How about World of Warcraft. Isn't that sort of a cult?
How exactly is a video game like a cult? What belief system does "World of Warcraft" have? I'm not talking about the lore of the game, because they don't represent dwarves and elves and magic as reality, they represent it as fiction within the universe of the game. That is a distinct difference between entertainment and religion.
Say what you will, but you've got to love the genius of scientology. They take things that are generally considered serious crimes and make them "religious rituals". I can imagine someone coming to Ron in the early years..
Scientologist: Ron, I've got a problem. I just got angry with my girlfriend and shot her in the chest with my.45. Ron: Hmm.. let me think..
Calling an iPhone a communications device is like calling a computer a word processing device. Apple has made damn sure with all of their marketing that people associate more than communication with the iPhone, it's made out to be more like a PDA with a phone program than a phone. And I doubt this is the first time an artist has made "print-ready" work (for various definitions of "print-ready") from a PDA. This still seems like a piece of Apple fluff.
That makes me feel better, that's the first time you've actually addressed my point.
I would refute it, but I'll defer to all the comments on that fine article instead.
I'm wondering which comments you're referring to. I don't see a single comment that addresses the ease of installing Windows, nor do I expect to see any in that story. I see people discussing OS monoculture, the problems with autorun, how no OS is immune to infection, etc etc but nothing about installing.
Once you started throwing out caveats like NAT router and latest service pack media your argments were done for anyway.
Oh cmon, are you using 8-year old media to install your OS? Neither am I. Do you have a NAT router? So does the rest of the world. These aren't caveats, they're acknowledgement of reality.
Why don't you recommend the average user slipstream the drivers and service packs into the custom scripted install DVD they make for themselves. My grandma always does that when she's not running the beta she DL'd from her MSDN account.
..and you go right back to your MO. I say I use a NAT and install the latest version, and you exaggerate that to fit your point. I've slipstreamed drivers a total of once, and I've never downloaded and installed a beta from MSDN, nor do I have an MSDN account.
Since this discussion went off-topic several messages ago, and since I don't see you willing to continue further on-topic, it's probably safe to say that this discussion has outlived its usefulness.
Well shit, there goes my argument that Windows machines are immune to viruses that people (possibly intentionally) manually install in a factory. I guess you got me there.
Strawmen: taking the internet by storm since 1996.
Jeez what do you suggest as punishment for driving 2k's over the limit? The death penalty?
If someone gives me a document that says that if I drive 2k's over the speed limit that I'm going to be killed, and if I read the document, understand it, and willfully sign it, and then I get caught going 2k's over the speed limit, I'm not going to be very surprised if I get the specific punishment that I knew about and agreed to.
If the kid wants to live in the university housing, then he needs to follow the rules he agrees to, that's it. If he doesn't agree with the rules, then he doesn't have to live there. It's not like if he doesn't live there he's going to be homeless, university housing is not the only place in the world to live.
You sir are what's known as an asshat.
No, an asshat is when you agree to not do something, and then you do it, and then you get all butthurt when you get punished for it. This isn't legal rocket science, this is what your parents should have taught you growing up.
Many do. Half the ones that don't are trials or have crippled functionality until you pay
Citation, please.
Yet in your mind all of this is easier and more secure than clicking "gimp" under "Add/Remove" programs and waiting for fifteen seconds while it fetches, verifies, and installs?
I never made that claim. My claim was that you are needlessly over-complicating the Windows installation process to make your argument seem more valid. Windows might have several problems, but the exaggerations you're making don't apply to the majority, in my opinion.
The average lifespan of an unpatched XP box directly connected to broadband is less than a minute.
I read that, but what exactly am I supposed to take away from that? The link you gave doesn't offer any sort of evidence in support of that claim, and it doesn't even make that claim itself. Let's see what the descriptions about that vulnerability say:
Most firewalls already block RPC traffic from external sources, so that attack vector is somewhat mitigated.. I haven't seen Active-eXploits out in the wild yet, but it is only a matter of time. (Oct. '08).. Critical: Moderately critical (3/5) Impact: System access Where: From local network Solution Status: Vendor Patch.. Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code, but requires access to a disk share.
