With regards to AutoUpdate, you know you can set it to advise that there are updates available, download them and prompt you to install/decline them, or just download and install them automatically, don't you?
Even if you don't want them installed automaitcally, you could have it tell you that there are some available so you can go to the windows update website and check them out for yourself. Just sayin'. (Of course, autoupdate only does critical updates anyway)
dd the 3 maintenance scans you suggest (updates, anti virus, spyware) and the intimidated user is bowled over.
Well then the average user has a definite problem. Sure, they can migrate to a different platform (Linux, OS X, whatever) but as soon as that platform gains enough popularity, the malware writers will come to it. It can make it harder for them, but at the end of the day if a user wants to run an executable, or install software, or whatever, there's nothing the OS can do to stop them.
At some point, they are going to *have* to learn to perform basic maintenance on their systems; there's simply no other choice. Well, there is one I guess - pay someone else to do it for them.
Heh - it still amuses me when I see people make that sort of request about the IT section colour scheme.
Go take a look at games, think about how much worse it is and how much longer it's existed, then think about how likely it is that any of the/. editors actually cares enough to do anything in response to the complaints.
Oh and Jamie, you're lying - slash does not emit valid HTML 3.2. Fine by me, just don't treat us like idiots please; some of us do this for a living.
you can patch without fear of breaking a gazillion programs
The downside of course being that the gazillion programs all have their own implementations of the required functionality, each with its own quirks, foibles and bugs, each taking their own chunk of disk space.
Most of what you think of as IE is just a shell for the rendering engine. In that sense, it's not a whole lot different to gecko. You can embed gecko in your apps in much the same way as you can the MSHTML component.
If and when people start doing so, you'll see people saying exactly the same thing about that, too, I'd imagine.
both C# and Java rely on massive libraries written largely in native code
I believe that most of Java is now written in Java (and has been for a while).
and C# in particular makes it far too easy to integrate with native code
Well then, you have a problem of programmer education. For that matter though, I've been coding almost exclusively in Java for a little over 4 years now, and have *never* used JNI to write in C.
Just because you *can*, doesn't mean you *will*. At least with Java and C#, the majority of your code will be less prone to buffer overflow errors.
Today I have dozens of windows open, a media player, and IDE, mail reader, etc, and you need 256mb to run Linux or Windows XP. That's bloat.
No, that's a lot of applications running simultaneously. Unless you're saying that you would have similar apps open simultaneously back in the old days, and yet need only 32MB of RAM...
And for balance, contrast it with the way it works on a properly-maintained XP machine:
1. Plug in USB mass storage device.
Seriously, I've used my iRiver as a USB drive on a number of PCs running XP (Home and Pro) since I bought it in February, and have never had a single problem. Therefore, I conclude that all such devices work perfectly on all such machines.
Ain't anecdotes great? Shame they're next to useless as far as proving anything goes.
the only reason you never see it on XP is that it automatically reboots, rather than sitting there with the BSOD
Well, that's not the only reason - the real reason is that a properly-maintained XP box crashes about as often as a properly-maintained Linux box, that is to say, almost never.
Besides, when an XP box does crash, it dumps a file to the SystemRoot, and on rebooting pops up a dialogue explaining that a serious error caused a reboot and inviting you to submit an error report to MS.
All of this is configurable, too - you can tell it to stop with a BSOD if you wish; My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery settings.
As for the text editors thing, the real difference there is that Windows ships with 3, and has many more available, while the average Linux distro ships with dozens. That's really not a problem for the average user, though, who will probably just use kate or gedit or similar.
There are plenty of Linux-only games available
That's true enough, but they tend to be hobbyist games, rather than big name releases. It's a little disingenuous to say that, when you know that the poster was thinking along the lines of major releases. As you say, though, the situation is definitely improving from the bad old days of having Quake 3, UT and precious little else.
A bomb is just a device for causing an explosion, there's no fundamental difference between "accidental explosion" and "deliberate explosion caused by a bomb".
Unless, of course, you mean it's an atomic bomb, but even then remember that the yield of such bombs is measured in (mega)tonnes of TNT; apart from the EM pulse and fallout, again, there's no fundamental difference. It's just a big explosion, with some secondary effects.
