And regarding the "noob friendliness", this is always put forward with Windows although I keep seeing Windows users that just can't manage to make head from tails from their system, haven't really figured how to install or remove stuff or how to change basic settings.
I'm not sure what your point is here - it doesn't matter that Linux system can be confusing for people because they find Windows systems confusing too? Either way, you end up with a frustrated user having a poor experience.
Just because the competition arguably isn't very good doesn't mean you can't still strive to be perfect.
If a box has a picture of a flag on it with "Games for Windows"
But the vast majority of game boxes don't have that logo on them. Most of them have something like "PC-CDROM" or "PC-DVDROM", with the fact that it requires Windows 2000/XP/Vista (or whatever) listed in small print near the bottom on the back along with a load of other stuff the average PC user simply doesn't understand.
It used to be a proud trademark - it stood for something
It stood for a slow, buggy, crash-prone browser that (at version 4) was on a par with IE 3 then had its butt handed to it by IE 4. Don't get me wrong, I used it as my main browser until around M13 or so of Mozilla, but it was dire. Resizing the browser window forced a page reload ffs!
I do like the idea of giving the name to the Mozilla Foundation though; it does seem kind of fitting. Just please, for the love of all that is holy and good, let the name die. (Although as another poster says, there is a certain appeal to renaming Firefox to Netscape and watching it take on IE again...)
But does your mum not start the dishwasher because she wants it to start at a specific time, or simply because you're in bed? From the wording of your post, it sounds like the latter, and that she simply doesn't want to risk waking you up.
I can't think of any reason why I would not want to start my dishwasher immediately if it was full and ready to go, unless I was concerned that it would wake someone up.
even better, set a timer that tells it to start up at some specific time.
This is a solved problem. My parents were using this sort of thing to start various appliances late at night (cheaper electricity) decades ago.
I'm a geek, I love cool tech, and I'm not saying that network-controllable or network-aware appliances are a bad thing. I just don't see the use of them. Sure, once in a blue moon I'll forget to start something up and then it would be handy, but I think I can live without it.
Ah yes, here it is. I don't usually complain about dupes, but 30 seconds with the site search turned that up - and it only took that long because the search was so slow.
I've got two words for you: Berne Convention. Oh, and three letters: WTO.
I'm with you on the point that these likenesses shouldn't be copyrightable, but if they *are*, then the comment about it applying in other countries isn't arrogance, it's fact.
Do you surf porn with your 6 year old? Have you explained the finer details of tubgirl to her?
No, but at 6 years old she knew where babies come from, and had an overview of the mechanics involved.
You're right, it's not up to me or anyone else when you should be teaching your kid things. In an ideal world, people would be considerate of the fact that there are kids around and modify their behaviour appropriately - curb their language, watch what they're talking about, not smoke, etc. You can't rely on that though, and you have to be prepared for your kid to be exposed to things that you don't think are appropriate, and have to deal with the inevitable questions. Either that, or keep him/her in the house and never let them out; hardly conducive to a healthy life though.
I'm not so sure I agree with your interpretation of the situation in the UK. Sure, we're rather more repressed than some (many?) other parts of Europe, but I don't think we're as bad as the US. You can buy softcore porn mags in almost any newsagents, there are topless women in our tabloids, etc.
Yes, Nu Labour is talking about cracking down on prostitution - but that strikes me as a way of distracting from the incredibly damaging fallout from the multiple data loss incidents, the sort of thing to generate discussion and controversy without necessarily requiring any actual legislation. Labour will almost certainly be out at the next general election anyway.
Oh, and while I agree that large sections of the government (in all parties) would seem to love nothing more than to turn the UK into a police state, I think that right now calling it a "semi-fascist state" is pure hyperbole. I do worry about the future though, if not for myself then for my daughter...
Your post seems predicated upon the assumption that the means of compromise is a trojan. Right now, that is not the common case, especially for bots.
