Because slashdot readers in general will believe anything that's anti-MS, no matter how tenuous, while rejecting out of hand anything that's pro-MS, no matter how solidly backed up.
The big question, though, is why would anyone (other than MS) care how many or few businesses are renewing? What does it matter?
The current speed limits, however, were in some sense set with the knowledge that people would "cheat a little bit," so the posted limit turns out to be below the limit most safe drivers actually drive at.
Do you have a source for that? Because not to be rude, but I'm not going to believe it unless you can prove it.
Not to mention that the vast majority of threats require user interaction to infect a machine - you actually have to run that executable claiming to be a nude picture of Paris Hilton, or a document that your "colleague" has edited and mailed back to you, or a security patch mailed by a router/firewall that has noticed virus activity on your PC...
That won't change if everyone switched to Linux or OS X. At best, no-one would run as root (just like you can choose not to run XP as Administrator...), but people would still infect themselves.
Spam bots don't have to listen on privileged ports, and the only important files on a home machine are the ones the user has write access to.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that per-user, per-application temporary files are a bad thing? That a better solution is to have one or two central locations for temporary files, and force every application developer to worry about file permissions, name-clashes, unexpected over-writing or deletion, etc?
There are a great many reasons to criticise MS, but this isn't one of them. I hate waste as much as the next person, but I've not had to worry about the amount of disk space temp files were taking up in years.
No, that's the address of the server, the web page's address most certainly is the full URL - that's how you find it. Similarly, the address of a person living in a flat includes the flat number/name, not just the address of the building the flat is part of.
I think it really depends on the nature of the request. If all that's being read is a static page, then your analogy is good. If on the other hand information is being submitted to the web site (such as this comment), then merely knowing the URL doesn't tell you what was posted at all.
I'm simply stating that creating laws that outlaw possession of anything (including drugs, books, and money[1]) makes it very easy to punish someone who hasn't actually committed a crime.
Well, to play Devil's advocate for a moment, they have indeed committed a crime - possession of the prohibited item...
Let's look at the highest level: we are imprisoning people because they possess evidence that a crime was committed.
I'm not a lawyer, not even in my jurisdiction let alone yours, but I believe that withholding evidence is itself a crime. If you want to consider the photographs as evidence, then fine - your legal duty is to turn them over to the authorities or face the legally-mandated punishment.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Unless that proof is supplied, then hell yes I'm going to be sceptic.
As others have already pointed out, in science part of that proof is publishing your experimental/theoretical method (your workings, as it were), your results and your conclusions, and inviting others to prove you wrong. The more people fail to prove you wrong, the more accepted your work will become, no matter how outlandish it is.
Yes, it's hard to get people working on things that are way out there, especially when they go against principles that have served us well for hundreds of years. But if you're completely open about exactly what you're doing and how you do it, *someone* will try to show you your error. If you're right, and they fail, so the momentum will build.
But that requires rigorous documentation, sufficient for any expert in the field to reproduce your work. Make a claim this extraordinary without backing it up with that, and of course people are going to disbelieve you, just like the last few dozen times it was done.
the name they chose for their email services is wrong. GMail says nothing. They should have made it GoogleMail
The funny thing is that they do in fact own the googlemail.com domain, which redirects to mail.google.com (as does gmail.com), and all their branding calls the service "Google Mail". In fact, the log in page says that mobile access is available "by pointing your phone's web browser to http://googlemail.com/app".
might not be a good use of the Missouri tax payer dollars to invite people from all over the world
So do what English universities do - charge them the full cost of tuition. (In fact, I imagine all unis do that, but my only direct experience is of English ones)
The US-only thing is simple - it's so no-one can claim they're training foreign terrorists, simple as that.
Self-medication is done without training or regard for potential damaging side effects. Self-medication with alcohol and other narcotics also generally has a social impact as well as a negative impact on the user's own life.
When a trained medical professional prescribes a drug, you have to assume that the drug itself has been through a rigorous testing and approval process, that the medic is well-trained and completely aware of what they're doing, etc. (I know that's not always the case, but it's far more likely than in the self-medication scenario)
Basically, if you self-medicate, especially with alcohol or narcotics, you're far more likely to fuck up than if you take a prescribed drug.
it includes things like your IP address. So they can convert that it non-anonymous information quite easily.
How so? Before answering, consider that my ISP won't give them any of my personal details without a warrant, so the best they can get is that I live in London. That's if their geo-IP software is up to it; Sourceforge keeps auto-selecting Belgian download servers, and I keep getting location-based ads for services in Bracknell and Slough, both of which are a good couple of hours' drive away...
Open source voting machines are useless, unless you can verify that the software and hardware in use at the time you cast your vote is trustworthy. If you can't, it might as well be a closed-source system.