Unless, of course, someone develops an applet and signs it with full privileges - then it can do anything it wants, as long as you click the "ok" button to let it.
(Unless that's changed since I last did applet stuff, which is a few years now)
So, if the front door on my house is a bit flimsy, and someone kicks it in and steals some of my stuff, whose fault is it? Mine, for buying/not replacing the door, the door manufacturer's for making a flimsy door, or the guy who kicked it in?
I've said it before, and I'll keep on saying it - just because you *can* do something doesn't mean that you *should*. For every finger pointing accusingly at the user and MS for making it easier than it could've been, there should be many more pointing at the guy who actually did it.
shouldn't a large company like Microsoft be liable for the cleanup costs associated with their own security bugs?
Make them liable, and they'll do what any other company in a similar situation would do - pass on the costs to their customers. That's fine for the few customers who willfully ignore best security practices, but a bit shitty for those who simply don't know what to do. As for those of us who do know what to do, do it, and have never been compromised, it's downright unfair.
No, I think he's just not being entirely clear. *Everything* with mass has gravity, and that includes you, me, the rings on my fingers, the keyboard I'm typing on, *everything*. For things that light, of course, the gravitational filed is vanishingly, almost unmeasurably small, but it's still there.
In fact, there's an experiment we did in undergrad Physics lab involving small metal balls that allows you to measure the gravitational constant (G in g = GM/(r*r)) by essentially detecting the force of attraction between them.
. The iRivers present as perfectly ordinary USB mass storage devices, and the database created by the Windows driver is completely optional, allowing for cross-platform compatibility without needing to fiddle with anything.
Indeed. I've had an iRiver IHP-120 since February, and I've not even opened the packet that the CD came in. Sure, that means that I'm missing out on stuff like the db creation tools - but I can't say I feel the loss. Plug the player in, drag 'n' drop files to it, unplug it. Easy. No computer support required bar USB and support for USB mass storage devices.
They've also got *really* cool remotes
That was what swung it in the end for me - the remote. I don't like carrying any more than I have to when I'm out and about, so whatever player I got was always going to be in a pocket, or on my belt, or whatever. Having a remote control with a display is really, really useful. After several tape and MD players that had cut-down remotes in terms of features, having one that can do everything the base unit can (bar displaying text files) is ultra-cool.
Thief 3 (or any other game) only supporting (newer) NVidia and ATI cards is absolutely nothing to do with MS or DX. Bitch at the other card manufacturers for not keeping up with supporting the latest DX features (and DX9 has been out a long time now), and at the games devs for not handling the lack of support gracefully.
Perhaps when microsoft got up to DirectX 8 or so they thought "nah, this multitasking thing will never catch on, lets go back to single-tasking".
How do I disable ALT+TAB and other task switching?
You don't!
If the game crashes or fails to minimise succssfully when you switch back to the desktop, blame the developers. UT2k4 for example, minimises perfectly. Same with requiring admin rights - blame the developers, or quite often, the publishers for forcing some crappy, broken copy prevention tech on them that requires admin access to work.
The rest of the international laws can be erased with a pencil if anyone wants to.
As can *all* laws, if the pencil is wielded by the sufficiently powerful; what's your point? That the Berne Convention is not legally binding, so this person is innocent?
What he is accused of doing is illegal in his home country, illegal in the country that forms the base of operation of the companies he affected, and in fact, illegal in most parts of the world. It is only right and proper that he stands trial. That means facing his accusers in a court of law; either he or their representatives have to travel to do that. It's been decided that he's the one to travel; such is life.
Seriously, why is this in YRO? An Australian citizen broke international law in a way that affected US businesses, the US applies for extradition, Australia complies. Seems simple enough to me - or is it bad because it's white-collar crime, which some of us might get caught for one day?
Slashdot Mirror
With regards to AutoUpdate, you know you can set it to advise that there are updates available, download them and prompt you to install/decline them, or just download and install them automatically, don't you?
Even if you don't want them installed automaitcally, you could have it tell you that there are some available so you can go to the windows update website and check them out for yourself. Just sayin'. (Of course, autoupdate only does critical updates anyway)
dd the 3 maintenance scans you suggest (updates, anti virus, spyware) and the intimidated user is bowled over.
