A grown man, with only a couple of drinks with a meal can now be DANGEROUSLY close to being busted for DWI...and not be anywhere near too impared to drive.
So? Don't have a couple of drinks with your meal if you're driving afterwards, then.
The problem is that you need to have the limit set at a level where an average person will not have their driving impaired. If you set it too high, you'll get more accidents, which is precisely what the law is supposed to prevent.
Sure would be nice if there was such thing as "root" on Windows so you could have files that every day users couldn't delete...
You mean like the Administrative account? It's not entirely MS's fault that almost everyone abuses it; most of the blame lies squarely with the third party developers. XP has been out for a long time now, there's no excuse for new software to require admin privs to run.
That's because if I bought something yesterday, the duty goes up on it today and I sell it tomorrow, when I come to replace it I'll have to pay more for it than I did yesterday. If I sold yesterday's one based on yesterday's price, I'd be reducing my profit margin by the rate of the increase.
Because it's Microsoft, and we all hate them, remember?
Never mind that Apple has patents on things like progress bars in media applications, or that IBM is the largest holder and generator of software patents in the world...
Why file for patents unless you plan to enforce them?
IBM is the world's single largest holder of software patents, both holding more patents than anyone else and generating them at a greater rate than anyone else. By your logic, we need to worry about them, too, despite all the support they give open source.
It bloody well enforce patents about twenty-five-years old bloody technologies. Silly of me to think they were working to finish that WinFS of theirs, instead.
Well, it'd be the programmers working to finish WinFS and the legal team enforcing the patent, so they could be doing both at once...
They give you all of two options for users in XP; Administrator, and Limited.
Incorrect. They are the two options available via the control panel's users control, yes. However, if you right click "My Computer" and choose "Manage", you'll have access to the same users and groups admin that's been present since at least NT 4. By default, that gives you Administrators, Power Users and Users, and you're free to create whatever other groups you wish, assigning them whatever privileges you desire.
There is no middle ground, no permission system on comparable grounds to Linux.
Actually, the NT permission system is far richer than that found on the majority of Linux systems. You just have to know how to use it, and unfortunately, precious few people do.
Not to mention that the story in group A) as you describe it *is* interactive - you must interact with it (highlight a line) in order to listen to the story.
All this study proves is that inappropriately designed and implemented interactive learning tools are worse than well designed and implemented ones. Shock horror.
I was all ready for the usual tiresome* slew of anti-Sony comments, but I have to admit you made me chuckle with this one. Nice and subtle.
(* Yes, Sony is evil, I know, we all know, you'll never buy Sony stuff again, good for you, I don't intend to either. Can we stop talking about that now please?)
a spectroscope breaks the star light through a prism and displays black lines going through one of the colors
No, a spectroscope breaks light down into its spectrum - the discrete frequencies* that make it up. The black lines are there because those frequencies are missing. For example, if you took a pure red light source and put its light through a spectroscope, you'd have a narrow line at the appropriate frequency, and black everywhere else. The lines themselves have nothing to do with redshift (or blueshift), and aren't "put there" by the spectroscope.
(* discrete here meaning to within the tolerance of the device, we can't measure arbitrarily narrow frequencies so it'll always be a (thin) range)
You measure the speed of the source of light by comparing the observed pattern of lines with the expected one. If the lines are shifted higher in frequency (towards the blue end), the source is moving towards you; if they're shifted lower in frequency (towards the red), it's moving away from you.
That presupposes that you know what the spectrum is supposed to look like, of course.
well, if light can be attracted by gravity, obviously the speed of light is not a constant
That's not obvious at all. A sattelite orbiting the earth at a constant altitude is travelling at a constant speed, yet is constantly attracted by gravity. I am currently travelling at a constant speed (zero, wrt the Earth) yet am attracted by gravity. Similarly, light being bent around a massive object is attracted by gravity, yet travels at a constant speed.