Now the "country" is for sale and the pirate bay expressed interest so they can use it as a safe-from-legal-threats datacenter location.
Well, given that the previous population was defeated by "one German guy in a dinghy", I'm not sure how safe they really expect it to be. I can't see us Brits leaping to their defence if some organisation or other decides to invade.
It seems that in the past 10 years or so, many corporations have decided to treat anything that denies them revenue as if it's identical to actually taking something they already had.
It's not just corporations. A friend of mine runs a book swapping website - you sign up, list the books you're willing to give away, and see if anyone else is offering something you'd like. He gets a slow trickle of emails from pissed-off authors decrying the website. (And yes, some of them also mention how evil second hand book shops are too. Seriously.)
The point being that when you blame corporations, never forget that corporations are run by (and made up of) people, and ultimately it's the people who are stupid and greedy.
Well, I have a young daughter, and thankfully there's nothing wrong with her that some dental work won't fix. (Yeah, a Brit with bad teeth, say it ain't so)
However, if there was something wrong with her that couldn't be cured, do you really think I'd be wailing and wringing my hands and cursing cruel fate, pleading with anyone who'll listen to find me a cure for her? Or do you think I'd be telling her that I love her just the way she is, and that while $things might be harder for her, that's just the way she is and everyone is different and it's nothing to be ashamed of or upset about?
If a cure became available, yes I'd see that she got it if possible. But in the absence of a cure, I'd try not to give her a complex about whatever was wrong with her.
I'd be utterly amazed if more than about 2% of the people who say that sort of thing would actually withhold a cure from their child. For those ones, I'll happily take my turn on the bat.
But new levels are being reached, requiring of extending the "int catchphrase_rating" to "long int catchphrase_rating". These levels are being reached by the one and only, Microsoft.
If you think "people-ready business" represents a new low in marketing bullshit, you're not paying attention. It's bad, but there's far, far worse out there.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that some GPLed software requires you to click "I agree" to the GPL in the installation process. It may be meaningless, but that doesn't make it any less irritating (if anything, it makes it *more* irritating). In fact, I'd say it's dangerous, as it helps to dilute the message that you don't need to agree to the GPL to just use the software. The more software that forces agreement like that, the more people can point to it and say "See? You *do* have to agree!" That at least helps to spread uncertainty and doubt, if not fear...
Which is true, but it doesn't answer the main point of the comment, which was that surely we should "have a bit more respect" every time, not just this time.
A tragedy is a tragedy no matter who it happens to, or what community they belong to.
apparently when I signed up for the University of Michigan testing stuff it clobbered my account profile with whatever was going on at the time and now none of this "discussion2" stuff works
Ah, so that's my problem! Last time I volunteer to be a beta tester...
I've had the University of Michigan stuff turned off for ages too - it simply doesn't work properly, and is quite stunningly slow once the comment count gets over a couple of hundred (and this is on a X2 4400+ with 2GB of RAM...). I was wondering where the discussion 2 checkbox was; I don't get it either.
Oh well, guess I'll be sticking with the Slashdotter extension for a while yet then.
But if this issue is so easily fixed with a software patch... whose fault was it?
It's patching the microcode that forms (part of) the processor's instruction set - essentially patching the processor itself. This is most definitely Intel's fault, and is nothing to do with the OS or any other ("traditional") software.
Slashdot Mirror
Because slashdot readers in general will believe anything that's anti-MS, no matter how tenuous, while rejecting out of hand anything that's pro-MS, no matter how solidly backed up.
The big question, though, is why would anyone (other than MS) care how many or few businesses are renewing? What does it matter?
Not to mention that the vast majority of threats require user interaction to infect a machine - you actually have to run that executable claiming to be a nude picture of Paris Hilton, or a document that your "colleague" has edited and mailed back to you, or a security patch mailed by a router/firewall that has noticed virus activity on your PC...
That won't change if everyone switched to Linux or OS X. At best, no-one would run as root (just like you can choose not to run XP as Administrator...), but people would still infect themselves.
Spam bots don't have to listen on privileged ports, and the only important files on a home machine are the ones the user has write access to.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that per-user, per-application temporary files are a bad thing? That a better solution is to have one or two central locations for temporary files, and force every application developer to worry about file permissions, name-clashes, unexpected over-writing or deletion, etc?
There are a great many reasons to criticise MS, but this isn't one of them. I hate waste as much as the next person, but I've not had to worry about the amount of disk space temp files were taking up in years.
No, that's the address of the server, the web page's address most certainly is the full URL - that's how you find it. Similarly, the address of a person living in a flat includes the flat number/name, not just the address of the building the flat is part of.
I think it really depends on the nature of the request. If all that's being read is a static page, then your analogy is good. If on the other hand information is being submitted to the web site (such as this comment), then merely knowing the URL doesn't tell you what was posted at all.