Well, I can't say that I have any hard facts to back up my opinion, but I've always assumed the exact opposite. I don't see *anything* in my router/firewall logs. Either the attacks aren't happening, or they're stopped by my ISP; either way, they're not compromising any PCs (and I'd expect the ISP to advertise the extra protection if they were doing it)
In contrast, I receive viruses attached to spam mails *every single day*. I use p2p and occasionally download a file that my av software software flags up as being a virus or trojan. Hell, I even get viruses mailed to me in password-protected zip files; people must be opening up these unexpected files, typing in the password and infecting themselves.
even if that is the case, that's still less than half of the exploits happening
Assuming that's true, then you'll wipe out roughly half the exploits by switching to Linux. So malware authors will adapt; worms will die out and social-engineering attacks and trojans will increase. You'll buy a temporary respite as the authors react and amp up production of new attacks. Big deal. User education is key, but we've known that for a decade and the situation doesn't seem to be improving.
in the UK a lot of houses need upgraded aerials to receive digital TV and digital radio
Well, I don't know about "a lot of houses", but my ex gets digital TV and radio just fine with a 25 quid set-top aerial.
Besides, the impending switch-over was publicised literally *years* ago. Even saving just a few pounds per month should have been ample to cover any associated cost (other than perhaps a brand new 1080p plasma screen...)
Oh rubbish. In more than a decade of Windows PC ownership and use I've not had a single machine grind to a halt in this manner. The machine I'm typing this on now I've had for 3+ years without ever reinstalling it.
I'm not saying that it can't happen, but it most definitely is not inevitable.
Both your "Bottling water" and "Cappachino" lists are missing several steps. If you're going to start the coffee selling process at "make coffee", then you really have to start the gasoline selling process at "Pump gas into station tanks" and omit the equipment purchase. Anything else is simply misleading. Coffee doesn't appear by magic in the shop's storeroom, you know.
In fact, it was CRIMINAL for the burglar to be inside your house at the time he saw the child porn, but it's still probably fair game in a prosecution.
Well, I would imagine that the police would obtain a search warrant based on the burglar's statement, and that the statement would be sufficient grounds for granting it. Then whatever the police find would be used in evidence.
What if I was writing a fictional story about a child pornographer, and the plumber decided to read my novel? The plumber assumes it's a journal entry, calls the cops, and my house is raided. Is that an invasion of privacy? Was the raid legal? The plumber had no reason to read the journal, it wasn't in plain site, etc.
Yes the raid was legal, assuming the cops did it by the book. They were given reason to believe that evidence of a crime had been uncovered, so they would in fact be duty bound to get a warrant and see for themselves. So they come in, take a look, you tell them the truth, it all gets cleared up (possibly after a couple of hours down the station), you never use that plumber again. I'm not sure what law the plumber would have violated - he's not covered by unreasonable search and seizure, he didn't steal anything (in your example), maybe trespass if the room he was in was clearly nothing to do with the job he was hired for. Morally wrong yes, but legally wrong isn't the same thing.
While I agree generally with excessive acronym use, you really have to consider the context of the statement (guy getting in trouble for child porn), and the fact that there is no "CP" command...
I can't answer for Chicago, but London isn't in the States, and therefore the US media isn't really interested. For example, I don't remember War of the Worlds being set in America originally. That's not really a crack at the US media by the way, humans in general are more interested in things that happen close to home than thousands of miles away.
it's difficult for the interviewers to engage seriously on a subject that he genuinely believes in
Which of course is a failing in the interviewer, not the interviewee. If he's there to talk about the threat from near-Earth objects and they start asking him about his personal life, that's down to them and their pandering to their gossip-hungry audiences.
No, I think he's trying to say that a large body of water is sufficient for life to exist, but not necessary - the exact opposite of what you are saying.
Well, I have a degree in physics and I've never heard it pronounced "kwork", everyone pronounced it as it's spelt, as "kwark". Maybe it's a UK/US thing?
Speaking of quarks though, I like the names - charm, strange, up, down, top and bottom (which were called truth and beauty at first; I still think they should have stuck).
Anyway, scientific nomenclature is a serious business - but scientists are people too...
