Notwithstanding a raft of smaller ones, there's basically two big security problems in Windows - 1) ActiveX et al and 2) a totally improper use of Admin/user privs.
The whole #2 problem is basically: Too damn many things make you need to login as admin to do, so it's way too easy to grant high privs to something malicious. In OS X you're never "logged in" as admin, you sudo as necessary for specific actions. Same is good practice in Linux. And in both cases, you need to do that as rarely as possible; you can do everything a user could want without being root.
But Vista apparently lets a normal user run random exes they've added to the system, (as it must be, for my definition of a "normal user") but _doesn't_ let them run anything Vista detects as an installer, no matter how unimportant the installer is. Meaning, "of course my new solitaire game needs complete and total access to my system" is par for the course. Instead of "boy, anything that needs admin privs must be VERY important and should come with a stern warning"
I HOPE that Vista has fewer problems with having apps that must-run-as-admin, and fewer problems with applications that can only be installed as admin but then can only be run by the user who installed them. (This is rampant in XP... I don't know if Vista has a "sudo" functionality the way OS X and Linux do and XP didn't, really. "run-as" doesn't have the capability of giving the files the nonadmin-user's ownership, which is the critical missing feature.)
But they've already demonstrated a continued disregard for the basic principles of privileges. *sigh*
I don't think Google is highly regressive in the way you describe, but I suppose it certainly depends on your definition of regressive.
Google is definitely regressive from the point of view that it tries to represent the average total mindshare about search terms - NOT the average CURRENT mindshare. So if you want to find the up and coming site that's ABOUT to be the new hotness but hasn't reached critical mass yet, you need something like the derivative of Google's PageRank.
But this is definitely NOT what I want from my everyday search - that's more like the Digg of search. But everybody loving something today doesn't mean it has staying power or consistency, both of which ARE true for the major Google results. I don't WANT my search engine to forget about links that aren't hot anymore, and that no one is posting NEW links to.
There's no doubt that paying for a bunch of links kicks up your PageRank - but stopping that completely is literally impossible. As long as the system is democratic, people are going to buy votes to at least some extent. The only thing you can do is take sites that sell their opinion, detect them as much as possible, and drop their PR as much as possible.
But that's much harder and more expensive than taking your better mousetrap, sending it to some appropriate, prominent bloggers, and - if it really IS so much better - watching it tear through the blogosphere and therefore your rank go up. Plenty of people are writing links about anything they think is better.
Notwithstanding "fight the tricks better", which is obviously an ongoing battle, there's only 3 major ways I can see to change this situation. 1) Make it more derivative-of-mindshare. But I don't actually want that for MY search engine. 2) Make at least some of the ranking more explicit 3) Make the ranking more personalized.
#2 is something that would be cool. You shouldn't let people get more power than their PR implies, but - I definitely want there to be a way for me to put a link in a page and say "hey Google, I'm saying this link is BAD, not good!" (Yes, I realize putting "worst site ever" in the link text helps.) And a way to say "hey Google, these 10 links I really care about, so if you could give them slightly more PR and all my other ones slightly less PR worth of linkification, I'd like that. But that second part would have to be a pretty tiny effect anyway.
The other way to approach #2 is through some explict ranking instead of links at all. And while this gives you a LOT more flexibility, it also gives you a LOT less democratization, because you're cutting out all the people who merely have websites and don't care about your search engine. In this way Google is very extroverted instead of being introverted, and that's a good thing.
#3 is another option, and it doesn't have the same democratization problems. In this zone, we get to make a list of our personal sites and say "hey, I really trust these sites. Links from there should be much more powerful - for me." And if that's true, then sites that those sites link to... etc. In this way you could easily build trust networks that were more personalized. Linux fans would never get Microsoft answers to networking questions:) But you have to recalculate PR on a per-user basis, which seems pretty daunting.`
The big problem I see is that adding in both of those things and doing it perfectly will aboslutely not make up for the underlying search being less well executed. So there's a huge hurdle to overcome for any minor player to catchup using these kinds of techniques.
Headsprout (headsprout.com) is an awesome online early reading tool. It may be of limited use to you as it seems to be only in English, but I definitely wanted to include it for anyone else who might be looking for this answer. (I know some people involved with it, but I have no formal connection.)
The second thing I have to recommend is Precision Teaching. This is 1970s educational high-tech, but the important principles are missed in most education I've seen recently. The required hardware is a special kind of graph paper and a pencil - so it's not exactly digital. The wiki below I maintain, and it has a relatively good overview of why you should be interested in PT - and then a very large links page for more detailed or scholarly information.
IANAL, but I fail to see how this could possibly be free speech issue. You're not prohibiting anyone's speech - it's the equivalent of book-banning, which IS legal, not suppression of publication, which wouldn't be. Even if there was a right to free (online) assembly, this wouldn't violate it - it's not limiting who interacts with who.
That said, in my opinion the librarians do a pretty darned good job balancing such issues, and I hate to take any control out of their hands. Furthermore, there is no "save the children" aspect to blocking social networking for adults, which seems decisively included. (Unless you're taking the "no anonymous internet access" route, which isn't realistic)
On the other hand, MySpace has traditionally shown a pretty flagrant disregard for keeping people safe from predators, and the age where you can type is definitely younger than the age where you can really have an adult understanding of someone lying repeatedly and systematically to scam you into a predation situation that you don't understand, especially if all the adults you have met have been relatively friendly. So I WANT my child's school to block MySpace, at least at younger ages. Or I want them to send me home a transcript of my student's messages there. (Frankly, I think there's definitely a whitelist age, followed by a blacklist age, followed by relatively open access. I'm not going to get into the argument about what these ages are, though - which I'm sure would vary wildly from person to person.:)
Obviously this legislation is nothing but lawsuit fodder if it doesn't carefully define a social networking site. So it's terrible legislation until it does that. And once it does, you'll have a devilish problem of policing the smaller ones. Actually maybe a harder problem than just monitoring all the communications on MySpace, because at least then you'd know where it was.
So I guess overall I'm in favor of this legislation if substantially watered down to something like: The librarians are required to either provide guardians with transcripts or block access by minors to sites where the users can privately message each other and which have been shown to have a strong disregard for the protection of minors.
I have a client which is an accounting firm in the US. They primarily use Thompson's Creative Solutions, which they use for both payroll and general ledger for a variety of clients.
I've seen worse software - but I've also seen MUCH better. It seems to be written on an Access base, which I think is the root of most of the problems. It no longer just randomly crashes for no reason, but it still occasionally decides to corrupt a data file for no apparent reason. (To date this has been recoverable...) Network performance on very fast machines and switched fast ethernet is terrible - even though it's only single-user on a given client. And of course it's Windows only. (Although we use a little Samba server, which otherwise performs quite nicely)
I'd love to recommend a move to a cross platform solution - but frankly I'd love to move to anything that didn't suck as much, even if it still required a Windows client. But obviously the needs of a multi-client package aren't the same as a solution sold to in-house accounting at a midsized business.
Biologically, speciation is a tough subject that's more convoluted than that. For instance, sometimes they can interbreed, but won't. Sometimes the SAME species won't interbreed - and sometimes they won't interbreed with individuals born too far away from them, but without any kind of clear boundary, just a spectrum where eventually they are "too" different - even though they're the same species. In plenty of examples, what's a species is contested. Considering the breeding issues and lack of popular hybrids, your traditional fantasy "races" are probably not the same species.