Not that I necessarily support the ruling, mind.
No-one is stopping people doing weird stuff to each other but they would be strongly advised not to put it on the internet.
Nice to see the main proponent of the legislation is keeping an open, unbiased mind when dealing with its critics.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Unless that proof is supplied, then hell yes I'm going to be sceptic.
As others have already pointed out, in science part of that proof is publishing your experimental/theoretical method (your workings, as it were), your results and your conclusions, and inviting others to prove you wrong. The more people fail to prove you wrong, the more accepted your work will become, no matter how outlandish it is.
Yes, it's hard to get people working on things that are way out there, especially when they go against principles that have served us well for hundreds of years. But if you're completely open about exactly what you're doing and how you do it, *someone* will try to show you your error. If you're right, and they fail, so the momentum will build.
But that requires rigorous documentation, sufficient for any expert in the field to reproduce your work. Make a claim this extraordinary without backing it up with that, and of course people are going to disbelieve you, just like the last few dozen times it was done.
The US-only thing is simple - it's so no-one can claim they're training foreign terrorists, simple as that.
Self-medication is done without training or regard for potential damaging side effects. Self-medication with alcohol and other narcotics also generally has a social impact as well as a negative impact on the user's own life.
When a trained medical professional prescribes a drug, you have to assume that the drug itself has been through a rigorous testing and approval process, that the medic is well-trained and completely aware of what they're doing, etc. (I know that's not always the case, but it's far more likely than in the self-medication scenario)
Basically, if you self-medicate, especially with alcohol or narcotics, you're far more likely to fuck up than if you take a prescribed drug.
it includes things like your IP address. So they can convert that it non-anonymous information quite easily.
How so? Before answering, consider that my ISP won't give them any of my personal details without a warrant, so the best they can get is that I live in London. That's if their geo-IP software is up to it; Sourceforge keeps auto-selecting Belgian download servers, and I keep getting location-based ads for services in Bracknell and Slough, both of which are a good couple of hours' drive away...
Personally, I thought the sniper's rifle idea gave it away that it was a joke, but maybe I just have a strange sense of humour.
Open source voting machines are useless, unless you can verify that the software and hardware in use at the time you cast your vote is trustworthy. If you can't, it might as well be a closed-source system.
Now the "country" is for sale and the pirate bay expressed interest so they can use it as a safe-from-legal-threats datacenter location.
Well, given that the previous population was defeated by "one German guy in a dinghy", I'm not sure how safe they really expect it to be. I can't see us Brits leaping to their defence if some organisation or other decides to invade.
The point being that when you blame corporations, never forget that corporations are run by (and made up of) people, and ultimately it's the people who are stupid and greedy.
Well, I have a young daughter, and thankfully there's nothing wrong with her that some dental work won't fix. (Yeah, a Brit with bad teeth, say it ain't so)
However, if there was something wrong with her that couldn't be cured, do you really think I'd be wailing and wringing my hands and cursing cruel fate, pleading with anyone who'll listen to find me a cure for her? Or do you think I'd be telling her that I love her just the way she is, and that while $things might be harder for her, that's just the way she is and everyone is different and it's nothing to be ashamed of or upset about?
If a cure became available, yes I'd see that she got it if possible. But in the absence of a cure, I'd try not to give her a complex about whatever was wrong with her.
I'd be utterly amazed if more than about 2% of the people who say that sort of thing would actually withhold a cure from their child. For those ones, I'll happily take my turn on the bat.
But new levels are being reached, requiring of extending the "int catchphrase_rating" to "long int catchphrase_rating". These levels are being reached by the one and only, Microsoft.
If you think "people-ready business" represents a new low in marketing bullshit, you're not paying attention. It's bad, but there's far, far worse out there.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that some GPLed software requires you to click "I agree" to the GPL in the installation process. It may be meaningless, but that doesn't make it any less irritating (if anything, it makes it *more* irritating). In fact, I'd say it's dangerous, as it helps to dilute the message that you don't need to agree to the GPL to just use the software. The more software that forces agreement like that, the more people can point to it and say "See? You *do* have to agree!" That at least helps to spread uncertainty and doubt, if not fear...
Which is true, but it doesn't answer the main point of the comment, which was that surely we should "have a bit more respect" every time, not just this time.
A tragedy is a tragedy no matter who it happens to, or what community they belong to.
I've had the University of Michigan stuff turned off for ages too - it simply doesn't work properly, and is quite stunningly slow once the comment count gets over a couple of hundred (and this is on a X2 4400+ with 2GB of RAM...). I was wondering where the discussion 2 checkbox was; I don't get it either.
Oh well, guess I'll be sticking with the Slashdotter extension for a while yet then.
The funniest thing is, I get pretty much exactly those problems in Firefox (2.0.0.4).