(emphasis mine)
Here's another little tidbit: on the computer I'm running right now, which I have at home and I leave powered on and online 24/7, I rebooted yesterday for the first time in several weeks, I don't have the patch for that vulnerability installed. I'm currently affected by that vulnerability, and I think it's fair to say my computer has been online significantly longer than 60 seconds. So what am I, the luckiest or most advanced computer user in the world, or do I just have the same NAT router that everyone else who has a home computer has? According to Add/Remove programs, this computer has a grand total of 9 security updates applied post-SP3. This thing even has services like IIS and MySQL running, which a normal user wouldn't even have. I also never bother to activate the Windows Firewall, which most home users do.
I'll also say that in all of my installing throughout my XP "career", I've never had a single machine compromised at any point before I apply whatever security updates there are (or after for that matter), and I've already explained that applying updates is not my priority in getting a machine set up. I've set up several machines at work and at home, and the only precaution (if you want to call it that) is that I always have a NAT firewall/router set up, which is a very common thing to have.
So, in my experience the reports about "average lifespan of an unpatched XP box" don't reflect reality, I've never seen that happen personally and I don't know anyone who's had it happen to them either. I'm not sure how you can believe a statistic called "average lifespan of an unpatched XP box" anyway, I know I never got polled for that one.
If you have any real evidence to back up any claims, feel free to post citations.
I'm not sure if you were responding to my post or the one yours is attached to (it doesn't list companies), but I just got those names off the MySQL site under "Customers". I was surprised to see some of those big names there (Cisco, Cray, Motorola, etc), and I definitely acknowledge that many of them can use MySQL for some purposes but not mission-critical stuff. It just irks me to see people trolling about MySQL being useless, it's obviously a useful piece of software that has a place in many applications.
Good god, man. For all the complaining the Linux crowd does about FUD, you certainly have no hesitation to spew it yourself.
You don't even dare plug in the network cable until you've
Well, uh, actually, I do. The first thing I do when I get a new XP box up is to get it online (hell, I do the installation with the LAN cable plugged in) and download my preferred browser, usually Opera (depends who I'm setting it up for though). If I'm building it for myself, I don't install security software, I haven't needed it for the past 10 years.
I do tweak the OS settings (autorun, etc) to make the OS behave like I want. Are you saying you don't do that, you're fine with all the defaults of whatever software you install?
Figure an extra thousand bucks
What??? For what? Are you spending money to install an office suite? I can't even remember the last time I bought MS Office, I think it was Office 97, maybe 2000. I've used OpenOffice since then. I don't know which country you live in, but there are also several free PDF readers. In fact, I'm not even aware of a single PDF reader that is *not* free. And goddamn, you know those Flash players are expensive too!!! And thank god that you don't need a PDF reader or Flash player if you're running Linux.
Add a few more days of tweaking settings.
Well shit, maybe it takes you a few days to tweak your PDF reader and Flash player settings, but I guess I've been able to avoid that. I guess I'm just lucky.
NOW you're ready to plug in that network cable and spend an hour or two registering and activating all the various applications and installing the updates for them, turning off their absurd unhelpful and insecure default settings.
Notwithstanding the fact that I downloaded everything I just installed and therefore don't need to update anything (it's the newest version..) or activate anything other than XP itself, I guess I didn't realize that absurd and unhelpful settings were limited to Windows applications. Thanks for clearing that up.
This would be a good time to clone the system to an offline backup
Again, if you want to do that, that's just fine. It only took an hour to get the OS and applications installed, so it's not a big deal to get back to this point. I'm not saying everyone should follow my example, but I've never imaged my HD, I don't use any backup at all (do what I say, not what I do..), and for some reason my computer just keeps right on working. I haven't had a hard drive crash since I stopped using magnetic screwdrivers to work on my computers (that was a fun learning experience), and now I've got some amount of redundancy with RAID. I don't backup, I don't restore, I just use my computer and it doesn't fail me. I *do* need to get a couple TB online to back up to, I just haven't done that yet (I guess I've been too busy actually *using* the computer.. which apparently you would find ironic).
