7. Give yourself admin privileges for your everyday account? This is insane.
I've actually run across one or two programs (I think one was PowerPoint in Office 97) that pretty much required admin privileges on the local account for a general feature to work. I don't remember the feature, but there are plenty of things you just can't do without admin on the local box.
I'm not sure virii are an issue here, since the default security settings are wide open, even on an NTFS volume. So the virus could do almost anything it wanted, anyway.
Finally, without something like su, it is exceedingly annoying to have to shut all your programs down, log out, log in as Administrator to do some silly thing, and then start everything back up in your normal user account. For developers especially, this is just a huge waste of time.
9. Service Packs (and HotFixes) are pretty much mandatory and I think it is highly irresponsible to suggest that you don't apply them, espcecially if you are running a small number of machines.
NT 4.0 SP2 for one had some very nasty problems. I installed it on a machine shortly after it was released and found that the first floppy access blue screened the box. Lots of other people had major problems, too, so waiting a bit to see what shakes out is good advice. And if nothing is broken, this is one great reason not to "fix" it.
Linux will better Windows because Linux is reliable, free, and you can recompile it yourself whenever you need to fix bugs or add features.
I'm curious: out of all of the OSS operating system users out there, how many actually do fix bugs or add features to their kernel? I'm not talking about applying someone else's patch, either! This is constantly used as an argument for using Linux, but I think it's misleading.
Before all the flamers come after me, think about it for just a bit. I realize that it's nice to have this capability and I'm not trying to slam any advocates. It just seems a bit silly since very few of us ever try to do this in the first place. It's like saying DOOM was better than Wolfenstein just because id published information on how to make add-ons. A nice feature, yeah, but that's not the reason most people played the game.
It seems to me that perhaps we should be concentrating on the reasons Linux runs better than Windows that typical users would understand.
In the talk it was suggested that if the position was one of serious importance that the candidate was being considered for, it might be a wise idea to do a internet and usenet search for possible webpages, discussions, postings, and emails the person may have written.
I've been doing this for years just for my own amusement, generally before a candidate comes in for a first interview. Sometimes it's quite interesting to observe answers to questions in relation to things that have been posted to the Net.
About the Mindcraft problem: it seems to me that people need to learn that this is just business. Ethics and netiquette are going to take a back seat when there is big money involved. This is a fact of life that people around here need to accept. I'm not about to start defending these messages as "typical net flames" and take Mindcraft to task for violating netiquette.
My mom always used to tell me never to write anything down I didn't want to see on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. I think that's great advice. Next time you write to a feedback mail address or otherwise criticize a person or company, be aware that you have no control over that message once it's sent, and it could very well end up on a public web page.
Try not to embarass yourself and the rest of us, okay?
Maybe in real life you aren't having these kinds of discussions because you're talking to the wrong people.
There's a guy I work with who has the tendency to get nasty and rude when someone disagrees with him over some minor issue. I've learned not to get involved with him in these sorts of discussions, because it's really pointless (he never sees points other than his own) and I just end up feeling irritated and offended.
There's another guy who I rarely see eye-to-eye with, only he has no trouble carrying on discussions and remaining polite and rational. Given, most of the talks up to now have centered around technology, but I haven't seen anything to make me believe it would be much different if the topic were politics or religion.
My point is: maybe the people you're talking with on IRC are just better people to be having debates with in the first place. Look hard enough and I promise you'll find plenty of people on IRC who would be more than happy to call you names and type in all caps to annoy and torment you.
I disagree. The article certainly does not adequately explain the way these objectives will be accomplished.
New CDs could be tagged with a watermark, as has been previously pointed out. I'm guessing that newer encoders will use that watermark and some unique ID from the computer that does the encoding to prohibit playback on any other machine. This presents two problems. First, a portable MP3 player isn't the same machine, so logic says the MP3 won't play here. Secondly, what do I do when I upgrade my box? If I go buy a new machine, I expect my existing music to play. If it doesn't, I'm not going to be happy!