But that is SO not the point. The question is why do we call them races. Which I'd say we do in new games because we did in older games, because D&D did, because Science Fiction writers did, because Tolkien did - because stories have for time immemorial, before genetics existed. Personally, I believe the reason for that is that as far back as we have histories, travelers found different people, and they were all humans or at LEAST very close to it. (I'll add that in for arguments about co-existing Neanderthals and hobbits.) And that's where the definition of race comes from - another people with another society, but recognizeable as people.
And while fantasys certainly contain exaggerations... if I stood next to Andre the Giant (when he was alive) he'd certainly seem like a giant, as would basically any football player. A race of people with an average height that was less than a foot taller or shorter than my personal height would certainly make a difference - this joke has been played in every American-visits-Japan story I've heard. Something as simple as a helmet with a bull's horns could account for a minotaur in low light. etc. Except the ears, Elves are just intelligent, agile, long lived people. The vast majority of fantasy and science fiction races don't push the limits of what an intelligent nonhuman species might be - they are all people with certain things exaggerated and certain things suppressed - exaggerated in the way everything else is in fantasy.
I realize the g-gp was a joke, but since the parent wasn't, I'm responding to it.
Right now there are US tax BENEFITS to outsourcing. That simply shouldn't be true; I've never heard any justification for it except to line the pockets of the companies large enough to do it a lot.
Companies with US employees pay a tremendous amount for healthcare, in great disproportion to the quality of care we get. a) I'm not saying we need national healthcare, but we at least need enough regulation of this critical industry to prevent by the insurance companies the anticompetitive practices that today rule the industry. b) To keep good jobs here, a greater proportion of this burden needs to be borne nationally. (That also doesn't mean the system has to be nationalized; tax revisions would be sufficient for part b.)
Fixing these things isn't a tariff per se, but it has the tariff effects the gp was looking for compared to today's status quo.
Of course, there are other important changes that could be made - a fair fraction of outsourcing fails, not because somewhere like India doesn't have quality people, but because the lowest bidding contractors aren't the highest-quality people available. So better corporate responsibility for these failures - both a) responsibility to consumers for inferior products, services and especially privacy violations and b) responsibility of officers to shareholders for the failed outsourcing projects, where "everyone else was doing it" isn't a good defense.
These public views are public - and what's more, for the most part already publicly collated and available in many major cities.
If they're doing anything wrong, it's that they're maybe throwing in some information that should be private - live everybody else is. The rampant buying and selling of private information needs to be criminalized.
The real problem is the START of authentication. On the identity theft / SSN is a secure factor kind of level. NOTHING in a public record should be a secure factor; it's easier for the crooks to look that up than for you to remember it.
Another really basic problem is this: US banks are setting up the systems, but they have only moderate legal liability for problems from it.
However, I don't think you're right about the extent of a pain it has to be to use a better system for online banking.
The basic online banking problem is that you can't guarantee the path between you and their server - so you need to change the auth very frequently. But you can't, because people can't handle the changes themselves - so people need a dongle, or a book of pwds.
The simplest system is a simple dongle where you push a button, it gives you a one time pwd, and you enter it along with your regular pwd. This is still vulnerable to people hacking into your account "live" at the same moment you're logging in. (And you can't just prevent the "duplicate" logins because they can just as easily block your actual login so it's not duplicate.) But it's better.
Assume a small device with, say, 11 keys and a little black and white screen and the ability to beep - and that's a USB dongle with One Time Pad hardware.
When you try to login to the bank's website, have this super-dongle communicate with the server through the computer's network connection. It can't guarantee the computer or network doesn't redirect the packets, but it can do some crypto certificate magic to make reasonably sure it's got the right server before it talks and can talk over an end to end encrypted channel using something stronger than normal SSL. You enter at least a PIN into the super-dongle itself, for it to transmit rather securely.
Go about your banking session via your normal web browser. When it comes time to make a transaction, everything happens as normal, except that the "confirm" page happens on the dongle - the dongle displays a brief summary of the transaction and you hit "yes" - or maybe you enter the whole-dollar amount of the transaction.
Your web session could, of course, potentially be hijacked under this system, because it can't be stronger than SSL. Although under certain circumstances the super-dongle could start furiously beeping. So your statements are only protected by a normal level of semi-security. But your PIN and your transactions are both protected quite well.
I know this isn't the party line at Slashdot, but at this point in time, there's no right reason for a regular non-geek individual person to use Linux on their home computer.
If they have a binding reason to use Windows - like being very into Windows gaming, having killer apps that don't work otherwise, only having one person to work on thier computer and that person does ACTUALLY know Windows, or being unwilling to make any changes despite the problems - then they should stick with Windows.
If they don't, they should buy a Mac. The right time to make this conversion is whenever they were going to buy a new computer anyway, which they do.
Linux gains a normal user effectively no compatibility OS X won't have. And OS X has fewer headaches than either Windows or Linux.
Don't misunderstand me - I LIKE Linux. The majority of my systems are Linux. It runs on obscure things OS X couldn't dream of - and runs on all sorts of non OS X hardware, which is sometimes free. For servers it has no disadvantages to OS X and is cheaper, running on all sorts of hardware. If you're buying an IT department worth of computers, the multiplied savings can be substantial. (And if you're in support there WILL be headaches, no matter how good the OS, because users are often dumb.) And if you're DISTRIBUTING computers, Linux is awesome. Or if you're making computers for any specialized set of uses. If you WANT to tune your computers to do particular things, Linux gives you greater ways to tune it. Most users wouldn't dream of doing that.
But as an overall, general purpose, unsupported-user workstation Linux has almost zero advantages to OS X - and these days the costs between a new Mac and a new PC are basically negligible if you shop at all and care more about it running reliably than being a tad faster.
To be clear, many important advantages of OS X over Windows are shared with Linux or BSD. Not merely that they both have them, but they use the same codebase, which is shared and OSS. Despite the kernels being different, OS X and Linux and BSD are all brothers in the most important ways, and the most important improvements that come to one eventually come to all.
I've posted a longer reply into the original article blog-comments, and in a different part of this article above. But my basic answer is:
If what you really want is a desktop that does exactly what Windows does, why are you trying to use Linux? In my opinion, part of the reason this isn't a huge focus for Linux is that there are good alternatives around for all of these things, and that spending a lot of developer time keeping up with Exchange only catches users who don't really want Open - they want Windows they can call Linux.
If what you really want is the ability to do some Linux applications and all your legacy applications, installing Windows entirely in VMWare on every single computer should work fine, if slowly. But obviously you've limited your advantages substantially.
But if you're trying for a transition to Linux, from your (admittedly brief) description it sounds like you're doing it backwards.
I'm NOT advocating that you go out one day, through out all your old software, and reinstall everything OSS. That would be insane. I'm saying that you transition to more open standard or at least cross platform choices, and that the desktop OSes are probably the LAST thing you migrate. Since a huge number of the apps you can use on Linux you can also use on Windows, it makes much more sense to transition those apps first. Maybe you can make these transitions in a month in your organization - or maybe it takes a decade. But you aren't ready to push to Linux until you're sure all the apps work, and you don't NEED to push to Linux to start using them.