Are you surprised they want a Mac or Linux, which have almost none of these problems?
They? Who is "they"? Are "they" the 10% of people who don't use Windows computers at home?
I try to look at all sides of an argument. I've got Linux machines, I've got Windows machines.. there's at least one Mac in my house (not to say I use it).. I would love to have a discussion about the relative merits of different platforms, but with people like you spouting that kind of mindless shit, it makes it a little difficult.
I believe his complaint is that, for stealing ~$10 worth of books, he is now being punished by losing his house and possibly an academic year.
Oh c'mon, man up Nancy. I got kicked out of the dorm my freshman year for smoking pot inside. I didn't fight it, because I knew I was obviously wrong, in fact I knew it wasn't OK to do that before I even did it, and I *even* knew that if I got caught they would probably kick me out. So they kicked me out, I got an apartment nearby, and never even missed a day of classes (well.. not because of moving, anyway).
He knew that what he was doing wasn't allowed, and that there was punishment for it. He might have even known that the punishment was that he loses the privilege to live in the university housing. He's not losing his "house", he doesn't own the dorm, he's losing the privilege that the university extended to him to live on campus because he broke the rules that the university asked him to live by.
If he loses an entire academic year because of this, he probably doesn't have the motivation to finish college in the first place.
So what's the problem, huh? Where's your moral outrage? The university gives him a document when he moves into the dorm that says that if he uses the university's network to download illegal material then he may be sanctioned, including losing the privilege to live in university housing. He broke the agreement, he lost the privilege of living in university housing.. what's the problem? Where does the moral outrage come in?
Had he committed an actual crime (as in criminal offense) and stole the DVD on a store, he would probably only get fined
Well that depends, doesn't it? Was the store a university-run store, or did he use university resources to help him steal it? Because, in this case, he used the university's network to download the copyrighted material. That's different than walking into an unrelated store and shoplifting, the university has a responsibility to police its own resources.
How do you people know he didn't get due process? How can you even assume that? Considering the fact that he confessed to this on a public website, I'm thinking his conversation with the manager went something like this:
Manager: Hey, kid. I got this letter here from a company called MediaSentry claiming that they traced a download of Angels and Demons to your PC. Is that true? Kid: Yes. Manager: GTFO.
That's due process, right there. The kid decided to use his study time to search for, download, and presumably watch a movie which he wasn't entitled to download, and now he's crying because he has to use his study time to find a new place to live.
The only thing newsworthy about this story is the fact that MediaSentry is operating in Australia, the kid who got what he deserved is not the story.
That's entirely correct. MSSQL has several nice features, but the lack of LIMIT.. well.. really limits its usefulness. The concept of a LIMIT clause is so useful that the lack of it is essentially a dealbreaker. The hacks to implement some sort of limiting using TOP are very inefficient and don't result in any sort of performance increase comparable to the one you get with LIMIT.
Let's be a little more clear on this process, because you're simplifying it way too much.
And you're seriously over-complicating things.
1. Search the web. Come up with page after page of results.
Yes, Google searches often result in many, many pages. That does not imply that the result you're trying to reach is not listed first. Do a search for "context", "gimp", or "opera" on Google and tell me how far you need to look before you find home pages for a text editor, image tool, or browser. This step can be replaced with "Search the web, find what you're looking for".
2. Find a bunch that are either crippled trial versions, or you have to pay for them.
Nice assumption that all Windows programs require money. This step can be left out.
3. Finally find one that looks like it'll do the job, and is free.
Not a problem if you actually know the name of what you're after. Even if you don't know the name, again, it turns out that Google is actually pretty decent at indexing online information. Do a search for "free windows text editor" and see what comes up in the top 3 results. This step can be left out also, you still haven't moved on from using Google to find what you're looking for.