Well then the average user has a definite problem. Sure, they can migrate to a different platform (Linux, OS X, whatever) but as soon as that platform gains enough popularity, the malware writers will come to it. It can make it harder for them, but at the end of the day if a user wants to run an executable, or install software, or whatever, there's nothing the OS can do to stop them.
At some point, they are going to *have* to learn to perform basic maintenance on their systems; there's simply no other choice. Well, there is one I guess - pay someone else to do it for them.
Heh - it still amuses me when I see people make that sort of request about the IT section colour scheme.
/. editors actually cares enough to do anything in response to the complaints.
Go take a look at games, think about how much worse it is and how much longer it's existed, then think about how likely it is that any of the
Oh and Jamie, you're lying - slash does not emit valid HTML 3.2. Fine by me, just don't treat us like idiots please; some of us do this for a living.
PR = preview release, I would imagine.
(Yes, RC is much, much more common...)
Yeah, that is a loss of using beta software. If you're using firefox you're a beta tester, which comes with all sorts of drawbacks like that.
I wonder how many people here, when encouraging their friends, family and coworkers to switch from IE to Firefox, explain that aspect of it too...
you can patch without fear of breaking a gazillion programs
The downside of course being that the gazillion programs all have their own implementations of the required functionality, each with its own quirks, foibles and bugs, each taking their own chunk of disk space.
Most of what you think of as IE is just a shell for the rendering engine. In that sense, it's not a whole lot different to gecko. You can embed gecko in your apps in much the same way as you can the MSHTML component.
If and when people start doing so, you'll see people saying exactly the same thing about that, too, I'd imagine.
both C# and Java rely on massive libraries written largely in native code
I believe that most of Java is now written in Java (and has been for a while).
and C# in particular makes it far too easy to integrate with native code
Well then, you have a problem of programmer education. For that matter though, I've been coding almost exclusively in Java for a little over 4 years now, and have *never* used JNI to write in C.
Just because you *can*, doesn't mean you *will*. At least with Java and C#, the majority of your code will be less prone to buffer overflow errors.
Today I have dozens of windows open, a media player, and IDE, mail reader, etc, and you need 256mb to run Linux or Windows XP. That's bloat.
No, that's a lot of applications running simultaneously. Unless you're saying that you would have similar apps open simultaneously back in the old days, and yet need only 32MB of RAM...
No, I meant read, but it doesn't look like anyone else found it funny. Ah well.
So, you're saying that a mysterious force created the probes? Because that's what the headline is saying.
And for balance, contrast it with the way it works on a properly-maintained XP machine:
1. Plug in USB mass storage device.
Seriously, I've used my iRiver as a USB drive on a number of PCs running XP (Home and Pro) since I bought it in February, and have never had a single problem. Therefore, I conclude that all such devices work perfectly on all such machines.
Ain't anecdotes great? Shame they're next to useless as far as proving anything goes.
the only reason you never see it on XP is that it automatically reboots, rather than sitting there with the BSOD
Well, that's not the only reason - the real reason is that a properly-maintained XP box crashes about as often as a properly-maintained Linux box, that is to say, almost never.
Besides, when an XP box does crash, it dumps a file to the SystemRoot, and on rebooting pops up a dialogue explaining that a serious error caused a reboot and inviting you to submit an error report to MS.
All of this is configurable, too - you can tell it to stop with a BSOD if you wish; My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery settings.
As for the text editors thing, the real difference there is that Windows ships with 3, and has many more available, while the average Linux distro ships with dozens. That's really not a problem for the average user, though, who will probably just use kate or gedit or similar.
There are plenty of Linux-only games available
That's true enough, but they tend to be hobbyist games, rather than big name releases. It's a little disingenuous to say that, when you know that the poster was thinking along the lines of major releases. As you say, though, the situation is definitely improving from the bad old days of having Quake 3, UT and precious little else.
But given that David Blunkett is the Home Secretary at the moment, I doubt that the opposing reports, comments and complaints will even be read...
A bomb is just a device for causing an explosion, there's no fundamental difference between "accidental explosion" and "deliberate explosion caused by a bomb".