For instance, you might migrate to OpenOffice first because it'll save you a bunch of licensing fees. Make sure at least most company-use web applications work with Firefox, because you don't really have ActiveX on other platforms. If you want an Exchange-like experience, first migrate to Groupwise or Domino. (Or many less prominent and less costly options people have listed above.) They support more than one platform. You can have an much more interoperable network platform without installing a single copy of Linux. (Although I personally would install that new Groupwise server on a Linux box...) Etc, Etc until you're at least close to out of problems.
I'm not aware of a Microsoft technology that can't be reasonably replaced. There ARE Windows applications that aren't easily replaced - and maybe you still need WINE or VMWare for those - I'm not saying if you're ever using those options you're wrong. My point is only that the application - conversion, as much as possible, should precede the OS conversion.
I just put the following comment on the actual article, which I'll show below, but I missed adding in the professional Exchange replacements, about which you are extremely correct.
I have to agree with some of the other comments I've seen - your expectations are all wrong.
You're defining "Enterprise" as "work seamlessly in an all-Microsoft shop" and those aren't necessarily the same thing.
You also seem to be defining a good Linux experience as doing exactly what you were totally happy about in Windows but without paying.
If what you're looking for is a computer whose function is to attach to a Microsoft domain server and a Microsoft Exchange server and use all the newest Microsoft technologies relatively seamlessly, you should just install Windows. If you're happy with Windows, you should install Windows. Heck, even Microsoft Entourage for OS X can't talk to Exchange right most of the time, and MS MAKES that.
If you're talking about a transition, you're doing it backwards; put Linux on the servers first, where no non-techs have to get used to using it, where you have a greater guarantee of a limited application set, and where Linux has more experience. Also where Windows charges you more in licensing fees for fewer benefits. Samba is great.
THEN start rolling it out on desktops, starting with the thinnest ones, and using your choice of Linux-style or Windows style methods based on the situation.
But if you really want to talk fairly about Linux in Enterprise you need to talk about legitimately comparing a Linux environment with a Windows one.
You need to talk about better natural security and less time trying to clean up stupid-user infections. You need to talk about the ease of remotely configuring, updating, and reinstalling large numbers of machines. You need to talk about running remote applications via X being free. You need to talk about the registry mostly being replaced with a large number of text files you can easily and remotely overwrite and a total lack of DLL-hell, meaning you almost never HAVE to totally reinstall a machine - and if you do, you never have to open a control panel on any client machine ever to set a single setting unless you want to. A seamless ability to use any convenient desktop in the office.
Certainly there's add-on Windows enterprise software to do many of these things that Linux does naturally. And I'd point out that OS X does most of them too and has a more user friendly desktop. Some studies show substantially lower costs in terms of administrators with Linux - if the administrators know Linux.
But if all you want is a Windows machine, USE a Windows machine. Saving $129 is not, alone, a sound rationale for using Linux in a professional environment where all you seem to want is Windows.
I had a shill bidder push me up, then literally bid OVER my price, winning the bid themselves. And I stopped bidding. Then they RETRACTED their bid (which is supposed to already be suspicious) to make sure they didn't win.
I reported them to Ebay, back when the names showed, along with various evidence that the accounts were tied together. (The previous-name of one of them was real-name type username with the same last name as the real-name type username the other one was using... from the same city.)
I did not get my money back - although it was only $1, and it was still a reasonable deal on the item. And I wasn't willing to refuse to pay because I didn't want to screw up MY feedback, and I didn't have enough transactions to make it unimportant.
Human Action is destroying us. Don't drink the anti-global-warming koolaid from a couple of discredited scientists.
It sounds like you will agree that there is substantial global warming and that this global warming will cause massive economic disasters, at a minimum, in terms of terrible agricultural failures. But you disagree about the causes.
1. These effects are at least additive - and maybe multiplicative. So the sun being in a warming cycle (which I'm not confirming or denying) does NOT mean that there isn't human caused global warming. If human behavior has a large impact - even if it's not the ONLY impact - and if we have a chance to massively improve the future of our race by reducing our greenhouse emissions, our obligation is not diminished by the existance of other causes. It would only be diminished if our part in global warming was insignificant.
2. Volcanos are not a cause of global warming; they cause more COOLING than warming.
"Volcanic eruptions can enhance global warming by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. However, a far greater amount of CO2 is contributed to the atmosphere by human activities each year than by volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons/year, whereas other sources contribute about 10 billion tons/year. The small amount of global warming caused by eruption-generated greenhouse gases is offset by the far greater amount of global cooling caused by eruption-generated particles in the stratosphere (the haze effect). Greenhouse warming of the earth has been particularly evident since 1980. Without the cooling influence of such eruptions as El Chichon (1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991), described below, greenhouse warming would have been more pronounced."
And if you shouldn't avoid the 89 because it seems harder at first, you shouldn't avoid the HP for the same reason.
I don't know anyone who got used to using their HP and wanted to go back. I'm STILL happy about my 48G, and I got it in 93.
People who haven't used them say "why are they so complicated" and after you get used to it you say "why are the other calculators retarded, RPN rules!"
Playing the Wii, I had the general feeling that they LET you get away with just flicking it, because they wanted any idiot to be able to play without a big learning curve. I don't think it's a physical limitation of the Wiimote, or at least I don't have any evidence thereof.
I heard rumor of a Wiimote First Person Staker based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That's right, hold your Wiimote like a stake...
Having made one of the above posts about it not being cheaper, last time I checked. (Which was a while ago) I feel compelled to weigh in against the "never buy from Dell" points above.
I'm not a person who believes corporations should engage in profit motive absent all other considerations, but Dell can't possibly afford to go to war with Microsoft - Dell's entire business model is inexpensive Windows computers, and that depends on having inexpensive Windows licenses. I certainly think they should try harder to do more, but as long as Linux is a very niche product and Dell can't sell OS X they can't lose their beneficial Windows licensing. There's plenty other ways to push Dell to be better.
The following applies to things purchased from Dell Small Business - I've heard pretty bad stories about Home sometimes.
For a single high end desktop computer, I think buying components makes a lot of sense. For a low end computer that's supposed to have Windows, it's hard to beat Dell's prices, at least around here. For a low end computer that's not supposed to have Windows, it's STILL hard to beat their prices, even if it happens to come with Windows. (I'm defining "low end" as "whatever the cheapest new Dells are at the time. Some vendors have MUCH slower stuff...)
The hardware is cheap - but not finicky; it breaks nicely and replaces nicely. And 3 year onsite warranties are relatively affordable, which I wouldn't care as much about if the computers were all somewhere I was physically near all the time, but when they're in a random office somewhere that can be important. And they come and repair it without a struggle.
My recollection is that they AREN'T cheaper. Been a while, Dell's pricing is always shifty, but... I remember the price of Windows (if you were in a state where you could "return" it) to be something like $47 - but these "bare" boxes to usually cost the same amount as a similar computer WITH Windows... no savings at all. Oh, and not available on the least expensive boxes, as I remember - a Windows box is always the cheapest Dell option.
You have to legislate conventional broadband for the simple reason that it involves property easements - people running cables through semicommunal and private land. Without this it would be impossible to have wide-scale broadband. Obviously you also can't count on the broadband providers to operate in the best interest or self-interest of the consumers.*
Until or unless you eliminate the broadband monopolies (and residual power of the monopolies that now exist) you need something like Net Neutrality. The reality is that most people have very limited choices in terms of affordable broadband - 0,1 or 2 actual providers. (A million people reselling the same monopoly DSL doesn't count separately.) When you're thinking about backbone peering connections, I'm anti-NN. But for the VERY SMALL number of monopoly providers it's essential.