4. Download an untrusted executable.
Yeah, I guess the offerings on firefox.com or opera.com are untrusted, but somehow I trust those people to avoid making a bad name for themselves more than I trust an anonymous repository.
5. "Scan it" for "malware". I'm not really sure what this means. Your antivirus programs will try to check the closed binary for matches, but they aren't all that good at it. The fact is you have no idea if this thing has a virus, and you certainly don't know who it's going to talk to after it's installed.
Unless you're only downloading source code, and always go through all of it line-by-line before compiling and running it, I don't see how this has anything to do with OS.
6. Install it. Agree to a EULA you won't read. Click Next a bunch of times until it's done. Files are now all over your filesystem because there's no useful standards about where things go.
This is just getting ridiculous. Just because you don't understand the conventions doesn't mean people don't practice them. By default nearly every Windows program released in the past decade puts its main files in Program Files. Shared libraries go in Program Files/Common Files (difficult to remember, I know). User settings are stored under the user's home directory inside the Application Data folder. I'm not sure what's difficult to understand about that, or how that's any different than Linux conventions for putting things in/bin or/etc or/lib or/usr or/home. Again, this step has nothing to do with OS.
7. You may have to reboot the machine a this point for some reason.
Microsoft has been trying to eliminate post-install reboots since XP and they've done a pretty nice job at it so far. The only things I install today that require a reboot are things like SQL Server or something that needs to modify system files that are currently in use. Most of the time when it tells me I should reboot I tend to ignore it and don't see any problems. Regardless, any minor application that the vast majority of people would download online does not require a reboot, it's essentially limited to system software and updates at this point.
8. The program insisted on making its own incomprehensible entry in the start menu, based on arbitrary criteria. Maybe it's the vendor's name, maybe it's the program's name. Move this to a sane location.
Maybe you enjoy doing that after the install, but most people fill that out when prompted dur
This tutorial actually makes Ubuntu seem as complicated as a Windows Vista installation
I don't know what experiences you've had, but Microsoft OS installers have been ridiculously easy to use for the past 8 years or so, since XP. XP, Server 2003, Vista, Win7, whatever other flavors, are extremely easy to install. It would be nice if XP could read RAID drivers from a CD without having to slipstream them in, but that's about the only hangup. It may take its sweet time loading every driver on the CD before starting the install, but Windows installers have been very, very easy to use for a long time now. It would be a major improvement if installing Linux was as easy as installing XP.
More importantly, what use do ligatures have in modern times? If you're writing by hand, fine, it might be quicker to write several characters in one stroke.
Why do computers even have support for ligatures at all? What's the point? I'm not trolling, I just don't understand the necessity. What do ligatures add, why would you choose to use the "fi" ligature instead of the characters "f" and "i"?
Word already has the tendency of turning a basic document into a code of spaghetti when saved as HTML.
Word actually does a pretty decent job at HTML, but not by default. The format to save a document in is "HTML (filtered)", not regular HTML. When Word uses non-filtered HTML it introduces a requirement that the file should look the same if you re-open it in Word, so it includes a metric ton of meta-data and Office-only crap in the markup so that if you open the HTML document again in Word, it looks exactly the same as when you saved it. If you choose to filter all that crap out, it might not look as pretty when re-opened in Word, but the HTML markup is a lot easier to deal with.
Anyway, just a tip if you ever find yourself needing to export something from Word as HTML and don't want to spend the next hour cleaning it up.
Slashdot Mirror
That is not what defines a cult, that is competition.
How about World of Warcraft. Isn't that sort of a cult?
How exactly is a video game like a cult? What belief system does "World of Warcraft" have? I'm not talking about the lore of the game, because they don't represent dwarves and elves and magic as reality, they represent it as fiction within the universe of the game. That is a distinct difference between entertainment and religion.
Say what you will, but you've got to love the genius of scientology. They take things that are generally considered serious crimes and make them "religious rituals". I can imagine someone coming to Ron in the early years..
Scientologist: Ron, I've got a problem. I just got angry with my girlfriend and shot her in the chest with my .45.
Ron: Hmm.. let me think..