If upgraded MP3 player software follows these rules and won't play illegal files, I won't upgrade my player.
If I don't upgrade my player, I can't play the new audio formats. Well, this is fine with me, I'd rather buy a CD anyway so I can play the disc in my car or on my home stereo. I can still use the same encoder I've been using all along to produce the same MP3 files I have now and play those with my existing player. I can give those files to a friend and he can play them with his stuff, too.
What's the definition of legal here anyway? Isn't a song I rip from a CD I purchased legal? The bits don't change when I give it to a friend, but now it is illegal. How is software supposed to know the difference?
Since when does anyone use an OS because of the patents it contains? I've never seen anyone quote me any of the patents contained in a Microsoft OS. They certainly don't market it this way.
I would imagine that the vast majority of commercial software out there is probably not the result of a patent (legitimate or otherwise). Companies are still making money off of it because consumers have a need and buy the software. Whether or not the patent office exists isn't going to change the supply and demand.
Remember the copyright continues for close to a century for works produced for hire. If a patent runs out in 18 months, we still can't legally distribute the software.
Patents and copyrights last much longer than that. Currently, patents expire 20 years after the initial date of filing for the patent. Copyrights expire 70 years after the death of the author.
I don't really have much of a problem with copyrights, but patents really bug me. Especially these days, too many companies are patenting obvious processes by applying it to the Internet. All of a sudden, it's some whiz-bang new invention and the lawyers get richer.
Software is much more analagous to writing than construction or invention. Copyright law protects an author from someone simply copying the sequence of words written on a page. Authors can't patent a particular passage, paragraph or novel. I believe software is more like a novel. It just happens to be written in a peculiar style with a rather limited vocabulary.
Most of the time I see patents in other fields besides software, it's on tubes of toothpaste. Colgate can't make a squeeze tube like the one that Crest has, but does this really affect the product inside? I'm not convinced the patent office has a useful purpose these days.
I am reminded by something I read in one of the posts in the original Hellmouth article. I think a key point here is that kids in high school are treated too much like children. They are held down to such a point that some of them start to feel oppressed. Dismissing this recent act of violence and condoning it, even slightly, by saying that they were children who didn't know any better is a cop-out. Those two definitely knew what they were doing. The problem is that they lacked a basic respect for human life, their own and others.
I'm sure years of humiliation had a lot to do with this. Does that make it right or acceptable? Of course not, but it does somewhat explain it.
Like a lot of other people, I was somewhat of a loner/outcast in junior high and high school. Another thing that made life hard for me was that ours was a military family, which meant we moved around a lot. Imagine not fitting in very well, and then imagine getting uprooted every four years or so and dumped into a new environment. Believe me, it doesn't make anything any easier.
I haven't seen it widely publicized, but Eric Harris was a military child, too.
A good way to start fixing this situation is to make school officials more accountable to the emotional health of their students. I tried to go to guidance counselors in junior high, too, and while they wanted to help, they weren't willing to hand out punishments to any of the popular people who assaulted me. I'm not sure what they were scared of. Maybe it was a backlash from other parents, disciplining their kids when all other signs showed them to be "okay" (good grades, lots of friends, played sports, whatever).
Somehow, the perception that teenagers being cruel is okay or just a fact of growing up needs to change. I expect immaturity, but by age 14, kids understand their actions. Most of the time they just don't care about the ramifications. They know the worst thing likely to happen is a slap on the wrist.
Yeah, I just bought a new 10.1GB IDE made by IBM for about $175.
Removable technology is great, but only if they get the prices down to a reasonable level. I'd much rather buy an ORB drive and get 2.2GB media for $30/shot than 5x more space for 23x the price.
I've been using a Microsoft Natural for years, and it does help quite a bit, but the best thing you can possibly do is get a good keyboard/mouse tray.
The keyboard should be just above your knees, so that you aren't lifting your shoulders in an unnatural way. The mouse should be at the same height, as close to the keyboard as possible, so you don't find yourself stretching to get to it. I just got a nice combination setup at work that allows me to raise and lower the entire surface, as well as tilt it forward and back. It's much better than just dropping a keyboard and mouse on the top of a desk.