Now, perhaps it's "obvious" that light being "sucked in" by a black hole speeds up as it approaches, but that's not the case either. It also doesn't stop when it hits it - it's absorbed, and is no longer light.
we still do not fully understand the nature of light, although many people think they do. (many people say "light travels at 186 miles per second." and it seems noone knows the end to that statement to actually make it scientific. "light travels at 186 miles per second IN A VACUUM."
It's true that we don't completely understand the nature of light, but we're not as clueless about it as you seem to think. We've been observing it and experimenting with it for hundreds of years, and we have a pretty good handle on how it behaves.
Also, assuming that your "many people" refers to the general public rather than the physics community in general, well then I hate to break it to you but most people are utterly clueless about science. For example, while you correctly point out that c is the speed of light in a vacuum, you yourself get it wrong - it 186000 miles per second.
we do not know that throughout space that the speed of light has remained a constant
No, we don't. Equally, we don't know for sure that the laws of physics are the same everywhere, or that they'll be the same tomorrow as they are today. You have to start with a working set of assumptions, though, and so far we don't have much evidence to suggest that we're wrong. If we find some, great - we'll have to change our theories to cope, and lots of interesting work will be generated. If we don't, great - we can get on with newer, just as interesting stuff. Science is win-win like that; even if your theory proves to be wrong, you've contributed to the greater understanding.
even evolutionist professors acknowledge that
What do you mean by "evolutionist professors"? (The phrase rings an alarm bell at the back of my mind...)
8.4 -> 10.6 is what, 25% error margin? seems a bit far off from an exact science to me
The Hubble constant is not well understood and is very hard to measure, hence the error margin. That is the way of things, however - initial estimates tend to be out, but over time as the problem is better understood and theories are developed, they get closer.
How can you -estimate- a constant, since that number is one of the multipliers in your equation, if even one num
My mod privs dissappeared a while ago and I'm still waiting for my Meta-Mod privs to dissappear. I don't think they will though, as nobody watches the watchers of the watchers.
I lost mod- and meta-mod privs (literally) years ago. A while later, I realised that my meta-mod privs had returned; as far as I know, I still don't have my mod-privs back. I guess I *could* have missed the points, but as I tend to browse the site a couple of times a day every day it seems unlikely...
I think the trick is to not take this site too seriously. We rant and rave about adverts and uncaring big business, all the while being advertised at in obvious and not so obvious ways by a business that while not very big, certainly doesn't give any impression of caring.
This seems to be the standard way of fixing things in windows when things start going wrong./i.
Only for people who don't know what they're doing. There's no reason to reinstall a modern, properly-cared for Windows install.
Of course, if the PC is used by an idiot who installs all sorts of malware and destroys critical system files, then there's no hope, but then such a person would be jsut as likely to cripple a Linux install too given the chance.
XP was released a good couple of years ago; of course modern Linux distros have prettier installs, they've had that time to improve them. I remember installing Slackware 3 from floppies, or the debian install I did about 5 years ago; completely text-based. I expect that Vista's installer will be rather prettier and more user-friendly than XP's one.
But so what? 90%+ of users will never see it. They buy their PC from big ODMs like Dell or Compaq and Windows comes preinstalled. If for whatever reason they need to reinstall it, they'll use the recovery CD that everyone seems to ship these days.
Sure, people like me will buy OEM copies of the latest Windows OS the next time we upgrade and it makes sense to do so, but we are very very much in the minority.
Playing Devil's advocate for a moment, perhaps the reason so much effort has been expended by each distro on their installers is because they don't come preinstalled, aren't likely to in any great numbers for a long time yet, and so they *must* have a slick, easy to use installer?
some of us happen to live in countries where businesses don't own the government so much that format shifting is illegal.
Where do you live? I'm not entirely against the idea of moving country, the next time I feel it's time to move house - broaden my horizons, and all that...
I know there is a tiny group of people out there who really do pirate everything and never buy digital media
Do you? Do you have any figures to back up that assertion that it's a "tiny group of people"? Or are you just allowing your own preconceptions to colour your impression of what's going on?