Calling an iPhone a communications device is like calling a computer a word processing device. Apple has made damn sure with all of their marketing that people associate more than communication with the iPhone, it's made out to be more like a PDA with a phone program than a phone. And I doubt this is the first time an artist has made "print-ready" work (for various definitions of "print-ready") from a PDA. This still seems like a piece of Apple fluff.
That it's quick and easy to install Windows.
That makes me feel better, that's the first time you've actually addressed my point.
I would refute it, but I'll defer to all the comments on that fine article instead.
I'm wondering which comments you're referring to. I don't see a single comment that addresses the ease of installing Windows, nor do I expect to see any in that story. I see people discussing OS monoculture, the problems with autorun, how no OS is immune to infection, etc etc but nothing about installing.
Once you started throwing out caveats like NAT router and latest service pack media your argments were done for anyway.
Oh cmon, are you using 8-year old media to install your OS? Neither am I. Do you have a NAT router? So does the rest of the world. These aren't caveats, they're acknowledgement of reality.
Why don't you recommend the average user slipstream the drivers and service packs into the custom scripted install DVD they make for themselves. My grandma always does that when she's not running the beta she DL'd from her MSDN account.
..and you go right back to your MO. I say I use a NAT and install the latest version, and you exaggerate that to fit your point. I've slipstreamed drivers a total of once, and I've never downloaded and installed a beta from MSDN, nor do I have an MSDN account.
Since this discussion went off-topic several messages ago, and since I don't see you willing to continue further on-topic, it's probably safe to say that this discussion has outlived its usefulness.
Well shit, there goes my argument that Windows machines are immune to viruses that people (possibly intentionally) manually install in a factory. I guess you got me there.
Strawmen: taking the internet by storm since 1996.
Jeez what do you suggest as punishment for driving 2k's over the limit? The death penalty?
If someone gives me a document that says that if I drive 2k's over the speed limit that I'm going to be killed, and if I read the document, understand it, and willfully sign it, and then I get caught going 2k's over the speed limit, I'm not going to be very surprised if I get the specific punishment that I knew about and agreed to.
If the kid wants to live in the university housing, then he needs to follow the rules he agrees to, that's it. If he doesn't agree with the rules, then he doesn't have to live there. It's not like if he doesn't live there he's going to be homeless, university housing is not the only place in the world to live.
You sir are what's known as an asshat.
No, an asshat is when you agree to not do something, and then you do it, and then you get all butthurt when you get punished for it. This isn't legal rocket science, this is what your parents should have taught you growing up.
Many do. Half the ones that don't are trials or have crippled functionality until you pay
Citation, please.
Yet in your mind all of this is easier and more secure than clicking "gimp" under "Add/Remove" programs and waiting for fifteen seconds while it fetches, verifies, and installs?
I never made that claim. My claim was that you are needlessly over-complicating the Windows installation process to make your argument seem more valid. Windows might have several problems, but the exaggerations you're making don't apply to the majority, in my opinion.
The average lifespan of an unpatched XP box directly connected to broadband is less than a minute.
I read that, but what exactly am I supposed to take away from that? The link you gave doesn't offer any sort of evidence in support of that claim, and it doesn't even make that claim itself. Let's see what the descriptions about that vulnerability say:
Most firewalls already block RPC traffic from external sources, so that attack vector is somewhat mitigated .. .. ..
I haven't seen Active-eXploits out in the wild yet, but it is only a matter of time. (Oct. '08)
Critical: Moderately critical (3/5)
Impact: System access
Where: From local network
Solution Status: Vendor Patch
Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code, but requires access to a disk share.
(emphasis mine)
Here's another little tidbit: on the computer I'm running right now, which I have at home and I leave powered on and online 24/7, I rebooted yesterday for the first time in several weeks, I don't have the patch for that vulnerability installed. I'm currently affected by that vulnerability, and I think it's fair to say my computer has been online significantly longer than 60 seconds. So what am I, the luckiest or most advanced computer user in the world, or do I just have the same NAT router that everyone else who has a home computer has? According to Add/Remove programs, this computer has a grand total of 9 security updates applied post-SP3. This thing even has services like IIS and MySQL running, which a normal user wouldn't even have. I also never bother to activate the Windows Firewall, which most home users do.
