massive one that controls everything. Unfortunately, those barriers seem to be weakening much the way our government's separation of powers is being eroded.
I'm not an expert on this, so if I'm mistaken about the original separation, I'll stand corrected. But I'd read in several places it was set up that way on purpose.
The difference is that with cars, you're buying a specific, physical piece of equipment. It belongs to you, it's your property. You didn't purchase a license to use it. However, instead of buying the car, let's say you lease the car. There are many more restrictions on what you can do with the car, because it doesn't technically belong to you. This is much the same as purchasing a license for software, rather than actually purchasing and owning your copy of the software. Microsoft and other companies don't want to sell you software, they want to lease or rent it to you, so they get your money and retain control.
In about:config, find browser.tabs.closeButtons, and set it to 3 (the default is 1). That gives you the old close button back, where you have multiple tabs but only one close button.
Does anyone know if it's possible to get rid of the little drop-down thingy that lists all the tabs? They put it right where the close button is supposed to be (well, moved a little to the side if you re-enable the old-style close button), but it's in the way and annoying. I haven't seen anything that looked obvious in about:config to remove it, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
I was going to say the same thing. I'm a contractor and just started working with the DoD in April, and I have a Common Access Card as well. I don't know if other bases are using them in the same manner, but we even use them for base access now (unless you're somebody who, for some reason, doesn't get one).
You know, I've had many disagreements with lilo over the years with regard to my time as staff on Freenode, a PDPC board member, and with my work on WOPN/Freenode Radio a while back. While I disagreed with a lot of his views, I wouldn't ever have wished something this tragic upon him and his family. I wish his wife and his son all the best, and hope they're able to get through this tough time. Agree or disagree with the man, I don't think anyone could say his impact on the free software community was insignificant. I hope he's found peace, and can say that he'll be missed even by many of those who disagreed with him.
I think it can be tremendously useful. Since torrent downloads are treated more or less like any other download, it makes downloading things via BitTorrent as easy as clicking on a link, just as you would any other link. It's not necessarily the most advanced and featureful torrent client, but I don't think that's its purpose. I think it's meant to be quick and easy to use, and to integrate torrent downloads with the rest of the download manager.