Net Neutrality should ONLY apply to monopoly providers. And for them we need it - they have an anticompetitive business model at their very core. Chances of SBC letting VoIP operate fairly over their lines? Zero.
For example, SBC (at least) STILL hasn't opened up DSL (last I checked, in IL) - they're required to offer 3rd party DSL and 3rd party POTS service... BUT YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH. 3rd party POTS means you can only buy DSL through SBC.
*Witness the crazy things they've done to prevent anyone from offering municipal broadband of any kind. When a majority of citizens of that town want it, they convince the state legislature to make it illegal!
I'll admit this isn't my specialty, so hopefully I'll get the s**t corrected out of me. But, IN GENERAL:
For most things 64-bit computing is not faster but SLOWER than 32-bit computing. A simple example of why this is would be that all pointers are now twice as long, so instructions like "jumps" take more space - and therefore more cache and more time to load from RAM.
But usually a newer architecture is faster regardless of that, because it tends to have a bigger/faster cache and better branch prediction. Having more registers is a BIG help... IF you've recompiled your OS and apps for that arch so it uses them.
For certain things, 64-bit computing is substantially faster... for example, if you needed 64-bit integer operations, doing them in 32-bits involves a lot of waste. For lots of stuff you don't need this... but AltiVec, for instance, uses 128-bit pathways for certain image processing. This is sometimes really important, because these certain things tend to be really time-consuming and big.
But the biggest and most general reason you really want a 64 bit computer isn't that at all - it's that a 32-bit computer can only use 4 GB of RAM in the normal way. (Both physical and Virtual, basically) 64 bits = 18 x 10^18 B of RAM. So if you only need 4 GB of RAM, 32 bits is fine for you. The moment you need more, 32 bits really blows.
I was going to say this too - I know tons of people that use Windows, but very few who like it. I know plenty who don't think the Mac would be better, but almost none who ACTUALLY like what they have. Maybe they would be unhappy with the Mac, but they sure are often unhappy with Windows too.
The people I know who use Windows fall into three categories:
People who have to (employees - or because they have PC hardware and can't afford to buy new stuff - a new Mac isn't much more than a new PC, but a just-slightly-used PC gets cheap-to-free much faster. This SHOULD include people who use Windows at home because they have Windows at work and don't want to have to switch back and forth. Consultants and developers who get paid to fix Windows manually or by creating software and are happy that it's complex because it means more work are in this group, too. This includes every commercial AntiVirus manufacturer, for instance.)
People who don't know any better. (People who's only exposure to computers IS Windows, for a variety of reasons. This should really include anyone whose only Mac experience is pre- OS X, too.)
People who have killer app(s). (This includes basically all gamers for the moment, quite a bit of accounting software, etc., etc. People who PUT UP with Windows because their software won't work on the Mac are not equivalent to people who LOVE Windows.)
I'll stipulate that I'm sure there are people outside these three categories who DO love Windows... I've just never met one.
She died from drinking pure water too fast screwing up her electrolytes. The holding it had nothing to do with it. Peeing as often as she wanted wouldn't have helped.
It's not impossible to burst a bladder, but to my understanding usually it involves a sharp jab to the bladder while it's full.
It's also not healthy to hold concentrated urine for long periods, esp for women, but that's not usually a problem that's related to drinking lots of water.
You don't have to CAVE to sponsors. I understand completely that without money you don't exist. That is NOT the same thing.
While I would have zero disrespect for someone who said "we're going to have the wholesome game awards" to get more sponosors - even if he and all the judges thought games with mature themes were better - you have to do that BEFORE the competition. And you have to be honest with your sponsors and yourselves. And if you WERE honest with them and they get cold feet in violation of your agreement, you have to have balls.
You're missing the other side of the puzzle. At the risk of sounding like the bubble, if your awards are worthless you have no marketshare, and if you have no marketshare you ALSO have no sponsors. (Unless you're one of those "competitions" that have a big entry fee and give an honorable mention to everything that enters, to pad the things they can put on the box.) If you have a big marketshare and publicity, sponsors - SOME sponsors - will beat a path to your door.
In this case I think they've traded for short-term sponsorship and publicity by giving the long-term popularity of their awards.
If you decide to make "The Wholesome Game Awards" because you'll get more sponsors, more power to you. If you move way out to the edge for the "ultraviolent game awards" then you won't get traditional mainstream sponsors. Maybe you'll get a sponsorship from the Ultimate Fighting Championships or something. Porn game awards would only get porn sponsors. Etc.
Choosing to be mainstream enough to have sponsors is VERY different than what this competition did - caving to sponsors after the game was a finalist. Unless the sponsor has a contractually set veto over the judging process, the right answer is to offer to a) add disclaimers about the sponsor not sponsoring the individual games, etc. and other such concessions if the sponsor will go for them or b) telling the sponsor they can pull out of future sponsorships if they want, but you're keeping the money they already promised for THIS competition, thank you very much.
And if they STILL behave badly - like they withhold money they promised you for this competition or they threaten to sue you for going through with it - then you publicize the heck out of the situation. Include publicizing how this game was in the list of entrants, so the sponsor was ALREADY sponsoring it. You'll get some combination of a) them backing off to stop the continuing press coverage about it and b) a ton of press and name recognition, netting you the ability to get other sponsorships. Get that fact into as much of the press as possible.
Btw, I've never seen the game in question, and the little I've read doesn't make me think highly of it. But the fact that it was a finalist means it was very much exactly what this competition was looking for, whatever that is.
I'll be the first to admit that our Myth installation has been problematic and a pain. So now I'm going to ask you some questions about Tivo which cut to the core of the things I really like about Myth compared to Tivo. I'm not a Tivo expert, so these really are questions; some of them Tivo probably does fine... But I think at it's heart Tivo has a great interface but is much more limited than Myth.
Can you really BUY a Tivo, or only rent it? (That is, you buy the hardware but my impression is it doesn't work without a subscription)
Can you cheaply and indefinitely expand the capacity of your Tivo for roughly the cost of drives? (Tivo is Linux based, so it certainly COULD support mounting a new drive over, say, NFS, but I don't think it does...) It's only a few hundred $ to expand your Myth box to 1 TB...
Are Tivo's files encypted? Can I copy them to another machine and have them play while the Tivo is off, disconnected, far away - or if the Tivo breaks. Can I back them up to another media and have them work? Can I put them on my laptop and watch them on a plane without internet?
Can I guarantee my Tivo will let me skip commercials? ALL commercials, including ones Tivo might put there? (I believe they've several times talked about adding unskippable commercials...)
Does Tivo support fast-playback with adjusted audio? I haven't used this, but at least some versions of Myth are supposed to support playing on a fast-forward speed (say 2x, but even 1.5x) WITH audio, and with the audio adjusted so that you hear normal words but you don't hear gaps between words. Supposedly it's quite reasonable to watch a lecture in 3x once you get used to it, because someone can only talk so fast and still be clear, but that has gaps.
Slashdot Mirror
Only slightly on topic, but my Karma doesn't care - and I want as many people as possible to see this. :)
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I expect a certain number of security holes in any massive software undertaking. But I couldn't let this go by without referencing a recent
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/13/19
Which to me says "wow, MS still got it ALL wrong"
Notwithstanding a raft of smaller ones, there's basically two big security problems in Windows - 1) ActiveX et al and 2) a totally improper use of Admin/user privs.