I'll also say that in all of my installing throughout my XP "career", I've never had a single machine compromised at any point before I apply whatever security updates there are (or after for that matter), and I've already explained that applying updates is not my priority in getting a machine set up. I've set up several machines at work and at home, and the only precaution (if you want to call it that) is that I always have a NAT firewall/router set up, which is a very common thing to have.
So, in my experience the reports about "average lifespan of an unpatched XP box" don't reflect reality, I've never seen that happen personally and I don't know anyone who's had it happen to them either. I'm not sure how you can believe a statistic called "average lifespan of an unpatched XP box" anyway, I know I never got polled for that one.
If you have any real evidence to back up any claims, feel free to post citations.
I'm not sure if you were responding to my post or the one yours is attached to (it doesn't list companies), but I just got those names off the MySQL site under "Customers". I was surprised to see some of those big names there (Cisco, Cray, Motorola, etc), and I definitely acknowledge that many of them can use MySQL for some purposes but not mission-critical stuff. It just irks me to see people trolling about MySQL being useless, it's obviously a useful piece of software that has a place in many applications.
Good god, man. For all the complaining the Linux crowd does about FUD, you certainly have no hesitation to spew it yourself.
You don't even dare plug in the network cable until you've
Well, uh, actually, I do. The first thing I do when I get a new XP box up is to get it online (hell, I do the installation with the LAN cable plugged in) and download my preferred browser, usually Opera (depends who I'm setting it up for though). If I'm building it for myself, I don't install security software, I haven't needed it for the past 10 years.
I do tweak the OS settings (autorun, etc) to make the OS behave like I want. Are you saying you don't do that, you're fine with all the defaults of whatever software you install?
Figure an extra thousand bucks
What??? For what? Are you spending money to install an office suite? I can't even remember the last time I bought MS Office, I think it was Office 97, maybe 2000. I've used OpenOffice since then. I don't know which country you live in, but there are also several free PDF readers. In fact, I'm not even aware of a single PDF reader that is *not* free. And goddamn, you know those Flash players are expensive too!!! And thank god that you don't need a PDF reader or Flash player if you're running Linux.
Add a few more days of tweaking settings.
Well shit, maybe it takes you a few days to tweak your PDF reader and Flash player settings, but I guess I've been able to avoid that. I guess I'm just lucky.
NOW you're ready to plug in that network cable and spend an hour or two registering and activating all the various applications and installing the updates for them, turning off their absurd unhelpful and insecure default settings.
Notwithstanding the fact that I downloaded everything I just installed and therefore don't need to update anything (it's the newest version..) or activate anything other than XP itself, I guess I didn't realize that absurd and unhelpful settings were limited to Windows applications. Thanks for clearing that up.
This would be a good time to clone the system to an offline backup
Again, if you want to do that, that's just fine. It only took an hour to get the OS and applications installed, so it's not a big deal to get back to this point. I'm not saying everyone should follow my example, but I've never imaged my HD, I don't use any backup at all (do what I say, not what I do..), and for some reason my computer just keeps right on working. I haven't had a hard drive crash since I stopped using magnetic screwdrivers to work on my computers (that was a fun learning experience), and now I've got some amount of redundancy with RAID. I don't backup, I don't restore, I just use my computer and it doesn't fail me. I *do* need to get a couple TB online to back up to, I just haven't done that yet (I guess I've been too busy actually *using* the computer.. which apparently you would find ironic).
Are you surprised they want a Mac or Linux, which have almost none of these problems?
They? Who is "they"? Are "they" the 10% of people who don't use Windows computers at home?
I try to look at all sides of an argument. I've got Linux machines, I've got Windows machines.. there's at least one Mac in my house (not to say I use it).. I would love to have a discussion about the relative merits of different platforms, but with people like you spouting that kind of mindless shit, it makes it a little difficult.