Unless, of course, you mean it's an atomic bomb, but even then remember that the yield of such bombs is measured in (mega)tonnes of TNT; apart from the EM pulse and fallout, again, there's no fundamental difference. It's just a big explosion, with some secondary effects.
Just to burn some karma, I'll toss in the fact that Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security, was formerly the governor of Pennsylvania.
Why would that burn Karma? It's not like slashdot isn't fond of a good conspiracy theory, or has any love for the DHS or (presumably) Tom Ridge...
Unless, of course, someone develops an applet and signs it with full privileges - then it can do anything it wants, as long as you click the "ok" button to let it.
(Unless that's changed since I last did applet stuff, which is a few years now)
So, if the front door on my house is a bit flimsy, and someone kicks it in and steals some of my stuff, whose fault is it? Mine, for buying/not replacing the door, the door manufacturer's for making a flimsy door, or the guy who kicked it in?
I've said it before, and I'll keep on saying it - just because you *can* do something doesn't mean that you *should*. For every finger pointing accusingly at the user and MS for making it easier than it could've been, there should be many more pointing at the guy who actually did it.
shouldn't a large company like Microsoft be liable for the cleanup costs associated with their own security bugs?
Make them liable, and they'll do what any other company in a similar situation would do - pass on the costs to their customers. That's fine for the few customers who willfully ignore best security practices, but a bit shitty for those who simply don't know what to do. As for those of us who do know what to do, do it, and have never been compromised, it's downright unfair.
No, I think he's just not being entirely clear. *Everything* with mass has gravity, and that includes you, me, the rings on my fingers, the keyboard I'm typing on, *everything*. For things that light, of course, the gravitational filed is vanishingly, almost unmeasurably small, but it's still there.
In fact, there's an experiment we did in undergrad Physics lab involving small metal balls that allows you to measure the gravitational constant (G in g = GM/(r*r)) by essentially detecting the force of attraction between them.
Wow, *someone* needs to get a little perspective on things...
What scientists should be doing is finding ways that allow mammals to live/work in these toxic environments.
I'd be amazed if scientists aren't doing that... it's just not these scientists.
Look at it this way - do you tell all your coworkers your login password? No? Then you're practising security through obscurity.
. The iRivers present as perfectly ordinary USB mass storage devices, and the database created by the Windows driver is completely optional, allowing for cross-platform compatibility without needing to fiddle with anything.
Indeed. I've had an iRiver IHP-120 since February, and I've not even opened the packet that the CD came in. Sure, that means that I'm missing out on stuff like the db creation tools - but I can't say I feel the loss. Plug the player in, drag 'n' drop files to it, unplug it. Easy. No computer support required bar USB and support for USB mass storage devices.
They've also got *really* cool remotes
That was what swung it in the end for me - the remote. I don't like carrying any more than I have to when I'm out and about, so whatever player I got was always going to be in a pocket, or on my belt, or whatever. Having a remote control with a display is really, really useful. After several tape and MD players that had cut-down remotes in terms of features, having one that can do everything the base unit can (bar displaying text files) is ultra-cool.
Perhaps when microsoft got up to DirectX 8 or so they thought "nah, this multitasking thing will never catch on, lets go back to single-tasking".
From the Direct X Developer FAQ:If the game crashes or fails to minimise succssfully when you switch back to the desktop, blame the developers. UT2k4 for example, minimises perfectly. Same with requiring admin rights - blame the developers, or quite often, the publishers for forcing some crappy, broken copy prevention tech on them that requires admin access to work.
The rest of the international laws can be erased with a pencil if anyone wants to.
As can *all* laws, if the pencil is wielded by the sufficiently powerful; what's your point? That the Berne Convention is not legally binding, so this person is innocent?
What he is accused of doing is illegal in his home country, illegal in the country that forms the base of operation of the companies he affected, and in fact, illegal in most parts of the world. It is only right and proper that he stands trial. That means facing his accusers in a court of law; either he or their representatives have to travel to do that. It's been decided that he's the one to travel; such is life.
Do bad things, be brought to account.
Seriously, why is this in YRO? An Australian citizen broke international law in a way that affected US businesses, the US applies for extradition, Australia complies. Seems simple enough to me - or is it bad because it's white-collar crime, which some of us might get caught for one day?