4. The "top sites" are coding for all browsers - if we use them as examples of good design, why not extend that to implementation as well?
Exactly--even (most of?) Microsoft's site works with Netscape. I remember the days when they used to try to convince you, right on their front page, that you'd get a richer web experience with IE (4.0, as I recall, right after it came out), but it works fine with Netscape. They may have a few specific IE toys and niceties in there, but it works fine from Netscape. And I don't think they try to convince you anymore.
Alienating a portion of your audience just out of ignorance, unwillingness or inability to learn, or just plain malice towards an alternate browser (|os|product|whatever), is never a wise choice, and is a pretty closed-minded way of doing things.
The teacher was telling the kid what to click on - and he was just blindly doing it, and not learning how to *use* a computer. In my opinion, that's the wrong way to go about it.
Boy, isn't that the truth! I am having a terrible time at my job right now--I'm fixing to move to a new job at another company, and I have to leave behind information on how they can perform all of the administration functions on our Linux mail and web servers that I do.
They want step-by-step instructions, which I can provide, but there are problems with that sometimes, for several reasons:
What if something goes wrong? Steps of instructions only show you what to do provided things work *correctly* the first time.
Along with that, such instructions do not teach you how to interact with the system. It's only monkey-see, monkey-do--not intelligent functioning.
Sometimes, when I figure something out (this is usually in the case of fixing something that might be down, a server, service, or whatever), I don't *follow* a specified checklist: "Check this, check that, if you get this, then THIS is your problem." That goes back to the interaction: I interact, and make intelligent decisions based on what I see. Also, sometimes I just have to try things until something works, but unless I care to try and reproduce the problem, I don't know exactly *what* caused it to work. Was it the last thing I did, or a combination of that and other things?
They want deafeningly simple instructions, which creates a lot of redundancy if I explain how to edit a file every time a file needs to be edited.
I can only show them so much, but beyond that, they are going to have to learn enough about the system. Leaving instructions that tells HOW to do such things as edit a file is outlandish; I should just be able to say "edit this file in/etc, add this value--then restart the process".
I learned this stuff by sitting down, wanting to do something, and figuring out how to do it. That gives *me* a difficult base to teach from, because I only know what I know out of need to do it. Realizing that some people learn differently (ie, not by experimenting like I did), I wonder just how I can leave enough behind to get they where they need to be. It comes down to the fact that they're going to have to find another qualified person--I can only do so much.
THAT's where a good teacher comes in--he can teach people to do this stuff. My CS teacher in high school was very good at this, though there has to be a combination of an inquisitive, explorative nature involved on the part of the student as well.
Now that that's nicely off-topic and over with, I'll go now.:)
The merits of this idea are neither here nor there; what about faking it to trick the service into thinking you have the CD? There are plenty of ways to cheat when your machine is trusted to be honest--online gaming, alternate ICQ clients that don't really "ask" for a user's permission to add them to your contact list, etc. How long is it going to be before you can easily download a simple program that fakes a CD-ROM drive (those already exist) as well as the signature of a particular CD so you can access its MP3s? Or does such a beast already exist?
Since this is the subject, I am curious of such programs that do the address-filching from web pages. I've seen all sorts of clever email addresses on here, requiring certain modifications to spam-safe email addresses users post on slashdot (and other such places), the most obvious of which would be changing address
bob@bob.com
to
bob@SPAM.bob.com
It seems to me that as the programs advance, they probably pick up on some of this stuff, no?
I agree: just how far is a small paper tag going to transmit? I can't see one of these having that great range. Not to mention all of the interference electronics and other goodies that standard home has to offer. And good night! buy something and throw the tag away after you get it home!
If someone wants to break in, they have a lot better and more convenient ways of figuring out whether you own any valuables. And for the guy who just zeros you out for kicks, taking what he finds when he gets into your house, what difference is this gonna make?
I imagine in this situation the FBI didn't go to these people and say "give us all your logs and we'll tell you who did it" but rather ask the site admins who could have done it based on the logs. So very possibly, an ignorant site admin (who didn't keep up on security patches to keep his system from being vulnerable) might have seen that this guy had connected to their site several times and gone shouting to the FBI "He did it! He did it! Go get him!"
Even if there was some cooperation and log-investigation on the part of the FBI, quite possibly the site admins still could have come back pointing fingers at this guy. I'm not trying to absolve the FBI's responsibility from jumping on this guy so quick for just being curious and poking around, but perhaps this is something along the lines of what might have transpired.