I believe his complaint is that, for stealing ~$10 worth of books, he is now being punished by losing his house and possibly an academic year.
Oh c'mon, man up Nancy. I got kicked out of the dorm my freshman year for smoking pot inside. I didn't fight it, because I knew I was obviously wrong, in fact I knew it wasn't OK to do that before I even did it, and I *even* knew that if I got caught they would probably kick me out. So they kicked me out, I got an apartment nearby, and never even missed a day of classes (well.. not because of moving, anyway).
He knew that what he was doing wasn't allowed, and that there was punishment for it. He might have even known that the punishment was that he loses the privilege to live in the university housing. He's not losing his "house", he doesn't own the dorm, he's losing the privilege that the university extended to him to live on campus because he broke the rules that the university asked him to live by.
If he loses an entire academic year because of this, he probably doesn't have the motivation to finish college in the first place.
So what's the problem, huh? Where's your moral outrage? The university gives him a document when he moves into the dorm that says that if he uses the university's network to download illegal material then he may be sanctioned, including losing the privilege to live in university housing. He broke the agreement, he lost the privilege of living in university housing.. what's the problem? Where does the moral outrage come in?
Had he committed an actual crime (as in criminal offense) and stole the DVD on a store, he would probably only get fined
Well that depends, doesn't it? Was the store a university-run store, or did he use university resources to help him steal it? Because, in this case, he used the university's network to download the copyrighted material. That's different than walking into an unrelated store and shoplifting, the university has a responsibility to police its own resources.
How do you people know he didn't get due process? How can you even assume that? Considering the fact that he confessed to this on a public website, I'm thinking his conversation with the manager went something like this:
Manager: Hey, kid. I got this letter here from a company called MediaSentry claiming that they traced a download of Angels and Demons to your PC. Is that true?
Kid: Yes.
Manager: GTFO.
That's due process, right there. The kid decided to use his study time to search for, download, and presumably watch a movie which he wasn't entitled to download, and now he's crying because he has to use his study time to find a new place to live.
The only thing newsworthy about this story is the fact that MediaSentry is operating in Australia, the kid who got what he deserved is not the story.
I didn't realize that any mod got you mod points.
Funny does nothing for your karma, though.
Your company must be run by morons.
Obviously. In fact, the people who run Wikipedia, craigslist, youtube, Slashdot, Apple, Cisco, Cray, Dell, Intel, HP, Motorola, NEC, TI, Xerox, Adobe, Symantec, Novell, McAfee, Citrix, Continental, Orbitz, Priceline, Amazon, ebay, Google, iStockphoto, Pricegrabber, Yahoo, ZipRealty, Linden, Audiogalaxy, Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Flickr, Freshmeat, LinkedIn, Photobucket, Stumbleupon, Twitter, and WordPress are clearly morons for using MySQL. These people don't know anything about databases.
In fact, I'm pretty sure you're the only person who's not a moron.
That's entirely correct. MSSQL has several nice features, but the lack of LIMIT.. well.. really limits its usefulness. The concept of a LIMIT clause is so useful that the lack of it is essentially a dealbreaker. The hacks to implement some sort of limiting using TOP are very inefficient and don't result in any sort of performance increase comparable to the one you get with LIMIT.
Let's be a little more clear on this process, because you're simplifying it way too much.
And you're seriously over-complicating things.
1. Search the web. Come up with page after page of results.
Yes, Google searches often result in many, many pages. That does not imply that the result you're trying to reach is not listed first. Do a search for "context", "gimp", or "opera" on Google and tell me how far you need to look before you find home pages for a text editor, image tool, or browser. This step can be replaced with "Search the web, find what you're looking for".
2. Find a bunch that are either crippled trial versions, or you have to pay for them.
Nice assumption that all Windows programs require money. This step can be left out.
3. Finally find one that looks like it'll do the job, and is free.
Not a problem if you actually know the name of what you're after. Even if you don't know the name, again, it turns out that Google is actually pretty decent at indexing online information. Do a search for "free windows text editor" and see what comes up in the top 3 results. This step can be left out also, you still haven't moved on from using Google to find what you're looking for.