The whole #2 problem is basically: Too damn many things make you need to login as admin to do, so it's way too easy to grant high privs to something malicious. In OS X you're never "logged in" as admin, you sudo as necessary for specific actions. Same is good practice in Linux. And in both cases, you need to do that as rarely as possible; you can do everything a user could want without being root.
But Vista apparently lets a normal user run random exes they've added to the system, (as it must be, for my definition of a "normal user") but _doesn't_ let them run anything Vista detects as an installer, no matter how unimportant the installer is. Meaning, "of course my new solitaire game needs complete and total access to my system" is par for the course. Instead of "boy, anything that needs admin privs must be VERY important and should come with a stern warning"
I HOPE that Vista has fewer problems with having apps that must-run-as-admin, and fewer problems with applications that can only be installed as admin but then can only be run by the user who installed them. (This is rampant in XP... I don't know if Vista has a "sudo" functionality the way OS X and Linux do and XP didn't, really. "run-as" doesn't have the capability of giving the files the nonadmin-user's ownership, which is the critical missing feature.)
But they've already demonstrated a continued disregard for the basic principles of privileges. *sigh*
I don't think Google is highly regressive in the way you describe, but I suppose it certainly depends on your definition of regressive.
:) But you have to recalculate PR on a per-user basis, which seems pretty daunting.`
Google is definitely regressive from the point of view that it tries to represent the average total mindshare about search terms - NOT the average CURRENT mindshare. So if you want to find the up and coming site that's ABOUT to be the new hotness but hasn't reached critical mass yet, you need something like the derivative of Google's PageRank.
But this is definitely NOT what I want from my everyday search - that's more like the Digg of search. But everybody loving something today doesn't mean it has staying power or consistency, both of which ARE true for the major Google results. I don't WANT my search engine to forget about links that aren't hot anymore, and that no one is posting NEW links to.
There's no doubt that paying for a bunch of links kicks up your PageRank - but stopping that completely is literally impossible. As long as the system is democratic, people are going to buy votes to at least some extent. The only thing you can do is take sites that sell their opinion, detect them as much as possible, and drop their PR as much as possible.
But that's much harder and more expensive than taking your better mousetrap, sending it to some appropriate, prominent bloggers, and - if it really IS so much better - watching it tear through the blogosphere and therefore your rank go up. Plenty of people are writing links about anything they think is better.
Notwithstanding "fight the tricks better", which is obviously an ongoing battle, there's only 3 major ways I can see to change this situation. 1) Make it more derivative-of-mindshare. But I don't actually want that for MY search engine.
2) Make at least some of the ranking more explicit 3) Make the ranking more personalized.
#2 is something that would be cool. You shouldn't let people get more power than their PR implies, but - I definitely want there to be a way for me to put a link in a page and say "hey Google, I'm saying this link is BAD, not good!" (Yes, I realize putting "worst site ever" in the link text helps.) And a way to say "hey Google, these 10 links I really care about, so if you could give them slightly more PR and all my other ones slightly less PR worth of linkification, I'd like that. But that second part would have to be a pretty tiny effect anyway.
The other way to approach #2 is through some explict ranking instead of links at all. And while this gives you a LOT more flexibility, it also gives you a LOT less democratization, because you're cutting out all the people who merely have websites and don't care about your search engine. In this way Google is very extroverted instead of being introverted, and that's a good thing.
#3 is another option, and it doesn't have the same democratization problems. In this zone, we get to make a list of our personal sites and say "hey, I really trust these sites. Links from there should be much more powerful - for me." And if that's true, then sites that those sites link to... etc. In this way you could easily build trust networks that were more personalized. Linux fans would never get Microsoft answers to networking questions
The big problem I see is that adding in both of those things and doing it perfectly will aboslutely not make up for the underlying search being less well executed. So there's a huge hurdle to overcome for any minor player to catchup using these kinds of techniques.
Headsprout (headsprout.com) is an awesome online early reading tool. It may be of limited use to you as it seems to be only in English, but I definitely wanted to include it for anyone else who might be looking for this answer.
(I know some people involved with it, but I have no formal connection.)
The second thing I have to recommend is Precision Teaching. This is 1970s educational high-tech, but the important principles are missed in most education I've seen recently. The required hardware is a special kind of graph paper and a pencil - so it's not exactly digital. The wiki below I maintain, and it has a relatively good overview of why you should be interested in PT - and then a very large links page for more detailed or scholarly information.
http://aimchart.schtuff.com/
IANAL, but I fail to see how this could possibly be free speech issue. You're not prohibiting anyone's speech - it's the equivalent of book-banning, which IS legal, not suppression of publication, which wouldn't be. Even if there was a right to free (online) assembly, this wouldn't violate it - it's not limiting who interacts with who.
:)
That said, in my opinion the librarians do a pretty darned good job balancing such issues, and I hate to take any control out of their hands. Furthermore, there is no "save the children" aspect to blocking social networking for adults, which seems decisively included. (Unless you're taking the "no anonymous internet access" route, which isn't realistic)
On the other hand, MySpace has traditionally shown a pretty flagrant disregard for keeping people safe from predators, and the age where you can type is definitely younger than the age where you can really have an adult understanding of someone lying repeatedly and systematically to scam you into a predation situation that you don't understand, especially if all the adults you have met have been relatively friendly. So I WANT my child's school to block MySpace, at least at younger ages. Or I want them to send me home a transcript of my student's messages there. (Frankly, I think there's definitely a whitelist age, followed by a blacklist age, followed by relatively open access. I'm not going to get into the argument about what these ages are, though - which I'm sure would vary wildly from person to person.
Obviously this legislation is nothing but lawsuit fodder if it doesn't carefully define a social networking site. So it's terrible legislation until it does that. And once it does, you'll have a devilish problem of policing the smaller ones. Actually maybe a harder problem than just monitoring all the communications on MySpace, because at least then you'd know where it was.
So I guess overall I'm in favor of this legislation if substantially watered down to something like:
The librarians are required to either provide guardians with transcripts or block access by minors to sites where the users can privately message each other and which have been shown to have a strong disregard for the protection of minors.
I have a client which is an accounting firm in the US. They primarily use Thompson's Creative Solutions, which they use for both payroll and general ledger for a variety of clients.
I've seen worse software - but I've also seen MUCH better. It seems to be written on an Access base, which I think is the root of most of the problems. It no longer just randomly crashes for no reason, but it still occasionally decides to corrupt a data file for no apparent reason. (To date this has been recoverable...) Network performance on very fast machines and switched fast ethernet is terrible - even though it's only single-user on a given client. And of course it's Windows only. (Although we use a little Samba server, which otherwise performs quite nicely)
I'd love to recommend a move to a cross platform solution - but frankly I'd love to move to anything that didn't suck as much, even if it still required a Windows client. But obviously the needs of a multi-client package aren't the same as a solution sold to in-house accounting at a midsized business.
Biologically, speciation is a tough subject that's more convoluted than that. For instance, sometimes they can interbreed, but won't. Sometimes the SAME species won't interbreed - and sometimes they won't interbreed with individuals born too far away from them, but without any kind of clear boundary, just a spectrum where eventually they are "too" different - even though they're the same species. In plenty of examples, what's a species is contested. Considering the breeding issues and lack of popular hybrids, your traditional fantasy "races" are probably not the same species.