I'm not flaming, but I see this claim here all the time, that most people just use P2P as a sort of unofficial demoing tool, that the number that infringe copyright and don't buy the otiginal is really small, but the one thing I've never seen is any hard data. I'd be really interested if you actually have anything other than conjecture and your own anecdotal evidence.
Knowing how a lot of people and even companies are with software (I once had a *CTO* tell me "not to worry about licencing issues" for our single MSDN subscription), and knowing how many people I know are perfectly happy to buy cheap pirated DVDs, I'd be surprised if you're right.
What we need to do is institute corporate death penalties.
No, what we need to do is create tougher consumer protection laws, give them teeth and enforce them. "Killing" a corporation is a completely disproportionate response. Sure, it sends a clear message to others, and sure, it gets those responsible - but it also gets every single other employee, and affects their families, the corporation's suppliers, etc. The ones how are truly responsible - the ones at the top - will also likely just receive a huge payout and move on to the next top job. Meanwhile the ordinary employees - the ones who didn't really have a whole lot to do with anything - will likely (relatively) struggle to find alternative employment.
I can't agree with a corporate death penalty, as it affects far too many innocent people.
the *nix kernels doesn't throw things like a web browser or a window manager into the kernel.
This is a myth. IE does not run in kernel space. It is embedded into the OS in that lots of apps use it (or rather, MSHTML.dll) to render HTML, including (amongst other things) Windows explorer, the XP control panel, help centre and security centre, etc. Lots of third party apps use it too. None of this makes it part of the kernel, or means that it runs in kernel space.
If you have proof otherwise, I'd love to see it, because this particular meme is getting tiresome.
Slashdot Mirror
A grown man, with only a couple of drinks with a meal can now be DANGEROUSLY close to being busted for DWI...and not be anywhere near too impared to drive.
So? Don't have a couple of drinks with your meal if you're driving afterwards, then.
The problem is that you need to have the limit set at a level where an average person will not have their driving impaired. If you set it too high, you'll get more accidents, which is precisely what the law is supposed to prevent.
Sure would be nice if there was such thing as "root" on Windows so you could have files that every day users couldn't delete...
You mean like the Administrative account? It's not entirely MS's fault that almost everyone abuses it; most of the blame lies squarely with the third party developers. XP has been out for a long time now, there's no excuse for new software to require admin privs to run.
I know, IHBT, IHL, I will HAND, etc.
Strictly, it should be "correcting a person's grammar", but most people would say "correcting people's grammar".
There's a system available that allows you to do that now - it's called a chaffeur. I believe the "ding" sound is an optional extra, though.
last I checked it only set the home page if you checked the box 'set my homepage' in the installer...
That used to be checked by default; it changed sometime around 1.0.5 or so. You wouldn't believe the number of times I forgot to change it...
The point is they should ask permission first. It may not do any harm, but it's rude.
That's because if I bought something yesterday, the duty goes up on it today and I sell it tomorrow, when I come to replace it I'll have to pay more for it than I did yesterday. If I sold yesterday's one based on yesterday's price, I'd be reducing my profit margin by the rate of the increase.
Because it's Microsoft, and we all hate them, remember?
Never mind that Apple has patents on things like progress bars in media applications, or that IBM is the largest holder and generator of software patents in the world...
Why file for patents unless you plan to enforce them?
IBM is the world's single largest holder of software patents, both holding more patents than anyone else and generating them at a greater rate than anyone else. By your logic, we need to worry about them, too, despite all the support they give open source.
It bloody well enforce patents about twenty-five-years old bloody technologies.
Silly of me to think they were working to finish that WinFS of theirs, instead.
Well, it'd be the programmers working to finish WinFS and the legal team enforcing the patent, so they could be doing both at once...
They give you all of two options for users in XP; Administrator, and Limited.
Incorrect. They are the two options available via the control panel's users control, yes. However, if you right click "My Computer" and choose "Manage", you'll have access to the same users and groups admin that's been present since at least NT 4. By default, that gives you Administrators, Power Users and Users, and you're free to create whatever other groups you wish, assigning them whatever privileges you desire.
There is no middle ground, no permission system on comparable grounds to Linux.