I regularly have lotus notes, firefox, IE and visual studio open at the same time.
And how many of them are actually performing compute-intensive processing at the same time? Upwards of 99% of any application's run time is spent waiting on user input - and that's especially true of web browsers, assuming you actually read the pages you open.
Fire up Task Manager and switch to the "Performance" pane, and watch the CPU graph for a while. Or better yet, use the "Performance" admin tool and have it log CPU use for a while. I'd be surprised if your 4 apps there use anything like the full capacity of the system you have now. Sure, there will be spikes, but averaged over a whole session I'd be very surprised if you hit more than a few percent utilisation.
I'm not saying that multi-core CPUs are useless; I have a dual core CPU now and am tempted by a quad core one. I'm just pointing out that your example application set doesn't need one. Even a compile in VS probably won't benefit greatly from increased core count.
No. The WINE guys aren't distributing any code covered by that EULA, so they're in the clear. The shop/website you buy/download/whatever your software from similarly isn't doing so so that you can run it under WINE. You yourself, in running the software under WINE, are not distributing it.
So, unless someone actually is distributing code covered by that EULA specifically for the purposes of running it under WINE, then I really don't see how anyone is violating it simply by using WINE.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess the submitter missed the link to an exe you can use to do it for you. I mean, it is buried in the KB article as "Method 1" after all...
Just because the competition arguably isn't very good doesn't mean you can't still strive to be perfect.
I do like the idea of giving the name to the Mozilla Foundation though; it does seem kind of fitting. Just please, for the love of all that is holy and good, let the name die. (Although as another poster says, there is a certain appeal to renaming Firefox to Netscape and watching it take on IE again...)
While you're at it, stopping posting stories that read like adverts would be nice too. E.g. do we really need the company's name in there twice?
But does your mum not start the dishwasher because she wants it to start at a specific time, or simply because you're in bed? From the wording of your post, it sounds like the latter, and that she simply doesn't want to risk waking you up.
I can't think of any reason why I would not want to start my dishwasher immediately if it was full and ready to go, unless I was concerned that it would wake someone up.
even better, set a timer that tells it to start up at some specific time.
This is a solved problem. My parents were using this sort of thing to start various appliances late at night (cheaper electricity) decades ago.
I'm a geek, I love cool tech, and I'm not saying that network-controllable or network-aware appliances are a bad thing. I just don't see the use of them. Sure, once in a blue moon I'll forget to start something up and then it would be handy, but I think I can live without it.
Ah yes, here it is. I don't usually complain about dupes, but 30 seconds with the site search turned that up - and it only took that long because the search was so slow.
I've got two words for you: Berne Convention. Oh, and three letters: WTO.
I'm with you on the point that these likenesses shouldn't be copyrightable, but if they *are*, then the comment about it applying in other countries isn't arrogance, it's fact.
call me when the arrow doesn't pierce the monitor, punch through the wall behind it, and impale itself in a marketing intern.
Well I did it, but I missed the marketing intern - I think the monitor knocked the arrow off course. Any pointers?
Do you surf porn with your 6 year old? Have you explained the finer details of tubgirl to her?
No, but at 6 years old she knew where babies come from, and had an overview of the mechanics involved.
You're right, it's not up to me or anyone else when you should be teaching your kid things. In an ideal world, people would be considerate of the fact that there are kids around and modify their behaviour appropriately - curb their language, watch what they're talking about, not smoke, etc. You can't rely on that though, and you have to be prepared for your kid to be exposed to things that you don't think are appropriate, and have to deal with the inevitable questions. Either that, or keep him/her in the house and never let them out; hardly conducive to a healthy life though.
I'm not so sure I agree with your interpretation of the situation in the UK. Sure, we're rather more repressed than some (many?) other parts of Europe, but I don't think we're as bad as the US. You can buy softcore porn mags in almost any newsagents, there are topless women in our tabloids, etc.
Yes, Nu Labour is talking about cracking down on prostitution - but that strikes me as a way of distracting from the incredibly damaging fallout from the multiple data loss incidents, the sort of thing to generate discussion and controversy without necessarily requiring any actual legislation. Labour will almost certainly be out at the next general election anyway.