But that is SO not the point. The question is why do we call them races. Which I'd say we do in new games because we did in older games, because D&D did, because Science Fiction writers did, because Tolkien did - because stories have for time immemorial, before genetics existed. Personally, I believe the reason for that is that as far back as we have histories, travelers found different people, and they were all humans or at LEAST very close to it. (I'll add that in for arguments about co-existing Neanderthals and hobbits.) And that's where the definition of race comes from - another people with another society, but recognizeable as people.
And while fantasys certainly contain exaggerations... if I stood next to Andre the Giant (when he was alive) he'd certainly seem like a giant, as would basically any football player. A race of people with an average height that was less than a foot taller or shorter than my personal height would certainly make a difference - this joke has been played in every American-visits-Japan story I've heard. Something as simple as a helmet with a bull's horns could account for a minotaur in low light. etc. Except the ears, Elves are just intelligent, agile, long lived people. The vast majority of fantasy and science fiction races don't push the limits of what an intelligent nonhuman species might be - they are all people with certain things exaggerated and certain things suppressed - exaggerated in the way everything else is in fantasy.
I can't believe I'm posting in this thread.
I realize the g-gp was a joke, but since the parent wasn't, I'm responding to it.
Right now there are US tax BENEFITS to outsourcing. That simply shouldn't be true; I've never heard any justification for it except to line the pockets of the companies large enough to do it a lot.
Companies with US employees pay a tremendous amount for healthcare, in great disproportion to the quality of care we get. a) I'm not saying we need national healthcare, but we at least need enough regulation of this critical industry to prevent by the insurance companies the anticompetitive practices that today rule the industry. b) To keep good jobs here, a greater proportion of this burden needs to be borne nationally. (That also doesn't mean the system has to be nationalized; tax revisions would be sufficient for part b.)
Fixing these things isn't a tariff per se, but it has the tariff effects the gp was looking for compared to today's status quo.
Of course, there are other important changes that could be made - a fair fraction of outsourcing fails, not because somewhere like India doesn't have quality people, but because the lowest bidding contractors aren't the highest-quality people available. So better corporate responsibility for these failures - both a) responsibility to consumers for inferior products, services and especially privacy violations and b) responsibility of officers to shareholders for the failed outsourcing projects, where "everyone else was doing it" isn't a good defense.
These public views are public - and what's more, for the most part already publicly collated and available in many major cities.
If they're doing anything wrong, it's that they're maybe throwing in some information that should be private - live everybody else is. The rampant buying and selling of private information needs to be criminalized.
The real problem is the START of authentication. On the identity theft / SSN is a secure factor kind of level. NOTHING in a public record should be a secure factor; it's easier for the crooks to look that up than for you to remember it.
Another really basic problem is this: US banks are setting up the systems, but they have only moderate legal liability for problems from it.
However, I don't think you're right about the extent of a pain it has to be to use a better system for online banking.
The basic online banking problem is that you can't guarantee the path between you and their server - so you need to change the auth very frequently. But you can't, because people can't handle the changes themselves - so people need a dongle, or a book of pwds.
The simplest system is a simple dongle where you push a button, it gives you a one time pwd, and you enter it along with your regular pwd. This is still vulnerable to people hacking into your account "live" at the same moment you're logging in. (And you can't just prevent the "duplicate" logins because they can just as easily block your actual login so it's not duplicate.) But it's better.
Assume a small device with, say, 11 keys and a little black and white screen and the ability to beep - and that's a USB dongle with One Time Pad hardware.
When you try to login to the bank's website, have this super-dongle communicate with the server through the computer's network connection. It can't guarantee the computer or network doesn't redirect the packets, but it can do some crypto certificate magic to make reasonably sure it's got the right server before it talks and can talk over an end to end encrypted channel using something stronger than normal SSL. You enter at least a PIN into the super-dongle itself, for it to transmit rather securely.
Go about your banking session via your normal web browser. When it comes time to make a transaction, everything happens as normal, except that the "confirm" page happens on the dongle - the dongle displays a brief summary of the transaction and you hit "yes" - or maybe you enter the whole-dollar amount of the transaction.
Your web session could, of course, potentially be hijacked under this system, because it can't be stronger than SSL. Although under certain circumstances the super-dongle could start furiously beeping. So your statements are only protected by a normal level of semi-security. But your PIN and your transactions are both protected quite well.
I know this isn't the party line at Slashdot, but at this point in time, there's no right reason for a regular non-geek individual person to use Linux on their home computer.
If they have a binding reason to use Windows - like being very into Windows gaming, having killer apps that don't work otherwise, only having one person to work on thier computer and that person does ACTUALLY know Windows, or being unwilling to make any changes despite the problems - then they should stick with Windows.
If they don't, they should buy a Mac. The right time to make this conversion is whenever they were going to buy a new computer anyway, which they do.
Linux gains a normal user effectively no compatibility OS X won't have. And OS X has fewer headaches than either Windows or Linux.
Don't misunderstand me - I LIKE Linux. The majority of my systems are Linux. It runs on obscure things OS X couldn't dream of - and runs on all sorts of non OS X hardware, which is sometimes free. For servers it has no disadvantages to OS X and is cheaper, running on all sorts of hardware. If you're buying an IT department worth of computers, the multiplied savings can be substantial. (And if you're in support there WILL be headaches, no matter how good the OS, because users are often dumb.) And if you're DISTRIBUTING computers, Linux is awesome. Or if you're making computers for any specialized set of uses. If you WANT to tune your computers to do particular things, Linux gives you greater ways to tune it. Most users wouldn't dream of doing that.
But as an overall, general purpose, unsupported-user workstation Linux has almost zero advantages to OS X - and these days the costs between a new Mac and a new PC are basically negligible if you shop at all and care more about it running reliably than being a tad faster.
To be clear, many important advantages of OS X over Windows are shared with Linux or BSD. Not merely that they both have them, but they use the same codebase, which is shared and OSS. Despite the kernels being different, OS X and Linux and BSD are all brothers in the most important ways, and the most important improvements that come to one eventually come to all.
I've posted a longer reply into the original article blog-comments, and in a different part of this article above. But my basic answer is:
If what you really want is a desktop that does exactly what Windows does, why are you trying to use Linux? In my opinion, part of the reason this isn't a huge focus for Linux is that there are good alternatives around for all of these things, and that spending a lot of developer time keeping up with Exchange only catches users who don't really want Open - they want Windows they can call Linux.
If what you really want is the ability to do some Linux applications and all your legacy applications, installing Windows entirely in VMWare on every single computer should work fine, if slowly. But obviously you've limited your advantages substantially.
But if you're trying for a transition to Linux, from your (admittedly brief) description it sounds like you're doing it backwards.
I'm NOT advocating that you go out one day, through out all your old software, and reinstall everything OSS. That would be insane. I'm saying that you transition to more open standard or at least cross platform choices, and that the desktop OSes are probably the LAST thing you migrate. Since a huge number of the apps you can use on Linux you can also use on Windows, it makes much more sense to transition those apps first. Maybe you can make these transitions in a month in your organization - or maybe it takes a decade. But you aren't ready to push to Linux until you're sure all the apps work, and you don't NEED to push to Linux to start using them.