It's probably also worth pointing out that after a rash of shoplifting incidents at the local store, someone is going to think twice before tucking his shirt in or pulling something out of his pocket and sticking it back in, for fear of looking suspicious. It's too bad that this happened--it shouldn't have happened--but c'mon! the site was just broken into! Don't go poking around!
Of course, the FBI will be paying all of US a visit for posting our thoughts about this on here...
That looks more like Afterstep to me, but I haven't used that or Windowmaker in awhile. Nah, after looking at it, there are some Afterstep features missing, while the desktop-switching dock button (in the upper-left, with the numbers and paperclip) is definitely as I remember it from Windowmaker.
Almost as cool as seeing the occasional OS/2 screenshot a few years ago. The computers in the lawyer's office in Primal Fear definitely looked like they were running OS/2.
This happened to ZDNet's Anchordesk once--I stopped recieving mail from them because MAPS was blocking it. I checked it out, and it turns out some guy turned them in for not being able to get unsubscribed from their list (similar situation to this one, I guess).
The sad thing was, I emailed them just to give a heads-up, and when I finally got a response a month or more later, they had *no idea* about the whole thing. Subscription to their list is not small, either.
I haven't seen anybody ask about the all-important (though limited, when compared to BSD's, Linux's, or even OS/2's) tool, fdisk. For now, that doesn't run under Win9x gui (though there is a graphical partition manager for NT/Win2k). I always thought there were technical limitations that kept fdisk under dos, preventing a similar graphical partition manager (the only one of which might have been to prevent joe-average-home-user from modifiying his drive partitions), but whatever the reason it stayed a dos utility for so long, how do they intend to accomplish this function in the future?
I guess fdisk does run under a command-line within Windows in current versions, but what if your installation is hosed? Windows (9x) is one of the only OS's that doesn't allow you to repartition on install (again, probably for the ignorant-user factor). Maybe this functionality will be added to the installer then?
I agree with removing the dos foundation from Windows (are they really removing it, or just "hiding" it even more? --though it seems they are removing many of the dependencies on it), but there still needs to be some of that functionality available. Other arguments about convenience and preference for us-types aside, some of the utilities and ability to fix the OS yourself are still needed to be available from a still-pure unadulterated dos mode.
Well, duh! You can do that with about any email program/service, as long as they permit attachments. That doesn't say anything about the type of service they will offer, how people will access, or (more interesting to us geek-types) how they will run it.
Why would the postal service want to give us free email? Not only that, but why would I want to go with their provided email over something I can control, customize, and choose my level of service from--and many times also get free? Consider:
Don't they (claim to) lose money because of how popular email has grown? Each email we send denies them the opportunity to make $0.33 off of me--and I'm sure not gonna PAY them to send my email!
Where is it the government's responsibility to give us what tons of other free services (yahoo mail, hotmail, etc) already offer, voluntarily?
How do they intend to present it? Webmail? POP3?
How do they intend to run it, effeciently?
How do they intend to manage something so big? AOL claims to have in excess of 20 million users, and that's big--but 120 million? Can we say slow?
What about the households (50%? 25%? 75%?) that don't have computers? How do they propose to provide them access?
It seems as if they have something tricky up their sleeves. It seems a mammoth undertaking, and they don't exactly have a reputation of providing services for our good, but to make money (USPS is the only branch of government that turns a profit, from what I hear). They are one of the only legally sanctioned monopolies--hey, did Microsoft put them up to this?
That might be the *absolute* safe way, but it sure is inconvenient to have to reconfigure all the customizations I made to make it "my" system, like preferences, font settings, network settings, X settings, etc etc. I hate to say it, but even Windoze upgrades fairly conveniently, without requiring a complete reinstall. Not always, mind you--I didn't say that, but I've had plenty of luck, when using it, in upgrading one version on top of the other. I know package managers out there such as RPM as well as utilities like CVS are at least somewhat intelligent when upgrading files--don't overwrite certain "user-specific" config files, etc. I just wondered if FreeBSD did this any better than, say, your average Linux distro. Some seem to say yes, while others would rather hassle with a complete reinstall rather than chance something in the new system being hosed.
Ok, so we have this sysadmin appreciation day-thingy (for all those people who aren't appreciation-dayed out for all those OTHER appreciation days out there). But this is posted on slashdot--so I'll be the only one in my organization to read it. I'm the sysadmin, I guess I'll go appreciate myself. No one will understand when I want the day off, though...