The temperature of your work space makes a difference, too. When the thermostat at my office is set too low, I definitely notice a stiffness in my hands.
This site is all about RSIs and the things you can do to help yourself. Do a Google search on "repetitive strain injury" to find other sites.
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7. Give yourself admin privileges for your everyday account? This is insane.
I've actually run across one or two programs (I think one was PowerPoint in Office 97) that pretty much required admin privileges on the local account for a general feature to work. I don't remember the feature, but there are plenty of things you just can't do without admin on the local box.
I'm not sure virii are an issue here, since the default security settings are wide open, even on an NTFS volume. So the virus could do almost anything it wanted, anyway.
Finally, without something like su, it is exceedingly annoying to have to shut all your programs down, log out, log in as Administrator to do some silly thing, and then start everything back up in your normal user account. For developers especially, this is just a huge waste of time.
9. Service Packs (and HotFixes) are pretty much mandatory and I think it is highly irresponsible to suggest that you don't apply them, espcecially if you are running a small number of machines.
NT 4.0 SP2 for one had some very nasty problems. I installed it on a machine shortly after it was released and found that the first floppy access blue screened the box. Lots of other people had major problems, too, so waiting a bit to see what shakes out is good advice. And if nothing is broken, this is one great reason not to "fix" it.
I'm curious: out of all of the OSS operating system users out there, how many actually do fix bugs or add features to their kernel? I'm not talking about applying someone else's patch, either! This is constantly used as an argument for using Linux, but I think it's misleading.
Before all the flamers come after me, think about it for just a bit. I realize that it's nice to have this capability and I'm not trying to slam any advocates. It just seems a bit silly since very few of us ever try to do this in the first place. It's like saying DOOM was better than Wolfenstein just because id published information on how to make add-ons. A nice feature, yeah, but that's not the reason most people played the game.
It seems to me that perhaps we should be concentrating on the reasons Linux runs better than Windows that typical users would understand.
I've been doing this for years just for my own amusement, generally before a candidate comes in for a first interview. Sometimes it's quite interesting to observe answers to questions in relation to things that have been posted to the Net.
About the Mindcraft problem: it seems to me that people need to learn that this is just business. Ethics and netiquette are going to take a back seat when there is big money involved. This is a fact of life that people around here need to accept. I'm not about to start defending these messages as "typical net flames" and take Mindcraft to task for violating netiquette.
My mom always used to tell me never to write anything down I didn't want to see on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. I think that's great advice. Next time you write to a feedback mail address or otherwise criticize a person or company, be aware that you have no control over that message once it's sent, and it could very well end up on a public web page.
Try not to embarass yourself and the rest of us, okay?
Maybe in real life you aren't having these kinds of discussions because you're talking to the wrong people.
There's a guy I work with who has the tendency to get nasty and rude when someone disagrees with him over some minor issue. I've learned not to get involved with him in these sorts of discussions, because it's really pointless (he never sees points other than his own) and I just end up feeling irritated and offended.
There's another guy who I rarely see eye-to-eye with, only he has no trouble carrying on discussions and remaining polite and rational. Given, most of the talks up to now have centered around technology, but I haven't seen anything to make me believe it would be much different if the topic were politics or religion.
My point is: maybe the people you're talking with on IRC are just better people to be having debates with in the first place. Look hard enough and I promise you'll find plenty of people on IRC who would be more than happy to call you names and type in all caps to annoy and torment you.
New CDs could be tagged with a watermark, as has been previously pointed out. I'm guessing that newer encoders will use that watermark and some unique ID from the computer that does the encoding to prohibit playback on any other machine. This presents two problems. First, a portable MP3 player isn't the same machine, so logic says the MP3 won't play here. Secondly, what do I do when I upgrade my box? If I go buy a new machine, I expect my existing music to play. If it doesn't, I'm not going to be happy!
If upgraded MP3 player software follows these rules and won't play illegal files, I won't upgrade my player.