4. Download an untrusted executable.
Yeah, I guess the offerings on firefox.com or opera.com are untrusted, but somehow I trust those people to avoid making a bad name for themselves more than I trust an anonymous repository.
5. "Scan it" for "malware". I'm not really sure what this means. Your antivirus programs will try to check the closed binary for matches, but they aren't all that good at it. The fact is you have no idea if this thing has a virus, and you certainly don't know who it's going to talk to after it's installed.
Unless you're only downloading source code, and always go through all of it line-by-line before compiling and running it, I don't see how this has anything to do with OS.
6. Install it. Agree to a EULA you won't read. Click Next a bunch of times until it's done. Files are now all over your filesystem because there's no useful standards about where things go.
This is just getting ridiculous. Just because you don't understand the conventions doesn't mean people don't practice them. By default nearly every Windows program released in the past decade puts its main files in Program Files. Shared libraries go in Program Files/Common Files (difficult to remember, I know). User settings are stored under the user's home directory inside the Application Data folder. I'm not sure what's difficult to understand about that, or how that's any different than Linux conventions for putting things in /bin or /etc or /lib or /usr or /home. Again, this step has nothing to do with OS.
7. You may have to reboot the machine a this point for some reason.
Microsoft has been trying to eliminate post-install reboots since XP and they've done a pretty nice job at it so far. The only things I install today that require a reboot are things like SQL Server or something that needs to modify system files that are currently in use. Most of the time when it tells me I should reboot I tend to ignore it and don't see any problems. Regardless, any minor application that the vast majority of people would download online does not require a reboot, it's essentially limited to system software and updates at this point.
8. The program insisted on making its own incomprehensible entry in the start menu, based on arbitrary criteria. Maybe it's the vendor's name, maybe it's the program's name. Move this to a sane location.
Maybe you enjoy doing that after the install, but most people fill that out when prompted dur
This tutorial actually makes Ubuntu seem as complicated as a Windows Vista installation
I don't know what experiences you've had, but Microsoft OS installers have been ridiculously easy to use for the past 8 years or so, since XP. XP, Server 2003, Vista, Win7, whatever other flavors, are extremely easy to install. It would be nice if XP could read RAID drivers from a CD without having to slipstream them in, but that's about the only hangup. It may take its sweet time loading every driver on the CD before starting the install, but Windows installers have been very, very easy to use for a long time now. It would be a major improvement if installing Linux was as easy as installing XP.
Stupid post anonymously box getting in the way..
That's an interesting example. Here's another version of the same image:
Yours:
http://www.impactlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/body-scanners-372.jpg
Original:
http://osaka.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/pic_body02lg.jpg
Now why would they feel the need to photoshop out they guy's junk like that?
And they never, ever, save screenshots to show everyone else later.
That's a nice card. My logical programmer mind doesn't see the need for a ligature, but artisticly it looks really pleasing.
More importantly, what use do ligatures have in modern times? If you're writing by hand, fine, it might be quicker to write several characters in one stroke.
Why do computers even have support for ligatures at all? What's the point? I'm not trolling, I just don't understand the necessity. What do ligatures add, why would you choose to use the "fi" ligature instead of the characters "f" and "i"?
Word already has the tendency of turning a basic document into a code of spaghetti when saved as HTML.
Word actually does a pretty decent job at HTML, but not by default. The format to save a document in is "HTML (filtered)", not regular HTML. When Word uses non-filtered HTML it introduces a requirement that the file should look the same if you re-open it in Word, so it includes a metric ton of meta-data and Office-only crap in the markup so that if you open the HTML document again in Word, it looks exactly the same as when you saved it. If you choose to filter all that crap out, it might not look as pretty when re-opened in Word, but the HTML markup is a lot easier to deal with.
Anyway, just a tip if you ever find yourself needing to export something from Word as HTML and don't want to spend the next hour cleaning it up.