Does anyone know whether FreeBSD is any easier or convenient to upgrade between releases? I can't speak for all Linux distributions here, but it seems that at least Slackware recommends that you delete and reinstall everything, just to be safe. Is FreeBSD that inconvenient, or does it allow for a smoother upgrade path between versions? That would be a major plus for me for looking into FreeBSD usage more heavily at our location.
What role does the NSA play in advising lawmakers about cryptography exportation? Did the NSA call the shots or simply make recommendations with the recent US government relaxing encryption export regulations?
How's an admin s'posed to find out he's running broken code, if the one who finds it doesn't tell anybody? It's the same concept as the MAPS Realtime Blackhole List, and the list of open mail relays--refuse enough mail from an open mail server, and the mailserver admin will have to fix his relay. Make public the fact that version x of whatever software package has a security hole, and admins will either fix it or risk losing data. Plus, OTHER admins will have the opportunity to seek solutions as well...
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly--even (most of?) Microsoft's site works with Netscape. I remember the days when they used to try to convince you, right on their front page, that you'd get a richer web experience with IE (4.0, as I recall, right after it came out), but it works fine with Netscape. They may have a few specific IE toys and niceties in there, but it works fine from Netscape. And I don't think they try to convince you anymore.
Alienating a portion of your audience just out of ignorance, unwillingness or inability to learn, or just plain malice towards an alternate browser (|os|product|whatever), is never a wise choice, and is a pretty closed-minded way of doing things.
"Click there... that's it, select that..."
The teacher was telling the kid what to click on - and he was just blindly doing it, and not learning how to *use* a computer. In my opinion, that's the wrong way to go about it.
Boy, isn't that the truth! I am having a terrible time at my job right now--I'm fixing to move to a new job at another company, and I have to leave behind information on how they can perform all of the administration functions on our Linux mail and web servers that I do.
They want step-by-step instructions, which I can provide, but there are problems with that sometimes, for several reasons:
- What if something goes wrong? Steps of instructions only show you what to do provided things work *correctly* the first time.
- Along with that, such instructions do not teach you how to interact with the system. It's only monkey-see, monkey-do--not intelligent functioning.
- Sometimes, when I figure something out (this is usually in the case of fixing something that might be down, a server, service, or whatever), I don't *follow* a specified checklist: "Check this, check that, if you get this, then THIS is your problem." That goes back to the interaction: I interact, and make intelligent decisions based on what I see. Also, sometimes I just have to try things until something works, but unless I care to try and reproduce the problem, I don't know exactly *what* caused it to work. Was it the last thing I did, or a combination of that and other things?
- They want deafeningly simple instructions, which creates a lot of redundancy if I explain how to edit a file every time a file needs to be edited.
I can only show them so much, but beyond that, they are going to have to learn enough about the system. Leaving instructions that tells HOW to do such things as edit a file is outlandish; I should just be able to say "edit this file inI learned this stuff by sitting down, wanting to do something, and figuring out how to do it. That gives *me* a difficult base to teach from, because I only know what I know out of need to do it. Realizing that some people learn differently (ie, not by experimenting like I did), I wonder just how I can leave enough behind to get they where they need to be. It comes down to the fact that they're going to have to find another qualified person--I can only do so much.
THAT's where a good teacher comes in--he can teach people to do this stuff. My CS teacher in high school was very good at this, though there has to be a combination of an inquisitive, explorative nature involved on the part of the student as well.
Now that that's nicely off-topic and over with, I'll go now. :)
The merits of this idea are neither here nor there; what about faking it to trick the service into thinking you have the CD? There are plenty of ways to cheat when your machine is trusted to be honest--online gaming, alternate ICQ clients that don't really "ask" for a user's permission to add them to your contact list, etc. How long is it going to be before you can easily download a simple program that fakes a CD-ROM drive (those already exist) as well as the signature of a particular CD so you can access its MP3s? Or does such a beast already exist?
bob@bob.com
to
bob@SPAM.bob.com
It seems to me that as the programs advance, they probably pick up on some of this stuff, no?
If someone wants to break in, they have a lot better and more convenient ways of figuring out whether you own any valuables. And for the guy who just zeros you out for kicks, taking what he finds when he gets into your house, what difference is this gonna make?
Even if there was some cooperation and log-investigation on the part of the FBI, quite possibly the site admins still could have come back pointing fingers at this guy. I'm not trying to absolve the FBI's responsibility from jumping on this guy so quick for just being curious and poking around, but perhaps this is something along the lines of what might have transpired.