If I don't upgrade my player, I can't play the new audio formats. Well, this is fine with me, I'd rather buy a CD anyway so I can play the disc in my car or on my home stereo. I can still use the same encoder I've been using all along to produce the same MP3 files I have now and play those with my existing player. I can give those files to a friend and he can play them with his stuff, too.
What's the definition of legal here anyway? Isn't a song I rip from a CD I purchased legal? The bits don't change when I give it to a friend, but now it is illegal. How is software supposed to know the difference?
Since when does anyone use an OS because of the patents it contains? I've never seen anyone quote me any of the patents contained in a Microsoft OS. They certainly don't market it this way.
I would imagine that the vast majority of commercial software out there is probably not the result of a patent (legitimate or otherwise). Companies are still making money off of it because consumers have a need and buy the software. Whether or not the patent office exists isn't going to change the supply and demand.
Remember the copyright continues for close to a century for works produced for hire. If a patent runs out in 18 months, we still can't legally distribute the software.
I don't really have much of a problem with copyrights, but patents really bug me. Especially these days, too many companies are patenting obvious processes by applying it to the Internet. All of a sudden, it's some whiz-bang new invention and the lawyers get richer.
Software is much more analagous to writing than construction or invention. Copyright law protects an author from someone simply copying the sequence of words written on a page. Authors can't patent a particular passage, paragraph or novel. I believe software is more like a novel. It just happens to be written in a peculiar style with a rather limited vocabulary.
Most of the time I see patents in other fields besides software, it's on tubes of toothpaste. Colgate can't make a squeeze tube like the one that Crest has, but does this really affect the product inside? I'm not convinced the patent office has a useful purpose these days.
I am reminded by something I read in one of the posts in the original Hellmouth article. I think a key point here is that kids in high school are treated too much like children. They are held down to such a point that some of them start to feel oppressed. Dismissing this recent act of violence and condoning it, even slightly, by saying that they were children who didn't know any better is a cop-out. Those two definitely knew what they were doing. The problem is that they lacked a basic respect for human life, their own and others.
I'm sure years of humiliation had a lot to do with this. Does that make it right or acceptable? Of course not, but it does somewhat explain it.
Like a lot of other people, I was somewhat of a loner/outcast in junior high and high school. Another thing that made life hard for me was that ours was a military family, which meant we moved around a lot. Imagine not fitting in very well, and then imagine getting uprooted every four years or so and dumped into a new environment. Believe me, it doesn't make anything any easier.
I haven't seen it widely publicized, but Eric Harris was a military child, too.
A good way to start fixing this situation is to make school officials more accountable to the emotional health of their students. I tried to go to guidance counselors in junior high, too, and while they wanted to help, they weren't willing to hand out punishments to any of the popular people who assaulted me. I'm not sure what they were scared of. Maybe it was a backlash from other parents, disciplining their kids when all other signs showed them to be "okay" (good grades, lots of friends, played sports, whatever).
Somehow, the perception that teenagers being cruel is okay or just a fact of growing up needs to change. I expect immaturity, but by age 14, kids understand their actions. Most of the time they just don't care about the ramifications. They know the worst thing likely to happen is a slap on the wrist.
Yeah, I just bought a new 10.1GB IDE made by IBM for about $175.
Removable technology is great, but only if they get the prices down to a reasonable level. I'd much rather buy an ORB drive and get 2.2GB media for $30/shot than 5x more space for 23x the price.
The keyboard should be just above your knees, so that you aren't lifting your shoulders in an unnatural way. The mouse should be at the same height, as close to the keyboard as possible, so you don't find yourself stretching to get to it. I just got a nice combination setup at work that allows me to raise and lower the entire surface, as well as tilt it forward and back. It's much better than just dropping a keyboard and mouse on the top of a desk.
The temperature of your work space makes a difference, too. When the thermostat at my office is set too low, I definitely notice a stiffness in my hands.
This site is all about RSIs and the things you can do to help yourself. Do a Google search on "repetitive strain injury" to find other sites.