Oh, and while I agree that large sections of the government (in all parties) would seem to love nothing more than to turn the UK into a police state, I think that right now calling it a "semi-fascist state" is pure hyperbole. I do worry about the future though, if not for myself then for my daughter...
Your post seems predicated upon the assumption that the means of compromise is a trojan. Right now, that is not the common case, especially for bots.
Well, I can't say that I have any hard facts to back up my opinion, but I've always assumed the exact opposite. I don't see *anything* in my router/firewall logs. Either the attacks aren't happening, or they're stopped by my ISP; either way, they're not compromising any PCs (and I'd expect the ISP to advertise the extra protection if they were doing it)
In contrast, I receive viruses attached to spam mails *every single day*. I use p2p and occasionally download a file that my av software software flags up as being a virus or trojan. Hell, I even get viruses mailed to me in password-protected zip files; people must be opening up these unexpected files, typing in the password and infecting themselves.
even if that is the case, that's still less than half of the exploits happening
Assuming that's true, then you'll wipe out roughly half the exploits by switching to Linux. So malware authors will adapt; worms will die out and social-engineering attacks and trojans will increase. You'll buy a temporary respite as the authors react and amp up production of new attacks. Big deal. User education is key, but we've known that for a decade and the situation doesn't seem to be improving.
Besides, the impending switch-over was publicised literally *years* ago. Even saving just a few pounds per month should have been ample to cover any associated cost (other than perhaps a brand new 1080p plasma screen...)
What's tauted as "HD-ready" often means just that I think, that it can do 16:9.
I don't know about in the States, but over here in the UK "HD-ready" means "can do 720p" (and often 1080i), while "Full HD" means "can do 1080p".
Oh rubbish. In more than a decade of Windows PC ownership and use I've not had a single machine grind to a halt in this manner. The machine I'm typing this on now I've had for 3+ years without ever reinstalling it.
I'm not saying that it can't happen, but it most definitely is not inevitable.
Both your "Bottling water" and "Cappachino" lists are missing several steps. If you're going to start the coffee selling process at "make coffee", then you really have to start the gasoline selling process at "Pump gas into station tanks" and omit the equipment purchase. Anything else is simply misleading. Coffee doesn't appear by magic in the shop's storeroom, you know.
While I agree generally with excessive acronym use, you really have to consider the context of the statement (guy getting in trouble for child porn), and the fact that there is no "CP" command...
No, I think he's trying to say that a large body of water is sufficient for life to exist, but not necessary - the exact opposite of what you are saying.
Speaking of quarks though, I like the names - charm, strange, up, down, top and bottom (which were called truth and beauty at first; I still think they should have stuck).
Anyway, scientific nomenclature is a serious business - but scientists are people too...
I regularly have lotus notes, firefox, IE and visual studio open at the same time.
And how many of them are actually performing compute-intensive processing at the same time?
Upwards of 99% of any application's run time is spent waiting on user input - and that's especially true of web browsers, assuming you actually read the pages you open.
Fire up Task Manager and switch to the "Performance" pane, and watch the CPU graph for a while. Or better yet, use the "Performance" admin tool and have it log CPU use for a while. I'd be surprised if your 4 apps there use anything like the full capacity of the system you have now. Sure, there will be spikes, but averaged over a whole session I'd be very surprised if you hit more than a few percent utilisation.
I'm not saying that multi-core CPUs are useless; I have a dual core CPU now and am tempted by a quad core one. I'm just pointing out that your example application set doesn't need one. Even a compile in VS probably won't benefit greatly from increased core count.
No. The WINE guys aren't distributing any code covered by that EULA, so they're in the clear. The shop/website you buy/download/whatever your software from similarly isn't doing so so that you can run it under WINE. You yourself, in running the software under WINE, are not distributing it.
So, unless someone actually is distributing code covered by that EULA specifically for the purposes of running it under WINE, then I really don't see how anyone is violating it simply by using WINE.