Actually, the NT permission system is far richer than that found on the majority of Linux systems. You just have to know how to use it, and unfortunately, precious few people do.
Not to mention that the story in group A) as you describe it *is* interactive - you must interact with it (highlight a line) in order to listen to the story.
All this study proves is that inappropriately designed and implemented interactive learning tools are worse than well designed and implemented ones. Shock horror.
I was all ready for the usual tiresome* slew of anti-Sony comments, but I have to admit you made me chuckle with this one. Nice and subtle.
(* Yes, Sony is evil, I know, we all know, you'll never buy Sony stuff again, good for you, I don't intend to either. Can we stop talking about that now please?)
a spectroscope breaks the star light through a prism and displays black lines going through one of the colors
No, a spectroscope breaks light down into its spectrum - the discrete frequencies* that make it up. The black lines are there because those frequencies are missing. For example, if you took a pure red light source and put its light through a spectroscope, you'd have a narrow line at the appropriate frequency, and black everywhere else. The lines themselves have nothing to do with redshift (or blueshift), and aren't "put there" by the spectroscope.
(* discrete here meaning to within the tolerance of the device, we can't measure arbitrarily narrow frequencies so it'll always be a (thin) range)
You measure the speed of the source of light by comparing the observed pattern of lines with the expected one. If the lines are shifted higher in frequency (towards the blue end), the source is moving towards you; if they're shifted lower in frequency (towards the red), it's moving away from you.
That presupposes that you know what the spectrum is supposed to look like, of course.
well, if light can be attracted by gravity, obviously the speed of light is not a constant
That's not obvious at all. A sattelite orbiting the earth at a constant altitude is travelling at a constant speed, yet is constantly attracted by gravity. I am currently travelling at a constant speed (zero, wrt the Earth) yet am attracted by gravity. Similarly, light being bent around a massive object is attracted by gravity, yet travels at a constant speed.
Now, perhaps it's "obvious" that light being "sucked in" by a black hole speeds up as it approaches, but that's not the case either. It also doesn't stop when it hits it - it's absorbed, and is no longer light.
we still do not fully understand the nature of light, although many people think they do. (many people say "light travels at 186 miles per second." and it seems noone knows the end to that statement to actually make it scientific. "light travels at 186 miles per second IN A VACUUM."
It's true that we don't completely understand the nature of light, but we're not as clueless about it as you seem to think. We've been observing it and experimenting with it for hundreds of years, and we have a pretty good handle on how it behaves.
Also, assuming that your "many people" refers to the general public rather than the physics community in general, well then I hate to break it to you but most people are utterly clueless about science. For example, while you correctly point out that c is the speed of light in a vacuum, you yourself get it wrong - it 186000 miles per second.
we do not know that throughout space that the speed of light has remained a constant
No, we don't. Equally, we don't know for sure that the laws of physics are the same everywhere, or that they'll be the same tomorrow as they are today. You have to start with a working set of assumptions, though, and so far we don't have much evidence to suggest that we're wrong. If we find some, great - we'll have to change our theories to cope, and lots of interesting work will be generated. If we don't, great - we can get on with newer, just as interesting stuff. Science is win-win like that; even if your theory proves to be wrong, you've contributed to the greater understanding.
even evolutionist professors acknowledge that
What do you mean by "evolutionist professors"? (The phrase rings an alarm bell at the back of my mind...)
8.4 -> 10.6 is what, 25% error margin? seems a bit far off from an exact science to me
The Hubble constant is not well understood and is very hard to measure, hence the error margin. That is the way of things, however - initial estimates tend to be out, but over time as the problem is better understood and theories are developed, they get closer.
How can you -estimate- a constant, since that number is one of the multipliers in your equation, if even one num
My mod privs dissappeared a while ago and I'm still waiting for my Meta-Mod privs to dissappear. I don't think they will though, as nobody watches the watchers of the watchers.
I lost mod- and meta-mod privs (literally) years ago. A while later, I realised that my meta-mod privs had returned; as far as I know, I still don't have my mod-privs back. I guess I *could* have missed the points, but as I tend to browse the site a couple of times a day every day it seems unlikely...