For instance, you might migrate to OpenOffice first because it'll save you a bunch of licensing fees. Make sure at least most company-use web applications work with Firefox, because you don't really have ActiveX on other platforms. If you want an Exchange-like experience, first migrate to Groupwise or Domino. (Or many less prominent and less costly options people have listed above.) They support more than one platform. You can have an much more interoperable network platform without installing a single copy of Linux. (Although I personally would install that new Groupwise server on a Linux box...) Etc, Etc until you're at least close to out of problems.
I'm not aware of a Microsoft technology that can't be reasonably replaced. There ARE Windows applications that aren't easily replaced - and maybe you still need WINE or VMWare for those - I'm not saying if you're ever using those options you're wrong. My point is only that the application - conversion, as much as possible, should precede the OS conversion.
I just put the following comment on the actual article, which I'll show below, but I missed adding in the professional Exchange replacements, about which you are extremely correct.
I have to agree with some of the other comments I've seen - your expectations are all wrong.
You're defining "Enterprise" as "work seamlessly in an all-Microsoft shop" and those aren't necessarily the same thing.
You also seem to be defining a good Linux experience as doing exactly what you were totally happy about in Windows but without paying.
If what you're looking for is a computer whose function is to attach to a Microsoft domain server and a Microsoft Exchange server and use all the newest Microsoft technologies relatively seamlessly, you should just install Windows. If you're happy with Windows, you should install Windows. Heck, even Microsoft Entourage for OS X can't talk to Exchange right most of the time, and MS MAKES that.
If you're talking about a transition, you're doing it backwards; put Linux on the servers first, where no non-techs have to get used to using it, where you have a greater guarantee of a limited application set, and where Linux has more experience. Also where Windows charges you more in licensing fees for fewer benefits. Samba is great.
THEN start rolling it out on desktops, starting with the thinnest ones, and using your choice of Linux-style or Windows style methods based on the situation.
But if you really want to talk fairly about Linux in Enterprise you need to talk about legitimately comparing a Linux environment with a Windows one.
You need to talk about better natural security and less time trying to clean up stupid-user infections. You need to talk about the ease of remotely configuring, updating, and reinstalling large numbers of machines. You need to talk about running remote applications via X being free. You need to talk about the registry mostly being replaced with a large number of text files you can easily and remotely overwrite and a total lack of DLL-hell, meaning you almost never HAVE to totally reinstall a machine - and if you do, you never have to open a control panel on any client machine ever to set a single setting unless you want to. A seamless ability to use any convenient desktop in the office.
Certainly there's add-on Windows enterprise software to do many of these things that Linux does naturally. And I'd point out that OS X does most of them too and has a more user friendly desktop. Some studies show substantially lower costs in terms of administrators with Linux - if the administrators know Linux.
But if all you want is a Windows machine, USE a Windows machine. Saving $129 is not, alone, a sound rationale for using Linux in a professional environment where all you seem to want is Windows.
Arete
I had a shill bidder push me up, then literally bid OVER my price, winning the bid themselves. And I stopped bidding. Then they RETRACTED their bid (which is supposed to already be suspicious) to make sure they didn't win.
I reported them to Ebay, back when the names showed, along with various evidence that the accounts were tied together. (The previous-name of one of them was real-name type username with the same last name as the real-name type username the other one was using... from the same city.)
I did not get my money back - although it was only $1, and it was still a reasonable deal on the item. And I wasn't willing to refuse to pay because I didn't want to screw up MY feedback, and I didn't have enough transactions to make it unimportant.
Human Action is destroying us. Don't drink the anti-global-warming koolaid from a couple of discredited scientists.
i mate_effects.html
It sounds like you will agree that there is substantial global warming and that this global warming will cause massive economic disasters, at a minimum, in terms of terrible agricultural failures. But you disagree about the causes.
1. These effects are at least additive - and maybe multiplicative. So the sun being in a warming cycle (which I'm not confirming or denying) does NOT mean that there isn't human caused global warming. If human behavior has a large impact - even if it's not the ONLY impact - and if we have a chance to massively improve the future of our race by reducing our greenhouse emissions, our obligation is not diminished by the existance of other causes. It would only be diminished if our part in global warming was insignificant.
2. Volcanos are not a cause of global warming; they cause more COOLING than warming.
"Volcanic eruptions can enhance global warming by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. However, a far greater amount of CO2 is contributed to the atmosphere by human activities each year than by volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons/year, whereas other sources contribute about 10 billion tons/year. The small amount of global warming caused by eruption-generated greenhouse gases is offset by the far greater amount of global cooling caused by eruption-generated particles in the stratosphere (the haze effect). Greenhouse warming of the earth has been particularly evident since 1980. Without the cooling influence of such eruptions as El Chichon (1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991), described below, greenhouse warming would have been more pronounced."
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/cl
This is not the only source, but had a nice quotable paragraph.
And if you shouldn't avoid the 89 because it seems harder at first, you shouldn't avoid the HP for the same reason.
I don't know anyone who got used to using their HP and wanted to go back. I'm STILL happy about my 48G, and I got it in 93.
People who haven't used them say "why are they so complicated" and after you get used to it you say "why are the other calculators retarded, RPN rules!"
I love mine too! Traded in a TI for it - in 1993 - but I wouldn't think of going back.
Playing the Wii, I had the general feeling that they LET you get away with just flicking it, because they wanted any idiot to be able to play without a big learning curve. I don't think it's a physical limitation of the Wiimote, or at least I don't have any evidence thereof.
I heard rumor of a Wiimote First Person Staker based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That's right, hold your Wiimote like a stake...
Having made one of the above posts about it not being cheaper, last time I checked. (Which was a while ago) I feel compelled to weigh in against the "never buy from Dell" points above.
I'm not a person who believes corporations should engage in profit motive absent all other considerations, but Dell can't possibly afford to go to war with Microsoft - Dell's entire business model is inexpensive Windows computers, and that depends on having inexpensive Windows licenses. I certainly think they should try harder to do more, but as long as Linux is a very niche product and Dell can't sell OS X they can't lose their beneficial Windows licensing. There's plenty other ways to push Dell to be better.
The following applies to things purchased from Dell Small Business - I've heard pretty bad stories about Home sometimes.
For a single high end desktop computer, I think buying components makes a lot of sense. For a low end computer that's supposed to have Windows, it's hard to beat Dell's prices, at least around here. For a low end computer that's not supposed to have Windows, it's STILL hard to beat their prices, even if it happens to come with Windows. (I'm defining "low end" as "whatever the cheapest new Dells are at the time. Some vendors have MUCH slower stuff...)
The hardware is cheap - but not finicky; it breaks nicely and replaces nicely. And 3 year onsite warranties are relatively affordable, which I wouldn't care as much about if the computers were all somewhere I was physically near all the time, but when they're in a random office somewhere that can be important. And they come and repair it without a struggle.
My recollection is that they AREN'T cheaper. Been a while, Dell's pricing is always shifty, but... I remember the price of Windows (if you were in a state where you could "return" it) to be something like $47 - but these "bare" boxes to usually cost the same amount as a similar computer WITH Windows... no savings at all. Oh, and not available on the least expensive boxes, as I remember - a Windows box is always the cheapest Dell option.
Now if THAT changed, maybe that would be news.