It's probably also worth pointing out that after a rash of shoplifting incidents at the local store, someone is going to think twice before tucking his shirt in or pulling something out of his pocket and sticking it back in, for fear of looking suspicious. It's too bad that this happened--it shouldn't have happened--but c'mon! the site was just broken into! Don't go poking around!
Of course, the FBI will be paying all of US a visit for posting our thoughts about this on here...
Almost as cool as seeing the occasional OS/2 screenshot a few years ago. The computers in the lawyer's office in Primal Fear definitely looked like they were running OS/2.
The sad thing was, I emailed them just to give a heads-up, and when I finally got a response a month or more later, they had *no idea* about the whole thing. Subscription to their list is not small, either.
Not quite so direct as
10 FRYPROCESSOR
But something that basically did that when executed--probably an assembler instruction.
I guess fdisk does run under a command-line within Windows in current versions, but what if your installation is hosed? Windows (9x) is one of the only OS's that doesn't allow you to repartition on install (again, probably for the ignorant-user factor). Maybe this functionality will be added to the installer then?
I agree with removing the dos foundation from Windows (are they really removing it, or just "hiding" it even more? --though it seems they are removing many of the dependencies on it), but there still needs to be some of that functionality available. Other arguments about convenience and preference for us-types aside, some of the utilities and ability to fix the OS yourself are still needed to be available from a still-pure unadulterated dos mode.
Well, duh! You can do that with about any email program/service, as long as they permit attachments. That doesn't say anything about the type of service they will offer, how people will access, or (more interesting to us geek-types) how they will run it.
- Don't they (claim to) lose money because of how popular email has grown? Each email we send denies them the opportunity to make $0.33 off of me--and I'm sure not gonna PAY them to send my email!
- Where is it the government's responsibility to give us what tons of other free services (yahoo mail, hotmail, etc) already offer, voluntarily?
- How do they intend to present it? Webmail? POP3?
- How do they intend to run it, effeciently?
- How do they intend to manage something so big? AOL claims to have in excess of 20 million users, and that's big--but 120 million? Can we say slow?
- What about the households (50%? 25%? 75%?) that don't have computers? How do they propose to provide them access?
It seems as if they have something tricky up their sleeves. It seems a mammoth undertaking, and they don't exactly have a reputation of providing services for our good, but to make money (USPS is the only branch of government that turns a profit, from what I hear). They are one of the only legally sanctioned monopolies--hey, did Microsoft put them up to this?That might be the *absolute* safe way, but it sure is inconvenient to have to reconfigure all the customizations I made to make it "my" system, like preferences, font settings, network settings, X settings, etc etc. I hate to say it, but even Windoze upgrades fairly conveniently, without requiring a complete reinstall. Not always, mind you--I didn't say that, but I've had plenty of luck, when using it, in upgrading one version on top of the other. I know package managers out there such as RPM as well as utilities like CVS are at least somewhat intelligent when upgrading files--don't overwrite certain "user-specific" config files, etc.
I just wondered if FreeBSD did this any better than, say, your average Linux distro. Some seem to say yes, while others would rather hassle with a complete reinstall rather than chance something in the new system being hosed.
Ok, so we have this sysadmin appreciation day-thingy (for all those people who aren't appreciation-dayed out for all those OTHER appreciation days out there). But this is posted on slashdot--so I'll be the only one in my organization to read it. I'm the sysadmin, I guess I'll go appreciate myself. No one will understand when I want the day off, though...
Does anyone know whether FreeBSD is any easier or convenient to upgrade between releases? I can't speak for all Linux distributions here, but it seems that at least Slackware recommends that you delete and reinstall everything, just to be safe. Is FreeBSD that inconvenient, or does it allow for a smoother upgrade path between versions? That would be a major plus for me for looking into FreeBSD usage more heavily at our location.
What role does the NSA play in advising lawmakers about cryptography exportation? Did the NSA call the shots or simply make recommendations with the recent US government relaxing encryption export regulations?
How's an admin s'posed to find out he's running broken code, if the one who finds it doesn't tell anybody? It's the same concept as the MAPS Realtime Blackhole List, and the list of open mail relays--refuse enough mail from an open mail server, and the mailserver admin will have to fix his relay. Make public the fact that version x of whatever software package has a security hole, and admins will either fix it or risk losing data. Plus, OTHER admins will have the opportunity to seek solutions as well...
He fit all that on one little postcard? Must have very small handwriting...
:)