I think the trick is to not take this site too seriously. We rant and rave about adverts and uncaring big business, all the while being advertised at in obvious and not so obvious ways by a business that while not very big, certainly doesn't give any impression of caring.
Now you come to mention it, the thing that most struck a chord with me about this thread is that the guy signed up in about 1999.
When the hell did I sign up then? Have I really been reading slashdot for 8 years or more?!
This seems to be the standard way of fixing things in windows when things start going wrong./i.
Only for people who don't know what they're doing. There's no reason to reinstall a modern, properly-cared for Windows install.
Of course, if the PC is used by an idiot who installs all sorts of malware and destroys critical system files, then there's no hope, but then such a person would be jsut as likely to cripple a Linux install too given the chance.
XP was released a good couple of years ago; of course modern Linux distros have prettier installs, they've had that time to improve them. I remember installing Slackware 3 from floppies, or the debian install I did about 5 years ago; completely text-based. I expect that Vista's installer will be rather prettier and more user-friendly than XP's one.
But so what? 90%+ of users will never see it. They buy their PC from big ODMs like Dell or Compaq and Windows comes preinstalled. If for whatever reason they need to reinstall it, they'll use the recovery CD that everyone seems to ship these days.
Sure, people like me will buy OEM copies of the latest Windows OS the next time we upgrade and it makes sense to do so, but we are very very much in the minority.
Playing Devil's advocate for a moment, perhaps the reason so much effort has been expended by each distro on their installers is because they don't come preinstalled, aren't likely to in any great numbers for a long time yet, and so they *must* have a slick, easy to use installer?
some of us happen to live in countries where businesses don't own the government so much that format shifting is illegal.
Where do you live? I'm not entirely against the idea of moving country, the next time I feel it's time to move house - broaden my horizons, and all that...
I know there is a tiny group of people out there who really do pirate everything and never buy digital media
Do you? Do you have any figures to back up that assertion that it's a "tiny group of people"? Or are you just allowing your own preconceptions to colour your impression of what's going on?
I'm not flaming, but I see this claim here all the time, that most people just use P2P as a sort of unofficial demoing tool, that the number that infringe copyright and don't buy the otiginal is really small, but the one thing I've never seen is any hard data. I'd be really interested if you actually have anything other than conjecture and your own anecdotal evidence.
Knowing how a lot of people and even companies are with software (I once had a *CTO* tell me "not to worry about licencing issues" for our single MSDN subscription), and knowing how many people I know are perfectly happy to buy cheap pirated DVDs, I'd be surprised if you're right.
As long as people and good causes benefit, what does it matter why he gives his money?
What we need to do is institute corporate death penalties.
No, what we need to do is create tougher consumer protection laws, give them teeth and enforce them. "Killing" a corporation is a completely disproportionate response. Sure, it sends a clear message to others, and sure, it gets those responsible - but it also gets every single other employee, and affects their families, the corporation's suppliers, etc. The ones how are truly responsible - the ones at the top - will also likely just receive a huge payout and move on to the next top job. Meanwhile the ordinary employees - the ones who didn't really have a whole lot to do with anything - will likely (relatively) struggle to find alternative employment.
I can't agree with a corporate death penalty, as it affects far too many innocent people.
No offense to any old timers intended.
;)
None taken, n00b
How badly fragmented is your filesystem? Launch apps, look in the drive window, and see how much the heads are flopping around.
Alternatively, just ask your OS or favourite diagnostic tool...
the *nix kernels doesn't throw things like a web browser or a window manager into the kernel.
This is a myth. IE does not run in kernel space. It is embedded into the OS in that lots of apps use it (or rather, MSHTML.dll) to render HTML, including (amongst other things) Windows explorer, the XP control panel, help centre and security centre, etc. Lots of third party apps use it too. None of this makes it part of the kernel, or means that it runs in kernel space.
If you have proof otherwise, I'd love to see it, because this particular meme is getting tiresome.