You have to legislate conventional broadband for the simple reason that it involves property easements - people running cables through semicommunal and private land. Without this it would be impossible to have wide-scale broadband. Obviously you also can't count on the broadband providers to operate in the best interest or self-interest of the consumers.*
Until or unless you eliminate the broadband monopolies (and residual power of the monopolies that now exist) you need something like Net Neutrality. The reality is that most people have very limited choices in terms of affordable broadband - 0,1 or 2 actual providers. (A million people reselling the same monopoly DSL doesn't count separately.) When you're thinking about backbone peering connections, I'm anti-NN. But for the VERY SMALL number of monopoly providers it's essential.
Net Neutrality should ONLY apply to monopoly providers. And for them we need it - they have an anticompetitive business model at their very core. Chances of SBC letting VoIP operate fairly over their lines? Zero.
For example, SBC (at least) STILL hasn't opened up DSL (last I checked, in IL) - they're required to offer 3rd party DSL and 3rd party POTS service... BUT YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH. 3rd party POTS means you can only buy DSL through SBC.
*Witness the crazy things they've done to prevent anyone from offering municipal broadband of any kind. When a majority of citizens of that town want it, they convince the state legislature to make it illegal!
I'll admit this isn't my specialty, so hopefully I'll get the s**t corrected out of me. But, IN GENERAL:
For most things 64-bit computing is not faster but SLOWER than 32-bit computing. A simple example of why this is would be that all pointers are now twice as long, so instructions like "jumps" take more space - and therefore more cache and more time to load from RAM.
But usually a newer architecture is faster regardless of that, because it tends to have a bigger/faster cache and better branch prediction. Having more registers is a BIG help... IF you've recompiled your OS and apps for that arch so it uses them.
For certain things, 64-bit computing is substantially faster... for example, if you needed 64-bit integer operations, doing them in 32-bits involves a lot of waste. For lots of stuff you don't need this... but AltiVec, for instance, uses 128-bit pathways for certain image processing. This is sometimes really important, because these certain things tend to be really time-consuming and big.
But the biggest and most general reason you really want a 64 bit computer isn't that at all - it's that a 32-bit computer can only use 4 GB of RAM in the normal way. (Both physical and Virtual, basically) 64 bits = 18 x 10^18 B of RAM. So if you only need 4 GB of RAM, 32 bits is fine for you. The moment you need more, 32 bits really blows.
I was going to say this too - I know tons of people that use Windows, but very few who like it. I know plenty who don't think the Mac would be better, but almost none who ACTUALLY like what they have. Maybe they would be unhappy with the Mac, but they sure are often unhappy with Windows too.
The people I know who use Windows fall into three categories:
People who have to (employees - or because they have PC hardware and can't afford to buy new stuff - a new Mac isn't much more than a new PC, but a just-slightly-used PC gets cheap-to-free much faster. This SHOULD include people who use Windows at home because they have Windows at work and don't want to have to switch back and forth. Consultants and developers who get paid to fix Windows manually or by creating software and are happy that it's complex because it means more work are in this group, too. This includes every commercial AntiVirus manufacturer, for instance.)
People who don't know any better. (People who's only exposure to computers IS Windows, for a variety of reasons. This should really include anyone whose only Mac experience is pre- OS X, too.)
People who have killer app(s). (This includes basically all gamers for the moment, quite a bit of accounting software, etc., etc. People who PUT UP with Windows because their software won't work on the Mac are not equivalent to people who LOVE Windows.)
I'll stipulate that I'm sure there are people outside these three categories who DO love Windows... I've just never met one.
She died from drinking pure water too fast screwing up her electrolytes. The holding it had nothing to do with it. Peeing as often as she wanted wouldn't have helped.
It's not impossible to burst a bladder, but to my understanding usually it involves a sharp jab to the bladder while it's full.
It's also not healthy to hold concentrated urine for long periods, esp for women, but that's not usually a problem that's related to drinking lots of water.
You don't have to CAVE to sponsors. I understand completely that without money you don't exist. That is NOT the same thing.
While I would have zero disrespect for someone who said "we're going to have the wholesome game awards" to get more sponosors - even if he and all the judges thought games with mature themes were better - you have to do that BEFORE the competition. And you have to be honest with your sponsors and yourselves. And if you WERE honest with them and they get cold feet in violation of your agreement, you have to have balls.
You're missing the other side of the puzzle. At the risk of sounding like the bubble, if your awards are worthless you have no marketshare, and if you have no marketshare you ALSO have no sponsors. (Unless you're one of those "competitions" that have a big entry fee and give an honorable mention to everything that enters, to pad the things they can put on the box.) If you have a big marketshare and publicity, sponsors - SOME sponsors - will beat a path to your door.
In this case I think they've traded for short-term sponsorship and publicity by giving the long-term popularity of their awards.
If you decide to make "The Wholesome Game Awards" because you'll get more sponsors, more power to you. If you move way out to the edge for the "ultraviolent game awards" then you won't get traditional mainstream sponsors. Maybe you'll get a sponsorship from the Ultimate Fighting Championships or something. Porn game awards would only get porn sponsors. Etc.
Choosing to be mainstream enough to have sponsors is VERY different than what this competition did - caving to sponsors after the game was a finalist. Unless the sponsor has a contractually set veto over the judging process, the right answer is to offer to a) add disclaimers about the sponsor not sponsoring the individual games, etc. and other such concessions if the sponsor will go for them or b) telling the sponsor they can pull out of future sponsorships if they want, but you're keeping the money they already promised for THIS competition, thank you very much.
And if they STILL behave badly - like they withhold money they promised you for this competition or they threaten to sue you for going through with it - then you publicize the heck out of the situation. Include publicizing how this game was in the list of entrants, so the sponsor was ALREADY sponsoring it. You'll get some combination of a) them backing off to stop the continuing press coverage about it and b) a ton of press and name recognition, netting you the ability to get other sponsorships. Get that fact into as much of the press as possible.
Btw, I've never seen the game in question, and the little I've read doesn't make me think highly of it. But the fact that it was a finalist means it was very much exactly what this competition was looking for, whatever that is.
I'll be the first to admit that our Myth installation has been problematic and a pain. So now I'm going to ask you some questions about Tivo which cut to the core of the things I really like about Myth compared to Tivo. I'm not a Tivo expert, so these really are questions; some of them Tivo probably does fine... But I think at it's heart Tivo has a great interface but is much more limited than Myth.
Can you really BUY a Tivo, or only rent it? (That is, you buy the hardware but my impression is it doesn't work without a subscription)
Can you cheaply and indefinitely expand the capacity of your Tivo for roughly the cost of drives? (Tivo is Linux based, so it certainly COULD support mounting a new drive over, say, NFS, but I don't think it does...) It's only a few hundred $ to expand your Myth box to 1 TB...
Are Tivo's files encypted? Can I copy them to another machine and have them play while the Tivo is off, disconnected, far away - or if the Tivo breaks. Can I back them up to another media and have them work? Can I put them on my laptop and watch them on a plane without internet?
Can I guarantee my Tivo will let me skip commercials? ALL commercials, including ones Tivo might put there? (I believe they've several times talked about adding unskippable commercials...)
Does Tivo support fast-playback with adjusted audio? I haven't used this, but at least some versions of Myth are supposed to support playing on a fast-forward speed (say 2x, but even 1.5x) WITH audio, and with the audio adjusted so that you hear normal words but you don't hear gaps between words. Supposedly it's quite reasonable to watch a lecture in 3x once you get used to it, because someone can only talk so fast and still be clear, but that has gaps.